The Peripatetic Philosopher shares book review of MORAL CLARITY:

BOOK REVIEW

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

© December 19, 2018

Scholarship is simply the unceasing effort to bring order into the confusion of Tradition.  By searching out, by comparing and weighing, by organizing facts, the scholar tries to hold in check the perpetual tendency of mankind to get things wrong, to mix up names and facts and ideas, to blur the outlines of its own beliefs.

Jacques Barzun, The Scholar is an Institution, 1947

MORAL CLARITY IN OBFUSCATING TIMES

A review of Susan Neiman’s book “Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists” (2008), which appeared in the Peripatetic Philosopher (December 18, 2018), indicates just how muddy the waters can become when dealing with the matter of a “moral compass” in the morality of our times. 

DO WE EVER ESCAPE OUR FIRST TRAUMA?

Susan Neiman dropped out of high school where she was a student in Atlanta, Georgia to join the anti-Vietnam War movement. She eventually went back to school and took a Ph.D. at Harvard University in analytical philosophy. 

Once the radical disposition takes hold of a person, especially at an early age, it can remain part of that person’s predisposition despite an education to the contrary. So, if the reader is expecting a measured narrative to “Moral Clarity,” this treatment is unlikely to satisfy as the treatment is decidedly subjective and gratuitously persuasive in an effort to appeal to a broad audience.

WHAT IS MORAL CLARITY?

Moral clarity is an apparent catchphrase popularized by the American political conservative movement in the 1980s. Former Secretary of Education for President Ronald Reagan and the Czar on Drugs for President George W. Bush, William Bennett captures this moment with “We Fight for Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism” (2003).

The notion of “moral clarity,” then, was to divide the world into good and evil reproaching rogues’ states with the conservative American rallying cry, “my country right or wrong!”

People in opposition to this mindset, such as philosopher Susan Neiman, find the phrase dangerous and the idea “moral clarity” as if an oxymoron. Therefore, the title of this book to the unsuspecting Republican or conservative reader is equivalent to a pun to his or her “moral clarity” sensitivity. 

So, if the reader is expecting measured scholarship to be on display, don’t be surprised to read: “President George W. Bush is the worst president in American history.” 

Such absolute contempt for a sitting president, while perhaps justified regarding certain presidential faux pas, it must be viewed suspect and rather arbitrary for a trained scholar. 

Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James believes that through scholarship:

“Our critical sensitivities grow both more acute and less fanatical. We sympathize with men’s mistakes even in the act of penetrating them; we feel the pathos of lost causes and misguided epochs even while we applaud what overcame them . . . The feeling for a good human job anywhere, the admiration of the really admirable, the disesteem of what is cheap and trashy and impermanent – this is what we call the critical sense, the sense for ideal values. It is the better part of what men know as wisdom.”

If this is so, would it not be counterproductive to summarily rebuke a person much less a President of the United States with such a broad brush? Could this simply be an echo of the mind of a teenage high school dropout who once ran off in protest of the Vietnam War?

On the other hand, the author demonstrates moral clarity quite dramatically in referencing the biblical struggles of Abraham and Job in moral crisis vis-à-vis God. 

Millennials are reported to be neither especially religious nor necessarily familiar with the lessons provided in the Old and New Testament of the Bible. This is not meant as criticism but to note the changing moral consciousness of America’s youth if not the youth of the world. 

Young people today don’t pay much attention to the infighting polarity and political shenanigans of politicians or theologians as these professions are largely dominated by old men. 

Professor Neiman frames her argument in terms of the “Age of the Enlightenment,” also known as “The Age of Reason.” The Enlightenment dominated the long eighteenth century (1695 – 1815) with such luminaries as Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Smith, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Diderot and Kant. Ideas generated by these men influenced such notable society changes as the American Revolution (1776) and the French Revolution (1789). 

Emmanuel Kant’s moral theory of categorical imperative was a significant improvement on the “Golden Rule” with the suggestion that all rational people across the globe no matter their desires or interests would follow this imperative as if a Universal Law. It was the equivalent of a fabricated “moral compass.”

Kant, who never traveled further than forty miles from his home, constructed a philosophical system based on reason and universalism that has never been surpassed. In fact, it has dominated the liberal agenda of the United States since the 1970s.

More recently, Richard Dawkins introduced the interesting idea of the memes in “The Selfish Gene” (1976), which is comparable to the connective tissue of our mental framework. A meme, according to Dawkins, is any bit of information that can spread from one human mind to another. Memes share many traits with genes. They can reproduce by copying themselves from one mind to another. This was the “moral centered” message of the teachings of Jesus, who had no interest in departing from his cultural Judaism.

As you read this review, whatever your predilection, memes are entering your brain and copied into your mind. They then undergo a form of natural selection with some dying and others flourishing. For author Neiman, this process is kept alive through the works of The Enlightenment. 

This reviewer suggests a more recent reference to be more enabling. 

THE 1830s and BEYOND

As wondrous as the Enlightenment may have been in creating memes, it was the nineteenth century from 1815 through the twentieth century that established the morality of the times, one without a “moral compass,” an epoch essentially absent from this book.

In 1815, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo with “The Age of Romanticism” to follow, which we are still experiencing in the 21st century. 

In 1833, Tocqueville came to America and wrote his two-volume “Democracy in America” (1835-1840), a classic still insightful today. 

The nineteenth century was the time of Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman, Melville and Lincoln. It was the age of avant-garde art as an expression of love. Art and love celebrated the individual at war with society. 

Love in Romanticism was not about sex; nor was it cheerful or elegant, but one of passion and tragedy. The Age of Romanticism was the time of Hugo and Byron, Delacroix and Berlioz, George Sand and Liszt, Balzac and Stendhal, Dumas and Flaubert, William and Henry James. 

In music as in literature and poetry, the arts tended to be snobbish or apologetic pursuing excellence at any cost. 

The age marked the rise of the bourgeoisie or middle class as capitalism expanded beyond the merchant class to include all professions marching to the tempo of political philosophy. 

