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 Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION – You deserve to be self-confident!

PART ONE 
CULTURAL DOMAIN

ONE – It’s Hard to be Confident When Our Culture Makes us Feel Otherwise!

TWO – A Counterintuitive Idea: Please-Self in a Culture of Self-Deprecation

THREE – Cage of Human Inattention as a Closed System FOUR – The Subtext of Life & Its Meaning!

FIVE – When the Incidental becomes the Accidental becomes the Norm, then there is No Place for Self-Confidence!

SIX – Continuity/Discontinuity: A Mind Self-Ignorant of Itself!

PART TWO  
PSYCHOLOGICAL DOMAIN

SEVEN – Confidence & The Most Important Sale !

EIGHT – The Secret Language of Relationships

NINE – Self-Realization & Self-Defeat!

TEN – The Dissembling Nature of Identity & Its Costs

ELEVEN – Understanding Others

TWELVE – Be Your Own Best Friend!

THIRTEEN – The Palliative to Anxiety

FOURTEEN – Is it More Important to be Love or Respected?

 FIFTEEN – Confidence, Coping & Culpability

 SIXTEEN – The Confluence of Essence & Personality 

SEVENTEEN – Who are You, Where are You, Right Now?

EIGHTEEN – If it doesn’t start early, chances are One’s Identity will be like riding a Roller Coaster!

NINETEEN – Just say, “No!” – The hardest word in the English Language to say!

TWENTY – The Soul of the Enabler versus the Chameleon 

TWENTY ONE – Virtues of Enablers

TWENTY TWO – Prisoners of the Mind

TWENTY THREE – What would you do if nobody found out?

TWENTY FOUR – Self-Esteem notwithstanding, it is what you are that counts!

PART THREE 
WORK DOMAIN

TWENTY FIVE – Who is in charge?

TWENTY SIX – Choosing a Profession & Taking Control of Your Life! 

TWENTY SEVEN – Teaching Smart People how to Learn!

TWENTY EIGHT – Love what you do!

TWENTY NINE – How Losers become Winners! They never quit! 

THIRTY – Life is what we make it, not what others make of us! 

THIRTY ONE – Are you trying too hard?

THIRTY TWO – The importance of everyone! Plumber, Electrician, Dr. Steinmetz

THIRTY THREE – Genius realized! Getting first published at age 96!

THIRTY FOUR – When Men Won’t Work & the Women Who Carry Them!

THIRTY FIVE – Men like to Soar; Women like to Stay Rooted!

THIRTY SIX – Taking charge! The best Expert is one’s own Experience!

FINAL WORD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

YOU DESERVE TO BE CONFIDENT!
BUT WHAT IS CONFIDENCE?

The brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that were stupid and irrational; but he whose noble soul subdues its fears, and bravely dares the dangers nature shrinks from.

Joanna Baillie (1762 – 1851), Scottish poet

We all have our own idea of what confidence is. Confidence is often defined in terms of believing in something or trusting someone else. For example, "We have every confidence in our staff." That is not how it is defined in these essays. Confidence is defined in terms of subtext or subconscious; in other words, the interplay between the conscious and the subconscious mind in acts of behavior.

Confidence in Subtext is evident when people know when to “go for broke” and when not to; when to develop a relationship and when not to; when to take a promotion and when not to; when to join a company or community or organization and when it would be wise to take a pass; when to invest and when not to; when to buy a home, an automobile or some other major purchase and when not to; when to take the advice of others and when not to; when to go it alone and when not to; when to leave a profession, a job, a community, a relationship, a church, school or company and when not to; when to counter-intuitively push the hot buttons of someone else and when not to; and when to be emphatic, say in a sales call, and when not to.

Confidence is belief and trust in oneself. It is being comfortable in one’s own skin and therefore equal to the tasks at hand, but confidence has nothing to do with feeling certain.

Nor does the confident person display superiority or preeminence in any way. On the contrary, the confident person recognizes limitations, but is resolute in developing within those limits. He knows that he may sometimes falter, prove less than equal to the task, but will not get down on himself. Instead, he will learn from experience and trust his Confidence in Subtext.

This confidence is not learned in a book, taking from a course, attending a seminar, or following a set of rules. It is using the gifts that everyone has but in which  we have not been schooled in how to use them.

Norman Vincent Peale published “The Power of Positive Thinking” (1952) after WWII, which was a collection of inspirational essays. It captured the mind of the time looking for a simple formula to regroup and go forward after the terrible trauma and sacrifice of that Great War.

Dr. Peale advised his readers in this self-help book that confidence can be attained by positive thinking through practice, training, and knowledge by talking to people. It was a rote agenda that fit the natural American inclination to optimistic thinking.

This rationale has survived despite a retinue of seemingly constant disappointments. It is all right to see the glass half full, but it is equally sensible to wonder how to fill the other half of the glass. The confident person doesn’t approach the issue of confidence mechanistically, programmatically, or ritualistically. These tools are passé.

He does it by thinking with his whole body not just his mind. His confidence is derived from engaging his subtext. And what is subtext? Subtext is allowing the subconscious mind to connect and integrate with the conscious mind. In other words, the intuitive mind connects and is integrated with the cognitive or rational mind as thinking is now with the whole body; with both sides of the bicameral mind. Often what surfaces is counter-intuitive to what one would expect to think or consider doing in a given set of circumstances

Confidence in Subtext cannot be taught. It can only be experienced. Confidence in Subtext is accumulative in learned experience.

