The Peripatetic Philosopher admits to:

How Difficult It Is To Get Off the Dime!

The Legacy of a Think Tank

JAMES R. FISHER, JR., Ph.D.

© August 30, 2017

Too many people I've worked for were vulnerable to Lord Acton's admonition of which I'm sure you're familiar, and of a similar mind to that of you, but too often they are in the wings and not on the stage. I would like to see your passion in a 30-year-old who could give a good goddamn about his career but was reckless enough to want to make a difference.


*Dr. Fisher’s response to a concerned reader in his nineties.


THE FRUSTRATION OF BEING TOO LONG IN THE TOOTH

The response to a reader is actually a response to two readers, two brilliant men, who write regularly in reaction to missives of the Peripatetic Philosopher, generously sharing their own salient thoughts relative to them. It is the function of a “Think Tank,” that has materialized over the years from posted missives on the blog of www.fisherofideas.com.

A “Think Tank” in the broadest sense performs research and advocacy on topics concerning social policy, political strategy, economics, the military, technology and culture. In a more specific sense, ordinary souls have views on such issues and that is the function of the Peripatetic Philosopher.

Whereas “Think Tanks” in the broader sense push for reshaping policy, mobilizing experts and pushing for innovative change through networking and nurturing, the Peripatetic Philosopher has not such a grand agenda, hoping instead to get ordinary citizens thinking about common issues that affect their lives, sharing their thoughts and concerns with others of a similar mind. In that sense, the Peripatetic Philosopher is a provocateur of thought.

On two occasions I have been personally invited to join fledgling “Think Tanks” that had more an academic sense of such an endeavor.

In the late 1990s, a retired US National Guard general, who had participated in the Bosnian War (1992 – 1996) as a member of the NATO contingent, during the Clinton Administration, called upon me at my home in Tampa, Florida to join “his team” of writers, academics and ex-military leaders in a new “Think Tank” network.

For a time, I heard from academics, who wanted all my published books and articles, of course gratis, while offering none of their own. This was before the Internet and there was no easy way of checking these academicians out. I sent the books and seldom if ever heard from them again. Apparently, they thought because I was critical of the complex organization and management in these works that I was also anti-business and pro-academia, which was not true at all. I was neither pro nor anti anything while being equally critical of the complex organization be it academia, industry or business. This “Think Tank” idea died a quiet death in inconspicuous anonymity.

Early in this century, another fledgling group out of Naples, Florida involving the ex-president of my own university, a man I deeply respect, invited me to join a group of businessmen at that location to be a member of a “Think Tank” to be called “The Naples Institute.” 

The interest of these people was genuine, the devotion authentic, and for a time spirited with palpable energy. Not being from Naples, which is south of Tampa, I never attended any of the Naples Institute’s weekly meetings.

Interestingly enough, none of the members of this fledgling group, to my knowledge, beyond my former president were either published authors or academicians. They were successful businessmen within the $million dollar circle, where at least one had created a national franchise, and where all, now that they had made it, wanted to contribute their thinking to the national dialogue as possible change agents. The Naples Institute, too, died a quiet death without ever getting off the ground.

THINK TANKS & MY TAKE ON THEM

Perhaps as long as man has existed, there has been the rudiments of a “think tank” in the society of man, a place where interested people could share their ideas, concerns and possible solutions to problems common to the community-at-large. So, the idea has legitimacy.

I must confess, when I was in industry as a young man and making – at the time – a considerable amount of money as a corporate executive, I envisioned forming an intellectual group, not necessarily a “Think Tank,” but a soiree where people of a certain persuasion would come together in my home to discuss ideas.

That became an abortive idea once I left the corporation at a young age – in my mid-thirties – to attempt to make sense of my life as to the meaning of what I had experienced working and living on four continents. I had a passion to find out why I was so troubled.

A two-year sabbatical from any gainful employment followed during which time I wrote and published one book, which became a national bestseller, and the most successful book I would ever write, while reading hundreds of books, looking for answers only to generate more questions. Somewhat in desperation, instead of returning to work, I went back to school to earn a Ph.D., then drifted back again into corporate life by necessity as I had to make a living.

Academia was seen up close and personal as a mature graduate student where I was more the age of my professors than my fellow students. The paradox was that I approached this intellectual life with romantic zest however found missing in the faculty and student body where professors lived in the cocoon of their special training and students appeared only interested in earning credentials as quickly and painlessly as possible to get on with their lives.

It dawned on me that formal education had devolved in my absence to the factory mentality of industry, where process is incidental and the product critical. 

Professors talked of “contact hours,” enrollment turnover, and graduation rates while students talked about how much they would likely make in their next job upon graduation. No one talked about the quality of education or what had been learned. This was the factory mentality that I was hoping to escape. Granted, I was in my thirties and battle tested with my idealized bubble pricked in South Africa’s apartheid.