It was also the time of Marx and Engels who came on stage to thwart capitalism and to launch international communism with the publication of The Communist Manifesto (1848). 

Author Neiman is right, “Morality is concerned with goodness, politics with power.” Capitalism, then as now, was much closer to the candle of both. But alas, it was without a “moral center.”

Conservative goodness in a capitalistic political climate proved ideal for the morality of industrial progress through soaring inventions from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century with the steam engine, spindle and power loom, locomotive, cotton gin, metal industries, the camera and plate, anesthesia, telegraph, telephone, typewriter, photograph, motion picture, radio, electric light, internal combustion engine, automobile, airplane, and the assembly line for manufacturing while people as persons ceased to exist on a wide scale.

The 1830s and Beyond was a period of rebellion against Classicism with a focus on the new frontiers of Nature. The central focus was on the imagination, taking the initiative, individualism, idealism and inspirational pursuits beyond the pale of convention, pursuits governed by reckless abandon, a preoccupation that hasn’t diminished to this day. 

It was a time of revolution, democracy and republicanism flanked by religion of the sublime, the transcendental and the ridiculous. It was also a time when psychology left mysticism to become respectable. 

Romanticism valued longer life spans, rising standards of living, while still valuing the past but seeking new wealth, stability and a sense of progress at all cost, the memes and mindset of today.

ANALYTICS IS NOT ENOUGH

We are seemingly obsessed with analytics today. They have depersonalized athletics, commerce, banking, education, personal relationships, employment, the arts, so why not philosophy? 

Dr. Susan Neiman's analytical philosopher is the conceptual study of language to uncover underlying logical structures and forms. It is the mathematical empiricism dating from the late 19th century to the late 20th century with the likes of Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) and G. E. Moore (1873 – 1958) carrying on the empiricisms of John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume and John Stuart Mill. Advocates of analytical philosophy consider themselves “realists” with an alternative nudge to “idealism.” 

Russell and Moore defended their realism as a quasi-Platonic compared to traditional realism. They favored the realistic philosophy of common sense, and to a lesser degree the application of mathematics to realize that end. 

It would have been useful if author Neiman had provided a more substantive view of analytical philosophy since the book's format clearly attracts the general reader as well as the seasoned academic. 

THOSE TERRIBLE CONSERVATIVES!

You learn when you are a writer of ideas that the collective conscience of society is essentially skin deep. Now, once that metaphorical skin has been pricked, chances are the mind shuts down to rely on comfortable biases. Therefore, it is one thing to sing to the choir of likeminded souls, but quite another if the intent is to speak with moral clarity to the many. Is it too presumptuous to expect a bridge of tolerance to stretch across the great divide of opposing views with a measured narrative to facilitate common understanding? Neiman writes:

“Conservatives play with two metaphysical strands they can pluck at will: When what they call realism becomes too grim, they can always call it idealism.”

Now, the irony of that declaration is that liberals call alternative idealism the new realism. If the intent is obfuscation rather than moral clarity, then this is quite effective. 

The author states that conservative reality is material reality (capitalism) whereas the left, she concedes, with some disappointment is “empty handed” (socialism) with no reality at all:

“Stuck between traditional conservative appeals to the hard facts of reality and the absolute idealism of a government prepared to ignore the empirical world, it (the left) has no metaphysics to offer at all.”

In other words, liberal realism has proven pusillanimous in replacing traditional pragmatism, something that William James advocated a century ago. James writes:

Moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for sensible proof. A moral question is a question not of what sensibly exists, but of what is good, or would be good if it did exist . . . A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the cooperation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted. (The Will to Believe, 1896)

While author Neiman would not disagree, she retreats to the sentiments of Socrates: This thing called justice – do we really know what it means?

Obviously, we don't. The problem of idealism and realism is that liberals and conservatives are equally ambivalent when it comes to matters of justice. Sad. 

IDENTITY POLITICS, IDENTITY PHILOSOPHY

With Donald Trump in the White House preaching ubiquitous nationalism to the right without apology ("Make America Great Again!"), one can imagine author Neiman sputtering contemptuously that President Trump is “America’s worst president in American history.” Meanwhile, she asserts:

“Identity politics tends to stop thought; it confuses grand passions with minor irritations; and it mocks broader goals as mere rhetoric.”

Incidentally, conservative scholar Francis Fukuyama’s latest book is titled “Identity” (2018) where he attempts to get inside the impasse that finds us building walls rather than bridges between our competing interests. To Neiman, Fukuyama is close to Faust. 

One wonders why author Neiman fails to see that "identity politics" also applies to “identity philosophy.” Alas, how insular the prison of our minds.

The Peripatetic Philosopher insists on the necessity of a common tongue:

The Necessity of a Common Tongue?

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

© December 10, 2018

Reference:

A writer responded to the last “A Tutorial of Ideas” (re: THE KING’S ENGLISH – Corrupted by Insouciant American Usage?) with this thoughtful question:

Your concerns are valid, I think, but I would like your take on another idea regarding the influence of TV that I got from an article some years ago and have always rather agreed with. The author's idea was that network TV by demonstrating a reasonably sized vocabulary of properly used and clearly enunciated words all across the country, provided a great service to the community by damping down the tendency toward regional dialects and personal idioms. He particularly spoke of the national news shows in which whole and oftentimes complex sentences were used. That does not of course mean that what you wrote of is not the issue you suggest it is. If the problem you noted is getting worse, is it because people are less well taught, the role model idea expressed above is not really effective, people have become lazier, or because in this age of being non-judgmental we don't offer the corrections that might otherwise occur?

This actually touches on the last sentence of this previous missive:

The first sign of the deterioration of a civilization is evident when its language becomes so corrupted its citizens are at a loss as to what others mean or to what they are attempting to say.

Incidentally, voice communication registers mainly through the eyes (75%), not the ears (25%). 

Consequently, the art of talking differs with the art of writing as does the source and construction of the words chosen. On television, it is the artful practice of projecting images to stimulate attention. 

