The Peripatetic Philosopher observes:

Consequences of 65 Years of Self-Indulgence:

A Spoiled Brat Society

JAMES RAYMOND FISHER, JR.

© November 12, 2016

Without the poorly educated but dedicated Americans that came out of the hinterland from the farms and factories, from the small towns and villages and volunteered to fight the Germans and Japanese in World War Two, America, indeed, the Western World would not have survived. 

I had a cousin who dropped out of high school and joined the US Navy in 1939 at the age of 17, and found himself a machinist on a repair ship tied to the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor Bay when the Empire of Japan naval and air forces attacked the American naval base there on the morning of December 7, 1941.  



My cousin survived with a broken back and was never able to pursue his duties again.  But his younger brother, a senior in high school, dropped out of school and joined the US Navy and became the captain of an LST (Landing Ship, Tank) bringing fighting men to the beaches of North Africa, participating in the D-Day Invasion of Europe, as well as the invasion of Italy and Sicily, and surviving, proud of his service but ever modest of his accomplishments.  


He read everything I wrote from articles in trade journals to published books, regretting that he had never had much of an education.  I collected his letters written when he was fighting in Europe in WWII, and published them in a book for his family shortly before he died.

Another cousin was a US Navy Commander and skipper of a mine sweeper in the North Atlantic looking for German submarines during WWII.  His sister was a WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service).  


They were part of nearly a million service men and women who sacrificed everything so that we could be safe, secure and free.

THE 1950s WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED

World War Two ended in 1945, and with it the nostalgia of the Great Depression that produced this Greatest Generation, who had the belief in honest work, sacrifice and dedication to something bigger than themselves.  


This generation also accepted philosophically disappointment, the unpredictable, failure, discrimination, inability to keep up with the prevailing norm, and cultural and religious biases, wasting little mind to what they could not change preferring to deal with what they could and get on with their lives.  


They believed in being the molders of their own destiny engaging in the Promethean struggle to achieve their own social freedom wresting from nature the means to serve their own goals and not looking for someone else to do that for them.

They believed in what philosopher Isaiah Berlin called “negative freedom,” that is, not looking for the government to protect and ensure their safety, security and freedom but to assume that responsibility themselves.  


We have drifted to what Berlin calls “positive freedom,” or entitlement where the government is our God, our protector, our conscience and our benefactor, and we are the obliging and obeying servants to that God and that government.


Sixty five years after Pearl Harbor nearly as many Americans survive on the dole or entitlements provided by the government as those working for a living in the US economy in 2016.

This all happened after 1945 when social engineers, sociologists and psychologists got into the act interpreting Sigmund Freud’s dictums on anxiety, trauma, and psychosexual hysteria treating these psychosomatic symptoms as communicable diseases as if as contagious as chicken pox. 

Educators got into the act and decided that no child should have a sense of failure; that every child should see him or herself as a winner.  Therefore, in classroom work or recreational activities everyone got achievement awards so no one felt left out.  


Education became a farce and a dumbing down process that commenced with social promotion from one grade to the next however unqualified the student was to do the work at the next level.  From the 1950s on, millions of students graduated from high school who could not diagram a sentence, read at the sixth grade level, do their multiplication tables, or read a map.  


From elementary school to middle school to high school to university psychological pabulum was fed to all students indiscriminately to protect their delicate psyches.

Then in 1958, the USSR or Soviet Union launched Sputnik, and suddenly the United States found itself behind – or thought it was – in science and mathematics with a radical reformation in the teaching of science and mathematics in the American classroom. 

This knee jerk response to outside activities would become an American syndrome in virtually every walk of life, as reaction rather than anticipation would become the game Americans played from the most sublime of activities such as the arts -- music, literature and culture -- to the most ridiculous in national politics in the Office of the President of the United States. 

The United States Congress as well as industry and commerce would follow the refrain, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” resulting in missing the changes, unable to face them, leaving the future up for grabs until the world exploded into crisis after crisis with rhetoric no longer sufficing for reality, as survival was now in play. 

We bemoan the loss of good industrial jobs in the rust built in such states as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere as if this all occurred in a vacuum.  It did not.  It was created by ineptitude and passivity.

In the 1950s, the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters Union, with many other unions following, decided to go for “positive freedom” putting their destiny in the hands of union bosses and obliging employers giving up their negative freedom, which was control of their jobs and the conduct of their work.  For this, workers became renters rather than owners of what they did. 

These workers did this without protest because their union leadership got them more and more money, and more and more entitlements until a typical UAW family in Detroit, Michigan might have a mother and father, brother and sister all working for General Motors, Ford or Chrysler with high school educations or less, while being better off than someone who had spent eight to ten years at university becoming a Doctor of Medicine.  



