Historical, cultural, philosophical, and operational changes in the past several centuries are the themes and Nowhere Man in Nowhere Land is the focus to show how knowledge has misguided us when used in “Cut & Control” fashion to dispatch or nullify “what was” to what is purported to now be “what is,” separating the mind from the reality of experience with no one seeming to be the wiser. We collectively find comfort in the illusion that “what was” no longer contaminates “what is,” feeling superior in the new, while oblivious to what may have been lost. Cultural DNA plays a prominent role in dictating outcomes with little if any conscious awareness. 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.”
PAPERBACK - $19.95 -- illustrations, tables, photographs, captions, refererences -- 394 pages
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PUBLISHED – NOVEMBER 11, 2021
It has been
30 years since I first met Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr. It was 1991 and I was
working at the time for a non-profit organization in Tampa, Florida. He was a retired Organizational Development
(OD) Psychologist and I was an Assistant Director and Human Resource Manager
for this agency.
This
organization had a long history (70 years) of providing community services in
Tampa/Hillsborough County in food distribution, nutrition, housing,
infant/childcare, developmental, and group home services.
Dr. Fisher
had been retained by the agency of some 100 professional employees who were
struggling with several organizational issues including leadership training,
professional development, internal conflict management, and funding. I was aware that he had authored several
books, trade journal articles and had conducted seminars in the Tampa Bay area
and across the country. On many
occasions, I have had the honor of reviewing drafts of his manuscripts giving
him feedback before publication.
He is a
prolific reader and consummate autodidact of several disciplines including
anthropology, psychology, medicine, public health, chemistry, chemical
engineering, philosophy, sociology, theology, marketing, management, history,
biography, politics, culture, work, and workers. These disciplines are evident in this
narrative as he confronts the ugly realities that keep us from succeeding and
thriving in these difficult times.
His
thought-provoking approach is designed to give the reader new insight into his
or her world as experienced. He is
neither a passive nor a conventional thinker but uses an interdisciplinary
approach to chart a better understanding of where we are and how we got into
what he calls “a muddle” irrespective of the prevailing cant.
He calls
himself a renegade “Irish Roman Catholic,” but be assured he is a man of faith
and has no time for duplicity at any level of society. This was apparent when he was sent to South
Africa by his company to facilitate the formation of a new specialty chemical
conglomerate in 1968. He wasn’t prepared
for the indifference of his company or church to the Afrikaner apartheid policy
of separation of the races with the 20 percent white population controlling the
80 percent black or Bantu population with draconian finality.
In The Rise & Fall of the Human Empire, he
doesn’t apologize for his interpretations of events past and present. Nor does he shy away from the prevailing
biases on the right and left of the political spectrum.
I have
collaborated with several consultants in my professional career but none so
well prepared and desiring to help partner with me to develop solutions to
pesky organizational problems.
The Rise & Fall of the Human Empire is a consistent narrative of earlier
published essays with the provocative theme of NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND,
essays designed to bring attention to our society, indeed, to our civilization
that keep repeating the same pratfalls that may ultimately lead to our
demise.
Speaking
personally, I can tell you the book challenges your sense of history; while
encouraging you to see events over the past millenniums in a new light, events
involving faith leaders such as Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, and Jehovah meant to
make this earth a kinder, gentler and more welcoming place. Too often faith leaders and followers divide
rather than unite us consumed as they are by ethnocentrism. Take the destruction of the indigenous
cultures of the New World when European explorers and missionaries marched into
these native civilizations in the 15th through the 17th
century to introduce them to Christianity and the wisdom of Western
Civilization only to reduce the native populations with new western
diseases. After 500 years of Progress,
we are now experiencing the cost and casualties of war, climate change, racial,
and social division, and societal polarity.
This book
encouraged me to ponder my understanding of our collective history from the
time of Greece and Rome to the Crusades, to the role of religion across time,
to the evolution of science and medicine, law and politics, ideas and
philosophy to its current impact on our postmodern world.
Humans are
a savage race and often brutal to their own species. Since the beginning of mankind, we have been
wanderers starting in Africa. The march
of human progress across the planet has always been one of continuing conquests
over others by a “higher-order,” be it God, Pope, King, Queen, oligarch, or
dictator. Society is broken. Our fragile democracy stands in the face of
this with common memes such as manifest destiny, peace, belief, security,
terrorism, genocide, truth, hypocrisy, crime, freedom, monuments, “cut &
control” progress, and Sunday School, to name a few.
2020-2021 has
been a challenging year in the times of our lives. Our fragile democracy is under threat. Failure of corporate, legislative, global,
national, state, and local leaders to take sensible control has instead brought
our nation and our world to its knees, and it is going to take all of us to
survive after this COVID-19 pandemic to regain our health and safety. Dalai Lama XIV writes:
“Happiness is not something
readymade. It comes from your own
actions.”
Put simply,
Dr. Fisher’s book is therapy for our anxious age.
E. Buddy Davis,
Myakka
City, Florida
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