What is Fisher about,
anyway?
JAMES
R. FISHER, JR., Ph.D.
©
March 29, 2017
Reference:
Entrepreneur, publisher, essayist and quintessential
Renaissance Man, Ken Shelton, recently published a mini-essay in which he
mentions my book Work Without Managers in his communique to me, but failed to
mention the book in his discussion of his principles of leadership. I simply wrote to Ken, whom I’ve never met,
but have had an intellectual relationship with for more than twenty years:
“It would have been nice if you mentioned WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS.” This
generated the following response. I
share my work and reflections with some 300 people on my e-mail list. I am not however on Face Book or any other
social media. Like Ken, I’ve never met
this person but value his comments because I sense they are genuine.
A
READER WRITES:
Dr. Fisher,
I’m wondering what you’re about. I read your stuff; ponder it; occasionally send you a comment. I’ve not read your book, don’t think I need to. I do sometimes marvel at your simple but powerful declarative sentences: It would have been nice if you had mentioned
WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS. Tell me I am wrong, but that sounded angry.
Am I right? Please comment.
DR.
FISHER RESPONDS:
Dear Reader:
Thank you for your observation and candor. I am trying to complete a book and so I’ll
try to be brief, but hopefully equally candid.
In
my own case as a witness to history, since I was born when Hitler came to
power; experienced the Great Depression; the surprise attack of Japan on Pearl
Harbor; followed by WWII concluding with the atomic bombing of Japan; then the
Korean War which was not a war but a police action because it was not declared
a war; followed by the Cold War with the USSR; then the election and assassination
of President John F. Kennedy; then President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “guns and
butter” Great Society with nearly a half million fighting troops in the Viet
Nam War; only to lose that war in full humiliating retreat; meanwhile the Civil
Rights Movement led to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; with the
Boomer Generation spawning the Hippie Counterculture; in that midst the
assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy, brother of the assassinated president;
then in this same time warp there was Watergate and President Nixon resigning in
disgrace; only to have things continue to unravel with the Islam terrorist
attack on the Twin Towers; followed by President George W. Bush's preemptive invasion of Iraq, then
the War in Afghanistan, and now the Civil War in Syria, and the collapse of the
Middle East around that conflagration. Tens of thousands into the millions have lost
their lives during my life span, mainly as collateral damage to war, while tens
of trillions of dollars have been spent in a mainly hysterical reaction to
events showing what was construed as leadership was not leadership at all but
something else entirely, the panic of fear.
I have made no secret of my low birth in the scheme
of things; nor have I apologized for claiming I have worked at every level of
the complex organization from being a laborer in a chemical plant to a top
executive in two Fortune 500 companies.
In that span of more than fifty years I’ve never joined the corporate
club. You might say I have been a perspicacious observer.
Corporate society is not new. It was conceived in Europe in the 18th
century, but only found its legs in the 20th century. Since the 20th century, it has discovered the best way to stay in power is not to lead, but to exploit fear. Leaderless leadership has followed.
We toss around the terms “social security” and “national
security” when this is only the content and context of “corporate security.”
Corpocracy has discovered that Americans are
vulnerable to the “politics of terror” and are most pliable to that psychology
because it leaves them off the hook to find their own way in life.
We have reentered the “Age of Fear.”
Gone is the sense that the skills with which
we entered a profession or job would be the relevant skills for our working
lifetime.
Gone is the certainty that you
can reasonably expect a comfortable retirement to follow from a successful
working career.
Gone is the sense that
you marry for love and have a family and that family will not look outside
itself for more excitement and adventure and forget the original commitment
made for life.
Gone is the belief in
God and the need for the safe haven provided by a church, temple, synagogue or
mosque.
Gone is the pride in regional community
that is out of the main stream and a little hokey and doesn’t apologize for its
hokiness.
Gone is the family and its
members that looks for answers within the family from the wisdom of family history
and family’s values.
Gone is the person
who believes marriage is between a man and a woman and is not afraid to face the
ridicule and derision it might generate.
Gone is the pride in work whatever the work may be thinking that some
work is more important than other work because people doing that work make more
money.
Gone are happy campers with a
moral compass governing their actions now believing instead they must look
to experts and specialists to find their way.
Gone is self-respect as well as self-awareness and self-acceptance as
everyone seems to want to be somebody else doing something else some other
place then where they are.
People consumed with fear flock to gated communities to be in the
comfort of their own kind believing within this cage there is security and
peace and comfort. They send their children to prep schools to ensure they are with their own kind. Everyone in this xenophobic nutshell stays away from
places where most people of limited means shop such as Walmart and K-Mart, fearing a stranger might accost them with a bomb.
There is fear that the government can no
longer control the circumstances of their lives. Consequently, they fear people of color and
different ethnicity and language and custom believing it might impinge on their
space as if that space belongs to them, alone.
This “Analysis of Fear” is new to most Americans but
familiar to the rest of the world for an eternity.
The United States of America has lived in a gated community for its
entire existence separated as it has been – before the current digital age –
by two gigantic oceans and by neighbors from the North (Canada) and the South
(Mexico) whom they considered no threat to them in any way. They now fear and wonder if they can remain a
gated community against the world.
That one security, that belief that Americans are exceptional
and can be protected from the chaos and calamity of the rest of the world has ushered
in President Donald J. Trump, who clearly understands this subtext of fear
better than any politician in the realm, and carried it against incredible odds
to the presidency.
Fear is not leadership; the threat of global warming
is not leadership; the mobilization of fear around trapped emotions between the
unknown and unknowable is however grist for the dystopian novelist.
Fear is the mask politicians and corporate leaders wear, keeping politicians in power and corporate leaders still able to vote themselves huge incomes in the
tens of millions of dollars while workers’ wages remain stagnant.
Fear ultimately leads to revolution. It always has and it always well. And if we could just get past the blarney of
economists, we would realize that capitalism has been on life support for
decades. It, too, will run its
course. It starts with fear and
separation; then mounts to divisive polarity; and then explodes into bitter
irrational mind numbing hatred.
Once
common needs and shared interests unravel, then you have what social
psychologist Gustave Le Bon warned: crowd psychology rules!
This is written hastily and for that I apologize as
I am completing a book on SELF-CONFIDENCE which is the bane to fear. Confidence like fear exists in the subtext,
not in the content and context of our lives.
I live in subtext.