A cavalcade of stereotypical pretty or discerning faces makes a pixel impression on the television viewer while what is being said is quickly lost only to be recovered in canned laugh tracks, theme music and a potpourri of engaging and sometimes violent visuals.

Assuming that the common tongue of the United States is English, or America’s version of the King’s English, and not Spanish or some other foreign language, words are meant to resonate with the listener in easy comprehension.

Remember, television is a commercial medium with the exception of Public Television, which also has an assortment of commercials if not a distinct cultural bias programmed into its menu.

That said television espouses rhetoric. Now, rhetoric has gotten a bad name as it is associated with the bombast and pomposity of campaigning politicians, media moguls, corporate kingpins, churchmen and other proselytizers who are selling a product often disguised as something else (e.g., ideas, entertainment, altruism, spirituality or breaking news).

The word “rhetoric” comes from the Greek root meaning “word” or “I say.” Rhetoric, then, is the art of putting words together so that the listener may easily grasp the meaning of what is being said.

Now, as pointed out in the previous missive, meanings are constantly changing as the nuances of words keep shifting in meaning. There has been a radical disruption in the meaning of words in the 20th century as a result of two global wars, WWI and WWII. These wars disrupted essentially stable societies across the planet including that of the United States.

Such disruptions have also been associated with progressive scientific, technological, economic, social and cultural maturations.

If you are a millennial reading this, chances are you take this in pretty much in stride because it is all you know. For the rest of us, it is difficult to relate much less communicate with each other as the sense of motion and pleasure, the sense of what is moral and right, just and unjust remains pretty rigid in the hard wiring of our collective DNA.

Common words no longer have the same ring of authenticity in a speech or sentence as the tone, rhythm, structure or context of these words (such as “progress,” “happiness,” “love,” “truth,” “family,” “security,” “wealth,” “God,” “church,” “school,” “state,” “job,” “joy,” etc.) has lost its legitimacy.

This is doubly disturbing when the movers and shakers cannot speak without a hiccup of “you knows” laced in the conversation masking the fact that “we do not know.”

This corruption of meaning has been rapid and extensive. To put it differently, the danger of American English losing its efficacy is not limited to bad grammar, dialect, vulgar forms, or native crudities, but has been further corrupted by what I call “corporate speak.” 

In NEAR JOURNEY’S END (Can the Planet Earth Survive Self-Indulgent America?), I write:

Corporate speak stepped into the breach with “it was the right thing to do at the time.” Words pour out of the mouths of politicians like soap bubbles from an unhinged bubblehead doll.

When irreplaceable keepsakes are lost in a hurricane or when psychic trust is flummoxed by the fear game, corporate speak steps in, but at the expense of moral clarity and mounting distrust. Only quiet understanding and appropriate and timely action can relieve such suspicion. Words have no cachet as conversation invariably becomes a duplicitous word game.

We listen to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (commenting on the failure of progress in the Vietnam War) who has perfected corporate speak. He declares with that squinty smile of his that there are “known unknowns” and then there are “unknown unknowns,” and because of this some things are actually quite hard to fix and harder to explain.

Still smiling, “You may ask why that is?” Continuing the Q&A on himself, he tells us it is because the systems behind these “unknown unknowns” or “known unknowns” are intricate, complicated and created by humans. Then with a slight chuckle and hunch of his shoulders, with an “oh shucks” lopsided grin, he adds, “Being human as we are, what else can you expect?” Indeed.

The Necessity of a Common Tongue?

We have had an invasion of illegal immigrants into the country over the past several years that now exceeds several million. Republican and Democrats have been equally ineffective in addressing this problem. 

Meanwhile, these undocumented occupants have been exploited by politicians, corporations, small business owners, celebrities and everyday middle class Americans. No one has clean hands. So, why the concern?

People suffer a debilitating handicap when they are unable to speak the common tongue. Across the United States, there are literally millions who are comfortable only in their own native tongue, but who have been in the United States for many years. They rely on their children or grandchildren to be their interpreters.

Many of these children and grandchildren are well educated and have successfully lobbied with politicians, corporations, city officials and advertisers to see that everything is labeled in Spanish as well as English. In fact, they have been successful in sponsoring, promoting, and financing scores of television outlets that program only in Spanish.

Why? Is this a problem? 

Not in the narrow or short term sense, but in the long term it impacts the efficacy of the individual and the integrity of the nation. That brings us to the essence of this missive.

We are stuck with a public and private paradox. On the one hand, being a democratic republic, we enjoy the benefits of multiculturalism. On the other hand, as a result of self-centered separatism and concomitant polarity, we are confounded by a clash of cultures which is the opposite of pluralism.

Ethnic groups in America understandably emphasize their roots, while failing to a significant degree to assimilate the common tongue. Instead, they retreat into colonized subcultures away from the mainstream which makes it difficult for teachers in public schools, doctors and nurses in hospitals, community and company psychologists, to name a few professionals, to deal effectively with them. 

Unlike Europe, the United States is not a multilingual society.

Quasi-tribal existence extends beyond large groups of ethnic populations unable or unwilling to speak English, or who only speak English with great difficulty. There are also scores of Black and Hispanic languages and dialects that construct invisible barriers preventing students from excelling in school, workers from enjoying good paying jobs, receiving prompt medical services in hospitals and clinics, or being able to shop with ease at supermarkets and mega malls.

This goes well beyond the surface issues of the last missive or the much more manageable problem of vocabulary and grammar. Still, not to trivialize the problem:

Language molds our thoughts, gives color and shape to our desires, limits or extends our sympathies and empathies, and gives continuity to our individual self in one sense or another.

These debilitating effects occur whether we are conscious of them or not. Failure to communicate because of language or dialect barriers is tragic, and in a sense a self-inflicted wound that may prove fatal to a nation, but even more directly to the resisting individual who suffers the loss of identity and hope and the promise of a satisfying future.

Failure to face the crisis of being unfamiliar with the common tongue may be a matter of pride, or simply fear of experiencing embarrassment in attempting to learn the new language. 