Another irony was that this poor boy had always made money and enjoyed promotion although that was never his focus. He was interested in making a difference while never feeling he had. As a consequence, his attention was on the journey, not on ends. Social scientists would say he was driven by terminal rather than instrumental values in a society that no longer believed in such values, as everyone appeared to be in a mad rush to get somewhere, often that somewhere being somewhere else that differed with where they were.

Evidence of this conundrum is apparent in my writing. For the past more than a quarter century, I have been writing essentially every day, getting my ideas out of life experiences, but also from experiences of others with whom I am in contact, marveling at how many confirm the joy and sorrow in a life worth living.

Now, in my eighties, seemingly attracting many others of a similar leaning, I wonder if there are any people in their thirties who feel as I felt a half century ago, and I answer, “You betcha!”

Unfortunately, I see this thirty-something very gifted crowd having their passions redirected in Faustian pursuits on cable television. Here the mania is to create and promote your brand in a desperate attempt to remain relevant and in tune with the times. This is without nuance or subtlety as nature, radical and otherwise, is playing on another network. Alas, there are too many Jesse Watters and not enough Juan Williams in the firmament.

MY “THINK TANK” OF ENGAGED PEOPLE

Recently, I told my BB that the “Think Tank” I’ve always wanted to have has actually evolved quite naturally with salient contributors to my blog on www.fisherofideas.com and from my e-mail list. These are representative respondents:

A poet from Jacksonville, Florida who demonstrates humor and insight in her poetry and who also grew up in Clinton, Iowa.

An ex-US Army Colonel from Tampa, Florida who is active in a number of community activities including the local library applying his administrative talents to community issues. He has made it his business to act as an educator leading a group in The Great Books Reading Program. In his own right, he has meaningful and provocative views that he shares freely in reaction to the Peripatetic Philosopher's missives.

A former artist and high school teacher came to the United States as a young man from Germany and now lives in Tampa. He has a most incisive mind and ubiquitous curiosity which has often come to grace these pages with his insights and concerns.

A writer, mother, gardener, chronicler and community leader comes from my home town of Clinton, Iowa. She demonstrates a love of people and nature, books and ideas, and has a candid point of view. She has shown courage first hand triumphing over an illness without complaint while maintaining an intelligent and empathetic understanding of people who sometimes see life differently than she does, including this writer.

Another Clintonian, who is a former security officer for the Sisters of St. Francis, has made it her business to help anyone in distress, and has a compelling record of turning the lives of many people around. She grew up in my Clinton neighborhood, although much younger, and was important when “In the Shadow of the Courthouse” came out, which was a book about that neighborhood.

Yet, another Clintonian, who is active in the Clinton County Historical Society and a high school classmate, has been instrumental in promoting my works to Clintonians from the days of “In the Shadow of the Courthouse” to “Zimba, the Domesticated Lion.”

An academic and former NASA scientist, who has enumerable careers serving the special needs of American servicemen across the globe, sending them tens of thousands of care packages, has started up universities, been a consultant, counselor, professor, community organizer, and instrumental in seeing that people back home know of my writings.

A Chicago, Illinois former human resources executive has a perceptive point of view with a strong loyalty and understanding of his own roots and those of others in his diverse community. He shares his views honestly and openly which often differ with my own, but does so politely and respectfully, teaching me new tolerance in the process.

A Detroit, Michigan UAW leader, and colleague of W. Edwards Deming of Quality Control and Statistical Control fame, has traveled the globe for the UAW promoting the Deming method. He keeps colleagues still employed and those retired informed of the latest development relating to labor/management issues. No one knows the Internet concerning union/management or the publication of papers and books covering this genre better than he does.

A New Yorker and now a Florida resident, holder of more than 100 patents, and author of several culturally defining books, has perhaps the most original mind that I have ever encountered. All his books I’ve read more than once. It amazes me how current they are although written more than a score of years ago. He is currently publishing his research and assessments on amazon.com in the Kindle Library. These new books relate to the nature of work, workers and productivity.

An immigrant from Holland knew the full blunt of Nazi Germany in WWII. He became a Canadian citizen and an educator in chemistry, as well as having had a career in technical publications. Now, at an advanced age, he is advising the Canadian Senate on fiscal and policy matters. I cherish each and every one of his comments as they are pure gold.

Another Canadian who has been reading my blog for years, introduced himself to me, and has since been my computer sage carrying me through the thorny world of my ignorance and showing me the way to surface my ideas.  His comments are always incisive and generous.  We have never met but I often think of him like a son.

If you have ever visited my website (www.fisherofideas.com), and you liked what you see, it is because of one individual who was tireless in creating it from practically nothing.  He seldom comments on what I have written, but I will always be indebted to him for this gift as it now enjoys a vibrant international audience. 