In chemistry, the valence of the atom determines the vigor with which atoms combine with other atoms of the opposite charge. The higher the valence the greater the activity.

Confidence in Subtext mirrors this physical chemistry phenomenon. To state it another way, the confident person embraces rather than retreats from his anxieties. I learned this first hand as a chemical sales engineer making cold

calls to prospects in the field. At first, I didn’t want to make the calls. My hands would sweat, my temples would ache, and I was afraid I would stutter, embarrassing myself and looking stupid. But I had no choice. I had a young family to feed and I was a long way from my home roots. So you could say I had motivation. You could also say I was terribly self-conscious which is antithetical to Confidence in Subtext as this book intends to show.

Once I broke the ice, once I made that first call, and then the next, and the next after that, I learned an important lesson about confidence. My contacts were found to be as nervous as I was; apprehensive and suspicious that I was there to take advantage of them. I didn’t think this; I felt this. Their nonverbal behavior was speaking to me, loud and clear, which I ignored at first. But finally, after much anxiety, I started to listen; and in listening I played back to them what I felt they were feeling; what they were saying without saying anything. Or if they said something provocative, “Your products are too expensive,” I would play back these exact words so they could hear what they had said.

Once we worked through this awkward stage by talking and listening, developing common ground, and getting to know each other. In the process, we found we were not buyer and seller; we were not adversaries, but partners attempting to solve a problem.

Confidence is the bond of trust within oneself and between the two parties without mentioning the word or thinking about the idea of trust. The relationship has moved beyond words where the buyer and seller are not only on the same page, but anxious get off on the same dime!

It is natural, given our programming, to shield our minds of ideas that appear counterintuitive. The shield of resistance is for self-protection and is normal. Time and good intentions, rationalists insist, reduces the icy distance but not before encountering some combative resistance.

But rationalists would be wrong because this is thinking in terms of “chronological time,” or one-step-at-a-time, when Confidence in Subtext is a factor of “psychological time,” or thinking and acting, right now!

Once we think with our whole body; once we break through the wall of our own distrust; once we establish self-trust, Confidence in Subtext is allowed to provide insight into the situation. The barriers of distrust are dissolved without making that appeal.

Confidence in Subtext is what happens when two people fall in love at first sight! A data bank of complex and detailed information floods the mind, information with which neither party is aware, processes them in an instant.

The mind, body and spirit are focused on giving, not getting. This is learned behavior through experience. It is where the unknown and unpredictable are encountered; where criticism and disappointment are endured; where surprise and failure are components of success. Experience can build to confidence if we are willing to tap into our subtext with all its nuances. But alas, many of us have damaged subtext, and this too, will be addressed in these pages.

By nature, I am shy, introverted, reclusive and an introspective person. In the field, I found this not a handicap but an asset. Also, I am more comfortable listening and processing information than talking. I didn’t understand it at the time, but listening eases the discomfort of others by putting them in control giving them power over the situation. The result is that you are in control without being in control and therefore able to assess the subtext of the situation without appearing to be doing so.

HOW “CONFIDENCE IN SUBTEXT” IS DIFFERENT

Confidence in Subtext is a departure from books discussing confidence as it is asking the reader to think differently on purpose. This book is about countless examples of people who have used Confidence in Subtext without actually knowing they are doing so. It is a new concept but actually an ancient practice.

Two examples are given here that do not appear in the book. The first example is when I was a novice chemical sales engineer in the field and about to lose my job for a faux pas.

After traveling two weeks with the area manager of Nalco Chemical Company, I was asked what I had learned. I candidly replied, “Nothing as the calls had all been social calls.  You never asked any customer what was needed to improve their operations with our chemical systems.”

I was given a score of marginal accounts to service, and told to find a new job within six weeks. I could upgrade these marginal accounts and call on competitors accounts in my area. One competitor’s account was huge with three plants in the town of Connersville, Indiana where Philco Corporation manufactured refrigerators and air conditioners.

“I’m here to save your job!”

The main Philco plant was several acres under roof with the superintendent’s bull pen in the middle of the plant. It was chaos with corroded and clogged pieces of pipe on his desk indicative of failed systems in Nalco’s technology. After waiting an hour in this bull pen, with workers answering phones reporting crises in several production lines, the superintendent came in, lit a cigarette, sat on the end of his desk, and said, “You’ve got five minutes, sport, what have you got for me?”

“Matter of fact,” I said, “I’m here to save your job.”

It was my Confidence in Subtext that found me blurting out that outrageous remark, but it had foundation.

Our competitor had had the business for 25 years and were obviously not paying attention to poor maintenance. Nalco hadn’t called on the plant in several years because of this long term history. Looking at the superintendent, his disheveled and nervous state, feeling with a rush his out-of-control manner, the declarative statement came out. I received a blanket order and a three month trial for the three plants. A few years later when I was promoted to Nalco’s corporate management team, Nalco still had the account, and the superintendent still had his job.

To Sell What Mr. Blue Will Buy You Must See Mr. Blue Through Mr. Blue’s Eyes

Now, as a member of corporate management, I was sent to Paramaribo, Suriname not to save this operation of an international Alcoa account, but to appease the local Alcoa management for our dilatory service. Nalco Chemical Company was responsible for the chemical water treatment of the massive electrical utility that powered this aluminum smelting operation.