Romance languages such as Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian differ in construction with Teutonic languages such as English, German, Dutch, and Flemish. Still, the situation begs the question:

Is a standard language necessary for the integrity of a cohesive nation?

This question cannot be answered when emotions run high or the inclination is to be defensive.

First, Standard English in America is a bit of an oxymoron as people of the American North, South, East and West speak American English in many different dialects and accents, as well as regional slang and jargon. New ethnic minorities experience this and struggle to deal with it.

Second, since Standard English in America is something of a misnomer, how do you solve this riddle? 

You don’t. Assimilation of American English, in its many confounding forms, requires patience and time. It is difficult for Americans when they move from Iowa to Vermont to be comfortable in the local colloquialisms, or vice versa, so imagine what this is like for foreigners.

There are many Americas in America as there are many countries in Europe.

That is to say, American society is a smorgasbord of contradictions and clashing cultural realities including the idea that the USA is a “classless” society when social class and economic clout are distinct manifestations of connections and cultural/political status and, of course, there is also HYPE (re: Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Elitism).

Indeed, American enterprise is an arcane insider game of special interests with players concealing the fact in the camouflage of multiple identities and objectives. Listening to politicians or corporate executives on the stump, you’d think they all shared a common log cabin heritage with Abraham Lincoln.

Then, there are engineers with a mindset clearly xenophobic with a vernacular unintelligible to outsiders. Tune into a television program with Silicon Valley geeks holding court espousing ideas that are hardly user friendly. 

In this technological age the mystical cant is reminiscent of medieval priests privy only to God beyond the pale of ordinary souls.  Similarly, these new high priests of technology now construct a universe ironically with no place for humans.

Exclusions and limitations demonstrate a need for a larger all-purpose language for everybody. Although desirable, it is unlikely to penetrate the façade of those armed with insider power any time soon.

This will eventually fade with an American language accessible to everyone vis-à-vis the Internet. The Internet is the new great definer and equalizer.

There are no secrets anymore as transparency has been assured by an army of hackers who are ubiquitous along with a renegade of trollers corrupting conventional wisdom. 

Heaven and Hell has been reduced to an observable sound bite.

Conversely, a common tongue brings together a language whose value is sense on sight. It holds citizens together as they go through the challenges of an upside-down world.

To put this in linguistic terms, dialects have often been a barrier to Standard English as they represent limited geographical expression. Moreover, a “dialect” implies that grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and idiomatic expressions differ widely with Standard English. It is a bit more complicated.

At first sight, a dialect looks as if it could serve all the needs of provincial users with distinction. But it cannot. Dialect falls short in breath of vocabulary and flexibility of construction. In fact, it denies users access to the full range of ideas, meanings and feelings available in the common tongue.

This rigidity becomes a veritable emotional and intellectual straitjacket for a dialect does not have access to a library of ideas for writing the words that appear here much less for approaching diverse subjects outside the normal purview of the reader’s experience.

Without the flexibility of the written word, language would slide into the uncontrolled chaos of directionless and purposeless exchange.

Moreover, slang is an insufficient variance of language, but fortunately has a short shelf life. It masks and corrupts native nuances currently in vogue. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for jargon or dialect as they have a tenacity difficult to dislodge.

To keep the Standard English extant is a practical endeavor requiring the integration of new usage, colloquialisms, vocabulary and emerging constructions. This is a challenge to all citizens as well as those unfamiliar with the country’s dominant language.

The rights to full citizenship include self-development which presupposes self-knowledge and self-expression in the new language. This leads to command and flexible thought.

There is no more vital formula for success in America than through American English. The irony is that this message is equally germane to Americans.

So what about the ubiquitous practice of translating notices into Spanish? Is this fair and equitable play? I don’t think so.

Not because Spanish is not a great language, but because it is unfair to new residences as it denies them the opportunity to fully participate in the American culture with all its attending advantages.

The only practical guide to a full and productive participation in American citizenship is through the common tongue with its baffling idioms, regional slurs, shoptalk slang and arcane jargon which, sad to say, is the common tongue of American English.

The Peripatetic Philosopher reflects on the King's English:

 THE KING’S ENGLISH

Corrupted by Insouciant American Usage?

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

© December 4, 2018

The King's English usage and grammar was written by Henry Watson and Francis George Fowler and published in 1906. It thus pre-dates by 20 years Modern English Usage, which was written by Henry after Francis's death in 1917.

It is less a dictionary than Modern English Usage; and consists of long articles and general topics on vocabulary, syntax, and punctuation and draws heavily on examples from many sources. One of its sections is a systematic description of the appropriate uses of shall and will. The third and last edition was published in 1931, by which time Modern English Usage had superseded it in popularity.

Because all living languages continually evolve, the book is now considered outdated in some respects, and some of the Fowlers' opinions about correct English usage are at times seen as antiquated (yet not incorrect) with regard to contemporary standards. For example, the Fowlers disapprove of the word "concision" on the grounds that it had a technical meaning in theology, "to which it may well be left"; but "concision" is now a common synonym for "conciseness,"

The Fowlers also criticized the use of standpoint and just how much (as in "Just how much more of this can we take?"), describing them as undesirable "Americanisms," but are now common in British English. The book nevertheless remains a benchmark for usage, and is still in print.

Does it matter? If so, where is the evidence?

Most Americans of my generation were taught the rudiments of the King’s English in grammar and high school. Alas, it is obvious that I could have been a better student as people occasionally complain of my grammar and punctuation errors. So, I am not preaching from the pulpit of exoneration.

Much of a surprise as it might be to my readers, I actually try to write grammatically correct. I would like to blame my failure on my advanced age, but that would be a spiteful dodge. It is that I simply do not spend sufficient time to write correctly as the good Sisters of St. Francis were diligent in their attempts to see that I would write correctly.

So, I write not as a person above the corruption, but, alas, as a writer inclined to be smitten with the indulgence. 

What I do have, and again I can thank the Good Sisters for this, is an ear for the tonality of speaking precisely and grammatically. 