A multi-dimensional publisher and author of international bestsellers is a devout Mormon as well as an entertainer in dance and singing, as well as a key note speaker and consultant of the first rank on the international stage. Some years ago, as an entrepreneur, he launched a series of monthly periodicals on personal, sales and marketing, and leadership issues relating to executive excellence. Anyone who is anybody in the corporate world has graced his pages. He was one of the first publishers to give me exposure, and has been especially encouraging to me as an independent thinker and writer.

An Alaskan author, and the best writer in American prose that I know, personally, is an advocate of didacdics encouraging people without formal educations to accept life as their university. He has a passion and an honesty that is unimpeachable. For that disposition, I admire him greatly. No writer of ideas has more engaged passion than this man.

A man with academic credentials, who chose to apply his expertise to corporate education, is the creator of the Management Development Center for Honeywell, Inc. He has risen to the first ranks among business journalists being a contributing editor to several national magazines, as well as an author in his own right. He has been quietly supportive of me from a distance for many years while sometimes finding me unnecessary provocative.

A particular professor at the University of South Florida was able to corral some sense into me making it clear that I had to behave if I wanted to attain my degree and credentials. Were it not for his efforts it is doubtful that I would be writing these words, as he has been of that importance to me in my life. For the past forty seven years he has been my constant friend, while writing some inspiring novels in his own right, which now grace amazon.com’s Kindle Library.

This engineer once invited me to Chicago to address his AQP chapter of Quality Control. He has remained in the trenches as an engineering manager, and demonstrates the patience required with atavistic management practices. He has also been my inspiration to write books keying on self-confidence as a guide to organizational success. While knowledge power has shifted to professionals, management with its anachronistic position power remains reluctant to read the handwriting on the wall. When I write these books, I think of him and what he has to deal with on a daily basis to be productive.

The valedictorian of my high school class and my roommate at the University of Iowa became a successful medical doctor having his own clinic while being a major contributor to our Alma Mater. He has also been a constant friend and talked me into attending our 50th High School Class Reunion and giving the commencement address, not having previously attended any other class reunions.

Another Clinton high school classmate, who left a promising executive career with a giant oil company to run the family business in his hometown was complicit with our high school valedictorian to induce me to attend this class reunion, reminding me that the Washington Post journalist and member of the Meet the Press television panel was Marquis Childs, who grew up in Clinton, and gave the commencement address at our high school graduation. “Since you are the only author in our class,” he reasoned, “it falls to you to speak at our 50th Class Reunion.” I could not but oblige.

A former vice president of Honeywell International, Ltd., and colleague of mine when I was with that firm in Europe, a native German and resident of Germany who was put in a German uniform in the dark days of WWII, survived that and rose to eminence in Honeywell displaying not only cogent skills but also a blistering sense of humor.   He has maintained that refreshing aspect to this day despite the trepidation and devastation that he had to endure early in his life.

A friend who is now a consultant but was an executive with Honeywell Avionics when I worked there, displays the most acerbic wit in his prose of any writer I’ve ever known personally. I’ve encouraged him to write over the years, and suspect he will one day. If he does, the reader will be stimulated, entertained, challenged and hungry for more of the same confection. His essays to me are keepers, I kid you not!

This Missourian is now a community action executive in Tampa meeting the needs of the disadvantaged and the neglected. He once had a teacher in his Missouri high school who was a member of the “Courthouse Tigers” of my youth, and a teammate of mine in high school sports. This very engaged professional also once trained a U.S. Olympic weightlifter, demonstrating early on his ability to get the best out of others. He is a discerning friend with powerful insights into his work and life which he has shared with the Peripatetic Philosopher.

THAT SAID, WHAT IS MISSING?

My sense to have a viable “Think Tank” requires an initial endowment – if we are talking about a conventional group, and not my Internet (e-mail) “think tank” – of some $5 million.

I say that because the group needs editors, copy editors, publicists, literary agents, administrators, researchers, collators, catalogers, visual and computer consultants, and at least one publishing house along with television outlets, and need I add, cogent contributors willing to associate their names and works with the think tank. 

A recently fired prolific author of cable news with a following of millions avoided all this turning out instant bestsellers with a built in purchasing audience.

A book about President Dwight David Eisenhower’s final address to the US Congress was written by a talented and respected journalist with a similar brand and exposure. It, too, was an instant bestseller with a television documentary to boost sales, which I read and found to have a very thin premise. My wonder is if any major publishing house would have touched it were such a book written by yours truly. 

This is not a trend; this is glutted reality. 

My hope is that young people reading this will get some idea of how to get beyond television cable hype and find their own equivalent of a personal “Think Tank.”

Finally, this was the referenced Lord John-Dalberg Acton’s (1804-1902) admonition:

*Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul. The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks. The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. Learn as much by writing as by reading. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity. The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought. And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.