When I arrived, the Managing Director told me a story about the superintendent of this utility and the impact of his holiday with no one knowing where he had gone. The plant shut down after a violent electrical storm. “We lost millions of dollars during that delay,” he added. “Before we located the superintendent in Switzerland.”

I asked if I might make an attempt to talk to the superintendent since I was here, the Alcoa compound being some 60 miles away in the bush. “There is little chance he’ll talk to you,” the managing director advised, “but since you’re here you can give it a try if you like.” Then, he added discouragingly, “But I don’t see the point. He doesn’t want to work with your people anymore, and he’s made that point quite clear.” I said nothing. Then he added, “If he does see you, and you give him any grieve, I’ll have your job!”

The guard at the compound stopped my car at the gate, walked over and said, “I don’t think he’ll see you. He’s mad as hell at your company.” I gave the guard my note, and asked him if he would call the superintendent and read the note to him over the phone. He read the note, Dear Mr. Superintendent, after traveling these thousands of miles, would you have the courtesy of firing me and my company to my face?  

Twenty minutes later in a cloud of dust a Jeep arrived with a sandy haired and bearded young American in equally sandy work clothes and boots waving me to come through the gate. He got out of his car, told me I had guts to “come out here,” and then blasted Nalco for what seemed forever. Again, I didn’t say a word.

Finally, he smiled, “You had balls to write that note.” All the time he was studying me. He asked me where I was staying in Paramaribo. I told him. “What do you think of living out here for a couple of weeks?” I said, “Fine!”

“You don’t mind giving up that cushy pad with all those beautiful women?” I just smile. “Then I’ll have your gear shipped out here. I want to show you something.”

For the next four hours, I was audience to a slide show of all the things wrong with the power utility relating to chemical water treatment failures; failures Nalco never addressed because “Nalco never had boots on the grounds.”

When he finished, he asked me what I thought. I told him it was clear he was into quality maintenance, addressing chronic problems at the source, and required the chemical engineering expertise on site to see that these conditions were resolved; and once resolved, prevented. Then I added that clearly Nalco had not been providing such services and he was right to be angry with us.

In Confidence in Subtext language, he was angry because no one paid attention to him until he was not available when the utility was shut down. Outside the compound, there wasn’t a house, a building, or even a tree on the horizon. The note got his attention; the next two weeks renewed the 

contract with Nalco with a consulting agreement that would justify sending Nalco’s chemical engineers to assist this superintendent.

It was such counter-intuitive work as these two examples that got the attention of my minders, while at the same time confounding them. It was the reason I went back to the university to acquire a Ph.D. to understand the nature of this phenomenon that I came to practice. The university did not have the answers as it was a factory like the one I had left. It had to be worked out in my consulting work and to eventually come to be described in this book.

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D., April 25, 2017

NEVER TOO LATE!

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

© January 29, 2020 

Reference:

Henry, a retired teacher of chemistry and something of a prolific author, especially on matters of governance and community action. I was moved by this remark recently from him:

Currently working on a piece about my younger years and how things appear to follow from other happenings. Not an agreeable assignment I laid upon myself. Hope it will work out reasonably well some time.

I wrote this to him:

Trust me, Henry, it will! You will find evidence in a very real sense of why that is so in this chapter from my book CONFIDENCE IN SUBTEXT (2017), published on Amazon’s KINDLE. It is priced at $66 so I don’t expect you to purchase the book.

Your modesty is becoming. It is apparent in all your missives which are universally stimulating. But it also causes me a little trepidation. Contrast your this style with my own.

I read a lot, as do you, often of people with sterling reputations as thinkers and philosophers and often scientists as well. I read them from what I can learn from them, but never to put them above myself, never!

No one can be a better expert in my laboratory, which is my life, than myself. It amuses me when people think they can.

People want to be saved from themselves by others when others often cannot save themselves. It is a losing proposition to imitate what is important to others at the expense of discovering what is important to you.

As a consequence, I don’t apologize to readers for using myself as reference in describing my position on this or that subject. Nor do I mount causes, join crusades, or campaign for this or that person, or this or that special interest.

If the reader cannot resonate with me, that is okay. It means we have little in common. I am not looking for an army of believers, only a few learners who have a common interest in growing.

Charles D. Hayes, whom I consider the best writer I know, personally, has much to say.  I have encouraged him for years to give his wisdom a personal touch.

It is not important to be anointed by society, but is important to share your special gifts with society. If everything revolves around imitation, no one will ever get off the dime.

The toxic disease of modern society is comfort and complacency where people think life is all about having “fun.”

My twin grandsons turned 15 on the 28th of January 2020. One is very tall – six-five – blond and beautiful, and everyone dotes on him. I wrote him in my card, “Your grandpa remembers when people made a big deal about him. Don’t fall for that malarkey! Follow your own passions, not someone else’s.”

My other grandson, also tall – six-one – has his head more firmly on his shoulders as his twin brother gets most of the attention. I wrote him, “I share your grandmother’s sentiments (she encourages him to follow his passion for music). Live life to bring your natural music to the surface.”

These and other Centennials are the innocent who will be inheriting a hundred yearlong mess of self-indulgence where politicians, the media, pundits, educators, industrialists, theologians and entertainers act as if they never left the sixth grade.

Can Centennials right this sinking ship? I don’t know. I won’t be around to find out. What I do know is that the world is plum out of excuses for doing so little.

Everyone dies. Why are so many people afraid to live?