When I hear people misspeak on television, it is like a piece of chalk screeching across a blackboard, imagery that I’m sure is foreign to many readers as chalk and blackboards are relics of the past.

Yesterday, however, a quarterback in the National Football League, a player making $33 million a year to toss a football was asked about the firing of his coach.  He replied, “Him and me have no problem; him and me have gotten along good and work together.”

Another player, also a multimillionaire from NFL football, said, “I ain’t got no problem (with firing the coach).” 

Yet, another former NFL player, Hall of Famer, and prominent sports commentator, says, “It don’t matter what players think (about the firing),” and the chorus continues.

Celebrity actors, actresses and musicians on Late Night Television commonly misspeak when it comes to the King’s English, which no one seems to mind. 

Then there are television game shows and situation comedies, as well as crime dramas where misspeaking is par for the course. No one seems to notice that the bad guys in these stories murder the King's English, while displaying sparkling perfect white teeth.  Their speaking lines suggest they’ve never spent a day in school. 

“Why does it matter?”

We assimilate language as if by osmosis, reflecting the way our parents speak at home, the conversations we have with friends and acquaintances, how our teachers and preachers talk to us, and what we subliminally internalize from exposure to television and the Internet.

My mother was severely hard-of-hearing all her life. She was however an avid reader and shared many of the books she read with me when I was young. She knew language, had a huge vocabulary and was an excellent crossword puzzle solver, always using an ink pen to fill in the squares with me marveling at her success.

Perhaps not surprising, I became an avid reader at a young age, and developed an extensive vocabulary.  Without my mother's hearing handicap, I have been guilty of mispronouncing words especially when tired as she was wont to do, an affliction that haunts me to this day.

Adding to this incongruity, when others mispronounce words, I catch myself pronouncing the word correctly under my breath. This can be disconcerting to others, a tic in my temperament that I’ve never quite mastered.

These contradictions and dichotomies are a product of my endeavor to speak correctly as I believe it necessary to stimulate comprehension. 

Few Americans, myself included, fail to appreciate the intricacies of language because we are mainly limited to the American dialect of our upbringing and nurtured experience. Small wonder when we run into someone at the mall or supermarket who asks us a question, we have no idea what they are saying as if their American dialect were a foreign language.

So, why does this matter? 

The first sign of the deterioration of a civilization is evident when its language becomes so corrupted that its citizens are at a loss as to what others mean or are attempting to say.

The Peripatetic Philosopher asks, is it reality of the imagination, or what?

 REALITY

Is it the Reality of the Imagination, the Imagination of Reality, or What?

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

©  November 30, 2018

Looking at our situation nakedly, blind evolution sanctions no particular purpose or advantage in the birth of the individual man or woman.  Equally true, there are no such things as rights in biology.  Yet, Egyptians built giant pyramids to the gods as if there were gods, while Europeans built massive cathedrals to a religion that was founded in myth.  Nor is there any certainty that those in a democracy are free and those in a dictatorship are less free.  It is a matter of perspective and cultural bias.  We do not want to hear that political ideologies are founded in the imagination or that the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are myths supported by our imagination and emotional desire to believe.  Yet, if human rights exist only in our imagination, what is the promise of a stable society?  If order is mainly imagined, is it not always in danger of collapse? (If people) imagine the order of things depends upon myths, when people no longer believe in these myths (will) that order collapse?  Look at the American and European political climate of today, is it not essentially controlled by chameleons? 

That said, Christianity would not have lasted 2,000 years if the majority of bishops and priests failed to believe in Christ as the Redeemer.  This brings us to the cage and the imprisoning walls within which we all live.  Our cage is a collection of suppositions based on an imagined order that has Americans espousing belief in Christianity, democracy and capitalism. 

Before you withdraw from this discussion, imagined order is embedded in the material world; that that imagined order shapes our desires; and that that imagined order is inter-subjective.  What then of the high priests of this imagined order who are the media using the platform of money, the law, our gods, and our sense of a protective nation? 

James R. Fisher, Jr., Near Journey’s End: Can the Planet Earth Survive Self-Indulgent America?(2018)

Leon Festinger (1919 – 1989) studied at the University of Iowa under the eminent German American social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890 – 1947), where he developed the theory of cognitive dissonance.  Festinger found that the individual seeks consistency among his beliefs (his cognitions), and when there are inconsistencies between these attitudes and his behavior (dissonance), something must give to eliminate the conflict.  Counterintuitively, the reality he imagines and the imagined reality of his fixation find his mind playing a game on him.  A smoker may know smoking is dangerous to his health but continue to smoke in defiance of the evidence to the contrary. 

Not only individuals but groups, indeed, even societies form bridges between the reality of their imagination and the imagination of their reality.

Cognitive Dissonance & Philosophy

In these times where a drift has occurred between realism and reality while technology goes blindly forward into the future with all jets firing, analytical philosophy has entered the breach.  It attempts to explain the unexplainable and to justify that which is beyond the pale. 

My brother-in-law completed the course work at the University of California at Berkeley for a Ph.D. in this discipline, only to fail to satisfy his dissertation adviser with his proposal and therefore remains to this day an ABD (all but dissertation) without this credential, and I can see why. 

Analytical philosophy has been around for about one hundred years, or largely during the rise and cresting of the United States espousing the wisdom of the Enlightenment, and the works of Immanuel Kant, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes and Voltaire, among others.  It sees itself as a conceptual investigation of language, history, religion, logical structures and forms that has guided human behavior in this and the last century.  In other words, it is a philosophy largely reliant on the wits of past thinkers.

Realism has replaced pragmatism says analytical philosopher Susan Neiman in Moral Clarity (2008) which has less to do with reflection than upping the ante on rhetoric (Subsequently, I will be reviewing this book).

Socrates claimed that philosophy begins in the marketplace and not the university.   If that is the case, then we are in a heap of trouble because cognitive dissonance dominates the market.  Read the New York Times, the Washington Post, or tune into CNN or MSNBC or Fox Cable News and what once was purported to be journalism is now entertainment with a view. 