Too often, those who climb to power and authority fall prey to Lord Acton’s dictum while those who occupy “Think Tanks” seldom have that temptation as they ruminate in earnest to generate mainly symbolic influence. Even when that influence becomes real, they remain far removed from its employment, which is something of a blessing.

The Peripatetic Philosopher has a conversation:

WHY NOW?

AN INTERIM ASSESSMENT

An Exchange with a Reader

JAMES R. FISHER, JR., Ph.D.

© August 27, 2017

A READER WRITES:

I continue to ruminate about all this, and I think most humans follow and obey the rules of a hierarchy because of the herd instinct which occurs in much of nature and which helps whoever is on top.

In looking back on my life I have seen these two controlling factors in my life.  Hierarchy mattered somewhat at Newberry College a Lutheran affiliated institution where I majored in English literature, but had two English professors who did not encouraged herd thinking.  When I went to Emory to do graduate work in comparative literature, I ran into the herd mentality. 

I left and joined the Air Force and became an aircraft maintenance officer.  In that capacity I was able to question and was not punished, but many times ignored as they moved me up the chain of command in maintenance and rank. 

After the Air Force I became an English teacher while I went to USF to study art.  During the time I was working on my MFA there too was an undercurrent that only certain kinds of art were acceptable which I ignored and still received my degree. 

When I started teaching art I found I had a lot of freedom in the classroom, and I encouraged freedom of thought among my students as they gained the skills.  However, for the most part the administrators did not like questioning anything and encouraged the herd mentality. 

Over all from my experience and from experiencing and reading history, the hierarchy in many areas controls from the top by encouraging the herd mentality in the corporate, religious or political world and any dissent is either ignored or punished if it threatens one of those structures.

 DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

This is an extremely wise and perceptive discourse.  I also applaud your empirical assessment of your life experience as the guide to your consciousness.  

There is much wisdom in what you say corroborated by your own life experience.  

You quietly have found a way to demonstrate a course of action that served you in your quest to be useful to others, and in being so, not only useful to yourself, but successful in removing barriers from others, especially your students, which has allowed them to seek and find their own specialness.  

What you encountered in the military, the ultimate corporate society, is representative of my experience in the corporation.  The difference is that at every level something in me was resistant to this herd mentality, which you identify so clearly. 

It started for me back in grammar school.  Some of the Sisters of St. Francis attempted to make me "fit" into the preconceived Catholic mode, while others, fortunately for me, gave me a great opportunity to test my wings.  

In high school athletics, only my varsity basketball coach allowed me such freedom; the other coaches in football, baseball and track attempted to make me conform, which I never did, at least to their satisfaction.  

Academically, I was fortunate to have had a great math teacher in my junior and senior year of high school, as well as a good chemistry and history teacher.  They saw something in my rebellious nature that didn’t distract them from their appointed task to educate.  Consequently, they allowed me to blossom.  

At university, my professors in chemistry and literature were themselves not confined to the herd mentality recognizing a similar disposition in me.  Ironically, I stayed in chemistry and rejected their literary counsel until I retired from the demands of an economic life. 

Books, however, would remain my staple over the years with their influence on what I should read.  I compare this metaphorically to a gestation period in preparation to the ultimate challenge of trying to become a writer.  I’ve never known a writer who was not first a reader.  They go together in terms of nourishment like eating and sleeping.   

From the very first as a bench chemist in industry, it felt all wrong.  It personified the herd mentality with a clear hierarchy and doing everything the way things had always been done.  In a word, it was not a happy experience.

Surprisingly, as an enlisted man in the US Navy, where the herd mentality is exercised in spades, I didn't mind it; indeed, I loved the Navy from the very first; still do; still look back on my military service with nostalgia.  Now, why is that?

This surprised a lot of people who thought they knew me, including myself, but it shouldn't have, given the fact that I was besotted with Irish Roman Catholicism.  Nothing is more totally the herd mentality than the church with her instrumental orderliness to rival that of the military.  

Everyone's life story should be one of discovery, as yours clearly has been.  Everyone's life story should be a personal assessment and evaluation of that life experience in terms of what is true and false, real and imagined, good and bad, what has worked and what has not, and what is self-enhancing and self-rejecting.   

There were legitimate reasons for the dominance of the herd mentality throughout man's history as Eric Hoffer has gone to some pains to explain in terms of mass movements.  Gustave Le Bon has done the same with his explanation of the nature of mass psychology.  

Your very brief assessment of what you perceive and why, holds within it a possible clue as to why this current preoccupation with the removal of landmarks -- statutes and monuments, books, songs and poems, and other historical artifacts -- of famous people who once owned slaves in the nearly four hundred year history of Europeans on American soil.

Slavery was a despicable industry and wrong and a permanent scar on America’s heritage.  Given that fact, what in terms of subtext is currently going on?  And why now? 