Your sincerity, and the lessons you have learned over your long life may not resonate with Centennials until they are thirty, which they now believe is an eternity away.

Write of the lessons learned when you were young, and they and others will find them! That is what Ben Franklin did with his Almanac. He wrote about his “lessons learned,” not from other people but from his own life. I believe that is the case with Harry Louis Bernstein in the chapter that follows, and with you as well.

Be always safe,

Jim

Chapter from CONFIDENCE IN SUBTEXT (2017):

GENIUS REALIZED: 

GETTING FIRST PUBLISHED AT AGE 96

“Genius is only the power of making continuous effort. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it, so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business, sometimes prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no defeat except from within; there is no failure except in no longer trying, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915), American pragmatic philosopher

IT IS NEVER TOO LATE!

Harry Louis Bernstein (May 30, 1910 – June 3, 2011) was a British-born American writer with his first published book, The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers (2007) at the age of ninety-six.

The novel dealt with Bernstein’s long suffering mother Ada's struggles to feed her six children while putting up with Yankel, her abusive and alcoholic husband.

It is also the story about the anti-Semitism that Bernstein and his family experienced growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in a Cheshire mill town called “Stockport” (now part of Greater Manchester) in northwest England.

Stockport was a community of Jews and Christians many of whom were lost in World War I. Bernstein shapes his story around the Romeo and Juliet-like romance that his sister Lily experienced with her Christian boyfriend.

The Invisible Wall tells the story of his older sister doing the unthinkable. She falls in love with a Christian boy. But they are separated culturally by an “invisible wall” that divides the Jewish families on one side of the cobble stone street from the Christian families on the other.

Harry Bernstein at home in New Jersey in 2007, age 96, when “The Invisible Wall” appeared. He holds a portrait of his wife, Ruby. Mike Mergen, New York Times.

When the young Harry Bernstein discovers the secret affair quite by accident, he has to choose between the strict morals that he has been taught all his life, his loyalty to his religious and selfless mother, and what he knows is right in his own mind.

The book was started when Bernstein was 93 and was published in 2007, three years later. The loneliness he encountered following the death of his wife, Ruby, 91, in 2002, after 67 years of marriage, was the catalyst for him to begin working on his book.

His second book, The Dream, published in 2008, centered on his family’s move to the West Side of Chicago in 1922 when he was twelve.

In 2009, Bernstein published his third book, The Golden Willow, which chronicled his married life and later years. A fourth book, What Happened to Rose, was published posthumously in 2012. Bernstein lived in Brick Township, New Jersey. He died four days past his 101st birthday.

Before his retirement at age 62, Bernstein worked for various movie production companies, reading scripts and working as a magazine editor for trade magazines. He also wrote freelance articles for such publications as Popular Mechanics, Family Circle and Newsweek.

THE PATIENCE OF GENIUS

From Harry Bernstein’s earliest recollections, as early as when he was four-years-old and started to read words on a page, he felt an urge to write. Through grammar school and high school, composition was his favorite subject.

As a young man out of high school, he attempted to publish, but received only rejection slips. He persisted, finding work editing the works of other writers, but the passion to be an author in his own right never left him.

He met his wife, Ruby, at a dance, and it was love at first sight. He loved her to pieces and took a job reading movie scripts of authors’ books, but changed his focus from his writing obsession to enjoying her completely.

They had two children, and a happy home, but he was put into a total funk when she died, and found the only way to fill his loneliness was writing, which he had always done throughout his life, publishing an article here and there, but never able to capture enough attention to make a living at it.

The Invisible Wall at first experienced a fate of which he was only too familiar – constant rejections. He attempted to write a novel after a short piece generated enough interest that an editor asked him to give the novel idea a try, which he did, but without success.

After Ruby died, he decided to go back to the beginnings of his life, nearly ninety years in the past, and found that he had a retentive memory of those early days as if they were only yesterday.

Instead of being discouraged at the rejections The Invisible Wall generated, he admits in the afterward of the book that he’s never lacked confidence in himself or his ability to write. In an amusing aside, he admits to being a rather cocky soul.

In any case, an editor from Random House called, and said she had read his manuscript and that Random House would like to publish it in a small printing. He was so elated he couldn’t believe his good fortune.

Random House published the book, and the book reviews were unanimously positive, while The New York Times put his picture on the front page of the newspaper celebrating his being a published author for the first time at the age of 96.

Columnists from across the Western World called or visited him for interviews. He was in demand on radio, television and in magazines. He satisfied all these demands willingly and enthusiastically.

Other publishers wanted to publish his works. So, at 96, he wrote a sequel to The Invisible Wall and followed it with another published novel of his family history during his lifetime, with one published posthumously.

Were Elbert Hubbard alive, he would have joined the celebration as he believed with his whole heart that genius was not rare, but common. The problem, he argued, was that people pay too much attention to those who say “you’re wasting your time” and not enough time listening to those who hear an inner voice telling them success is right around the corner!

CONFIDENCE & SUBTEXT – THE ETERNAL KEYS

Harry Bernstein lived in his subtext. It was personified in the love he had for his wife, Ruby, which as he explained was love at first sight. With such love, he escaped self-consciousness and self-regard, and although he wanted to be a writer, adjusted to the reality of his circumstances and enjoyed a very happy and productive life with her and his two children while working on the creative works of others for a living.

