THE REST OF THE STORY

A READER WRITES

Jim,

Reading your latest with great interest (so much so that it need to read it again.)

Unfortunately, what I received broke off in the par. beginning with “Control is the sequential product of order ...”

Your line about how we mirror the universe rung a bell, but I wonder whether we have the same universe in mind. Mine is not the human universe, it is the universe with all there is in it. Might call it God, but that again leads to misunderstanding. Language is a such a useful tool, but it too often is disastrously ineffective.

I’ll leave it here.

Best,

Henry

MY RESPONSE

Henry,

I apologize for my missive not being complete. Here I am providing not only that last paragraph but the rest of the conversation with Stanley that appears in THE WORKER, ALONE! (TWA).

That book was published 25 years ago; it was my briefest book, a book I gave to European friends on one of my visits to Belgium, Austria and Germany. It was my favorite book written to date, perhaps because of the conversation with Stanley Reeves, a brilliant and delightfully wonderful human being.

I first met him in 1993 during my quest to write IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003), a book about growing up in the middle of the country, in the middle of my community (Clinton, Iowa in "the shadow of the courthouse"), in the middle of the century, and in the middle of World War Two. Those incidental circumstances would come to form me.

Now, regarding my soliloquy, which concludes TWA, my training in chemistry, study of neuroanatomy, and my reading of Carl Sagan, has no doubt influenced me. Regarding Sagan, I appreciate his impudence causing me, paradoxically, to believe more not less in God, a God, however, not necessarily an anthropomorphic God.

It is through this process that I have gotten the idea that the single atom in a matrix of billions of atoms approximates Sagan’s idea that in billions of planets in the universe, there must be some similar if not the same as our own.

Sagan always has interesting titles: The Cosmic Connection (1973), Broca’s Brain (1974), The Dragons of Eden (1977), Cosmos (1980), Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1992), The Demon-Haunted World (1996), and Billions & Billions (1997). I celebrate his short life where his fellow scientists refuted him for popularizing science, while given to self-aggrandizement. Since I could be similarly accused, I only smile.

Now regarding the soliloquy that ends “THE WORKER, ALONE!”:

It follows at the conclusion of this book thusly:

Control is a sequential product of order, and order comes from within, one person at a time. The multiple of this process leads to communal order. And so it is as well for life in a world out of sync with its times.

Everything is connected. The macro is precisely the same as the micro, only many times more. A true leader knows this in his bones. The structure of the human cell mirrors the universe. We explore the micro to understand the macro.

A "changed society" is an evolutionary process, which starts with an idea. There is no ideal plan or strategy to the growth of an idea. It is a factor of climate, opportunity and time. An idea may undergo several mutations before maturity is reached and bear little resemblance to the initial idea. There is no "right or true" course, only movement from moment to moment.

Ideas have a growth period the same as every other living thing. It is slow and tortuous with no clear path to the future. Ideas grow like cracks in the cement as weeds, wild flowers or grass. One day an idea experiences a transmutation from a puzzling perturbation into a clarifying insight that resonates with mean­ing to the times, which is not unlike a shoot bursting into bloom as a beautiful flower. Ideas are not separate but part of nature.

As for consultants, they are bystanders. Like multifaceted sensors, they derive their function from listening and observing. The answers are not with them, but are the filtered product of the organization's collective mind, a mind which is often ignored until a consultant repeats its intrinsic wisdom. Consultants pro­vide connection between organizational knowers and learners.

Consultants are symptomatic of a culture that doesn't trust itself, a culture willing to pay for "a second opinion." Companies insist on seeing the controller and the controlled as separate enti­ties. Consultant are often the arbitrary intermediary between the controller (management) and the controlled (workforce), which is a contrived dichotomy and therefore inauthentic. Were society not so uncertain of its priorities and ambivalent on how to handle them, consultants might just fade away.

Stanley reflects:

In your chapter, “'A Life Without A Cause," why can't change be a combination of outside forces as well as inside forces? Does it always have to be either... or? Wouldn't it be desirable for some things to come true that workers expect to come true, not because they expect it, but because they are desirable?

Change is always a combination of inside and outside forces. That is not the problem. The problem is what initiates the change process, stimulus from outside or motivation from inside? Chaos and order are part of the same whole. This dynamic created our universe.

Order starts with the individual deciding to change, to put his house in order, and therefore the change process is an inter­nal commitment. Change is a reply to the demands of reality or outside forces.

What precipitates change is usually some disturbance, some­thing that makes the individual or the company more alert. Attentiveness is the precursor to change. The decision to act is a response to that stimulus — take a death in the family. That was the case with me.

My father died three days past his fiftieth birthday. His whole life was one of repeated labor to push the stone of Sisyphus up the hill, only to have it roll back downhill and crush him again and again. He never had his own agenda. He was afraid to. He had great physical courage, but little moral backbone. It was impossible for him to take a stand if his rights clashed with the rights of his "betters."

With his death, my insides changed almost immediately. A cautious, conservative, sensitive person launched an immediate pilgrimage to gamble on himself, to do what his lights would have him do, and to let the chips fall where they may.

Thus was born my motivation to plant seeds that others were too timid to plant, or who feared it might lose them friends and jeopardize their careers. I am not constrained by such consid­erations. Nor am I concerned with whether these seeds reach fruition within my lifetime. I am a planter, not a harvester. My father's death convinced me of that fact.

Each worker has to decide who and what he is. If he doesn't, it will be decided for him. Desirable things come out of pur­poseful behavior. The purpose of life is to live it. How each of us might choose to live it is an expression of that purpose. The rest is academic.

Thank you for bringing this error to my attention.

Be always safe,

Jim