ANGER, OR IS IT "FAIRNESS" THAT IS MY MOTIVATOR?

 

ANGER, OR IS IT “FAIRNESS” THAT IS MY MOTIVATOR?

 

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

© December 3, 2020

Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in circumstances confronting him.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

 

There was a time when I considered “anger” my greatest motivator, as I confess to angry being close to my nature.  This was suggested fifty years ago when I was especially incensed with the way in which one side seemed to have all the political/cultural answers, and of course, and the other side to have none of them.

 

For the past four years I have watched this drama intensify with increasing polarity and blowback on both sides.  It resolved nothing as accusatory fingers never do.

 

Then a reader suggested that I write on hate as hate was consuming our culture at Mach speed.  I gave it some thought but was too involved in another project to spare the thought or the time although I might pursue the idea of hatred in the future.

 

But even hatred is more complex than that.  Haters don’t see themselves as haters but believe those who differ with them are.  They can quote all the talking heads, pundits and sophisticates that sound as if they know what they’re talking about, and are amazed when you don’t appreciate the same sentiments they express. 

 

We have moved so far from being in control of our lives that we are numbed to our own essence much less our own senses.

 

Only this past Thanksgiving Season I had a discussion about unions with a highly successful electronic/electrical service engineer of sophisticated biomedical systems of hospitals and clinics in the North East.  His company does not have a union, and he was wondering what I thought about unions. 

 

Obviously, he believes the catechism of what unions purport to stand for, which is of course for workers in terms of job security, pay, entitlements, bonuses, and familial benefits, such as childcare, etc.

 

Clearly, he was hoping for an endorsement of unions when I feel the same way about unions as I do corporations.  As long as the company is viable, the corporation and unions mimic each other in structure, function, mission, authority, and in the infallibility of their “business as usual” practices. 

 

Translated, they have all the power and control and the workers, be they in a union or with a nonunion company, have no power. 

 

This is absurd as workers have the knowledge power, critical to operations, whereas management has position power which is now atavistic.  The same is equally true of the union which is structurally and functionally a mirror image of the anachronistic corporation.

 

Unions boomed immediately after WWII, and continued to do so as long as the world, decimated with destruction of WWII, was in recovery.  Today, three quarters of a century later the world is back on its feet and successfully competing with American markets. 

 

Guess where unions are today.  They are a miniscule entity of industrial and commercial enterprise in comparison to what they once were.  Why?  Because corporations now have found a way to finesse unions by duplicating what unions once offered while solidifying their control even more comprehensibly over workers!

 

Just as unions reached their zenith in authority and power, corporations are now maxing out but no one is paying attention.  Individualism is not dead; it has just faded away. 

 

Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace four titanic corporations, who are frenetically determined to control the world as well as its mind.  This is the threat of Big Tech. 

 

The four titanic corporations are AMAZON, FACEBOOK, and APPLE & GOOGLE.  Like religion of the late Middle Ages, these monolithic monsters purport to make the world a better place to live, while they systematically lay waste to individualism, privacy, spontaneity and creative endeavor.  Consequently, we are all now more alike than ever before in human history with the products of these corporations our ubiquitous pacifiers. 

 

The mock cultural wars of disinformation with which they periodically orchestrate have further reduced the masses to puppets on a string without a mind.  

 

As a consequence, we are now in a cultural civil war in which both sides are equally pusillanimous be the polarity of race, gender, politics, religion, values, beliefs, interests, appetites or yes, hatreds.

 

People rant passionately from whatever their platform with nothing changing.  Why?  Because they are yelling into an isolated echo chamber isolated from the reality of experience, unaware that everything is only getting worse. 

 

It is not fair, not constructive, and certainly not supportive of freedom, dignity and human understanding to be lock stepping to a figment of the imagination.  This inclination has promoted the chaotic world that is now the American nation, a nation in retreat from self-interest and self-regard.  This gigantic retreat has made us truly "a lonely crowd," and for that reason I find myself quite angry.