THINKING ABOUT VIOLENCE OF A SOCIETY ON THE EDGE OF COLLAPSE

 James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D. 

October 22, 2020 

Yesterday I penned a little article, “We are not a polite society, never were, never will be,” which dealt with the high jinx of political intrigue when the United States was in the opening chapter of its history. The emotional violence was apparent if not endemic to “Our Founding Fathers,” however accomplished they were in intellectual sophistication.

Intellectual sophistication is key to my thoughts today on violence. Some time ago I read “The Quartet: The Second American Revolution” (2015) written by Joseph J. Ellis, an American historian, and dealt with the period from 1787 – 1789, and was about George Washington, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and John Madison, authors of the Federalist Papers and the American Constitution. What was implicitly apparent was that Washington, Jay and Madison were the adults, while Hamilton, much younger, was something of the intellectual brat. 

Ellis got the idea for this book from listening to some middle school students struggling to recite Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” – Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation . . .

The problem Ellis realized was the math of “Honest Abe” was wrong as the American nation was not created in 1776 but rather in 1787 when the Constitution was written, and George Washington did not become President of the United States until 1789.

The colonies after The American Revolution weren’t working well together armed only with the Articles of Confederation and a powerless Continental Congress.  So these four men put their heads together and created essentially what exists to this day with the checks and balances of the Executive Branch, the Judicial Branch and the American House of Representatives and the United States Senate as the Legislative Branch.  These counterbalancing and complementary components of the three branches of government have worked reasonably well. 

Two other men who remain essentially invisible in terms of historical notice were financiers Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris (no relation) who author Ellis writes, “had a greater influence on the final wording of the Constitution than anyone else.” 

Now what does this have to do with "thinking about violence"? 

WHAT WE THINK IS NOT NECESSARILY SO, AND HOW WE BEHAVE IS NOT NECESSARILY THE WAY WE THINK WE BEHAVE.

We have had a societal COVID-19 pandemic but also a political pandemic to match the disease leading to a  season of outrageous disinformation fueled by toxic declarations from both presidential candidates: former Vice President Joseph Biden and President Donald Trump.

This toxicity has led to violence in the streets across America, all in an attempt to win election to the nation’s highest office.  Literally tens of millions of dollars have been spent in behalf of this madness which far from leading to accord has instead incited seemingly ubiquitous discord.

Like those middle level students reciting the “Gettysburg Address,” mechanically and robotically with no sense of its inaccuracies much less its essence, chances are there are few people reading this who are aware that violence starts with disinformation however innocent and harmless it is meant to be presented in the course of events.

The vitriolic exchange between people on the left and people on the right are equally misinformed, and while so engaged, have little sense of how this impacts the radical elements among their children.  A miniscule segment of this youth population has managed to decimate the business districts of several metropolitan areas.

I no longer watch on television these human combustibles on reckless rampage. Equally true, I am bored to death with the claptrap of the left and the right with the quadrennial madness of this presidential election season.  They both sound the same; both are accusatory of the other in terms of the cause and ineptitude of the pandemic; both talk of societal injustice, racism, and lack of jobs, poverty and discrimination as if it were a menu in a restaurant. 

Hoodlums in every phase of human history have not only been cowards and bullies but rebels without a cause, without a clear agenda and without anybody being in charge.  We saw this with people of all ages and all walks of life camped out in “Occupy Wall Street” only to collapse their tents and move on with nothing resolved.  We aggravate over things having surrendered to mythological angst as if stick figures in the wind. 

SOME MYTHS THAT SIMPLY WON’T GO AWAY

Myth 1:

Free public grammar school and high school education is not a right; it is a privilege. 

Ignorance is the lowest cage of human existence, and people who find themselves in that cage, who steal automobiles, rob 7&11 stores, steal billfolds and handbags from old people, rob mailboxes of residents, or run over them with their vehicles, beat up homeless people or people of a different sexual persuasion, are not human beings, but the most despicable creatures on the planet. These punks have no time for attending school, learning to read and write, or doing the hard work to envision a career, but who have plenty of time to drink and do drugs, live promiscuously, and blame society for their plight.

Myth 2:

No one promised you a living; no one owes you a job. 

We confuse compassion with character; empathy with sympathy. They are not the same.  When someone sits around, and lets you support them, still lives at home in their 20s or 30s, and has no job, conveniently blames the pandemic for their situation, and you go along with the drill, you forget one thing: as parents in your sixties, who will take care of them when you are not around? The government? The church? Other siblings? Charitable organizations?  Who?

When you attempt to do for others, what they best do for themselves, you weaken their resolve, and diminish them as persons.

This all started after WWII when little Jimmy and little Patsy were learning how to do long and short division, write a grammatical sentence, or spell common words, the drive was to treat everyone the same in school -- winners and losers -- as no one should damage the poor little dears delicate psyches.

Then “political correctness” came along with the ‘60s euphemisms protecting the delicate psyches, not only of children, but of everyone.

The thinking prevalent then was that nothing could be more damaging to our delicate psyches then to lose, fail, prove inadequate, or be unable to compete. We have had seventy-five years of this pabulum society and now it has come home to roost.

Myth 3:

Nothing is worse than for someone to declare you are an elitist. 

Common fare associates an elitist status with someone being a snob, highbrow or thinking they are better than everyone else. Quarterback Tom Brady, now of the Tampa Bay Bucs, is definitely an elitist, but he is in a sport where excelling above the pact is not only tolerated but critical to the success of the individual in the profession. 

By a remarkable coincidence the standards of performance in professional sport are brutal with many promising athletes falling by the wayside because they fail to have the heart, the discipline or the determination required. Now, that is sport.   Life in the social and business world is quite another matter: everyone is expected to be carried.

It amazed me after my many years in corporate society benefiting from corporate welfare that  this pabulum consciousness came out of the ‘60s but is now standard operating procedure. As society through government has become a welfare system, corporate society under the protection of government has become a welfare system as well.

In conventional corporate life, there was no place for Steven Jobs or Stephen Wozniak of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Bill Gates of Microsoft, or Larry Page and Jergey Brin of Google, elitist individuals to the tee.  They managed on their own to change the very nature of life on this planet.

Myth 4:

Genius is rare. 

Genius is not rare and it has many forms and is displayed in many different modes of activity. We think of genius in terms of the likes of Albert Einstein, who was quick to correct us on that score. What follows are some of his words that I have found fascinating and informative, remembering they have no central thrust but remind us that he sees himself as one among us:

Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things.

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts, and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us.

Comfort and happiness have never appeared to me as a goal. I call these ethical bases the ideal of the swine herd.

With fame I became more and more stupid, which, of course, is a very common phenomenon. There is far too great a disproportion between what one is and what others think one is, or at least what they say they think one is. But one has to take it all with good humor.

It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I say with problems longer. I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious.

People flatter me as long as I don’t get in their way. The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working. I am happy because I want nothing from anyone.

My power, my particular ability lies in visualizing the effects, consequences and possibilities, and the bearings on present thought of the discoveries of others. I grasp things in a broad way easily, I cannot do mathematical calculations easily. I do them not willingly and not readily. Others perform these details better.

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

Only life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

Common sense is a collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

People are like the ocean: sometimes smooth and friendly, at other times stormy and full of malice. The important thing to remember is that they too are mostly made of water.