All the while, the writing bug or his ability to write – “I am a bit cocky,” he says – never left him. His love of his wife that emanates from his subtext fueled his mind and gave purpose to his life. When she was gone, with a hole in his heart, he reached down into his subtext where all his stories were incubating finding new purpose in living.

The stories started with the forbidden love of his sister with a Catholic boy, which he remembered with crushing horror as he was a devout Jew equal in devotion to that of his parent’s. Only a child, he had to make a terrible choice between being loyal to his faith and his parents, or loyal to his sister with her great secret. He chose to be loyal to her with no idea that this was the response of a healthy subtext.

For nearly ninety years, the creative juices in subtext would come to produce a fine wine of stories in his last years as he approached the age of 100. Like Golda Meier, Stephen Jay Gould, Yehudi Menuhin and many others (see chapter Twenty Six), the confidence of subtext was apparent at a young age, but only in reflection as these stories epitomized what his life was all about.

THE REST OF THE STORY

A READER WRITES

Jim,

Reading your latest with great interest (so much so that it need to read it again.)

Unfortunately, what I received broke off in the par. beginning with “Control is the sequential product of order ...”

Your line about how we mirror the universe rung a bell, but I wonder whether we have the same universe in mind. Mine is not the human universe, it is the universe with all there is in it. Might call it God, but that again leads to misunderstanding. Language is a such a useful tool, but it too often is disastrously ineffective.

I’ll leave it here.

Best,

Henry

MY RESPONSE

Henry,

I apologize for my missive not being complete. Here I am providing not only that last paragraph but the rest of the conversation with Stanley that appears in THE WORKER, ALONE! (TWA).

That book was published 25 years ago; it was my briefest book, a book I gave to European friends on one of my visits to Belgium, Austria and Germany. It was my favorite book written to date, perhaps because of the conversation with Stanley Reeves, a brilliant and delightfully wonderful human being.

I first met him in 1993 during my quest to write IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003), a book about growing up in the middle of the country, in the middle of my community (Clinton, Iowa in "the shadow of the courthouse"), in the middle of the century, and in the middle of World War Two. Those incidental circumstances would come to form me.

Now, regarding my soliloquy, which concludes TWA, my training in chemistry, study of neuroanatomy, and my reading of Carl Sagan, has no doubt influenced me. Regarding Sagan, I appreciate his impudence causing me, paradoxically, to believe more not less in God, a God, however, not necessarily an anthropomorphic God.

It is through this process that I have gotten the idea that the single atom in a matrix of billions of atoms approximates Sagan’s idea that in billions of planets in the universe, there must be some similar if not the same as our own.

Sagan always has interesting titles: The Cosmic Connection (1973), Broca’s Brain (1974), The Dragons of Eden (1977), Cosmos (1980), Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1992), The Demon-Haunted World (1996), and Billions & Billions (1997). I celebrate his short life where his fellow scientists refuted him for popularizing science, while given to self-aggrandizement. Since I could be similarly accused, I only smile.

Now regarding the soliloquy that ends “THE WORKER, ALONE!”:

It follows at the conclusion of this book thusly:

Control is a sequential product of order, and order comes from within, one person at a time. The multiple of this process leads to communal order. And so it is as well for life in a world out of sync with its times.

Everything is connected. The macro is precisely the same as the micro, only many times more. A true leader knows this in his bones. The structure of the human cell mirrors the universe. We explore the micro to understand the macro.

A "changed society" is an evolutionary process, which starts with an idea. There is no ideal plan or strategy to the growth of an idea. It is a factor of climate, opportunity and time. An idea may undergo several mutations before maturity is reached and bear little resemblance to the initial idea. There is no "right or true" course, only movement from moment to moment.

Ideas have a growth period the same as every other living thing. It is slow and tortuous with no clear path to the future. Ideas grow like cracks in the cement as weeds, wild flowers or grass. One day an idea experiences a transmutation from a puzzling perturbation into a clarifying insight that resonates with mean­ing to the times, which is not unlike a shoot bursting into bloom as a beautiful flower. Ideas are not separate but part of nature.

As for consultants, they are bystanders. Like multifaceted sensors, they derive their function from listening and observing. The answers are not with them, but are the filtered product of the organization's collective mind, a mind which is often ignored until a consultant repeats its intrinsic wisdom. Consultants pro­vide connection between organizational knowers and learners.

Consultants are symptomatic of a culture that doesn't trust itself, a culture willing to pay for "a second opinion." Companies insist on seeing the controller and the controlled as separate enti­ties. Consultant are often the arbitrary intermediary between the controller (management) and the controlled (workforce), which is a contrived dichotomy and therefore inauthentic. Were society not so uncertain of its priorities and ambivalent on how to handle them, consultants might just fade away.

Stanley reflects:

In your chapter, “'A Life Without A Cause," why can't change be a combination of outside forces as well as inside forces? Does it always have to be either... or? Wouldn't it be desirable for some things to come true that workers expect to come true, not because they expect it, but because they are desirable?

Change is always a combination of inside and outside forces. That is not the problem. The problem is what initiates the change process, stimulus from outside or motivation from inside? Chaos and order are part of the same whole. This dynamic created our universe.

Order starts with the individual deciding to change, to put his house in order, and therefore the change process is an inter­nal commitment. Change is a reply to the demands of reality or outside forces.

What precipitates change is usually some disturbance, some­thing that makes the individual or the company more alert. Attentiveness is the precursor to change. The decision to act is a response to that stimulus — take a death in the family. That was the case with me.

