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.