I've asked myself why this insanity has surfaced now when it has always been part of our subconscious or unconscious reality.

A possible reason is that the hierarchy pecking order that has always existed in the annals of man’s history is possibly in trouble.  The structure of society which is so dependent on the reliability and sustainability of the hierarchical infrastructure to maintain some efficiency and some sense of order is showing evidence of some deterioration.  

The family has collapsed; the church has lost its mission; the school has become a combat zone; industry has spiraled into dysfunction as a competitive jungle; the political system is in chaos, and the government has lost its way.

As often as I am wont to be repetitive, I have been nipping at the heels of this situation for ages in an attempt to define it as I see the problem.  This is evident in my writing where I address the problem of leaderless leadership and dissonant workers, corporate sin and retreat from the culture of contribution to the twin cultures of comfort and complacency.   

But this may be my own limited ability to sense the apparent breakdown of hierarchies with the seemingly vacuum that this deterioration has seemingly created.  

To put it more boldly, when NOBODY IS IN CHARGE, the natives tend to go wild! 

This is what we are seeing and no one knows what to do about it because everyone is looking at the problem in terms of content and context, and not the subtext where it has erupted to the surface.

It happened in the French Revolution with the "Reign of Terror" with Robespierre (1758 -1794) at the controls who orchestrated the "terror" with the guillotine.  By doing so, he prostituted the reason for the revolution.  He lathered up the French people’s hatred of the monarchy and its abuses instead of guiding them to responsible engagement in the promotion of “liberty, equality and fraternity,” which had been the battle cry of the revolution.  Robespierre would perish at the tender age of 36 by that same instrument he released to the collective madness of the time, losing his own head to that guillotine.

Hate, vengeance, violence and real and/or imagined transgressions of the past ultimately backfire as the disenchanted become victims of their own excesses.  It is a matter of history.  

Once all these monuments of the past are destroyed, what has been accomplished? 

Chances are it paradoxically reifies what was silently on display and taken for granted as just that, inanimate objects of little interest to the majority, but because of all the attention now magnified into significance. 

No one ever "gets even" for past transgressions against human indignities.  By the same token, no one forgets these transgressions, or should they.  Most people, however, triumph over them by demonstrating love, compassion, understanding and empathy.  Morality is always a matter of the mind of the times.

Philosophers such as Socrates and Plato, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, St. Augustine, John Du Scot, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Montaigne, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Paine, Burke, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Bentham, Dewey, Smith, Mill, Weber, Arendt, Havel, among others, have been saying this for centuries.

If we are, indeed, experiencing a breakdown of the hierarchy, then we are losing our grip on a pecking order.  

When people no longer believe in a pecking order, no longer believe in "law & order," constitutional authority, the principles of rational conduct, and are only out for themselves projecting their anxiety if not their madness on the body politic than we have Charlottesville, Virginia, North Korea, a "Do Nothing" US Congress, an infantile US President, and equally infantile media, and an educational system that trains fresh minds for high end jobs and not for spiritual, intellectual and moral integrity.  

My thirty part NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND (e-books on Kindle’s amazon.com) was written with this in mind, but I sense, again, that I was only chipping away at the heels of the problem while the subtext of unconscious man was roaring to the surface.  Civility is a very fragile construct.

   

The Peripatetic Philosopher shares a consideration:

A Project in Mind!

Work without Workers!

JAMES R. FISHER, JR., Ph.D.

© August 25, 2017

For your information:

I don't usually do this -- telegraph what I'm considering -- but I'm not certain when I will complete this missive.  Currently, I'm just thinking about it.

Over the last quarter century, I've focused on work, the worker, the workplace, and management deriving the source of such efforts from personal knowledge, work experience, observations of work on four continents, and reflections on what it all seems to mean to me.  The irony is that many of these efforts have clearly anticipated trends that materialized, sometimes people using my data, insights and even conceptual models with or without acknowledgement of my having been the source.  

This has disturbed my BB for my apparent reticence to the point of indifference as this journey for me has been largely a personal entertainment -- researching, collating, writing and publishing -- than anything resembling a career as a writer. That notwithstanding, trends have been identified, assessments verified, and perturbations explored extensively and unapologetically so.  A summary review of my publishing history corroborates this contention. 

WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A VIEW FROM THE TRENCHES was published in 1991.  

WWMs was a critical review of the redundancy of management, especially middle management, finding its only apparent function that of processing paperwork and getting in the way of productive work.  

It was also apparent that since WWII the complex organization has gotten fat, lazy and self-indulgent with layer on layer of management with no purpose other than self-perpetuation.  

Meanwhile, management, largely an invention of the corporate approach to WWII, developed the convenient belief that it was indispensable, voting itself extraordinary salary, perks and benefits at first only five to ten times more than workers in the trenches only to escalate to one hundred times and beyond to the take home pay of the average worker.