Good and evil, rights and justice, thinking and reason are all slipping down the same slippery slope to prove indistinguishable from each other.  What we call good always has our friends in mind, never our enemies; what we call evil focuses only on our enemies, never our friends; and what we call justice is always the victors’ justice, never the collateral damage of the losers. 

Unconditional loyalty to a cause, an ideal, a theology or a friend has nothing to do with justice much less reality.  Indeed, it may clash with reality.

Experience of the things we hold most dear have been pounded into our psyches (souls) over time to influence and control our choices and actions over which we have no control as if we were only a body of shadows. 

Philosophers may make nice with words but there is no substance to the sizzle and therefore little nourishment for the soul.  A philosopher may write that George W. Bush was the worst president in American history, and believe it to be true, if American history only went back to the 20^th century.  Otherwise, this is a display of cognitive dissonance and of little value to one’s thinking.   

Morality in the Mind of the Times

Morality is concerned with goodness; politics with power.  We find with morality that we make morality fit our cognitive dissonance so that we can say, “Water boarding terrorist combatants is not only right but necessary because….” then insert our social and political justification. 

We gravitate to people who think as we do, and who hold the same beliefs and biases.  Robert Bellah (1927 – 2013) writes in Habits of the Heart (1985) that the moral assumptions of middleclass Americans indicate a discernible gap between behavior and moral principles:

The primary American language of self-understanding limits the ways in which people think.

Lacking a moral vocabulary, people act out of habit while thinking they are acting out of conviction, failing to see that they treat justice as doing good for their friends without showing equal regard for their enemies.  Complicating the matter further, they see the poor and uneducated as acting despicably but fail to see the rich and famous are equally inclined to act as shabbily and perhaps even more egregiously so. 

Think about that a moment! We are not only on automatic pilot, but existing in the reality of our imagination. To wit:

A nation is a mythical construct as is a corporation as is a government as is the New York Stock Exchange as is the family and the community, as is the state and the church. Trust and the reality of our imagination has given these entities providence over our destiny although a case could be made that they are simply the imaginings of what we deem reality.

Think about the stock market! It is a convention. We decide to let our anxieties and dreams and thoughts about the future set the price of a given commodity on the stock exchange. The price of a stock can soar or plummet on uplifting or scary news, information based largely on rumor, not on any substantive performing data.

Much of what matters in our lives, such as our cultural heritage and institutions such as the church, school, family, government, and nation are mere creations out of our human imagination.

And so, too, is money. We have faith in the system the way we once had faith in God. Modern man is suspect of God and religion. In the future, will the god of the capitalistic economy and scientific technology suffer a similar disinclination of the faithful? If so, what then?

These days our banks and savings accounts are simply numbers on a computer screen and possibly as whimsical as the tenets of many great religions. These bank accounts are constantly shifting along with frantic and often erratic movement in the marketplace. Yet, we rely on these numbers on a computer screen as being irrevocably valid and reliably true.

Imagine if we start to worry that these quotations are not accurate, and could be erased like numbers on a slate, what then? Our society would be shaken to its foundation. That is why the terrorists of today are the computer hackers of tomorrow who could erase our financial security in an instant.

Algorithms and data already control our lives. In every phase of our existence, markets are self-reflective of our interests, predicting our buy and sell orders. In political campaigns, tens of millions of dollars are spent gauging our psychological patterns and beliefs knowing we are more influenced on who will win than who is the best qualified candidate.

British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883 – 1946) claimed we are all perfect patsies for manipulation as our moral beliefs are like judging a beauty contest: we don’t select the most beautiful but the person we think will win.

Elaborate symbols, rites of passage, ceremonies and belief systems are all inventions in support of our sacred notions and are crucially dependent on our manifest trusts. These could disappear in a moment should convention, conformity, dependence or fear suddenly dissolve these constructions into the myths that they are.

People weave a web of belief and meaning with all their hearts. Eventually, over time, these inevitably unravel, and then, we can hardly imagine how anyone could have thought that way. Israeli scholar Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) writes in Homo Deus (2017):

A hundred years hence, our belief in democracy and human rights might look equally incomprehensible to our descendants . . . Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities and places that exist purely in their common imagination.

Reality & Corpocracy

As egregious as the reality of our imagination, and the imagination of reality is apparent in our individual and group cognitive dissonance, less apparent but more pressing are the practices of the American corporation. A German publication (Wirtschaft Woche, January 1987) called it “Amerikas Krankheit” (the American Disease of Corpocracy):

Management is insensitive to its employees while claiming sensitivity.

Management is consumed with company policy at the expense of productivity.

Secrecy is the measure of communications while feigning transparency.

Obsessive data collection is time consuming, data that is seldom reviewed much less read.

Endless meetings are the way when often the principles send substitutes and substitutes of substitutes to eventually attend these scheduled meetings.

There is an internal jockeying for clout and influence while potential markets are ignored.

Short-term planning is preferred to embracing long term challenges.

Individual initiative is advocated but never supported for you never know where it might lead.

Management confines itself to mahogany row making decisions that have little to do with the reality or status of operations.

Innovation and initiative is overtly acclaimed while covertly discouraged.

When crises develop, as they inevitably do, and the organization is spinning in place, and no one has any idea why, the ship of state enters the potential cycle of its demise.

The United States came out of World War II victorious, and management quickly came forward to take credit for its justifiably laudatory performance during the war. The peace that followed with The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, rebuilding Europe and Asia, management quietly asserted itself as being indispensable, creating a management class so top heavy in most organizations that today many are falling like a house-of-cards. 

With few if any constrains, and believing totally in their cognitive dissonance, corporate management convinced the public that it deserved huge salaries and entitlements that became multiples of workers in the trenches. 

Corporate position power was unquestioned and moved forward with reckless abandon. Now, position power is anachronistic and managers are atavistic as knowledge power of  academically trained professionals has come to the fore. 

But, alas, the expression "never the twain shall meet" is dated as work is no longer brute force but brain power and managing is no longer a position but a strategy.

The reality of the imagination and the imagination of reality have been reduced to realism.

