Genius & Contemporary Society
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 11, 2018
William L. Livingston is a professional engineer with over 100 patents, and with a career devoted to building nuclear power plants as far away as South Korea. For the past thirty years or so, he has devoted himself to studying how to transform dysfunctional organizations, existing in dystopias into productive, effective, happy Utopias. Since he is working at the bleeding edge of systems-think, making significant breakthroughs, he is functioning on a plane remote from most of us, but significant to all of us.
Nearly thirty years ago, he attended a book fair in New York City, and wrote me a note, “Send me your book and I’ll send you one of mine.” My book just published at the time was Work Without Managers. I sent him a copy of that book, and received promptly a copy of his Have Fun at Work. He autographed his copy with this note: “To Jim: Off to the races on the great crusade to organizational sanity” (July 28, 1991).
The book was an amazement. I have read and reread it several times, and most recently as late as last night. I have given similar attention to The New Plague, Friends in High Places, and Design for Prevention.
He has most recently published on Kindle his four volume Pilgrimage to Utopia and his four volume Magnificent Metamorphosis.
I have read captions of both these works sent to me periodically from him, but not the finished products, as I’m trying to get all my works on Kindle as my publisher has gone defunct, and so they are not available. Once I complete that task, I plan to bask in his genius as genius he is.
Authors are often very proprietary about their works, but William L. Livingston is generous to a fault, as he cares not a whit about anyone lifting his ideas and using them as his or her own. Besides being the most brilliant person I’ve ever known as we have remained friends throughout the last three decades, he is the most selfless. He doesn’t get in the way of his ideas.
What precipitated these reflections was coming across English novelist and short story writer E. M. Forster’s (1879 – 1970) “The Machine Stops.” It is a dystopian story of humanity being relegated to living underground relying on a giant machine to provide the method of their survival. It was written in 1909 or 109 years ago but has distressing relevance to our own time.
No person I know is reflecting and writing more poignantly about our current insanities than he is. I told my Beautiful Betty, “Maybe society will have to wait a hundred years to appreciate Bill Livingston.” She smiled, “And maybe that is true of you as well.”
JRF
Nearly thirty years ago, he attended a book fair in New York City, and wrote me a note, “Send me your book and I’ll send you one of mine.” My book just published at the time was Work Without Managers. I sent him a copy of that book, and received promptly a copy of his Have Fun at Work. He autographed his copy with this note: “To Jim: Off to the races on the great crusade to organizational sanity” (July 28, 1991).
The book was an amazement. I have read and reread it several times, and most recently as late as last night. I have given similar attention to The New Plague, Friends in High Places, and Design for Prevention.
He has most recently published on Kindle his four volume Pilgrimage to Utopia and his four volume Magnificent Metamorphosis.
I have read captions of both these works sent to me periodically from him, but not the finished products, as I’m trying to get all my works on Kindle as my publisher has gone defunct, and so they are not available. Once I complete that task, I plan to bask in his genius as genius he is.
Authors are often very proprietary about their works, but William L. Livingston is generous to a fault, as he cares not a whit about anyone lifting his ideas and using them as his or her own. Besides being the most brilliant person I’ve ever known as we have remained friends throughout the last three decades, he is the most selfless. He doesn’t get in the way of his ideas.
What precipitated these reflections was coming across English novelist and short story writer E. M. Forster’s (1879 – 1970) “The Machine Stops.” It is a dystopian story of humanity being relegated to living underground relying on a giant machine to provide the method of their survival. It was written in 1909 or 109 years ago but has distressing relevance to our own time.
No person I know is reflecting and writing more poignantly about our current insanities than he is. I told my Beautiful Betty, “Maybe society will have to wait a hundred years to appreciate Bill Livingston.” She smiled, “And maybe that is true of you as well.”
JRF
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