How do I know this?  In the 1950s, I visited my uncle every summer who was Head of the Department of Commerce and Economics at the University of Detroit, and I played summer baseball with kids of such families who had the best homes in the suburbs as well as the best equipment to play sports.

THE 1960s CAME AND EVERYTHING CHANGED AGAIN,

OR DID IT?

The Western World was devastated by the destruction of WWII, as well as much of the Far East.  The Soviet Union put up the Berlin Wall separating Western from Eastern Germany and the Cold War between Russia and the United States and Western Europe was underway. 

Senator Joseph McCarthy in the late 1950s had become something of a celebrity with the House Un American Activities Committee (HUAC) playing on the massive paranoia of Americans who believed “Reds” (Russian Communists) were everywhere.  



Meanwhile, Soviet Russia constructed an “Iron Curtain” between itself and the West with a promise that the Soviet Union would last one hundred years, which was modest to that of the Nazi’s claim of existing for one thousand years.  Germany’s Nazism last twelve years (1933-1945); the Soviet Union lasted seventy two years (1917-1989). 

World War Two was meant to be a "War of Liberation," but the West interpreted this to mean the world was prime for one ideology and one culture, and that was Western democracy and Western science.  Events have proven that was in error.

The 1960s gravitated to an essentially secular society with Christianity’s Catholicism and Protestantism taking a backseat to science and mathematics.  The mantra reverberated across the country that "everyone must be a college graduate.”  It was only a whisper in the 1960s, but would be repeated for the next fifty years to become the hermeneutics of an indisputable dogma of a civil religion.  



We tend to forget that mathematics is something that man has invented and not the forces of nature to which mathematics are dedicated to explaining.  It has been a challenge of man from the beginning to recognize the difference between self-understanding and deployment and accurate observation of the external world, as well as the world of others than himself. 

If anyone was paying attention, and clearly those in positions of authority and power weren’t, the 1960s saw the rise of Japan as an emerging economic force and serious competitor to the United States.


This groundswell of opposition continued to thrive in the 1970s and 1980s reaching a sustainable momentum throughout Europe and Pacific Rim countries. While this was happening, the United States would see its exports of finished products be reduced from a high of nearly 60 percent a quarter century after WWII to what they are today around 30 percent.



In 1980, NBC television launched an hour long program with the challenge: "Japan Can, Why Can't We?"  The Japanese surge was reduced to one word, "quality," and since Americans love simplicity, everything became a mad dash for quality in a tragic comedic effort to emulate Japan.  Little notice was taken of the fact that Japan was a group think or collective society and the United States was individualistic.  

Valiant as the effort, the trade deficit continued to escalate.  Good paying jobs continued to disappear with a severe erosion in the ranks of union workers in the United States along with the demise of American manufacturing.  



The United States has always prided itself in its innovative capacity to invent something new, and to produce new products swiftly and economically.  What the US didn't anticipate was that Europe, Japan and Pacific Rim countries could take this new technology and produce products equally as good if not better and more cheaply than the United States. 

In my work from the 1960s to the 1980s across Europe, I witnessed the inappropriateness of gas guzzling coffin sized American vehicles unable to negotiate narrow European streets.  The US automotive industry stubbornly continued to produce these machines, while Japan, South Korean and Taiwan took control of the American market at home and abroad nearly driving the "Big Three" automakers into receivership.  This has been repeated in many other US industries. 

As I have written in many of my tomes, the United States has gone from dependable, independent and self-actualizing workers up to and through WWII to workers suspended in terminal adolescence and arrested development, dependent on management and/or counter dependent on the organization that employs them for their total well being.  


They have become renters on the job rather than owners of what they do.

A blatant illustration of this dependence was apparent when US Steel and the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) decided in the 1960s to motivate workers and lift them out of their lethargy by giving veteran workers a 13-week furlough every five years to do as they liked while continuing to receive full wages and entitlements.  



Instead of taking advantage of this opportunity and going back to school to improve their skills, or to take an extended vacation, they did only what they knew.  They got a second job.  When the furlough period was over, many attempted to keep both jobs going as they had adjusted their standard of living to the new income.  Far from returning to work happy and appreciative as workers, they came back angry finding it impossible to be effective in performing the two jobs at once.

This illustrates how quickly counter dependence can develop from independence with responsible maturity giving way to immature adolescence in work as in life.  



In only a single generation after WWII (1945-1970), the American workforce went from independence to this dependent mode.  Moreover, American workers never expected the windfall to end, so they DID NOT SAVE FOR A RAINY DAY!

WAS THE PRESIDENT REAGAN YEARS A REALITY OR A MIRAGE?