My father died three days past his fiftieth birthday. His whole life was one of repeated labor to push the stone of Sisyphus up the hill, only to have it roll back downhill and crush him again and again. He never had his own agenda. He was afraid to. He had great physical courage, but little moral backbone. It was impossible for him to take a stand if his rights clashed with the rights of his "betters."

With his death, my insides changed almost immediately. A cautious, conservative, sensitive person launched an immediate pilgrimage to gamble on himself, to do what his lights would have him do, and to let the chips fall where they may.

Thus was born my motivation to plant seeds that others were too timid to plant, or who feared it might lose them friends and jeopardize their careers. I am not constrained by such consid­erations. Nor am I concerned with whether these seeds reach fruition within my lifetime. I am a planter, not a harvester. My father's death convinced me of that fact.

Each worker has to decide who and what he is. If he doesn't, it will be decided for him. Desirable things come out of pur­poseful behavior. The purpose of life is to live it. How each of us might choose to live it is an expression of that purpose. The rest is academic.

Thank you for bringing this error to my attention.

Be always safe,

Jim

What a delightful tribute -- re: MIND, MEMORY, THOUGHT.....

Quote of the Year!



"What a time Shakespeare would have with our times. While rejecting the idea of God, many in the political, social and economic sphere attempt to be like God in quest of wealth, celebrity, identity, power and invincibility" Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr.

Amen, Bro.

Ken Shelton, editor, agent, CEO

Executive Excellence, LLC

MIND, MEMORY, THOUGHT, THINKING, AND BEING KIND TO OURSELVES AS WE AGE

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

© January 24, 2020 

A READER WRITES

Jim.

Had a wonderful book by Giulio Tononi; gave it to a friend. Will search for his “integrated information theory.”

Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking ... I believe I do some of that; makes it hard for others to get my drift about topics. Correlates a bit with quantum theory as it sits alongside the simple “yes or no” dualism.

The reptilian mind... reminds me of a book by Carl Sagan, written way back when.

Jim, it seems that our paths crosses at many a junction where my low road touches your high one. Funny as it goes ...

Henry

MY RESPONSE

Henry,

There is no high road or low road, at the moment. There is no road at all.  We are stumbling through the chaos of a dark forest trying to purchase order, but not too wisely.

That is because the road to the future no longer emanates from within.  Existence today bombards our senses from without with incessant clatter devoid of music.

We both know this. Our long lives have taught us to respect our consciences that give credence to our moral centers and our natural guidance system from within. Consequently, we take failure and setbacks in stride, as we do modest achievements, because we have never lost our way.

On the other hand, we can smell a phony across the room or across the airwaves, waxing genuine with false sincerity revving up hedonistic appetites with empty promises.

Henry, we are outliers with opinions; not to attract idolaters or indulgent readers but to open minds to the dangers, and yes, possibilities of the times.

Life has been a struggle but we have persevered with insights learned that we would like to share, but alas, there is no audience.

People don’t want to be reminded of their sins of omission or commission. They want to be reassured, entertained and lifted out of morass. Politicians are at the ready to fill that void. They are selling the mitigation of our sins without the penalty of consequences or necessity of penance. They preach pleasure without pain, benefits without sacrifice, something for nothing, happiness without sorrow.

One political party is as guilty of this deception as the other as neither has any sense of the painful consequences of false hope, as each cynically believes mendacity is the only way to being electable.

They may call themselves “liberals” or “conservatives,” but they are neither. They have more in common with Shakespeare’s Shylock of the “Merchant of Venice,” driven more by self-interest and validation then love and compassion.  Ironically, they aspire to change the world without the necessity of changing themselves.

Culture, identity, role relationships, the place of God, church and state in society have been shattered. Like the two faces of Janus, no one seems to know whether they are coming or going.  Decay and decadence stand tall on the hill while love and compassion cower obsequiously in the bushes in the valley.  Small wonder, we find ourselves in Nowhere Land.

You and I have lived the better part of the last century, and are now in this new century in the late evening of our lives.

We are survivors who have been able, despite all the pressures to do otherwise, to hold on to our values, beliefs, passions, and sense of history and humanity. We are neither do-gooders nor detached from doing, but feel most people can figure out things for themselves.

After a century of suicidal warfare in which more than 100 million lives were lost, not on the battlefields as soldiers, but as collateral damage during the insanity of two World Wars, we have lost our way, without discernible insight as to where we are much less where we are going.  This is demonstrated with outrageous force on the Internet, in social networks, on television and in film, in music and literature, as communal and community life has no sense of embarrassment or appreciation of the absurd.

Ordinary people during the last century attempted to live private modest lives but have become unwitting victims of cultural insanity. With war, historical and sacred landmarks have disappeared, as have the magnificent architecture of churches, monuments and stately buildings across Europe and Asia.

While this destruction has been visible and palpable, the emotional toll on civilians across the globe lingers in fractured lives; lives that escaped the dread in one sense only to fall victim to it in another.  Civilization has become unglued with profligate addiction, permissiveness, pornography, hedonism, materialism, surrealism, which has in turn fostered bizarre behavior as the new norm, not to overlook mental illness, hate crimes and gratuitous violence.

Children are born innocent but often take on the social contagions of their culture and time. The nightly television news of any metropolitan city in the United States offers a litany of the carnage that has occurred in the previous 24 hours with young people often the perpetrators of such acts.  Why?