Management guru Peter Drucker, often management's pet, was even appalled at this excess, but of course to no avail.  The practice had become part of the corporate culture, and once that culture was firmly in place it became ubiquitous and omniscience.   

WWMs by one trade journal was considered an "angry book" but it still designated the book one of the ten best business books of 1991; another journal said it was one of the four best business books of the year.  

WWMs was self-published and without an agent or an advertising budget, and so to no one's surprise, went quietly into journals and books of other established writers, of course judiciously watered down for easy mastication, but still without 
acknowledgement of the source of these ideas.  

THE WORKER, ALONE! GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN came out in 1995 in an effort to remind professionals that the die had been cast and the balance of power had shifted from "position power" to "knowledge power," reminding them that they were now the possessors of that power and not management.  

The book also reminded the reader that at the end of WWII, ninety (90) percent of workers were blue collar and that in 1995, eighty (80) percent of them were now white collar or professionals.  

The book claims that professionals have no choice but to "go against the grain" and TAKE CHARGE! 

But of course that didn't happen because these professionals instead believed in PYRAMID CLIMBING, which is to say always filling all the boxes to win promotion to the next job showing general indifference to the job they were paid to do, now!  

Obviously, these professionals identified with management, not workers, showing a desire for the perks but not the responsibilities of leadership.  The book was largely ignored by professionals to the delight of management.

SIX SILENT KILLERS: MANAGEMENT'S GREATEST CHALLENGE was picked up by a large trade journal publisher with the CEO of that firm delighted with the book, publishing it in 1998. 

The publisher unfortunately died of a sudden heart attack and the new publisher backed away from the book after publication as fast as he could, claiming "it is not our typical readership."  

Fortunately, the Wall Street Journal and other responsible journals saw merit in the book and gave it a soft endorsement.  

The basic premise of SIX SILENT KILLERS was passive behaviors, previously outlined in WWMs, claiming they were now killing the organization's mission.

These passive behaviors were consuming professionals who pouted and complained as the spoiled brats that they were while seeming to be engaged in work when they were quietly practicing the "six silent passive behaviors" as the embodiment of the equivalent of social termites, destroying the infrastructure of the organization from within only to be discovered when it was too late for damage control.

These behaviors were identified as "corpocracy" (a term coined to capture corporate bureaucracy) costing companies $billions of dollars in unproductive work.  How so?

SSKs identified a 53 year (1945 - 1998) creep of increasingly worker dependence, first on management in reactive behavior, and then on an absolute counter dependence on the company for that worker's total well being.  

This resulted in the "worker syndrome" of workers becoming essentially suspended in permanent adolescence in learned helplessness.  As a consequence, they would bring their 20-50-year-old bodies to work with 12-13-year old mindsets in blind obedience leaving their minds at home.  

When companies could no longer compete, and had to downsize or relocate, it was "management's problem," not theirs, even though they were now the ones out of work.  Management always finds a "safe landing" somewhere else.

Workers with such an infantile mindset would protest infrequently but violently rather than frequently and politely when management was moving in the wrong direction.  Why?  Because workers chose to see it as "management's problem," and not theirs as well.

   

Both corporate management and corporate unions were complicit in this development as management would give anything to placate workers' demands as long as corporate management was able to maintain complete and absolute organizational control.  Union leaders unwittingly gave up on workers' control of their work for pay, benefits and other entitlement concessions in lieu of that control.  

The irony and paradox is that management now needs workers to take the initiative, to be innovative and to show bold intuitive action at the level of consequences, where real work occurs, when this has been literally bled out of these workers over the last half century.

Human Resources, otherwise known as "management's union," was also complicit in this trend as work and workers went from a Culture of Comfort to a Culture of Complacency while pontificating a Culture of Contribution.

CORPORATE SIN: LEADERLESS LEADERS & DISSONANT WORKERS was published by AuthorHouse in 2000.  

This book was an indictment of management for its excesses and lack of leadership and of workers, now 90 percent professionals, for remaining passive and unresponsive to the challenges and opportunities that were (and still are) quickly slipping away from American enterprise.  

CS identified the rise of the FEMININE PARADIGM in terms of "right brain" thinking as compared to exclusive "left brain" thinking, and the importance of nonlinear and intuitive engagement as well as the complement of the previously dominance of linear logic and cognitive thinking in the problem solving.    

CS also demonstrated the importance of PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME as opposed to obsessive dependence on CHRONOLOGICAL TIME.  The book made the bold prediction that capitalism as a system was in trouble because like greed it was dedicated to progress and like greed you can never have enough progress.