Politicians today talk about the “boom years” of President Ronald Reagan, years when the Berlin Wall was about to come down, and the Soviet Union was about to dissolve; years when US Defense spending went through the roof; and years when the cauldron of the Middle East was festering to the point of explosion, leading to the First and Second Iraq War; and years when the US Congress and the American business community were unceremoniously and unwittingly seeding the discord that would lead to the rise of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Twin Tower terrorist attack with the subsequent emergence of ISSI and the present stalemate in Syria. 


This passivity was born and nurtured by those in leadership positions since WWII.

President Barak Obama's presidency reflects his generation and its passivity, cautionary to the nth degree in his approach to the problem solving with an irrevocable belief in the nobility of man to prevail in the end.  



If President Obama ever read “The Prince” by Machiavelli, it is doubtful that any of it resonated as man is equally ignoble as noble when it comes to power.  As Lord Acton has said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” 

Politicians reminded American voters in the 2016 Presidential Election that the United States National Debt had soared from $10 trillion to $20 trillion during Obama's eight year administration, yet presidents as far back as John F. Kennedy in 1961 through Democratic and Republican Administrations have seen entitlements soar without abatement as politicians on the right as well as the left have been more interested in reelection than governance as the appeal has been to the lowest common denominator of the American people. 

Pirating from the words of the Lebanese American poet Kahlil Gibran in an address to the people of Lebanon, President Kennedy borrowed his words that have been repeated ad nauseam without registering their import: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

THE SPOILED BRATS COME OUT OF THE WOODWORK

Otto Preminger, the famous Hollywood film director, once said, “Hollywood actors have the maturity of children and the intelligence of morons.  The best they can do is memorize lines written by someone else.”  


Yet, in the wake of the 2016 Presidential Election, this celebrity culture is a force which has evolved since the 1950s.  We see this in war movies made by such Teflon movie stars as John Wayne who made a career starring in movies as a war hero while avoiding military service in WWII. 

Teflon man became the prototype of American individualism as envisioned by such writers as Garry Wills in his “John Wayne’s America.”  


This America has segued to the politics of celebrity, a culture that is now 65 years old and still soaring.  Many of these Teflon characters have threatened to go to Canada now that President-elect Donald James Trump has won the presidency.  I await their departure, but I am not holding my breath to see that it happens.

The election of Trump indicates the epitome of the “Spoiled Brat Society” that America has become.  There are forty million more Americans in the United States now than when Barak Obama was first elected, yet 20 million less Americans went to the polls on November 8, 2016 than went to the polls four years earlier when President Obama won reelection to a second term.  Moreover, one million less African Americans went to the polls in 2016 than went to the polls in 2012. 

Many Americans of the eligible age to vote have never voted.  I have a son in that category.  While students riot at UCLA; Portland, Oregon; Chicago, Illinois; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York City, and elsewhere, I doubt if 20 percent of the rioters actually have voted.  Spoiled brats want their cake and eat it, too, but they don’t want the responsibility of earning the means to enjoy that cake. 

We have had waves of Black Power, Black dissidents, and now Black Lives Matters, all of which have legitimacy as there are many justifications for anger and outrage against the establishment for the practices of metropolitan governments and the behavior of police and the Criminal Justice System.  But destroying small business establishments and destroying public property is the behavior of out-of-control spoiled brats and not the behavior of mature responsible citizens.

When you have been on this planet for only 18 to 22 or 24 years, what do you know about life?  What do you know about police?  Novelist and former Los Angeles police sergeant Joseph Wambaugh once said, “A community gets the police it deserves.”  

I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on that fact from consultancy of police and community organizations along the Atlantic east coast.  I found it emphatically true: corrupt community leadership spawns unethical police departments; communities of integrity create effective and engaged police departments.   

There is no more important profession than that of the police, who put their lives on the line every day.  When they are successful they receive not a word, but when they foul up they earn headlines in the media and are painted with a broad brush as racists and bigots and not caring.  Walk one day in their shoes and then tell me it is not one of the most difficult jobs in society. 

President-elect Trump was elected fairly and legitimately winning the Electoral College vote while Hillary Clinton won the popular vote beating Trump by 400,000 votes in an election that included 120.5 million Americans.  Trump earned a majority of the Electorate College vote of 290 (he needed 270) to Clinton’s 228.  


That is the system.  If you don’t like the system, vote and elect people to the system who can change it to more closely reflect your views.

The call is for responsible Americans, not spoiled brats.  Responsible individuals expect to pay for their college education, and not have it provided by the government; they expect to compete in the workplace for jobs and careers and not have them guaranteed by the government; and they have the good sense to save 5 to 10 percent of what they earn for the future, and not expect the government to take care of them from cradle to grave.

The behavior we see across the country at the moment in the wake of Donald James Trump's winning the election is the behavior of indentured slaves to their appetites; people who don’t know how to take disappointment, failure or the embarrassment of their contretemps in stride.  