The Peripatetic Philosopher discusses a "secondhand" life:

 FEAR, TICKET TO A SECONDHAND LIFE

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

© November 6, 2018

When I was in industry, we had a policy of holding quarterly seminars.  It fell to a different district manager to be the host, once per year.  Each manager tried to outdo his peers.  After one such meeting, everyone was congratulating the host.  He took the praise well enough but turned on his adulators with the question: “Why do you think I worked so hard on this?  This met with dead silence matched only with puzzled expressions.  “I’ll tell you why,” he continued, “It was simply fear of failure.”  This candid admission led to frank exchanges.  They all followed the fear line summed up with the comment, “I think that shoe fits us all.  No one likes to get hammered.”  Finally, as if an afterthought, I was asked my view.  I had a great temptation to fall into line with the others, but I had thought too hard to conquer fear to con myself now.  “What drives me to do my best,” I said seriously, “is the effective utilization of my inherent ability.”  The reaction was immediate.  It echoed around the room with this needling phrase, "How did we ever get a guy like you in this outfit?"  Once the nervous laughter subsided, I smiled.  “Isn’t it just a matter of chemistry, gentlemen, opposite charges attracting?”  Even in jest there was a grain of truth as what I was expressing is the counterpart to the negative, fear.”

James R. Fisher, Jr., Confident Selling, Prentice-Hall Publisher, 1971. 

No country can give itself a new past.  But it can alter the future and help change its identity by quitting its self-conscious fixation on its glorious past and embrace its fear of the future.  

Dare to ask why this nation is stuck in a very different way than the rest of the world?  Could it be fear of the future?  Fear is on display in contentious and divisive polarity across the nation as if unable to rise above the immature temperament of six graders squabbling on the playground while leading essentially second hand lives.  How so?

The “spoiled brat” generation is now in charge, euphemistically referred to as “baby boomers.” 

They are reluctantly moving off stage, leaving something of a vacuum, now in their sixties and early seventies having perfected the habit of living second hand lives by aping each other in dress and manner, speech and morals, attitude and values.  Victor Hugo compared such conformity to prison.  In any case, this conformity has made these Americans indistinct from each other as they have gravitated to what is esteemed rather than preferred, leaving their children, the new millennials, confused as to what they believe and stand for.  Millennials, as a consequence, are indifferent to authority and tradition, to institutions and religion, to manners and morals for they look at all this with naked eyes.

While the “spoiled brat” generation likely had parents and grandparents who felt it their duty to serve their country in the military, few of this generation has followed that example.  Where their parents and grandparents knew scarcity and the pain of constant struggle as the nation limped through the Great Depression and then embraced the uncertainties and sacrifices of the Great War (WWII), they came into the world in the economic booming years of the postwar that followed. 

Their parents and grandparents unwisely attempted to shield their precious egos from pain and struggle, self-doubt and failure, discrimination and bias, delayed gratification and disappointment to experience the Rites of Passage with no significant obstacles in the way. 

Church was unwittingly the casualty of this obsession, which at one time elevated man beyond himself to unite with his God, while conformity and appetite has forced man down to flesh against desire crushing him deeper into himself.  Today, we are spiraling out of control as a consequence of this predilection.

When you only know plenty, and have never had to activate your reptilian brain for survival, you retreat from adulthood as you plan never to grow old or be forced to grow up. 

People seem surprised that a member of the “spoiled brat” generation would be elevated by popular vote to the President of the United States, yet that has happened with the president behaving characteristically consistent with that prototype.  In retrospect, this was as inevitable as the consistency of meteorological tides.     

*     *     *

One hundred years ago the First World War (1918) ended.  It was followed by the “Roaring Twenties” with a relaxation of traditional social barriers, including an economic run on the banks with wild speculation on Wall Street. 

Ninety years ago, the Great Depression (1929) hit throwing the United States and the world of commerce into crippling inflation and massive unemployment that found 25 percent of the American labor force unemployed. 

Life became a crushing daily struggle for most Americans while, paradoxically, most families maintained the stability of two parent homes as divorce, crime, and vagrancy were low.  Through it all, self-sustaining identification and stoic resolve prevailed against oppressive poverty.  Presidential politics (re: US President Herbert Hoover) were blamed for the Great Depression, as often happens when a national scapegoat is needed to explain a situation driven by other more complex circumstances.  

This led to the inauguration of what would become a four-term election of a president (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and to the “New Deal,” which was essentially a social-democratic agenda that changed the template of American society, and the will of the people.

President Roosevelt pieced together a welfare system taking the power and control of survival from the people (Social Security System) and corporate pursuits from industry and commerce (tax concessions) changing forever representative democracy into a shell game for lobbyist. 

To wit, this strategy and policy failed to energize banks, revitalize Wall Street, or, indeed, make a significant dent in either inflation or national unemployment.  That would be provided by Europe when Adolf Hitler came to power as Germany’s Chancellor through the democratic elective process.

Eighty years ago (1939), Adolf Hitler, now operating as Germany’s dictator, invaded Poland with Great Britain declaring war on Germany, initiating World War Two.  The United States would enter the war two years later once the Empire of Japan bombed the US Naval Base of the 7^th Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu on December 7, 1941.  The war, the most devastating in history, decimated Europe and much of Asia leaving only continental United States untouched with such massive destruction. 

Seventy years ago (1945) the United States dramatically ended the war in the Pacific and the will of the Japanese people by dropping two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, killing more than 100,000 people, thus ending World War Two. 

Estimates of the number of deaths attributed to WWII vary between 50 and 80 million.  Meanwhile, the stigmata of that war and the devastation of that atomic bomb lurks in the memory of civilization to this day as if a bad dream.  In a curious way, it has led to essentially world peace into the 21^st century.

American industry from 1942 to the conclusion of WWII created the greatest war machine known to man.  The war effort also led to full employment although Americans had to endure rationing of household goods, along with delayed gratification for such luxuries as new automobiles, boats, household appliances, clothing fashions, construction materials and leisure ware.   