Perfection of means and confusion of aims seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.

All our lauded technological progress – our very civilization – is like the ax in the hand of the pathological criminal.

As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists.

Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. Thought is an end in itself, like music.

The greatest obstacle to international order is that monstrously exaggerated spirit of nationalism which also goes by the fair-sounding but missed name of patriotism.

Only a free individual can make a discovery.

Since our inner experience consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems to be empty and devoid of meaning.

Science without religion is lane, religion without science is blind.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

By painful experience, we have learned that rational thinking does not suffice to solve the problems of our social lives.

Study and, in general, the pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

One cannot learn anything well as by experiencing it oneself.

Reference: Bite-Size Einstein, quotations compiled by Jerry Mayer and John P. Holms, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1996.

Myth 5:

Saying “no” to your grown children, or to a friend who through their flagrant disregard for good sense is considered cruel and unusual punishment. 

Life is a cavalcade of choices, and choices have consequences, good and bad. But if choices have no consequences then learning be damned! When you put yourself and your family in dire circumstances, helping those who refuge to help themselves, you punish everyone including yourself for something not of your making.  On the other hand, if you relieve a person of the burden of the consequences of their unsavory behavior. no learning takes place with a change in behavior unlikely to follow.  People who make poor choices make them again and again seemingly always with someone at the ready to bail them out, which is the absolute worst thing that could happen to them or to you.

Myth 6:

We must search for our identity.  

To search for “identity” is not only absurd, it is impossible.   Identity is not something you attain; identity is something that you are.  In the unfinished novel, “Castle,” Franz Kafka demonstrates the elusive nature of recognition when castle authorities refuse to acknowledge he is a land surveyor so contracted by the castle. In this haunting tale the protagonist's quest for legitimacy proves unattainable; something outside himself.  Many treat identity as a quest equally elusive when identity is defined by interests and experiences and not by others.  If it doesn’t start early, chances are identity will be like riding a roller coaster for life.

Myth 7:

Contentment is not a matter of choice but a matter of chance. 

It is precisely the exact opposite of this: contentment is a matter of choice.  Life is what we make of it, not what others make of us. That said, should you become so content that you don't want to do anything anymore, don't want to grow anymore, you might as well be dead.

Myth 8:

Being totally “other-directed,” gregarious, a hardy fellow well met is the key to success, wealth and happiness.  

It is not.  Indeed, being so directed, you are as vulnerable to the ploys and deceits of the most clumsy of con schemes. James Hillman has it right in “The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling” (1996).  This author uses the metaphor of the acorn to suggest in order to grow up, you must first grow down to nourish the roots of your core personality. Out of that comes an appreciation of your inner-directedness with the guidance system of your moral compass that can effectively deal with a world absurdly committed to outer-directedness.

Myth 9:

It is more important to be loved than respected. 

See how these words change in meaning when “self” is added to love and to respect. The foundation of the Christian-Judaic code of ethics insists that love makes the world go around. Yet, we implicitly behave as if it is possible to be loving and respecting of others without first being self-loving and self-respecting of ourselves.  Self-love is not conceit, not arrogance, and not a sense of superiority. Love of self is an appreciation and acceptance or ourselves as we are, flaws and all, taking our successes and failures, triumphs and embarrassments, good days and bad days, idiosyncrasies and conformities in stride as part of life. Self-acceptance through self-awareness is the hardest hurdle in life to successfully negotiate. We know we have mastered this hurdle when we no longer own other people’s problems and can tolerate them, not as they should be, but as they are.

Myth 10:

Thinking is more important than feeling. 

As I have attempted to show, citing Einstein, thinking and feeling are inseparable and thinking follows feeling, not the other way around. 

Evidence is demonstrable.  For no matter how erudite and intellectually sophisticated we may become, we never escape the lasting impressions of our childhood. Read biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway, among other macho ideal types, you see they took themselves seriously along with huge chances. 

Self-realization and self-defeat are two sides of the same coin, something we may deny or attempt to run from but to no avail. As The Fisher Paradigm©™ attempts to show, three inner-connected spheres of influence – A Sense of Self (Personality), A Sense of Place and Space (Geography), and A Sense of Self-Worth (Demography) – are constantly clashing with each other as the outer world of events collides with our inner world of feelings.  Each of us is unique and the subject and object of our own private drama before an audience of one.

VIOLENCE ON STEROIDS

A child doesn’t come into the world scarred with a vengeance to be a rebel with or without a cause. A child comes into the world helpless, vulnerable, totally dependent on the love, nurturing, affection and warmth of grownups, caregivers, in a community of solidarity who are dedicated to enhance the nature of the child by unselfish love and dedication so that the child might effectively utilize its inherent natural ability in the service of others; not by comparing nor competing, not through jealousy nor envy, but by adults acting as responsible mothers and father, not for gain nor advantage; not for pride nor bragging rights, but to enhance the child's development into a wholesome human being.

Still, when a child is no longer a child, and has figured out that to maintain itself as the center of its universe, disruption is key to quickly manipulate grownups to meet its juvenile demands.  That juvenility now 75 years after WWII dominates American society.

When the child has no sense of delayed gratification, no sense of pain or discomfort, no sense of hurt or disappointment, no sense of failure, no sense of patience or consideration of others, then we no longer have a child, for we have created a monster.  

This mobster who may one day rob, loot, burn, or destroy what belongs to others is without conscience.  And we have created him out of passivity, neglect and indulgence so that any organized pursuit be it in the home, school, church, community or recreational center is a war zone. 

A nation of spoiled brats has been created, and perpetuated since WWII in which want becomes need; attention is deemed necessary as opposed to never being found out doing a good deed; where the belief persists that poverty is a sin and no community should countenance that sin.  Yet truth be told poverty has always been with us while attempts to stamp it out have only paradoxically increased its ugly presence as more people are pushed to exist on the dole.  This brings us to Myth 11.

Myth 11:

Poverty causes crime, mental illness and inhuman treatment. 

Wealth, not poverty, and the desire to have what others have through work, diligence, insight, and yes, luck, created the spoiled brats of the terrible 1960s and beyond.   Moreover, subsequent generations have moved away from the common good to personhood; from working for a living to looking for shortcuts to avoid work but to still enjoy the benefits of those who work.  As unconscionable as this may sound, spoiled brats are convinced they deserve such consideration.  One thing for certain, they don't want to be like their parents, who have struggled and planned, sacrificed and invested wisely.  They plan to remain spoiled brats but have everything that their parents have accumulated, and cannot wait until they die. 

Contrast this with the status of the poor.  Violence and criminality is not found dominant among the ranks of the very poor but of the idle rich and the want-to-be rich. These are society’s disrupters, not the poor who feel the day is a triumph when they have a roof over their heads, a warm bed to crawl into at night and a warm belly for besting hunger for a day.

Psychologists and sociologists have contributed to this pervasive and permissive manipulative self-indulgent climate through their skills with words and through the paradoxical conveyance of oppressive behavior to the oppressed themselves by the use of their ideologies in defense of how matters currently exist.

Finally, we have lost our sense of community that has protected us from the ravages of the excesses described here: we are told we are a nation of believers in God that doesn’t include going to church; we are told we are a religious and caring nation that doesn’t include talking to the next door neighbor; we are told we are a melting pot of nations but that doesn’t include socializing with other ethnic groups; we have a national character freeze framed into a collective identity that has little to do with a shared reality.