Several universities have postponed semester examinations because the anxieties of students are such that it is not possible for them to cope with the surprise of Donald James Trump’s winning of the presidency.  These young people are supposed to be the wave of the future.  If they don’t develop a backbone, they will represent its demise.

*     *     *

     

  

Peripatetic philosopher shares a chapter from:

Devlin

 

A Novel

JAMES RAYMOND FISHER, Jr.

© November 11, 2016

NOTE: Several readers across the globe have registered an interest in the previous segment shared from this novel.  This is a second one.

JRF

 

TWENTY TWO

 THE GARDENER JOSIAH

Josiah Bruto preferred to be called “Joe,” but Devlin liked the ring of Josiah and refused to use the nickname.  Josiah’s given name was actually “Jifunza,” which means, “teach oneself.”  Nearly as tall as Devlin, he had the magnificent physique of his people, the Swahilis, who once roamed South Africa with fierce authority, but were now limited to a homeland, called, “Swaziland.”  It is surrounded by South Africa and Mozambique, largely mountainous and slightly smaller than the size of New Jersey in the United States.  In 1963, the territory was constituted a protectorate within the northeast borders of South Africa and scheduled to become an independent nation in September of the current year.

*     *     *

There are people you meet who you already know so there is little necessity for polite sparring.  Josiah was such a person.  Yet, it took Devlin’s third attempt at conversation before the gardener decided he was sincere.

On that occasion, he said, “You are interested to know where I come from.  I come from Mbabane, a quiet village nestled in the Diangeni Hills in the northwest corner of my country near the South African border.  It is our capital and has been since the Boer War of 1901 when the British took control of the country.  We are mainly farmers and craftsman with a profusion of wild flowers covering our hills and valleys.”

He often talked about the “wild flowers,” his face lighting up with the memory of delicate plants as if they were friends.  “Wild flowers,” he said, “are the most fragile creature’s alive but yet the most persevering.”  Devlin wondered if that described Josiah. 

“I was educated in a convent school in Swaziland.  You were educated at an American university, no?”  Devlin nodded.  He found it confusing that Devlin could know so much about things and so little about nature.  Devlin smiled at the boldness of his observation, which was however true.  To mollify his employer, the gardener added, “You shall be my teacher of philosophy and I yours of nature.” 

*     *     *

Josiah came to Rosen Haven Place in 1963 at the age of twenty-two serving the needs of the garden but indifferent to whom might be the occupant.  One of the previous occupants was the former mayor of Johannesburg, a woman, who had entertained Prime Minister Winston Churchill there during World War Two.

Watching Josiah work, it was apparent that the nomadic life suited him, living in a modest house off the garden, and to the back of the main house.  Devlin was curious to see this house and get more of a sense of his new friend.  After a month of casual conversations, one day he asked if he could see his place. 

Josiah dropped his trough into the dirt, his expression that between betrayal and deception.  “You wish to see my home?”

“Yes, if that is all right with you?”

“How long have you been in this country?”

“Several months now, why?”

“Several months,” he repeated.  “Plants grow by nature’s clock.  There is a nature to time’s clock as well.”

“Meaning?”

“Nature adds or subtracts what sustains life.  Sometimes winter flowers choose to grow in the spring, and spring flowers sometimes bloom in the fall.”

“Josiah, you’re talking in riddles.  I have no idea what you’re about.  Have I offended you by asking to see your home?”

He studied the American.  “I try to live by Nature’s clock in all its variations.”

“I think I get it.  You see me forcing nature by making such a request, right?”

“Where is your home in the United States?”

“You could say ‘everywhere,’ but I was born in northeastern Iowa, have lived in Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville, which is in Kentucky, as well as in Europe and South America, for a spell on a US Navy ship in the Mediterranean, now in South Africa.”

“Kentucky is in the south?”

“Well, yes, more or less, at least it considers itself in the South, a border state is what they call it, but I see your point.”

“Yes, well, when people ask you where you come from in the white community, always tell them ‘Kentucky.’  It will be better.”

Devlin had read books by Alan Paton before coming to South Africa, also a “Very Strange Society” by Allen Drury, and so had a rough idea of apartheid.  He had also received propaganda from the “South African Embassy’s Consul of Information” getting the government’s side of the story. 

He was by nature curious, and by temperament direct.  It never occurred to him that it was necessary for his gardener to oblige him whatever the request.  He stood on individualism not on a class or cast system.  After all, he was the son of a brakeman.  That was how clueless Josiah was of this American.

*     *     *

So, the first time Devlin was in Josiah’s house the air was hot and humid like in a lion’s den.  Josiah didn’t seem to notice, but was differential to a fault.  It was clear he was most relieved when they prepared to leave.  As time passed, and they became friends, Devlin saw Josiah drop his guard without letting it down completely. 

