CONFESSION TO MY READERS

CONFESSION to my readers:



50 years ago CONFIDENT SELLING (1971) was published. The slender volume looked at the business of selling from an entirely different perspective with the seller and buyer as partners, not adversaries. At the time, the rage was WINNING THROUGH INTIMIDATION, which was a national bestseller. CONFIDENT SELLING was written in six weeks in 1969 after returning to the United States from South Africa disillusioned with life and life's purpose. Still young, I resigned from my high-paying job with a wife and four preteen children moved to Florida with no idea what I would do next. Once the first draft of the manuscript was completed, it was sent off to Prentice-Hall, Inc., in Englewood Cliff, New Jersey without preamble and accepted two weeks later. It would be in print for twenty years and go through some thirty to forty printings.



For two years, I read a lot, played tennis and basketball, jogged and swam in the Intercostal Waterway of the Gulf of Mexico. When nearly broke, I went back to school for six years to earn my Master's and Doctorate in social, industrial, organizational psychology. This was a time when graduate students were expected to attend lectures and classes as if still in grammar or high school. I was often absent working as a consultant, as an adjunct professor to several universities, or as a consultant to The Professional Institute of the American Management Association across the country.



Most professors allowed me this latitude as I often wrote for them, and was known for that particular skill. One professor, when I did attend class, before the group of some ten graduate students informed me, "I understand you are quite the writer. Let me inform you if you write the best thesis I have ever read you will receive the lowest grade I have ever given." Then she added, "I suggest you drop this class," which I did. Another professor confessed, “I don’t like you very much. I’d like to fail you in this doctorate seminar but if I did I’d have to fail the other six. So, I reluctantly give you an ‘A’.” This is mentioned because I have constantly gotten into hot water with authority figures, academics being no exception for failure to respect protocol. It is reflected in my published works.



Skipping my second executive career with Honeywell, where I ran into the same experience, I retired once again only now in my fifties, continuing to write, forming my own publishing company writing at my leisure publishing book after book to sometimes alarming response and often not.



December 2012 changed all that. A publisher wrote and followed it up with a call, stating that it wanted to publish nine of my books as second editions and one original unpublished work. At the same time, the Director of Amazon's Kindle called and said Amazon wanted to publish all my works including any novel manuscripts I had written.



Never very computer literate, I had touched the wrong key and lost virtually all my manuscripts that included several novels and short stories. Kindle said, “No problem,” send us copies of your books and we will do the rest, which they did. Alas, I only had one novel which needed work but Kindle said, “Send that manuscript, too.”



From December 2012 until my health broke in 2016, I was at my computer working on these ten books for the publisher, from four to six hours a day, seven days a week. The health problems I am currently experiencing can be traced to that stupidity. Often, Beautiful Betty attempted to prevail but I didn’t listen. Working hard with little interest in what others think has been natural to me since a boy because of my early experience, I suppose, without parents until I was five years old, something I have often written about in my works.



Why be so obsessed? The interesting thing I’ve learned, in my reading, especially concerning philosophers is that they don’t write for an audience but to explore their ideas vis-à-vis their empirical experience.



Psychoanalyst Eric Bernes in “Games People Play,” claims entertainers need hundreds if not thousands of worshipers, most people need reinforcement from a few friends, scientists and philosophers need only one person who understands and appreciates them. Now, with social media on the Internet, people chirp about having scores to hundreds of “friends,” sounding a lot like entertainers. Always being a closet introvert, I have not sought this reaffirmation but have often found it in my reading and that has been sufficient and if not necessary for me.



Curiously, authors are often the poorest critics of their works. That said, the works that I see somewhat in terms of “breakthrough” are CONFIDENT SELLING, WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS, THE WORKER, ALONE, IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE, BE YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND, and this present work, THE RISE & FALL OF THE HUMAN EMPIRE.



Readers have misread the EPILOGUE to this work, which I am not surprised because it looks at some of our most cherished beliefs in a different light. This, I believe, is less true of the PROLOGUE, which I end this missive:



Over the past 500 years, or since the shocking discovery of America, man has been at times on a rollercoaster climbing slowly, then rapidly descending taking tortuous turns at breathtaking speeds to end up pretty much where he started, only to believe because of his “cut & control” progress to be in a different place and space. He sees what he has gained but not what he has lost. Some might say this has been a five hundred year retreat from a God-centered to a man-centered universe, and with all that man has and has accomplished, that man finds himself in a place and space, not all that reassuring. Another metaphor might be that of a locomotive that must first overcome enormous inertia to establish some momentum, but once that is accomplished the momentum builds to acceleration that keeps quickening which becomes impossible to control, but nobody minds as they race past landmarks and sacred markings that they once cherished not realizing they are running from themselves as “Nowhere Man” to a place just over the horizon called “Nowhere Land.”

Jim