The Peripatetic Philosopher responds:

  A Reader Responds to

“JUST SAY ‘NO!’”

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© September 30, 2015

NOTE:

As the reader reacts to this referenced excerpt, I am sorry I made him late for his exercise class, but am pleased that the piece made him reflect.  “Self-Confidence: The Elusive Key to Health and Happiness” is written just for that purpose, to make readers think and reflect.

A READER WRITES

Dr. Jim,

You have made me late for the gym.  Okay, I have made myself late for I wouldn’t say “NO!” to your excerpt from your book.

I enjoyed it a lot.

That is probably because I think I actually understood much of it, and found I agreed with it.

Many years ago, I told a contemporary that I felt my job as a parent was to raise my children in a manner that ensured that they no longer needed me by the time they finished school.

He objected to that idea saying that he wanted his children to always need him.  I told him I wanted them to want me, but not to need me.

While I suppose my daughters remember many more lectures, I only remember deliberately giving them the advice of being truthful, and what it meant to be truthful, and the fact that this included the business of being truthful to yourself.

The second advice was about controlling your debt, and the reasons for that and how if uncontrolled it would ultimately and unquestionably lead to issues regarding truthfulness.

Moreover, I certainly concur with this paragraph in your piece:

“Another factor that needs much more attention to explain success and failure vis-à-vis IQ is the character, composition and nurturing capacity of the environment. 

“Minorities and inner city children are unlikely to have the climate to grow intellectually that is available in the suburbs.

“Then there is the business of parental involvement, psychological encouragement and readiness to be there when their children need mentoring. In a word, self-confidence and success go well beyond an IQ index.”

That leads me to the business of “America’s failing schools.” They are about this and not really about inadequate funding, inadequate facilities, or inadequate teachers.

Unfortunately, breaking the cycle is enormously difficult under the best of circumstances, but because our society only permits blaming the schools, etc., rather than admitting the real reason for the failure to learn we cannot hope to fix the problem.

Anyway, thanks for another good thought piece.

DR. FISHER RESPONDS

Your relationship to your daughters reminds me of an Erich Fromm observation in “The Art of Loving” (1978):

“Mature love says, ‘I need you because I love you’; immature love says, ‘I love you because I need you’.”

You express mature love, your friend expresses immature love.

Regarding education, what you say has merit. But the problem is even more basic than that. It is also – the way educational needs are handled – an indication of mature versus immature love.

We Americans are proud to continuously announce to the world how generous we are, and it is true, Americans are very generous.

You get inside that generosity and you see we have a more basic problem with intimacy.

We would rather throw money at a problem and hope some of it sticks than get involved and committed in solving of the problem.

It has not always been that way. Alexis de Tocqueville, when he came to America in the 1830s, and wrote “Democracy in America” (1834) found Americans involved and enthusiastically volunteering to help others.

In a word, being intimately committed and involved was not a problem then, but it is a societal issue today.

We have become insular and distrustful of others, especially strangers. So, we wrap ourselves in what we perceive to be security by staying close to our ethnicity and socioeconomic class.

Out of guilt, or perhaps collective memory, Americans have no trouble throwing money at problems. It is the capitalistic way.

You can see the evidence everywhere, the rise of privileged prep schools for affluent children so that they will qualify for prestigious academic universities, and won’t have to mingle with the less advantaged; in exclusive affluent residential communities that only the affluent can afford; while the rest of us build fences around our houses and minds in an equal attempt to live in a secluded world a safe distance from such thorny problems as education.

Show me the intimacy in Facebook, or those obsessively committed to tweeting and texting, or indeed, to young people who are afraid of the intimacy and commitment of marriage, while preferring to enjoy all its conveniences without its concomitant responsibilities.

Societal problem, including education, which is so fundamental to the survival of society, will never be adequately handled when most of us prefer to observe life a safe distance from each other, which paradoxically, includes an equally safe distance from ourselves.