The American could not bridge the gap to show the gardener how much they had in common, how much they were both outsiders.  The only difference was that Josiah’s cage was not of his making, while Devlin’s cage was of his.

*     *     *

The gardener’s house was a white stucco building of the same construction as the main house.  Inside, Josiah’s home was modest but extremely tidy.  It was a one-room combination kitchen and bedroom with a separate bathroom.  He had a small bed, which seemed too short for his long body.  It had a red homemade quilt over it, and was stacked high with pillows.  By the bed was a reading lamp and comfortable chair with a footstool.  The kitchen table was mahogany with two firm chairs, while the adjoining kitchen sink was polished to a shine with dishes stacked neatly on an open shelf above the kitchen table.  There was no stove but a small electric heating plate, and a similar sized space heater.

Against the side window that looked into the garden was a makeshift bookcase separated by red bricks and standing from the floor nearly to the ceiling.  The books were all paperbacks; most in English, but several in what Devlin did not recognize but would later learn was Swahili.

“Josiah,” he said, “I’m sincere.  I want to get to know you and your work.  I’m from a farm state but know nothing about agriculture and even less about flowers or exotic plants that I see everywhere here.”

“How could you be from a farm state and know nothing about farming?”

“Well, I grew up in a river town, which is on the Mississippi River, and it was also a factory town with most people working in factories or for the railroad.  My da worked on the railroad.”

“Your da?”

“Yes, my father.  I called him my da.” 

His eyes grew dreamy, then he turned away, “No other white man talks to me as you do.”

“Well, I’m not a white man.  I’m an American.  You’re from Swaziland and I’m from Iowa.  I suppose you are a lot like others from your hometown.” He nodded.  “I’m a Midwesterner, grew up in the Midwest, went to school in the Midwest, and have never left my roots.  Have you ever left yours?”  He nodded.

“We Midwesterners tend to be outspoken, earthy, straightforward and don’t suffer fools too well no matter what a big deal they think they are.”

“You are fortunate.  It is hard for me to perceive what you are saying.”  Then he grew pensive.  “But I read books about your country, and people of color don’t seem to have the same good fortune, is that not true?”

“Yes, it is.  There is much turmoil in America at the moment.” 

As we talked about the United States, it was evident that the South African press spared no detail to paint America with a broad brush of racial hypocrisy and social unrest.  However true that might be, it failed to capture the America Devlin knew and loved.  He decided to listen to his new friend without comment.

Josiah didn’t miss this.  He repressed his impossible glee, “You listen to me.”

“Yes?”

“I talk.  You listen.”  Then he grew worried.  “You don’t perceive the danger in this?”

“No.  Should I?”

“You could be deported.  It is a crime to be too familiar with the Bantu, do you not know that?”

“Yes, of course, I’ve been told that, but this is my home, on my property with a seven-foot stucco wall around the place, who is going to talk?”

“The walls have ears.”

“You’re not serious?  I’m sure there are no electronic bugs in the walls.”

“I’m talking about people.”

Devlin then knew exactly what he meant, the other servants, the housekeeper, the house manager, and his driver, whom he used only occasionally.  His own people!  They were the ears in the walls.  Neither the American nor the gardener knew how ominous this would prove to be.

*     *     *

The Peripatetic Philosopher presents:

A Preview of “Devlin,” a Novel

James Raymond Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© November 5, 2016

A number of you have written asking me about all this business of the "Devlin" novel. Your humble servant long in the tooth has had a tendency to write quickly and published equally quickly without so much as a pause to proofread. Those who follow me are well of aware of this predilection.

The most valuable people are not those that praise our work but those who find it wanting. Seamus "Dirk" Devlin, as one reader has so astutely pointed out, is incidentally about South Africa but critically about Devlin, the United States and the times.

It is 1968 and the US is having a nervous breakdown as is Europe, while Devlin finds himself in the land of apartheid when he has had no acquaintance in his life with people of color.

Being a novel reader of serious novelists -- of whom all are dead -- the idea of a character study such as "The Brothers Karamazov" is clearly germane. I'm no Dostoyevsky but I am one of his acolytes.

Some have asked to see a sample of this work, something to give them a sense of the book. What follows is the opening lines of the Twelfth Chapter. The previous chapters give a developing sense of Devlin's character as he takes on this momentous task of facilitating the formation of a new chemical company in South Africa of an American Affiliate, a British subsidiary and a major South African chemical company. He is an Iowa boy of working class stock thrust into the arena of British colonialism on the strength of his American training.

Those familiar with Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" will understand why this was bound to be a clash of cultures.