James Hilton is correct: we must grow down to nourish our roots before we can grow up and regain our lost promise.

THIS GOT ME THINKING -- RE: "LUCTOR ET EMERGO"

 James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D. 

© October 23, 2020 

Henry,

Bravo! This missive is entertaining and provocative, as are all your missives in your compendium (see below).

My approach is different, which of course you might expect as I have a different set of experiences and persuasions of mind.

Evidence of this was apparent in "We are not a polite society, never were, never will be."

What spurred my interest in writing this was rereading "The Lonely Crowd" (1950) by David Riesman who looks at violence quite differently than I do. He sees a lack of leadership consistent with Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy (re: essay after his death). Incredibly, he sees them as a cut above other presidents "because of their sophistication and intellectual acumen," failing to mention some of the messes they caused. No, I am not an admirer of either.

But Riesman got me thinking. That's all an author is obliged to do.

We Americans are a hard scrabble constituency with our most effective presidents, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson, hardly giant intellects.

Americans have always struggled to get beyond their midwife, Europe, where "Men of Words" have dominated and where "Men of Action" turn out to be either Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin, or Stalin with the occasional "Man of Words" such as Winston Churchill intervening to change the course of history, as he did persuading FDR to do the right thing.

Seemingly an unrelated subject, I am now working on a short piece, "Thinking About Violence of a Society on the Edge of Collapse," which starts out innocently enough, correcting Abraham Lincoln's error in the Gettysburg Address, then segueing into another book I read some time ago by Joseph Ellis, "The Quartet: The Second American Revolution" (2015).

Ellis correctly covers the period from 1787 to 1789, which was terribly traumatic as The Continental Congress had no teeth and The US Constitution as it then existed had no legs.

The thirteen colonies were perilously close to imploding, but then George Washington, always an adult and a "Man of Action" and John Madison a brilliant "Man of Words," keeping himself out of the limelight, and John Jay, another effective quiet "Man of Words," and pesky Alexander Hamilton, much younger than the other three, and never living long enough to assume true adulthood but another "Man of Words," combined to rewrite the US Constitution creating the three offsetting and balancing branches of the Federal Government: Executive, Judicial and Legislative, along with writing The Federalist Papers.

But like my typical long windedness, this is only preamble to discussing why we have such a violent society, not going back to the dawn of our nascent creation but looking at the mess we have been in since WWII.

You have a point about parenting in your piece. Parenting wasn't a problem for African American families or white families, poor as the majority of them were before WWII because they had something that their church gave them and the wider society, which no longer exists, and that was a sense of community. 

Alexis de Tocqueville saw this in 1831 (re: Democracy in America, 1831-1834) and the country saw it demonstrated in the mobilization miracle of 1942 where a sense of community saw the United States build more ship, planes, tanks, and create a logistical support system second to none in a single year (see David Halberstam's "The Next Century," 1991, p 59).

Enough. I'm going back to bed,

Jim

Re: “Luctor et Emergo”

http://fleabyte.org/My-2-cents/Myworld/blog-46.html

http://fleabyte.org/My-2-cents/Myworld/contents.html

WE ARE NOT A POLITE SOCIETY, NEVER WERE, NEVER WILL BE

 James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D. 

© October 21, 2020 

A READER WRITES

Very relevant for today’s times and some of these similarities are visible today in nationalistic behavior we are witnessing across the world and in the US.

We are about to see difficulties occur after the election I feel will likely inflame our country like no other time in our history! Been reading Ron Chernow's Hamilton biography and am amazed at the similarities of the 1770 - 1785 period when similar sentiments were experienced with just the 13 colonies/states in existence at the time. Maybe our experiment in democracy could come to a surprising end with another civil war between races, economic classes and conflicts around science and public health demands.

Praying for all who will be affected by the pain of our failed political leaders!

Thanks for all the perspectives you provide and be safe!

Buddy

MY REPLY

As bad as we think it is today, how much we feel it has never been this violent, this unfree, this warped with “dirty tricks” and unprecedented slander, the fact of the matter is that this has been part of presidential politics since the beginning, and as you point out, in the time of Alexander Hamilton and beyond. Books and Broadway make Hamilton as pure as the driven snow, which was hardly the case, nor for our “Founding Fathers.”

Negative campaigning in America was sired by two lifelong friends, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Back in 1776, the dynamic duo combined powers to help claim America's independence, and they had nothing but love and respect for one another. But by 1800, party politics had so distanced the pair that, for the first and last time in U.S. history, a president found himself running against his vice president.

Despite their bruising campaign, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams became friends again.

Things got ugly fast. Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force nor firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."

In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father."

As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.

Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was "one of the most detestable of mankind."

JEFFERSON’S “HATCHET MAN”

Back then, presidential candidates didn't actively campaign. In fact, Adams and Jefferson spent much of the election season at their respective homes in Massachusetts and Virginia.

But the key difference between the two politicians was that Jefferson hired a hatchet man named James Callendar to do his smearing for him. Adams, on the other hand, considered himself above such tactics. To Jefferson's credit, Callendar proved incredibly effective, convincing many Americans that Adams desperately wanted to attack France. Although the claim was completely untrue, voters bought it, and Jefferson stole the election. 

Incredibly, Jefferson was a slave owner and Adams never own a single slave; nor was Adams so inclined to ever be a slave owner. But the nascent United States of the time accepted slavery with amoral indifference.

Jefferson paid a price for his dirty campaign tactics, as politicians down to our present day continue to experience. Callendar served jail time for the slanderous copy he wrote about Adams, and when he emerged from prison in 1801, he felt Jefferson still owed him.

After Jefferson did little to appease him, Callendar broke a story in 1802 that had only been a rumor until then -- that President Jefferson was having an affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. In a series of articles, Callendar claimed that Jefferson had lived with Hemings in France and that she had given birth to five of his children.

This story would plague Jefferson for the rest of his career. And although generations of historians shrugged off the story as part of Callendar's propaganda, DNA testing in 1998 showed a link between Hemings' descendants and the Jefferson family.

Just as truth persists, however, so does friendship. Twelve years after the vicious election of 1800, Adams and Jefferson began writing letters to each other and became friends again. They remained pen pals for the rest of their lives and passed away on the same day, July 4, 1826. It was the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Incidentally, the last words of John Adams were, “Jefferson still lives,” which was not quite true as he died later that same day.

THE SON OF JOHN ADAMS, AN ELISTIST

John Adams lived long enough to see his son become president in 1825, but he died before John Quincy Adams lost the presidency to Andrew Jackson in 1828. Fortunately, that meant he didn't have to witness what many historians consider the nastiest contest in American history.

The slurs flew back and forth, with John Quincy Adams being labeled a pimp and an elitist, and Andrew Jackson's wife labeled nothing but a slut.

As the election progressed, editorials in the American newspapers read more like bathroom graffiti than political commentary. One paper reported that "General Jackson's mother was a common prostitute, brought to this country by the British soldiers! She afterward married a mulatto man, with whom she had several children, of which General Jackson is one!"