With a series of KINDLE BOOKS, I have returned to these themes in various venues in an effort to get the attention of professionals as they are our future.  The books in paperback as well as e-books on Amazon's Kindle are:

THE VELVET GLOVE & IRON FIST © February 11, 2017; 

A WAY OF THINKING ABOUT THINGS © February 24, 2017; 

CONFIDENT IN SUBTEXT © April 25, 2017; and 

TEN CREATIVE STAGES TO CONFIDENT THINKING © June 29, 2017.

Another irony of this personal journey is that in 2012 TATE PUBLISHING gave me a contract for second editions of nine of my books and one first edition.  

For the last more than five years, I have spent revising, editing, expanding and collating new data of these second editions with no help from anyone in my advanced years, spending literally seven days a week at this machine, only to have the publisher go belly up and disappear overnight with these second editions all having been published except the second edition of THE WORKER, ALONE!  

Now, the books, although listed on amazon.com, are essentially in limbo.  Perhaps God is trying to tell me something.

In any case, as I mentioned in these opening lines, I plan on writing a short missive that is the final denouement of this journey and the title of this effort is to be WORK WITHOUT WORKERS.  It will deal with robotics and the changing nature of not only work but life itself. 

Edward Bellamy (1850-1898), a journalist and science fiction writer, wrote a utopian novel LOOKING BACKWARD: 2000-1887 (1888).  It deals with a society in which everyone has the same amount of credit whatever their station in life and whether they do any constructive work or not.  Moreover, there is little crime and even less tolerance for it.  It was socialism as author Bellamy saw things.  If a person failed to handle his credit wisely, the government stepped in and supervised him closely.  People had much leisure with everyone a potential poet, writer, composer, musician, and so on. 

LOOKING BACKWARD, which I read some forty years ago, may not be familiar to many readers, although the book claims to be the third bestseller of all time after UNCLE TOM’S CABIN and BEN-HUR.  

WORK WITHOUT WORKERS will make some references to this Bellamy work in the present context of today.  So stay tuned.

The Peripatetic Philosopher goes against the grain!

 FAILURE OF MEMORY, FAILURE OF CONSCIENCE

Charlottesville, Virginia

August 12-13, 2017

Clash of Cultures -- White Supremacists with The Left

JAMES R. FISHER, JR., Ph.D.

© August 16, 2017

First of all, there is no way to justify the violence, or the driving of a vehicle into the crowd by a young Neo-Nazis and killing a young lady who was attending such a rally in support of her views.  Indeed, it was in fact a terrorist attack in every sense of that distinction because it was motivated by political and racial animus, and therefore an act of murder.  A score of others were also injured, many of them critically.   

What produced this insanity was the small city of Charlottesville, Virginia became the site for a Neo-Nazis, KKK and White Supremacist group with the aim of protesting the removal of a statue of the Confederate leader of the American Civil War, Robert E. Lee from the city center.

FAILURE OF MEMORY

Many signers of the American Declaration of Independence who led the successful struggle against the colonial rule of Great Britain of the thirteen colonies were also slave owners.

The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner.  Seventeen other Presidents of the United States were also owners of slaves including George Washington, James Madison, Andrew Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant. 

The Federalists Papers, which are the basis of the United States Constitution were written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.  Madison was a slave owner, John Jay possibly as well as he was somewhat ambivalent towards slavery, while Hamilton himself was literally at one point a slave.  He, too, had an ambivalent attitude towards slavery. 

It is a fact that the American idea, which is representative of American democracy and all that most Americans have enjoyed with regard to freedom over the past 241 years had originally been created by white men, and as pointed out with many of them slave owners. 

That is American history.  That is how the United States of America came about; that is the legacy of our country.  It cannot be changed.  It cannot be modified.  It cannot be denied.

Here in Tampa, Florida we are about to remove the statue of a Confederate Soldier that sits downtown close to the Hillsborough County Courthouse.  It is to be removed to a cemetery out of the sight of people who work or live or visit the fine city of Tampa.

Once you launch into the madness of attempting to erase unpleasantness of the history of the past from reality, what is stopping you from removing the Washington Monument and other monuments in Washington, DC and across these United States that are associated with the history of the Founding Fathers of American society? 

Those who fought and died for the Confederate’s cause believed they were right.  They believed in States Rights and the authority of the State to exercise its authority and control in matters of social, political and economic matters.

Yes, slavery was bad, and yes slavery denied what the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence states emphatically: That all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. 

And yes, it was hypocrisy to deny people of color those rights from 1776 to 1865; and yes, it was wrong to thereafter in the South to discourage black voters from voting with a poll tax and literacy requirement; and yes, it was not until 1954 when the United States Supreme Court considered Brown versus the Board of Education that the process of ending segregated schools and education commenced to be integrated, but not without bloodshed and a flight of many Americans to private schools to avoid sharing classrooms with people of color in public schools. 

This explosion of private institutions of learning was not only true of the south, but across the nation, and continues even to this very day. 

