The Peripatetic Philosopher is working on a new book:

 WORK WITHOUT WORKERS

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

© November 20, 2017

PERSONA

Work was the design of his life with a nineteenth century inescapable perspective as his ancestors came from Europe in that time of crisis while he was born two generations later in the twentieth century.  We bring our geography and psychology with us as well as our culture when we transport our roots to another land. 

This is a story being told by James as he experienced life and work through the twentieth and into the twenty first century.  It is biographical in tone as well as sense as it attempts to show how work has changed dramatically on the shoulders of science and technology while man as worker has failed to be given similar regard or attention. 

It is the story of how one individual encountered, was programmed into a culture and system that became increasingly schizophrenic and ambivalent as its identity and essence became increasingly buried in its hubris, and how he preserved his sanity in such corruption resisting all the way.    

The character of that existence was to be seen, not heard; to react, not challenge; to go with the flow, not resist it; to be obedient to all authority figures, not be disruptive to any; to know his place, not to step beyond it; to go to school and learn by rote mathematics and science, history and geography, English grammar and sentence structure, and think of all this as gospel; to acquire good grades and then go out into life as if educated when in fact he knew nothing and was blind to new experience; to accept the dogma of Christian ethics and morality as absolute, neither to question belief in God nor the divine nature of Jesus as the Son of God; to consider all those of another mind infidels to be avoided; to be a safe hire at work not questioning anything, but doing everything quietly, politely, submissively, punctually and attentively.

This nineteenth century mantra was introduced to him in the aftermath climate of the American Civil War as two other revolutions were stoking up for the next century: the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.  Young people like James were now fodder in the twentieth century for a sleepy nation suddenly embarrassed with its predominant agrarian nature anxious to be seen as a progressive, energetic and industrial society.

His people came from Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century west of Donegal after the potato famine, and from Oslo, Norway, all working class poor. 

In Ireland they were called “shanty Irish” as opposed to “lace curtain Irish,” as they worked on the land or with their hands as maids and servants, laborers and tenant farmers, janitors or bartenders, cab drivers or railroad workers. 

Because of class and circumstance, they acquired little education and were known for their heavy Irish brogue, which once in America identified them as undesirables as soon as they opened their mouths to speak.  This was so largely because their reputation preceded them.  They were known as drinkers and brawlers, ready to fight all comers because they had no other arsenal with which to express their angst and anger.  As stereotypical and erroneous as this description often was, enough Irish immigrants made a practice of so behaving to make it appear as common knowledge. 

Norwegians, in contrast, were less provocative although mainly of a similar class, usually from fishing and farming communities.  Ironically, they were from the same Celtic race but much less pugnacious or given to offense as they were bundled in Lutheranism and Calvinism as opposed to Irish Roman Catholicism.  

Norwegians believed in hard work and conceded that their betters deserved their status by the grace of God.  Consequently, they made a reasonably quiet transition to the new country although they had a language barrier that didn’t exist to the same extent with the Irish who had been forced in Ireland – in order to be employed – to sacrifice their Gallic for British English. 

So, the Irish came to America with a chip on their shoulder with those reaching celebrity status likely to do so with their fists such as John L. Sullivan, the heavyweight boxing champion, whereas Norwegians were content to fight through the language barrier thankful for finding themselves in America content to bring little attention to themselves.

He was born into this common clan with a father of Irish parents and a mother of Irish descent and a Norwegian father, all working class poor, all descendants from mid-nineteenth century immigrants.  His Irish father was the second born son with his Irish mother dying in childbirth with his father taking off never to be seen again.  His mother was the youngest of eight children, three of her siblings being born in the nineteenth century and five in the twentieth. 

It was into this inhospitable climate to which he was born as his birth state, Iowa, was seeing its first and only President of the United States humiliatingly defeated as the Great Depression was roaring, while the new president was quickly introducing the welfare state to the American people that was music to the ears and hearts of his Irish ancestors.  

It was also the time when Germany, a nation with a history as uncertain as that of the United States, was being romanced with the idea of a “master race.”  This was orchestrated by an Austrian, not a German, a corporal in the German army in the twentieth century’s First World War that proved iatrogenic as it solved nothing while throwing the world into chaos opening the door to World War Two.  

The genius of this Viennese Austrian was in an advertising campaign that put this unlikely drifter into the German Chancellery with the dictatorial authority to ultimately unleash the greatest conflagration ever known to man in the Second World War, which subsequently changed everything including the idea of what it was to be a human being.

Since this is about work and the mad rush of science and technology in the scheme of things, it invites comparison to the omniscient medieval Church and the oppressive feudal system.  A society of digital artificial intelligent machines and electronic robots has little room for the worker as an individual who must deal with the fear of being irrelevant or made redundant as a worker. 

This is the story of James who has lived in the shadows of this climate, and has lived long enough to write what he has learned along the way that may help others to survive this onslaught.