What got Americans so fired up? For one thing, many voters felt John Quincy Adams should never have been president in the first place. During the election of 1824, Jackson had won the popular vote but not the electoral vote, so the election was decided by the House of Representatives. Henry Clay, one of the other candidates running for president, threw his support behind Adams. To return the favor, Adams promptly made him Secretary of State. Jackson's supporters labeled it "The Corrupt Bargain" and spent the next four years calling Adams a usurper.

Beyond getting the short end of the electoral stick, Andrew Jackson managed to connect with voters via his background -- which couldn't have been more different than Adams'.

By the time John Quincy was 15, he'd traveled extensively in Europe, mastered several languages, and worked as a translator in the court of Catherine the Great. 

RISE OF A TREE OUT OF THE WOODS

Meanwhile, Andrew Jackson had none of those privileges. By 15, he'd been kidnapped and beaten by British soldiers, orphaned, and left to fend for himself on the streets of South Carolina. He had practically no formal education, but had fought bravely in the American Revolution War as a teenager, where he saw his brother bludgeoned to death by a British soldier because he wouldn’t shine his boots.

The memory of that incident would stay with Andrew Jackson the rest of his life with a vile hatred of the British that found him in command of a ramshackle army of Tennessee volunteers at New Orleans in the War of 1812. Jackson’s army totally decimated the British army and navy exacting major casualties while suffering few American casualties. 

Jackson's leadership saved the young nation which historians have called “America’s Second War of Independence” (see “Union 1812” by A. J. Langguth, 2006; “Andrew Jackson: Miracle of New Orleans – The Battle that Shaped America’s Destiny,” by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger, 2017).

John Quincy Adams was a Harvard-educated diplomat from a prominent New England family. Andrew Jackson was a humble war hero from the rural South who'd never learned to spell or write well. On the other hand, he was the first presidential candidate in American history to sell himself as a man of the people, and the people loved him for that.

The common people, having been denied their candidate in 1824, the masses took to the polls for Jackson four years later. Although Jackson’s lack of education and political experience terrified many of Adams' supporters, their argument proved it didn't hold water for the throngs who lined up to cast their votes for "Old Hickory."  Jackson, at six-two, thin as a rail and knotty and hard as the wood, would carry that simulacrum throughout his political career. Since Jackson's decisive presidential political victory, no presidential candidate has dared take a step toward the White House without first holding hands with the common man.

On the other hand, losing the 1828 election may have been the best thing to happen to John Quincy Adams. After sulking home to Massachusetts, Adams pulled himself together and ran for Congress, launching an epic phase of his career.

During his 17 years in the House of Representatives, Adams became an abolitionist hero, championing legislation to open the debate on slavery. And in 1841, he famously put his money where his mouth was, when he defended the 39 African captives aboard the slave ship Amistad before the U.S. Supreme Court. At a time when all but two of the justices were pro-slavery, Adams won his human rights plea.

Given these historical reflections, perhaps we should take a chill pill and recognize who and what we are, as well as how we have always been, and take pride in the fact that at times despite ourselves, we have managed to survive the weakest link in our chain of authority.

Thank you for your thoughtful reflections,

Jim

UNCERTAINTY IN THE AGE OF NEW SCIENCE

 

UNCERTAINTY IN THE AGE OF NEW SCIENCE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D. 

© October 20, 2020 

Henry writes


And let’s not overlook the Nazi Heisenberg, the “father” of quantum mechanics who alerted the need for heavy water, then produced in Norway, etc.

A general comment, it is not whatever -ism we sail under, it is the corruptibility of individuals. Ergo, we need to corruption-proof society. Any books about that?

My reply

True, Werner Heisenberg was one of the principle players in the incredible new field of physics in the early 20th century, along with several other German Sciences mentioned in a previous missive (i.e., “Why is hate such a powerful motivator?”). It is also true that he understood the critical need of “heavy water” in the creation of an atomic bomb, but beyond that it appears he wanders off into the ambivalence of the mythic of scientific intrigue.

When I was living and working in South Africa in 1968, often thumbing through scientific journals at my leisure, one day I came across Werner Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle,” and although I commenced to write my novel of that time in South Africa in 1969 when I returned to the States, I would work on the novel off and on for next fifty years, finally publishing it in 2017. This is how one chapter of that novel opens:

THE PHYSICS OF UNCERTAINTY (from the novel, DEVLIN)

The Devlins had reached the point of irreconcilable differences in their marriage where little energy was left for explanation or protest. When Sarah and Rickie left with Marta Rogers and her daughters, the Devlins knew they wouldn’t see each other again until the sun rose on another day. Both were disinclined to say anything as surprise had worn out its welcome.

There was a time when Sarah resented Devlin’s routine of retiring into the sanctuary of his study after dinner to read, listen to classical music, to some mystery on the BBC, or simply to stare into the fireplace watching the timbers smolder drinking coffee until falling asleep with a book in his lap.

She had asked dutifully before leaving, “When will you be home?”

“Later,” he had replied.

“Then later it is,” she had said evenly. “We won’t wait dinner for you.”

It was amazing how civil people can be when the antipathy in the air is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

As he drove to Nina’s just past five o’clock, for no apparent reason, Devlin thought of the German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his “Uncertainty Principle.” The theory deals with quantum mechanics and subatomic particles in physics, but he could see how it could apply equally to people.

Heisenberg’s uncertainty deals with the position of the electron, its momentum, energy and time. The problem in applying these four variables to his situation was that there was no precise measurement of their properties. Imprecision dictated his dilemma. Here I am in the turmoil of apartheid only to see how pathetic my church is as a moral force, ask to do a job in a corporate universe motivated only by money, driven with limited energy by the inconceivable variable of time. What could be more uncertain?

The church blackmails me with the threat of deportation. What could be more absurd? Nothing. My gardener is murdered and his death is treated as inconsequential because he is a Bantu. What can I do about it? Nothing. I make police inquiries to understand the why to appease my soul and am blocked by police and society. What can I do about it? Nothing.

Clearly, Asabi (house maid) had affection for Josiah. She spoke his language and came from the same homeland, and I’m sure he was the kind of man she dreamed of marrying one day. She didn’t understand he valued his freedom more than his physical pleasure.

Josiah and I had a warm relationship, which I choose to call friendship. He was my black electron and I his white in the momentum of ideas in the uncertainty of time. We were canonically conjugated variables with the momentum of one with the energy and time of the other. Murder most certain eclipsed the second pair of variables.

Heisenberg perceived something beyond physics when he said, “The more precisely the position is determined the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant and vice versa.” Surely this applies equally to life.

It seems to me I amplify my uncertainty to imprecision by my dalliances and contrariness. Is Nina a product of lust, love or revenge? Is she the personification of my angst, anger or mania for control? Heisenberg is implying there is no such thing as control. Neither people nor electrons can be punished with knowledge or authority to behave as desired. Therefore, to be a control freak is to be totally out of control. Uncertainty theory is merely pointing out the obvious. Could that be it? Could it be that I’ve been dropped into this universe and want to punish it for doing so? Was the choice I had from the beginning no choice at all?

Josiah was caught in this web and now he is in my dreams. Does that mean that even death is uncertain, that the ultimate momentum to justice will one day be precise when everything balances out? If order comes out of chaos, why am I so obsessed with control?