That said children of color have proven to have the aptitude, intelligence and capability of children of any other race or ethnicity, but yet it is still difficult for them – in many cases – to acquire the education that they desire and deserve.     

When you destroy our monuments, our data points of our climb through history, and then attempt to erase our blemishes by political action, you erase us as a people, culture and society from ourselves.  You drive out our essence and plaster over the surface a Teflon mask of how we would like to be viewed. 

We celebrate our connections to Greece’s Golden Age (500 to 300 BC) and its democracy, the times of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle forgetting that slavery was part of that Golden Age, as nascent democracy grew out of that ugliness with only 10 to 20 percent of the Greek population actually participating in the government.    

When you cherry pick what you are for from what you choose to believe you are not, you are marching down the road to oblivion and ultimately to expire over the abyss.  This has happened to other societies.  It could happen to our own.

FAILURE OF CONSCIENCE

Our conscience is an inner feeling or voice which acts as a guide to the rightness and wrongness of our behavior.  When we feel shame; when we have a guilty conscience, it acts as a barrier to doing something that hurts others or ourselves.  It provides us with a moral standard, a value system, an ethical system and a belief system that governs our behavior even though our good behavior may never be found out.  

With a conscience, we do it because we can.  In other words, it provides us with the scruples and the controls that monitors our compunctions.

With a sense of consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one’s own actions or intentions, the content of our character shines brightly because we feel a need and obligation to do the right thing. It is a matter of our individual principles guiding us irrespective of the subliminal stimuli from the television media, talking heads, or the Internet. We are our own person. We march to our own drummer.

With such an internal personal authority, we are happy campers because we have a moral center, are self-directed by a moral compass, and therefore know our way.

Alas, this is missing in today’s society because we have a failure of conscience. We are not internally directed and motivated but outwardly so, looking for a cause to project our anxiety, frustration and, yes, our insanity with those who are of a similar mind.

It is the herd mentality that rationalizes its hatreds into justifications for a cause. The basic justification always originates out of fear; fear that some other group; some other ethnicity; some other race or religion will disrupt our bigoted comfort and security.

This emotional dependency and irrationality is easy for evil leaders to exploit and orchestrate by playing on our jealousies and envies, our insecurities and doubts, our self-disgust and self-contempt.

Unfortunately, rabble rousers on the left as well as on the right have reduced this collapse of civility, and are now at the ready to exploit it for power.

The paradox is the belief that hate can dissolve into happiness and love into fulfillment to fill the void, is but a false positive generated by unhappiness and hatred. 

Why? Because life doesn’t work the way of either/or but either and or. Hate is the other side of love, as darkness is the other side of light.

Hate is as natural to us as is love. There are things we may hate such as idleness, or laziness, or waste; and there are many things that we love such as family and friends, our community and our work. But human emotions being what they are at times can have a problem with those things we love.

Don’t be pulled in by the pundits and journalists who make a business of exploiting hatreds. They make a career of our dissembling, corruption, contretemps and foibles.  It is the emptiness of this electronic age.

You can despise people who think and believe and behave differently than you do, but in the United States of America and not the United States of Anxiety, they have a right to the tenets of their beliefs independent of everyone else. Destroy them and you in turn destroy us all.

Again, it is fear that fails to allow us to be equanimous when we encounter people who do not have the same pegs in a row as we do. 

When people break the law whatever their persuasion they should be prosecuted to the full letter of that law.  But should they not be able to assemble freely simply because we disparage them as a people?

WHAT THE PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER SEES UNRAVELING

We are coming to behave like a Third World nation in total chaos. Good and tolerant people of all socioeconomic, political, religious, racial and ethnic origins are becoming so tired of relentless trauma that they are spurning newspapers, magazines and watching television news. 

Americans are increasingly becoming like the 80 or 90 percent during Greece’s Golden Age who were forced to the sidelines without a vote, only in the case of Americans today, they are doing so voluntarily.

People work, stay with their own kind, play with their electronics, texting and tweeting, listening to their music having retreated essentially into a self-imposed cage.  Forget a wall across the southern border of the United States, many Americans live in gated communities behind seven foot walls, and others have no idea who their neighbors are, as they are divided by fences.

The fringe on both sides of inflammatory issues have now taken center stage. They get much of the media coverage and are in the process of destroying the very idea of American democracy with a willing if ironic hand from people in power by being obsessed with the fringe.

We once prided ourselves in being self-directed and self-responsible individuals who were known for our volunteerism and for coming together in crisis. We are in crisis now and we could not be further apart.

Once shame controlled our behavior. Now there is no shame. Once we gave others the benefit of the doubt until they crossed us. Now if they look and act differently than we do, we have no regret if they are forcibly removed from our midst.

We worry about nuclear holocaust and the threat of North Korea, when we are in the center of an emotional holocaust that we conveniently deny.

It is a troubling time.