The sample follows:

TWELVE

THE BROKEN WING


During dinner the children held sway, while their parents stared into space, only to collapse into love making that rivaled that first time when they were total strangers to each other. It was as if Dirk and Sarah were trying to kill something that was pulling them forward until exhaustion covered them in sleep.

The next morning, which was the Devlin’s fourth Saturday in South Africa, the stares returned between them as everyone dressed, ate breakfast and set out on the required journey to the home of the company’s managing director. This was located on the far north east side of Johannesburg, some ten or fifteen miles away.

It was a bright sunny day warm with a gentle breeze. The sky was high and clear in a majestic blue. Sunlight seemed to wink through the trees that lined the route out of Rosebank as they passed into mock countryside. Stately homes ten or more acres apart caused Devlin to think of Chicago’s mainline suburbs as sandboxes. Smiling to himself, he directed the car around a small hill to see a large handmade sign, “Waverley Manor Straight Ahead.” Smaller signs marked the way into the area for another mile. One thing was clear, he mused, Mark Mathews was not subtle.

After another quarter of a mile, they came to a narrow gravel road and drove through an arched gate with the family crest mounted in the center, “Waverley Manor.” A wall of tall trees standing like sentinels arching across to form a broad umbrella of cover framed the road. Shards of light shot through these branches to nearly blind Devlin as he came upon the manor. It took him a few seconds to adjust his eyes, angry for not purchasing sunglasses.

* * *

Devlin had seen postcards of such homes but he wasn't prepared for the reality. The manor had a quiet elegance but seemed too massive to be a home with a naked circular cobblestone drive, the sun causing the stones to materialize like precious gems. Otherwise, the dignity of the place was simplicity itself devoid of trappings.

The house, set off by the circular cobblestones, made him think of a strand of pearls around the elegant neck of a lady as the manor clearly had a woman’s touch further accentuated by the blond thatched roof, something Devlin had not seen before. Was the roof meant to imply “going native" without having to? In any case, he liked it as the place put him in awe.

There was a separate building of the same design housing four sporty looking automobiles all positioned with their hoods facing the drive as if at the starting line of a drag race. For some reason, it sent a chill through him. He was never into cars.

To the east several thatched roofed cottages formed a semi-circle beyond the main house. He assumed them to be servant or guest quarters. He noted there was no fence but that a brook ran along the west side of the estate nearly a quarter mile away. A small bridge spanned the brook, and beyond it was a clearing with an earthen border that framed a field of lush greens that put him in mind of a golf course. On the western horizon were rolling hills and an oak glen and checkerboard pastures, but not another dwelling in sight. The Transvaal took his breath away. Could anything in the world be more beautiful?

“Look, daddy!" exclaimed Rosie, “Horses. Can we go see them?”

Devlin was so mesmerized by the thatched roofs and the splendor of the place that he hadn’t noticed the horses beyond the brook, or the colorful collection of umbrellas with people penciled around them against a cluster of oaks that lit the grass in chiaroscuro pools of uneven soft light. The word ‘tranquility’ came to mind.

“We’ll see, honey, but first we must visit our hosts.”

Rosie pouted and pulled at her new dress, but said nothing

Iowa farms were large with small, modest well-kept homes, barns and silos, but nothing grand, he was thinking, as he approached the house. He was surprised with the pitch of the gabled thatched roof as he approached the house that rose like a cathedral only to be supported by plain white stucco walls with prominent turrets on the third level displaying large bay windows with a circular veranda on the second level, and an open terrace on the first level that also encircled the mansion like a medieval moat. It made him wonder what to expect once inside this manor. Here he was, a working class American, sent to show the colonial Brits who lived in this aristocratic grandeur how to create a mega corporation. It was absurd.

The absurdity was compounded when four Bantu servants dressed in white suits materialized beyond the manor’s massive double doors, and stood at attention to greet the Devlins. A man clearly the head of the staff came forward and said, “Welcome to South Africa! I’ll escort you to the Mathews family.” And so the incongruity of this adventure began.

* * *

Look for “DEVLIN” on Kindle (www.amazon.com) in early 2017.

The Peripatetic Philosopher presents the final part of:

Nowhere Man in Nowhere Land

Part Twenty Four

Amazon.com Kindle Library

$0.99

DESCRIPTION:

Life is without cause and Nature has no conscience. Christian-Judaic tradition has defied this fact turning to the Old Testament to support the idea that God ordained humans to dominate and have dominion over the Earth (Genesis). The rational being that man is a conscious being and superior and apart from other animals as he is made in the image and likeness of God.

The Sacred Words of the Bible were composed thousands of years ago when the known Western world was less than a million souls, but now is fast-tracking to 8 billion while diminishing the Earth’s animal, vegetable and mineral natural resources to the point of exhaustion.