In the uncertainty of my nightmares, I’ve thought I could be deported, then too I’ve thought I could be murdered by my wife. There is no doubt she would do it if she had the certainty of getting away with it. I have become a pervasive irritant to those most proximate to me: my wife, my church, my company, the South African government, and yes, you too, dear Nina. Collectively, you have no appetite for my uncertainty.

Sarah is incredibly unhappy. Am I responsible? The church, my company and the Afrikaner government are paranoid. Have I contributed to this? Am I a toxic variable in a world that denies the unavoidable uncertainty of toxicity? It is only a matter of time before that toxicity pollutes my work and infects Nina if it hasn’t already. What to do? That is the question.

Heisenberg was on to something. Luckily, he fell short with his atomic bomb, or Germany might have won the Second World War with that uncertainty projected with the possibility that there would be no Seamus Devlin in South Africa today. Chance finds him here. How poetically uncertain!

As I stumble forward, thinking of Heisenberg and the horrific possibility of Germany launching an atomic holocaust, I marvel at how that uncertainly has contributed to the completion of my tasks. Could that be what God is, the verification of the Uncertainty Principle?

HISTORY & MYTHOLOGY OF A TIME

I share this with you having read Michael Frayn and David Burke’s “The Copenhagen Papers,” (2000) allegedly based on a curious package of papers buried under the floorboards of a home in Denmark relating to the meeting of Heisenberg with his Danish mentor, Niels Bohr.

As bizarre and controversial as was this play, Werner Heisenberg did meet his mentor Niels Bohr three times during his visit to Copenhagen, September 15 – 21, 1941. Germany was winning the war, but Hitler was suspect of the Copenhagen Institute, and according to “Niels Bohr Times: In Physics, Philosophy, and Polity” (1991), Hitler planned to blow up the institute by mining its sewers, but the plot was uncovered (p 490).  

After the meetings by these two scientists, their accounts proved conflicting and self-serving. Bohr, at the time, apparently was working with the British unknown to Heisenberg, while his account of his meeting with Heisenberg surprised him on how little specificity existed in Germany's approach to the making of an atomic bomb.

John Cornwell in “Hitler’s Scientists: Science, War, and the Devil’s Pact” (2003), writes that Albert Speers, who was at the time Director of Munitions with slave labor offered Heisenberg all and whatever resources he required only to be met with approach avoidance passive behavior. Cornwell writes:

Given that there were many imponderables, including the correct critical mass (to the atomic bomb), it was a strange performance for it seemed designed to provoke interest and high expectations. When virtually unlimited resources were offered by Albert Speer in June that year (1941), Heisenberg spurned the offer. It was possible that he was merely attempting to curry favour in order to remain an important figure in atomic physics, but that surely had its dangers since the German armies were not at this point prospering in Russia, and America had entered the war with its prodigious industrial might.

Yet, while Heisenberg sought, and was given, increasing responsibility for the atomic physics programme, he was taking on a variety of extraneous duties and activities. He was hardly focused on a task that should have absorbed all his energies (pp. 311-312).

Elsewhere:

The contrast between America’s bomb effort with its vast factories and processing sites, its cities in the desert and its many tens of thousands of personnel (Re. Manhattan Project in Los Alamo, New Mexico), could not have been more extraordinary and indicative of the feebleness of Germany’s research project (Ibid, p 329).

Albert Speer confirms this offer to Heisenberg in “Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs of Albert Speer” (1970), while Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin reveal the absolute commitment of The Manhattan Project in “American Prometheus: The Triumph & Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” (2005), as Oppenheimer was clearly "the father of the bomb," something he later regretted.   

MANHATTAN PROJECT

History is often confusing as well as self-serving. 

The American effort to create the atomic bomb started with a letter.  The letter was addressed to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but it was not written by Albert Einstein as many believed, but by Leo Szilard and signed by Einstein and delivered to FDR on August 2, 1939.

A month later, Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 to initiate World War Two. FDR who was a decisive if also an impulsive leader, immediately created The Manhattan Project placing J. Robert Oppenheimer, an atomic physicist, in charge of the project. 

FDR would die in office on April 12, 1945 with his Vice President Harry S. Truman becoming president, having no knowledge of The Manhattan Project beforehand which developed the first atomic bomb. 

Truman, an equally precipitous man of action, three months after becoming president, authorized the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945, ending the war in the Far East, as the War in Europe had already come to a close in June 1945.

Americans have a cliché, “He who hesitates is lost.” The German Military Command had nearly 400,000 French and British troops trapped at Dunkirk (west coast of France), but hesitated to attack with 198,000 British troops and 140,000 French troops escaping to Great Britain while 40,000 troops were captured. 

As Cornwell’s “German Scientists” points out, Hitler was fascinated with quick strikes and immediate results such as the V-2 rockets, and showed a lack of sophisticated strategic thinking.  Some have charged this was due to his ambivalence towards what he thought was “Jewish science,” or quanta physics.

In the end, it would seem, we never escape our inherent nature.

Thank you for stimulating my interest in a bit of recall,

Jim

COULD IT HAPPEN HERE?

 Note: 

A reader who collects The Peripatetic Philosopher Missives suggests resubmitting this, "As you did Why Is Hate Such A Powerful Motivator?"  He mentions this in the context of the current contentious political climate of the presidential election in the midst of a pandemic.  "Some report," he offers, "think it could end in a bloodbath."  Although a bit melodramatic, this may provide some perspective as to how things can get out of hand.

JRF 

                                          

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

© November 18, 2019

When I was a boy in fourth grade at St. Patrick’s Catholic School in Clinton, Iowa, Sister Mary Helen allowed me to give the class a ten minute capsule of the latest news on the Western Front of World War Two.  

My information was limited to The Clinton Herald, but I surmised when I was much older that it was a way of getting the class into the afternoon session, and to control me, a constant talker and class interrupter.  Should I continue this behavior, I was cautioned by Sister, I would lose my ten minute window of reporting.  Her strategy worked. 

By high school, I was reading books checked out at the library that might be related to World War Two.  Ones such book was Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here!” (1935). 

The book was a novel and a shocker on dictatorship and totalitarian rule in which people had no rights.  That thought sent tremors through me, the idea staying with me the rest of my life.  Such books did not interest my athletic friends, and there was no longer Sister Mary Helen to project my anxiety or question the relevance.  Books of some depth became furniture of my mind.

[I’ve always had a rather eclectic mind as well as an introverted personality, meaning I would read things stimulating to me while finding no one within my circle with whom to discuss them.  I’ve often thought Goethe was such a person with whom I could relate, but I don’t speak German and he died 100 years before I was born.]   

HITLER’S THIRTY DAYS TO POWER

Recently, I read the distinguished Yale professor Henry Ashby Turner, Jr.’s (1932 – 2008) book, “Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power: January 1933” (2003).  It reminded me of this earlier book mentioned above, as well as a recent e-mail I received from a reader, who writes:

This is a question with some malice aforethought: Have you ever read the US Constitution?  If yes, what responsibilities do you take from that understanding?

This is obviously a serious question, and although I once read the US Constitution, and have a copy nearby, I am not as familiar with it as I should be.  As this reader implies, there is no excuse.  Liberty is a very fragile right and wrought with danger.

Author Turner writes in “Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power":

On February 1 (1933) the parliament was dissolved.  On February 4, President von Hindenburg allowed the new chancellor (Hitler) to use presidential emergency powers to decree a law restricting freedom of press and assembly.