My! What a time Shakespeare would have with our times. While rejecting the idea of God, many in the political, social and economic sphere attempt to be like God in quest of wealth, celebrity, identity, power and invincibility.

Meanwhile, we have a tragic comedy going on in Washington, DC at the moment giving people an escape from their own miseries, and an opportunity to fixate on our national collective biases.

Henry, we are limping into the future without a guidance system as the United States gravitates to the high theater of the absurd.

Indeed, we no longer have a clear sense of what it means to be a man or a woman, a husband or a wife, a boy or a girl, a teacher or a student, a worker or a manager, a member of a group, be it a church, a school, a family, or a profession, or, what it means to be an individual, or even what is the difference between right and wrong, or good and bad behavior.

Evidence of this anxiety is apparent in the number of books being written on identity, while the lack of identity is demonstrated provocatively in the explosive growth of the tattoo industry.  It would seem everyone desires to become a human billboard advertising who they are.

Speaking of advertising, we gravitate to what advertisers tell us is important even if it is not self-serving but that is a subject for another time.

You mention quantum theory. I led with that reference in my previous missive. I failed, however, to mention German Nobel Laureate in Physics, Werner Heisenberg, who found holes in Einstein’s theory of relativity with his “Uncertain Principle.” This shattered the precision once thought to exist in the subatomic world.

Einstein, who sought but unsuccessfully, to develop a “Unified Theory,” had a problem from the beginning with quantum mechanics because it was not tidy with him suggesting that “God didn’t believe in throwing the dice.”

But we find God is not tidy, He is not a good housekeeper, and He has treated Nature as if a gambler, purposely making it a habit like “throwing the dice,” causing embarrassment to those who still believe they have a handle on existence.

Perhaps that is our salvation, imprecision, or recognizing that life is primarily existence in a fog, suggesting that we best make the most of it "as is."

Finally, Carl Sagan refers to Paul D. MacLean’s “triune brain” in “The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence” (1977), which relates to the Reptilian Complex, the Limbic System and the Neocortex. 

My interest in the Reptilian Brain (for The Fisher Paradigm©™) is in the context of the mechanisms of intuitive and survival instincts, whereas Sagan goes off on a tangent about the reptilian brain's dinosaur function and dream world where “dragons can be heard, hissing and rasping, and the dinosaurs thunder still.”  Perhaps this is the book of Sagan's that you read.  I'll say more about this in my new book.

Thank you for listening.

Be always safe,

Jim

A WORLD OUT OF SYNC WITH ITS TIMES

 James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© January 24, 2020

Everything is connected. The macro is precisely the same as the micro, only many times more. A true leader knows this in his bones. The structure of the human cell mirrors the universe. We explore the micro to understand the macro.

A "changed society" is an evolutionary process, which starts with an idea. There is no ideal plan or strategy to the growth of an idea. It is a factor of climate, opportunity and time. An idea may undergo several mutations before maturity is reached and bear little resemblance to the initial idea. There is no "right or true" course, only movement from moment to moment.

Ideas have a growth period the same as every other living thing. It is slow and tortuous with no clear path to the future. Ideas grow like cracks in the cement as weeds, wild flowers or grass. One day an idea experiences a transmutation from a puzzling perturbation into a clarifying insight that resonates with mean­ing to the times, which is not unlike a shoot bursting into bloom as a beautiful flower. Ideas are not separate but part of nature.

James R. Fisher, Jr., The Worker, Alone! Going Against the Grain (1995)

An established author, philosopher and social critic writes:

Jim,

I find Ken Shelton’s (conservative author and publisher) worry over socialism stupefying. We are much closer the fascism. The number of people who can fit into a local movie theater own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. We have the greatest income inequality since the 1920s and the current low employment numbers hide the realty that income inequality is still increasing exponentially, as millions of people work two and three jobs and still can’t make ends meet.

Taxpayers fund food stamps from some of our largest employers who pay slave wages. We have socialism in the top tiers of our society with what we call the financialization of the economy as executives continue to loot public corporations as effectively as 21st century feudalism. No doubt we owe some of the above to the reality that civics education has gone the way of the buffalo.

In an age of omnipresent social media, a country founded upon the Constitutional principles of knowledge-based reasoning cannot be sustained by tribalistic emotion, and yet, fully a third of our population relates politically in tribalistic fashion, which is why they are impervious to information. Blind obedience is antithetical to democracy and it can quickly lead to fascism, world history makes this point clear.

If low-information citizens ever become a substantial majority, any chance for achieving democracy will be doomed because contempt and ethnocentric prejudice, will foreclose the opportunity for common ground. The only avenue for the uninformed, is to up the ante of loyalty, because they don’t know enough about anything important to engage in constructive dialog. They don’t reason, they relate.

Myriad forms of racial and misogynist bias are embedded in our culture. Partiality is written into law, it’s programmed via algorithms, in our literature, our entertainment and our break-room chatter, and unfortunately, a red state education renders one incapable of noticing, therefore, Texas school textbooks, for example, are intellectually sterile, so complexity is off limits and the emotional ostracizing of the other, becomes a polarizing distraction, and a formidable barrier to the kind of thinking that questions power.

When education is heavily influenced by fundamentalist religion, and right-wing culture, obedience is considered evidence of successful learning, and thus, conduct and conformity become more important than the critical thinking democracy requires.