Sixty years ago (1958) the economic boom was in full swing and Americans were swimming in cash no longer experiencing restrain or delayed gratification buying houses, cars, boats, clothes, taking luxurious vacations, having children, and then giving them everything they wanted but not necessarily needed, forgetting why or how they came to be so fortunate. 

Consumption became therapy for delicate psyches not used to struggle or failure or delayed gratification as the new lexicon was, “See it, feel it, have it, do it now!” 

Communities of a thousand new homes in the suburbs seemed to spring up everywhere as if overnight.  Most Americans had jobs and good incomes with a compulsion to imitate and emulate the rich and famous with homes that mirrored theirs, but more modestly with attached garages of one, two, or three spaces for automobiles.  Paved driveways and manicured lawns were part of the imitation on postage stamp pieces of real-estate.  Hugh factories and giant interstate highways of concrete crisscrossed the country over what was once fertile farmland.   

Suddenly, with no discernible barriers, parents and their children retreated deeper into themselves to entertain the luxury of worrying about their delicate psyches.  The shrinking of America into a psychological nation was now established.  The new priests were psychologists, psychotherapists, mystics and gurus.  Paradoxically, rather than this army of palliative prescribers calming anxiety, the attention seemed only to spike anxiety creating a counter dependent industry whose greatest product was the quality of their listening and tolerance for people suspended in adolescence. 

Meanwhile, children in school or play now had to be given awards for their participation, as no one must be stained with the stigma of failure, of losing, or unable to keep up with others.  Elitism was anathema as the drive was relentlessly to mediocrity and a culture of sameness. 

Grades escalated in elementary and high school, and then even at our most prestigious universities.  For no other reason than because we could, Americans came to believe in American exceptionalism, failing to realize that Russia lost 20 million (military and civilians) and Germany and the Allies nearly as many (military and civilians), while America lost 400,000 and almost no civilians as no battle was ever fought on the continental United States.   

The 1950s marked the appearance of Hugh Hefner who exploited the mood of the times with Playboy Magazine, becoming the Marquis de Sade of his generation promulgating his narcissistic Playboy philosophy to an eager affluent audience of self-indulgent males who had too much time on their hands.  

Fifty years ago (1968) everything in the United States commenced to unravel.  It was as if a knife cut through the fabric of American history separating that year and the past from the future. 

In January, the USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea; the Viet Cong launched the Tet offensive in Vietnam; in April Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated; Columbia University students seized administrative buildings; 367 students were injured in student peace riots in Paris; in June Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated; the “Poor Peoples March” on Washington, DC promoted economic justice for poor people; in August Richard Nixon was nominated for president at the Republican Presidential Convention in Miami; Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia ending the “Prague Spring”; riots broke out at the Democratic Presidential Nominating Convention in Chicago led by the “Chicago Seven”; in October, at the Olympic Games in Mexico City two American African American sprinters defied tradition at the awards ceremonies with “Black Power” salutes as the US National Anthem was played; in November, Nixon was elected president; in December, the Pueblo was released by North Korea; and Apollo 8 circled the moon.

In the span of the twelve months that followed, America experienced the Woodstock Music Festival, the Battle of Hamburger Hill, the occupation of Alcatraz, the collapse of moral boundaries on stage (with “Oh! Calcutta!”), on screen (“Midnight Cowboy”), and in print (“Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex but Were Afraid to Ask”).  This also marked the genesis of the Gay Rights Movement; introduced the era of the “no fault” divorce; marked the rise of the Silent Majority; and solidified the Peace Movement of young people who now burned their draft cards and fled to Canada to avoid serving in the US Military and the Vietnam War.  It also marked the explosive growth of the pornography industry that successfully sought shelter under the First Amendment of the Constitution leading to a billion dollar business. 

Forty years ago (1970s), the sanctity of the home was essentially derailed as children became their own parents as parents were now too busy making double incomes to keep pace with the financial demands of their extravagant lifestyles, thus having little time for domestic responsibilities. 

Children were given “things” rather than love or time and attention from their parents.  No surprise, children came to associate love with material substitutes.  Chaos followed.  

The abrupt decline of parental authority was in turn manifested in the classroom, which more resembled a war zone than a learning laboratory.  Crime was on the rise and out of control with the president (Nixon) declaring “War on Crime” and then “War on Drugs.” Neither war proved an effective deterrent.  

The unpopular Vietnam War led to cover ups, which in turn led to corruption as politicians first deceived the electorate and then themselves which reached a crescendo with The Watergate Scandal.  Drugs at all levels of society were now in children hands as parental discipline was now a charade, as adults came to mimic their children in dress and behavior. 

New forms of bigotry and hatred were hatching as scapegoat to offset personal anxiety and unhappiness.  Meanwhile, European and Japanese automobile manufacturers were eating America’s lunch, only to have an energy crisis rock the land with OPEC’s oil embargo.  President Nixon, forever paranoid, became a law unto himself while Congress stayed the same, missed the changes, couldn’t face them, leaving the future up for grabs. 

Today, forty years later, the 1970s now a bitter memory, the United States remains a divisive and polarized nation with Democratic and Republican members of Congress stoking the fires of discontent by throwing abuse at each other rather than finding some reason for compromise leading to a nation in constant turmoil.  

Problems have become too complex to consider much less solve. 

Problems require facing our fears, our ineptitude, our incompetence and, yes, our lack of initiative and originality.  Instead, what is feared is uniqueness, of people of difference, of people who don’t see all news as “fake news,” of people who don’t have to tattoo most of their bodies to have a sense of identity, of people who don’t have to look to experts to tell them what is important or what is not, of people who don’t have to follow a diet or belief system currently a bestseller, of people who don’t worry about what other people think before they form their own opinions, of people who aren’t afraid to differ with the prevailing norm, of people not interested in getting something for nothing, of people who believe in themselves without pretending to have no faults, of people who accept themselves as they are and other people as they find them. 

The latter is an expression of “tolerance” that is seriously missing from the conversation of the day.  That is because most people are too busy living second hand lives.