In March, a mysterious fire gutted the Reichstag building that enabled Hitler to take a giant step in the direction of absolute power.  Indeed, well before the Nazi leader assumed the powers of the presidency upon the death of Hindenburg in August 1934, Hitler was already the dictator of Germany. 

The weakness and fragmentation of German liberalism, the strength of militarism, and the susceptibility of part of the public to pseudo-scientific theories of race all played in what was to come.

DETERMINACY

Versions of Hitler’s rise to power have an unfortunate tendency to become deterministic.  This gives the impression that what happened was the inexorable product of great impersonal forces, that it was bound to happen, that there was no alternative.

Yet although such factors may have been necessary to the outcome, they were not sufficient.  They can help understand how the Third Reich became a possibility, but they cannot explain how it became a reality . . .

CONTINGENCY

An examination of events in January 1933 reveals the strong elements of contingency in the chain of events that brought Hitler to power.  The Third Reich is unquestionably a product of German history . . . the future dictator was rescued from failure by a series of unpredictable developments over which he had no control . . . actions of other people, for although impersonal forces may make events possible, people make events happen . . .

Germany during January 1933, was one of those frequent junctures in human affairs when the fates of many rested with a few . . . Compared with the role of these few men, Hitler’s role was reactive . . .

At a moment when the disposition of power in a great nation rested with this small group of individuals. Some of the most elementary of human sentiments – personal affinities and aversions, injured feelings, soured friendships, and desire for revenge – had profound political effect . . .

Luck – the most conspicuous of contingencies – was clearly on Hitler’s side . . . Hitler’s greatest stroke of luck lay in the personality quirks and other limitations of Kurt von Schleicher, the man who occupied the office he sought as January 1933 opened . . . He (Schleicher) compounded that liability by irreparably alienating an old friend . . .  the shallow devious Franz von Papen master of intrigue . . . He disastrously underrated Papen’s skill at that craft . . .

Schleicher reached, so to speak, his level of incompetence . . . Had Schleicher been more politically adept, Hitler need never have had a chance at the chancellorship . . . Had events taken a different turn in January 1933, Adolf Hitler would merit, at most, passing mention in histories of the 20^th century instead of bulking large as one of its principal movers and shakers . . .   

The Weimar Republic would have been authoritarian, but not totalitarian; nationalistic, not racist; distasteful, not demonic . . . It might have suspended or curtailed political and civil rights, but it would not have abolished those rights altogether . . . It would not have made anti-Semitism a matter of government policy or embarked on a systematic program of genocide . . .

The Second World War with the horrors it brought – including the atomic bomb, which was produced out of fear that Hitler might be the first to obtain it – was no more inevitable than his rise to power . . . Without Hitler’s Third Reich and the war he unleashed on the world, many aspects of human affairs since January 1933 would have been quite different . . .

Humanity would be more innocence and optimistic than has been possible since “Hiroshima” . . . Only under the Cold War was the United States later drawn into the wars in Korea and Vietnam that involved no vital American interests . . .

Hitler’s regime would reveal that centuries of civilization had not diminished the capacity of Homo sapiens for profound evil and that modern technology and bureaucratic structures make possible unspeakable crimes of hitherto unimagined magnitude . . .

RESPONSIBILITY

If however determinism is rejected, the question of responsibility must be addressed . . . One level of responsibility – that of omission rather than commission – must be assigned to the defenders of the Weimar Republic. 

Without intending to do so, they helped to pave the way for Hitler’s triumph.  It was the unwillingness of republican politicians to place preservation of parliamentary rule above partisan interests that led the Reichstag to abdicate control over the government in 1930 . . .

A much larger measure of responsibility must be assigned to the millions of Germans who freely gave their votes to Hitler and his party . . .

In Mein Kampf and other Nazi utterances, the Nazis abundantly demonstrated their scorn for law and their readiness to employ force to crush those who dared to oppose them . . . Yet there is no evidence that Hindenburg, Schleicher or Papen ever read Hitler’s book Mein Kampf . . .

Nor did they request analyses of Nazism by competent experts in the high civil service … The resulting inquiries revealed a violent movement bent not only on imposing dictatorial rule on Germany but also on abolishing the rule of law and subjecting Jewish citizens to persecution …

Inept Schleicher bears the heavy historical burden of having lifted from well-deserved obscurity to political prominence the man who became his nemesis and Hitler’s savior, Franz von Papen . . .  In the case of Papen, guilt – responsible for a grave offense – applies. 

He was the key figure in steering a course of events toward the disastrous outcome, the person who more than anyone else caused what happened.  None of what occurred in January 1933 would have been possible in the absence of his quest for revenge against Schleicher and his hunger for a return to power . . .

Had Hindenburg held to his initial, intuitive mistrust of Hitler, Germany and much of the rest of the world would have been spared much misery and destruction.  

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE …

What is it they say, “The past is prologue to the future”? 

Germany is in the eye of the storm here.  Yet, for the first three decades of the 20^th century, Germany held the premier position for science in the world.  German scientists were the most accomplished and honored in their fields, winning the lion’s share of Nobel Prizes. 

But in 1933 came Hitler.  German scientists who were Jewish were dismissed from their positions in laboratories and universities with the Nazi ideology coming to dominate Germany’s science communities.  Some German scientists enthusiastically collaborated with the Nazis, most acquiesced arguing that science was outside politics and morality.  By the end of the Second World War few scientists much less educators and philosophers remained untainted by a regime bent on genocide and conquest. 

Scientists are no different from other human beings caught in complex moral dilemmas.  While scientists claim their research and analyses are value free, and that science is culturally and morally neutral, they have created weapons and technology that can destroy human civilization. 

A clear example of this is German scientist Wernher von Braun (1912 – 1977) of V-1 and V-2 rocket fame.  He was involved in the building of missiles that bombarded London during World War Two, only for this scientist, who used slave labor during the war, to survive Germany's defeat and have a second career in the United States. He became one of the darlings of the Space and Manhattan Project; the latter scientists being the creators of the first atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan in August 1945.  

After the war, when the United States was courting him, von Braun remarked that he didn’t care if he worked for Uncle Joe or Uncle Sam “all I really wanted was an uncle who was rich.” 

Could this irresponsible and calloused profile of scientific leadership also exist in other realms of society such as politics and government, business and industry, academics and the intellectual communities? 

If so, concomitant disaster is just around the corner.  How we think is how we behave.  Alas, it could happen here or in any other constitutionally conceived democratic nation.  It is something to think about.   

                                *     *     *  

WHY IS HATE SUCH A POWERFUL MOTIVATOR?

WHY IS HATE SUCH A POWERFUL MOTIVATOR?

Note:

Given the current hostile climate and polarity across the United States in this election year, a reader has asked me to write something on "hate," which I did in fact do a year ago.  This missive was centered on the rage of the moment, emotional intelligence, against the vulnerability of hate in the most gifted among us.  It is resubmitted for your pondering.

JRF

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

© November 26, 2019

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.

Horace Walpole (1717 – 1797), English writer

BACKGROUND: THE GENESIS OF IQ & COMMONALITY OF ITS CRIPPLING GENIUS

 

We humans jump on ideas that simplify our pressing dilemmas and meet the demands of our common sense. We have been doing this with some vigor over the past roughly 150 years. We apparently need to pigeonhole people into explanatory categories with mathematics and science to compensate for our confusion and exasperation when it comes to people as persons as so many vicissitudes seem to be manifested.

