READER REFLECTS - - ANGER, OR IS IT "FAIRNESS" THAT IS MY MOTIVATOR?

 

READER REFLECTS 

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



READER REFLECTS



Jim,



I really like what you said in this missive, however, that worried me a bit since I was then not sure I liked it because it is good thinking or only because I agree with so much of it and I'm looking for affirmation of my own ideas. On the other hand, as usual I found enough to disagree with, or have alternate views on, to cast that thought aside.



I remember some twenty-five plus years ago having just met you and then having read at least parts of all your books held by the local library (six at the time I think) I mentioned to you in conversation that I sensed a lot of anger in your books. You agreed that there probably was.



For some years I recall writing you long missives about things you wrote that I disagreed with working to convince you to change your mind. You always responded pleasantly, but without change of position. Being a slow learner and once as a new captain having been given the honor of being dubbed a master of the obvious by a general officer, I finally came to the realization that you were not really concerned with my position or agreement, but were trying to stimulate your audience to think about the topic. Neither their particular conclusion nor your agreement with it was your concern. It was stimulation of the mind and particularly thought independent of herd influence that you were after.



A couple of weeks ago Mary and I had a friend over for dinner. She has been a Book Nook volunteer for many years and at one point in the evening's conversation your name came up. She said she remembered you. I would stand there in the Book Nook having long conversations on a wide variety of topics. Her recollection was that she rarely understood what we were talking about, but she liked to listen and missed these conversations.



I do as well. They were about many topics and also were nearly all based on personal opinion but it was opinion that reflected personal thinking with little herd influence, and was expressed pleasantly without the preaching to the choir and rancor that so fills today's exchanges.



So, I don't write as much as I used to and we no longer stand around in the Book Nook or sit in one of the library meeting rooms for long conversations after a meeting. I still disagree a lot with you, but thought it appropriate after all these years to take a few moments to express my gratitude to you for all your kindness, thoughtfulness, interest and mental stimulation over the past nearly three decades.



Mary and I wish Merry Christmas to you and Betty and hope your New Year is a bit less threatening than this one.



Ted

I RESPOND

 

Colonel Ted,

 

Thank you for taking the time to express your candid opinion about my writing.  Nearly three decades?  Wow!  I was surprised I've known you all these years.  They have been good years and I have been better for having known you and Mary and have often learned much in our exchanges with this one no exception.  Your thoughtfulness and integrity define you and your Mary.  That said, I’d like to share with you how I became me especially in terms of a writer.  

 

Dr. Thomas L. Brown of Management General, and contributing editor to The Wall Street Journal and Industry Week, as well as a regular on "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio, gave me my "fifteen minutes" of fame in 1991 when he celebrated what he saw as the breakthrough originality of WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A VIEW FROM THE TRENCHES, naming it one of the ten best business books of 1991, but adding, and I've always wondered why he felt it necessary: "It is clearly written by an author who is angry with the corporate system." 

 

True, the book reflected more than 30 years in the corporation: from day laborer five summers while attending university in a chemical specialty company, then a chemist in the same company, followed by joining another specialty chemical company as a chemical sales engineer, industrial division manager, then promoted over four levels of management to an international executive as a vice president in a role not yet conceived but which I demonstrated a knack for, which was corporate organizational development (OD).  

 

The irony is that while I was practicing this art form intuitively and instinctively, it was becoming part of the college curriculum.  It found me, after taking a two-year sabbatical from work, reading, reflecting, jogging and playing tennis, going back to school for six years to earn a Ph.D. in the “soft sciences” as a social/industrial/organizational psychologist, finding the soft science discipline as taught totally rational, causational, cognitive, in other words, by-the-numbers in terms of scientific management that had little to do with my more humanistic approach.  

 

For ten years, after attaining that degree, I was self-employed as an OD consultant, practicing this art form, not as taught in university, but as it had worked for me throughout my working career.  THE FISHER PARADIGM©™ (2020) was created out of this experience.

 

I share this with you, given your candor and your most appreciative remarks, because one of the drawbacks of this scientific age is that it fails to realize that the thinking that has created these wonderful tools of modernity are all mechanical, electronic and entertaining distractions if not withdrawals from the reality of our human experience and construction.  

We are feeling beings before we are thinking beings, and our feelings often lead us to thinking the converse of what serves us best.

You ask, how so?  Our collective cultural programming unwittingly produces a colossal and ubiquitous weak personal and societal affect.  Another word for "a weak affect" might be a weak conscience.

Without a strong conscience, there is no sense of shame; no sense of guilt; no sense of empathy or sense of the consequences of how our actions impact others.

We see evidence of this weak affect in the riotous behavior of our youth in the streets across metropolitan America; we see it in our schools where the classroom has often become a combat zone dominated by miscreants; we see this in politicians who have never grown up and who behave as if spoiled children; we see this in the home and  in the church where parents and priests have abandoned their critical roles surrendering to the demands of spoiled brats; we see this in a society-at-large moving almost imperceptibly away from private enterprise to public employment as if the United States were now a third-world nation; and we see this where work has gotten a bad name eclipsed by instant gratification.  

THE FISHER PARADIGM©™ is all about this intuitive and instinctive affect, and its application, which is essential to our survival as a productive nation, but also that which makes us human.

 

A final word on anger.  

You perceived anger in my writing, and I’ll admit to it, but I will not apologize for it as it has been essential to the tens of thousands of hours that I have spent doing what I am doing here now, conceptualizing fragments of thought that torment my conscience into patterns of possible use to others such as yourself. 

 

Thank you for this.  I’ve never known a more honest man.  Love to you and Mary.

 

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.

 

Jim