The Christian tradition of progress has proven a lie with the utopian dream a fading fantasy. Faith in Utopia is dead. Like other faiths, it may be resurrected as there is evidence that “Old Time Religions” are resurfacing. They are currently at the heart of global conflict reeking terror, mayhem and ubiquitous violence.

Secular religion as science plays surrogate to apocalyptic theology promising redemption if not salvation through the miracle of synthetics to the Earth’s natural resources including man himself in the form of electronics and robotics. 

Soon, there will be no tangible function for man as robotics will have replaced him in work, and will have developed consciousness with the ability to think and act beyond human comprehension.

Science paradoxically compounds its challenges by accelerating the growth of human population through these synthetics while diminishing man’s function through Frankenstein robotics. This is chasing man into Nowhere Land or the garbage dump of his excesses that only robots can tolerate.

The Peripatetic Philosopher provides an advanced glimpse:

NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND – PART TWENTY FOUR

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

© October 15, 2016

DESCRIPTION

Life is without cause and Nature has no conscience. Christian-Judaic tradition has defied this fact turning to the Good Book (Old Testament) to support the ideas of its monotheistic faith, which are that God ordained humans to have dominance and dominion over the Earth (Genesis). Man is a conscious being and therefore different, superior and apart from other animals, so the thinking goes, as man is made in the image and likeness of his God.

The Sacred Words of man's Christian-Judaic Bible were composed thousands of years ago when the known Western world was less than a million souls, but now is fast-tracking to 8 billion and beyond while in the process diminishing the Earth’s animal, vegetable and mineral resources to the point of exhaustion.

Christian tradition of progress has proven a lie while its Utopian Dream is a fading fantasy. Alas, faith in Utopia is dead. Like other faiths, it may be resurrected as there is evidence that Old Time Religions are resurfacing.

Old time ideologies are currently at the heart of global conflict and ubiquitous violence reeking mayhem and fear without cause other than a misreading of their heritage.

Meanwhile, secular religion in the form of science plays surrogate to that apocalyptic theology promising redemption if not salvation through the miracle of prosthetic synthetics to the Earth’s natural resources including replacing man himself.

This is being done in the form of electronics and robotics. Soon, there will be no palpable function of man on Earth as robotics will have replaced him in work, and have developed consciousness to rival his with the ability to think and act beyond his capacity.

In the process, science will have paradoxically accelerated the growth of the human population while diminishing its function through its Frankenstein creations turning the planet Earth into an irrevocable garbage dump of despair which only robots can tolerate chasing humans ultimately and most certainly into Nowhere Land as Nowhere Man.

The Peripatetic Philosopher gets inside:

Nowhere Man in Nowhere Land

The Knowledge Keepers & Utopia!

PART TWENTY THREE 

JAMES RAYMOND FISHER, JR., Ph.D.

© September 29, 2016

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This is the penultimate segment of NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND, which has been an effort to put our current history and recent past into something of a perspective.  I like to think of this in terms of grammar (Past Imperfect, Present Ridiculous and Future Perfect).  

Those who have been reading these segments on Kindle know that it is a project that has been with me since the beginning of this new century with the first segment appearing on these pages on March 10, 2016.   

A version of this in book form was written in 2002 (CAN THE PLANET EARTH SURVIVE SELF-INDULGENT MAN?), then revised in 2004 (as NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND) and again in 2006 with the same title.  In the process, I became more adapt at adding graphics and pictures to the evolving story.

I have lived and worked in Europe when I was young (in my twenties) and again when older (in my fifties), and had a chance to see European colonialists in situ in South America, North Africa and South Africa (in my thirties). 

Moreover, I have spent some time in Morocco and Egypt in North Africa, and in Lebanon, Baalbek and Turkey in the Middle East.  Each place I absorbed the local culture as best I could.  

Always a note taker, as I suspect most writers are, I have lost myself in books about these places transporting myself as if in a dream world.  We are all more alike than different.

Some forty years ago I wrote a novel (A TRIPLE FOOL) about such a world which was never published.  As a writer, I have the peculiar distinction of not being an expert in anything I write about, but a peripatetic philosopher with an insatiable curiosity about people everywhere on this planet.

As an observer, I'm sure I am also a captive of my culture (Roman Catholicism), the United States (Midwest), and land grant public university education.  I am also a product of “The Great Depression of the 1930s” with a working class upbringing.      

You get the feeling when you see a lot and read a lot and reflect a lot that man has not changed much in 2,000 years.  Evidence of this is his insatiable attraction to Utopia, and like Sisyphus, being clobbered again and again for the attention.  

