THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© June 9, 2015
“There are three classes of people in the world. The first learn from their own experience. These are wise. The second learn from the experience of others. They are happy. The third neither learn from their own experience nor the experience of others. These are fools.
“A man of the best parts and greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd, and consequently very unwelcome in company.
“He may say very good things; but they will be probably so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed that he had much better hold his tongue.”
Lord Chesterfield (1694 – 1773), English Statesman and Man of Letters
The most dangerous man is out of sync with his times for he is able to penetrate the noise and sense how it listens.
He is guided by a vision that is not revealed to his cognitive mind but occupies his spiritual comprehension, a wisdom that seems conscious but is not; a sense of things which otherwise seem senseless.
He is the undeclared enemy of convention and all those who are guided by that tradition.
He is a student of history which means he is a student of his times.
Many ignore him, but when they can’t, they twist his words back to corroborate their own thinking, and if that fails, they are bent on destroying him for he is a danger to them and all that they hold dear.
He looks at the world as it is and does not fear the fact that it is changing.
They look at the world as it was and deny the fact that it is changing.
He admits he does not have answers but can clearly see that conventional wisdom is not wisdom at all, but the mind of a fool unhinged from the reality of what is collectively being experienced.
He has never been trusted because he has little interest in second, third and fourth sources of information, information with which the collective “they” find precious and the resume of their guiding actions.
He understands them because he records how their actions listen, and uses this to articulate some sense of what he sees on the horizon and why he sees it as so.
They ask him, “Is this your vision?” He answers, “No, it is yours!”
They ponder this and decide he is a madman, a danger to himself and others and must be dealt with in the spirit of what it considers rational, wise and final.
They justify this mindset because he says such inflammatory things as “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) was inevitable as it represents the blunt edge of the future turned back on itself.”
They ask him what he means by this. He answers with a question, “How else can you explain ISIS?”
They answer collectively, “That is a stupid question!”
“Stupid or not,” he replies, “How can you explain, then, that one hundred thousandth percent of mankind has crippled the world?”
Confidently, they reply, “Because they are a terrorist group!”
He asks, “What is a terrorist group?”
They walk away from him in disgust, shaking their heads, now more fearful of him than ever before because he is a madman with an agenda, an agenda that they don’t understand.
One of the group says flippantly, “He’s a terrorist.”
All eyes light up. “Yes, yes, he is a terrorist. He is one of them!”
Then they ponder what should they do. How can they control him, dispose of him without themselves acting like terrorist.
Someone says, “Isolate him, place an embargo on him, taint his name, and spread rumors about him; turn his family against him, his employer, his friends; turn society against him.”
Someone says, “Isolate him, place an embargo on him, taint his name, and spread rumors about him; turn his family against him, his employer, his friends; turn society against him.”
Then someone remarks questionably, “Until he becomes like us?”
“Yes, yes,” the herd says in unison, “Until he becomes like us, sane, responsible, understandable, agreeable.”
Then someone from the back, yells, “And predictable!”
“Yes, yes!” A roar erupts from the crowd, “And predictable like us!”
No one learned anything from the most dangerous man because no one got inside what he was saying; no one was listening. They only heard the echo of their own fears.
The most dangerous man of the first century of the Christian era was a man named Paul, who was betrayed by his own people who did not understand him and was beheaded by Rome. He died a failure and was meant to pass into oblivion but he wrote what he felt, what he saw and what he believed, not certain if his words would survive, but they did.
“Yes, yes,” the herd says in unison, “Until he becomes like us, sane, responsible, understandable, agreeable.”
Then someone from the back, yells, “And predictable!”
“Yes, yes!” A roar erupts from the crowd, “And predictable like us!”
No one learned anything from the most dangerous man because no one got inside what he was saying; no one was listening. They only heard the echo of their own fears.
* * *
Two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire was unraveling, an empire that could not see the hand writing on the wall. Each time it crushed a rebellion it won by losing. The more it tried to dictate the future through control the more it sponsored chaos. It failed to see the world was changing and unwittingly sponsored and then paradoxically generated new enemies. The most dangerous man of the first century of the Christian era was a man named Paul, who was betrayed by his own people who did not understand him and was beheaded by Rome. He died a failure and was meant to pass into oblivion but he wrote what he felt, what he saw and what he believed, not certain if his words would survive, but they did.
Paul had the distinction of being seen as the most dangerous man by the early Jerusalem Christians as well as by the Roman Empire. They both thought they had gotten rid of their nemesis. Instead, this peculiar little man changed the world for the next two thousand years (see “Jesus, Paul and Freud” in these pages).
The most dangerous man now walks among us but nobody knows him. He asks questions that have no answers in the current lexicon. He is comfortable being seen as a madman.
The most dangerous man now walks among us but nobody knows him. He asks questions that have no answers in the current lexicon. He is comfortable being seen as a madman.
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