This appears especially true when it comes to intelligence. Sir Francis Galton, the British mathematician, and founder of statistics, was fascinated with eugenics, behavioral genetics and intelligence. His book “Hereditary Genius” (1865) focused on biological breeding and nature rather than on nurture and the cultural environment. He was especially captivated by the distribution graph popularly known as the “bell curve.”

Biometrics, or reducing people to numbers on a statistical curve has been with us ever since. American biometrician Charles Davenport (1866 – 1944) was persuaded in his research that certain ethnic groups suffered stereotypical moral failings leading to criminality and prostitution.

Americans Henry Goddard (1866 – 1957) and Lewis Terman (1877 – 1956) introduced the French “Binet” intelligent test into the United States where it became known as the “Stanford Binet” IQ test. IQ stands for Intelligent Quotient and is calculated thusly:

 Mental Age divided by Chronological Age times 100 equals IQ.

[This was the standard test when I was in grammar school where it was first given to students. The hubris of the creators of this arbitrary and culturally dependent test was the assertion that IQ is unlikely to change in an individual's lifetime; that nature dominates decisively over nurture. I can remember classmates who used their poor test scores on IQ tests as an excuse for making little progress in school and subsequently in life.]

Reducing people as persons to numbers, statistical or mathematical variables was something of a defense mechanism to deal with exploding populations and the concomitant problems associated with crowd psychology from personal, family to societal dysfunction.

It is not surprising that social engineering would shift to emotional intelligence.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE – WHY IT CAN MATTER MORE THAN IQ

Science journalist Daniel Goleman (born 1946) erased the scarlet letter of shame across the forehead of many when he declared, “The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.”

No longer was IQ an obstacle to a mind who wished to have a career say in medicine who had been told his (or her) IQ was insufficient for such a task.

Goleman launched a series of books including the 1995 title of this segment postulating five components as primary to Emotional Intelligence:

Self-awareness; Self-Regulation; Motivation; Empathy; and Social Skills.

SELF-AWARENESS

This is the ability to recognize and understand ones moods, motivations, and abilities. Also the effects they may have on us and others. Goleman says to achieve a state of complete self-awareness, an individual must be able to monitor his or her emotional state and identify the emotions. Traits that prove an individual as emotionally mature include: confidence, the ability to laugh at one’s self and their mistakes, and the awareness of how you are perceived by others.

Example: By reading the reaction of someone else, you have an idea how you are perceived by them.

SELF-REGULATION

This is the ability to control ones impulses: that is, the ability to think before you speak/react, and the ability to express yourself appropriately. Goleman defines emotional maturity in this component as being able to take responsibility for your actions, being able to adapt to change, and the ability to respond appropriately to other people’s irrational emotions or behavior.

Example: If someone is screaming at you, they are not necessarily angry at or with you. They may be angry with themselves, or at a particular situation and feel they need to take it out on someone. You do not need to take it personally or to react angrily in response.  Silence is golden at such moments.  Miraculously, calm is the husband of silence.

MOTIVATION

Interest is the key to motivation; learning and self-improvement follow.  It is not the other way around. Once you hit an emotional bump in the road of life, interests supply the strength to keep carrying on.  Goleman would define an emotional mature individual as one who accepts temporary setbacks as part of the routine, while having the perseverance to face adversity.

Example: One who chooses internal motivation driven goals (i.e., interests) instead of exterior motivation driven goals (i.e., financial gain) has an easier time dealing with those inevitable "bumps in the road."  Internal motivation driven goals may involve such things as earning a college degree, becoming a healthier person, or following self-directed interests, whereas exterior motivation driven goals are other-directed interests which may be centered on wealth or status, such as having the newest most prestigious car.

EMPATHY

This is the ability to understand other people’s emotions and reactions. Empathy can only be achieved if self-awareness is achieved. Goleman believes that one must first be able to understand oneself before one can understand others. Empathy then involves accepting oneself as one is which then follows that it is easier to accept others as they are found.  In a word, empathy develops tolerance of people and situations in relationships.  The paradoxical benefit of empathy is that one never own other people's problems, problems that in any case one cannot solve because they are not one's problems.

Example: Being able to understand and cope with someone else’s hardships or sadness. When you fully understand yourself and why you feel the things you feel, you can understand other people even if they are different than you are.  Empathy is not sympathy.

SOCIAL SKILLS

This is the ability to pick up on jokes and sarcasm as what they often are, which is defense mechanisms.  Friendship and relationships demonstrate an ability to get inside defensive postures to develop common ground with others. Goleman states that emotional maturity defines someone who has good communication and time management skills, along with the ability to resolve difficult situations by managing conflict with empathetic understanding.

Example: When two people are in conflict, a third party intervention can be effective.  This person remains neutral while listening to the contentious differences of the two parties.  Simply by talking in the present of the interventionist, there is a possibility that common ground can be found to resolve the issue separating the two.  Anger is often the result of hurt or misunderstanding.  Americans are typically nonconfrontational protesting infrequently, but violently having allowed the hurt or injustice to fester.  

Journalist Goleman hit on a compelling theme stimulating the collective conscience of society just as Stephen Covey (1932 – 2012) did with “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (1989), and as Ken Blanchard (born 1939) did with “The One Minute Manager” (1982).

The flaw to readymade solutions to complex behavioral and organizational problems is that they don’t have staying power as they are generic and not problem specific.

The idea of emotional intelligence first appeared in a paper given by Columbia’s professors of psychology Joel Robert Davitz and psychiatrist Michael Beldoch in 1964. Daniel Goleman took it to another level with “Emotional Intelligence” (1995).

Mental health and leadership has been the focus of many studies assuming emotional intelligence (EI) as real intelligence. These studies show no causal relationships to those attributable to general intelligence and personality traits, seeing emotional intelligence rather as a construct.

That said, people with high EQ’s (Emotional Quotient's) seem to have better mental health, job performance and leadership skills. In other words, they can process emotional information effectively and negotiate the social environment but the prospects for them belonging to the genius class appear slim as I next swing towards that muddy terrain where genius, and yes, often hates reside against suspect emotional intelligence.

PALPABLE HATE IN A CLIMATE OF GENIUS

As a consultant, I once had a client who was a genius as an engineer, and as a managerial vice president of a high tech facility developing brilliant strategies and imaginative tactics. His problem was a director who reported to him whom he saw as a nincompoop and incompetent.

He railed about this man all the time while I pointed out to no avail that the man was the CEO’s best friend and hunting and fishing partner. My client had a heart attack. When he returned, he was relieved of his former position while his nemesis’s continued to flourish unscathed for his ineptitude.

This blog and my e-mail site often receive expressions of contempt if not hate for this or that individual. Ironically, it is often a national figure or celebrity who they do not know, and with whom they have no contact.

The source of their displeasure is the gossip provided by their favorite network news outlet. News sources are advertising dependent, with these networks religiously giving the slant to the stories reported that their sponsors' expect and pay for, while the poor viewers, ignorant of the game being played on them, treat this information as the unvarnished truth.