JRF   

DESCRIPTION

Knowledge keepers have moved into prominence in the 21st century as the explorer did in the 15th (discovery of America), theologian in the 16th (The Reformation), the Pilgrim in the 17th (Plymouth Rock settlement), lawyer/philosopher in the 18th (American/French Revolution), engineer in the 19th (Suez/Panama Canal), the manager in the 20th (mobilization in WWII), all with apocalyptical utopian Christian zeal to improve human nature and save humanity.

In the 20th century, this utopian passion appeared as a quasi-religious/military attempt to change the social order. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were principals in what became a reign of violence and terror. More than 100 million people across Europe lost their lives, many as collateral damage to the clash of these two ideologies, both of which failed to survive the century. 

Now, in the 21st century, we have the disruptive violence and terror orchestrated mainly in a stealthy fashion by ISSI and al-Qaeda through utopian jihads. The aim is to change human nature by first destroying it and then replacing it with a new version of Islam.

Meanwhile, the knowledge keepers in the United States, Western Europe, India and China are well ensconced in insular comfort mesmerized by the possibilities of this “Information Age.” They are essentially oblivious to the fact that this is their century, sitting at their work stations, dreaming of hooking up or texting friends, failing to get off their duffs and taking charge.

Terror and violence were the unanticipated product of the preemptive invasion of Iraq by the United States after 9/11, a war launched with messianic utopian zeal to right a wrong while unwittingly creating another. That tenebrous shadow still haunts the West, as it has plagued utopian thinkers since the beginning of the Christian era. 

Nowhere Land is the inevitable destiny of Nowhere Man whether the drive is predicated on improving or changing human nature.

 NEXT:

PART TWENTY FOUR – A Way Out May Be Here!

The Peripatetic Philosopher shares a life changing trend:

“MEDICINE EMPOWERED!”

PART TWENTY TWO

JAMES RAYMOND FISHER, JR., Ph.D.

© September 16, 2016

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As medicine has been empowered, a peculiar thing has occurred.  The patient has been reduced to data with the focus on the disease not the person.  Moreover, the quest has been to develop new “miracle drugs” to treat essentially lifestyle excesses rather than to address the root causes of the destructive behavior.

On the other hand, medicine has assumed the role of social controller of disease in the macro sense, sometimes with spectacular results in such cases as the cholera epidemic, which was traced to problems in sanitation, while many forms of cancer have been successfully linked to the smoking of cigarettes. 

Public Health, medicine and government have become intimately involved in the personal lives of citizens.  Moreover, The American Cancer Society and the American Medical Association have become equally intrusive successfully suing for smoking bans in most public places.  The false positive to this is that it has not been initiated by the people.

Cholera is no longer a pandemic while cigarette smoking in the United States has been reduced from 42 percent among adults in 1965 to 17 percent in 2014, along with a dramatic decline in cigarette smoking related deaths.  The ends clearly are thought to justify the means. 

What is disturbing about this medical power shift is that in medicine becoming more scientific and remote it has become less personal and humane, but as we shall see, for reason.

NEXT:

Nowhere Man in Nowhere Land – Part Twenty Three – The Knowledge Keepers & Destiny!

The Peripatetic Philosopher discusses:

Nowhere Man in Nowhere Land

PART TWENTY ONE

“Christian Missionaries on the New Frontier!”

JAMES RAYMOND FISHER, JR., Ph.D.

© September 7, 2016

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DESCRIPTION:

Beginning with Columbus in 1492 and continuing for nearly 350 years, Spain conquered and settled most of South America, the Caribbean, and the American Southwest. Portugal soon followed.

After an initial wave of conquistadors—aided by military advantages and infectious diseases that decimated the native populations— the people of the Americas were defeated. This included the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas. Spain followed by Portugal organized a huge imperial system to exploit the land, labor, and mineral wealth of the New World.


The Spanish Empire became the largest European empire since ancient Rome, as Spain used the wealth of the Americas to finance nearly endless warfare in Europe, protecting the Americas with a vast navy and powerful army and bringing Roman Catholicism through the missionaries to the New World.

While the Spanish conquistadors destroyed the institutions and artifacts of societies in the Americas of more than a thousand years, the “Soldiers of Christ” or Jesuits along with other Christian missionaries, took possession of their souls.

This was aided and abetted by the European diseases that these interlopers brought with them that would act as a powerful complement to the conquistadors march to victory in the New World.

The European West, in this case, the Spanish Armada, with its cultural sophistication, military prowess, and armed with the stanchion of Christianity, considered the only true faith, felt ordained by God to vanquish the infidels of the New World, rid them of their profane customs, primitive culture and pagan gods. Indeed, it was Spain’s manifest destiny to colonize the New World for crown, country and God. Enter the Christian missionaries.

NEXT

Nowhere Man in Nowhere Land – Part Twenty Two – Medicine Empowered!