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.