Actress Marilyn Monroe once said, “Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you." Marilyn Monroe, who had very little formal education, shared this dilemma with one of the great geniuses of our era, Albert Einstein.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

In 1905, the Einstein published his epoch-making special relativity theory. He also wrote a paper revealing how Max Planck’s quanta theory was confirmed by experiments conducted by physicist Philip Lenard.

This is noteworthy as Einstein was always quick to give credit to others. Lenard was a scientist who became a Noble Laureate in Physics, but was destined to identify with the Nazis, and attempt to discredit Einstein’s proven theory of relativity out of jealousy and because he was a Jew.

In the competitive climate of German physics, Einstein demonstrated maturity and emotional judgment throughout his life:

(1) With anti-Semitism rampant in Germany during the 1930s, he renounced his German citizenship and became stateless;

(2) Refused to sign a manifesto which claimed, “Were it not for German militarism, German civilization would long ago have been destroyed.” Such notables as Max Planck signed the document;

(3) He visited the battlefields of France after WWI, and commented: “We ought to bring all the students of Germany to this place, all the students of the world so that they can see how ugly war is.”

(4) He was among a handful of academics who had refused to sign the Fulda Manifesto supporting the view that German science should be at the service of the Fatherland and the military; instead he became signatory to a counter-manifesto seeking to promote international peace in the form of organic unity in Europe;

(5) Fame came his way when an eclipse expedition in 1919 mounted in Brazil and the west coast of Africa proved his theory of relativity. Despite the acclaim, he disowned the notion that his theory was “revolutionary” choosing instead to see it as evolutionary stressing the foundation work of Newton and James Clark Maxwell;

(6) Solvay Congresses of 1921 and 1922 banned Germans from attending; when he was invited as an honorary non-German, he refused to attend as a gesture of solidarity with his German scientific colleagues;

(7) Always modest about his own skill set, pointing out that he was weak as a mathematician and humble about all the accolades sent his way.

Albert Einstein considered himself an outsider to his culture and time, despite being awarded the Nobel Prize and essentially replacing Newtonian physics that had dominated the discipline for 300 years.

As a matter of conscience, he renounced his Jewish faith and his German citizenship and for a time was stateless until he became a Swiss citizen.

Einstein demonstrated self-awareness, self-sensitivity, self-identity, and consummate empathy for others, as well as self-dignity for himself and other members of human society.

With Einstein, Intellectual Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence were in balance, a state not always demonstrated by his equally gifted colleagues, such as Nobel Laureates Philip Lenard (1862 – 1947) and Johannes Stark (1874 – 1957).

Individual genius and early brilliance in science are no guarantees of rational maturity and dispassionate objectivity especially when ideological notions take hold.

In the case of these two men, anti-Semitism colored their approach to life with a sick focus on a once cherished friend, Albert Einstein.

Personality and emotions are inseparable from the way we see ourselves whatever our profession.

For a scientist, no matter how ideal the work environment, how well-funded the research, or how independent and unobtrusive the oversight, there are no guarantees this will shape a mature, generous, socially engaged and empathetic balanced personality. 

Toxic hate flourishes anywhere, even in what may otherwise appear to be the most positive of circumstances.

PHILIP LENARD

Philip Lenard was a man of vitriolic and fanatical temperament with consummate zeal for research. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 at the age of 43. Despite his brilliance and success, he was a great hater of his peer group of scientists that included Wilhelm Konrad Rontgen (1845 – 1923) discoverer of X-rays, whom he claimed stole his research.

He made the same accusation of English physicist J. J. Thompson (1856 – 1940) for winning the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect.

Lenard had general contempt for English science in general claiming Great Britain was an island race of self-seeking duplicitous tradesman. He was however respectful of Einstein until he was universally acclaimed for his theory of relativity.

After WWI, losing a son during the war to malnutrition, and then a small fortune after the war to inflation, Lenard blamed Jewish politicians. From that time forward, anti-Semitism became his featured view of his science and that of other scientists.

Historian Alan D. Beyerchen claims Lenard’s upbringing and romantic need to be led by a great figure was coupled with a sickening need to belong to something greater than himself which became a contributing factors to his conversion to and zeal for Nazism.

JOHANNES STARK

Johannes Stark was only in his early thirties when he discovered the Doppler Effect in ‘canal rays’ that became known as the ‘Stark Effect.’ He was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize for Physics. 

Likewise, in the early days he was impressed with Einstein. But when he failed to receive a valued academic appointment, his enmity was fixed on the Jewish cartel led by Einstein’s circle of Jewish friends in the scientific community.

Thwarted at every stage to control the German physics community, he became increasingly vitriolic to everything Jewish.  Once a Nazis, he became virulently hostile to Einstein when he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, awarded in 1922.

Stark released his venom against Einstein in his book “The Contemporary Crisis in German Physics” (1923), attacking Einstein’s methods of self-publicity; for the wild claims of his theories; while drawing parallels between social and political revolutions in Germany to justify his anti-Semitism.

German Nobel Laureate Max von Laue (1879 – 1960), winner of the prize for the diffraction of X-rays by crystals, wrote a long review of Stark’s book concluding:

“All in all, we would have wished that this book had remained unwritten, in the interest of science in general, of German science in particular, and not least of all in the interest of the author himself.”

Six months after the fiasco of Hitler’s abortive "1924 beer hall putsch,” Lenard and Stark published an article titled “The Hitler Spirit and Science,” comparing Hitler to the giants of the past in science, linking him with Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Faraday, and claiming Hitler as the genius of the Aryan race.

CONCLUSION

We only have to turn on our television or surf the Internet to see how pervasive hate is in the national dialogue at the moment, and in the international culture as well.  You would think men of genius would also possess the humanity of emotional temperance as well, but that is not always the case.  Could it be because they fail to understand that we feel before we think?

Envy is promoted by wanting what someone else has that is desired for oneself; jealousy is the fear of losing what one already possesses. Both sides of this coin promote hatred.

In the early 20th century, there were scientists who were intellectually conservative who opposed relativity and quantum physics, not on the grounds of faulty science, but because it threatened and undermined their traditional intuitive mechanistic and deterministic scientific traditions.

There were also those who envied and despised Einstein and his group because they saw the new science as a disruptive Jewish conspiracy designed to derail the world of conventional physics that had held sway for 300 years.

They also personally despised Einstein for his pacifist stand during WWI, his support of the democratic spirit of the Weimar Republic, and for his independent mind and judgment.

In the German physics community before WWII, many former Nobel Laureates shared the same anti-Semitic sentiments as Lenard and Stark, and were primed for the eminent domain of Nazi science without Jewish scientists.

In fact by the late 1930s, a quarter of the most esteemed and gifted physicists in Germany, who happened to be Jewish, were working in Great Britain, the United States and/or the Soviet Union. Some of these scientists were working on the Manhattan Project that would produce the first atomic bomb.

If this seems absurd, remember how petty most of us can be at times without possessing any of the demands of genius. Absent Emotional Intelligence, juvenility is not only rampant but equally democratic with the moronic and genius occupying common ground in the most brilliant among us.

One wonders if those with imagination and clout but little emotional maturity are driving civilization to the brink of disaster through their hubris, false pride, and contempt for others not of their ethnicity or for not being nearly as gifted.

They appear to lack the perception to see the absurdity of their ways, while failing to appreciate the wisdom of Horace Walpole’s words:

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.

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