The result of such an indoctrination is that people grow up believing that being a good citizen is demonstrated, not by reasoned deliberation, but by submissiveness, so symbols and icons become more important than the values they are supposed to represent, and hence the familiar cry “America love it or leave it.”

We are on the cusp of an AI technology that is radically reshaping our economics, in which, prejudices and manifestations of political power are being surreptitiously preprogrammed via the algorithms that automate our governance—and a population incapable of discerning sophisticated oppression, will eventually render our Constitutional rights null and void, because they will be incapable of deconstructing the injustices in a backdrop posing as pseudo patriotism.

Never has it been easier for the powerful to stoke the fear and existential insecurities of uninformed citizens, and to persuade them to vote against their own interest, and to genuflect rage on cue.

We need a citizenry capable of critical thinking now more than any time in our history, and yet there is nothing on the horizon that suggests we are up to the task. Donald Trump’s presidency is a global embarrassment of epic proportion, his campaign rallies are disgraceful exhibitions of bigotry and racism, they reek the tenor and tone of fascism, and the effect that they have on our standing in the world as defenders of freedom and democracy are both psychologically devastating and morally debilitating.

I am optimistic from habit not from experience or my expectation about the future. I hope I am wrong, but I have grave doubts about the outlook for democracy because our technology and our echo chamber media are proving to be much better at polarization and indoctrination than inspiring critical thinking. A sham impeachment trial as a cover up, may very well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. We may have to take to the streets in Hong Kong fashion to wake this country up.

My age group is about to exit, but the generations to follow must realize what responsible citizenship requires and not simply be cheerleaders for despots.

The critical thinking needed today to sustain democratic rule, is equal to or greater than, the intellectual efforts upon which this country were founded, which is to my thinking a very frightening reality, given the current lack of civic education, and the regressive mentality holding red state America hostage, via a strain of ethnocentric contempt, fueled and spurred on by an incompetent and morally bankrupt president, whose breathtaking ignorance makes him egregiously unfit for office and whose erratic mental instability means his continuation as president, represents a clear and present danger to our national security and quite possibly world peace.

Charles

MY RESPONSE

Charles,

What you say here is at least partially true:

We are on the cusp of an AI technology that is radically reshaping our economics, in which, prejudices and manifestations of political power are being surreptitiously preprogrammed via the algorithms that automate our governance—and a population incapable of discerning sophisticated oppression, will eventually render our Constitutional rights null and void, because they will be incapable of deconstructing the injustice in a backdrop posing as pseudo patriotism.

We have a surfeit of critical thinking, which is limited to cause and effect analysis and logic, or what is already known. We need creative thinking which explores what is not known but can be found out in the pursuit of discovery,

That was the problem with Tom Peters’s and Bob Waterman’s bestselling book, “In Search of Excellence” (1982). It fostered imitation, which Business Week slammed two years later (November 5, 1984) with the headline story, “Who’s Excellent Now?” Many companies superimposed this book’s ideal examples on their own culture with sometimes disastrous results.

There are good people on the right and the left, and it turns out the ideas and passions of the one side tend to be as flawed as the excesses of the other side. You cannot persuade the other side that their views are faulty any more than they can convince you them that your views are faulty.

Nearly 50 years ago, I wrote Confident Selling (1971) in 1969 after returning from South Africa where I had facilitated the formation of a new specialty chemical company.  Earlier, I had been a successful chemical sales engineer for Nalco Chemical Company with my approach to find out what the customer needed then partnering with him to realize that end. I wrote the book in a friend’s plumbing catalogue publishing office on his IBM electric typewriter from 6 p.m. to 4 a.m., Monday through Friday for six weeks, sending the first draft to Prentice-Hall (P-H) in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, where it was accepted two weeks later, then published in the fall of 1970 with P-H’s 1971 copyright.  It would be in print for 20 years and become a modest national bestseller, selling over 100,000 copies. 

Twenty years later, after ending my executive career and retiring from Honeywell, I wrote my second book on the labor/management phenomenon.  This project started while working for Honeywell Europe, SA in 1986 while living in Brussels, Belgium.  BB collected my research in a dozen three-inch loose leaf notebooks, creating the schematics, graphics, tables and visuals that went with the text.  She would type on our Honeywell computer in a Microsoft Word document while I walked around my study and dictated the book to her.  It would become Work Without Managers: A View from the Trenches, and be published five years later in 1991 and listed as one of the ten best business books of 1991 by Industry Week.

WWMs made a minor rumble and then faded being decades early as the electronic revolution had yet to take hold confirming its thesis. Five years after publication of WWMs, economist Jeremy Rifkin’s “The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era” (1995) came out. It seemed evident author Rifkin had perused my book but without acknowledgement. The same was true of Fortune Magazine.  It had a cover story WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS a year after my book was published, but again without acknowledgement.

Critical thinking and critical thinkers represent an army at the ready to latch on to any creative work that serves its fancy.  Otherwise, the problem solving is to circular logic.

When you’re not in the power grid you can be exploited with impunity by a celebrated economist or an established magazine.  This son of an Irish Roman Catholic brakeman on the railroad never joined that crowd much less given to pay it homage.

Charles, you are schooled in philosophy, economics, politics, work, and social justice while “working in the trenches.” I had only a spell in the trenches spending five summers laboring in a chemical plant while going to university. This work plus an academic scholarship provided the funds to attend a land grant institution (University of Iowa) after completing a public high school education.

No doubt from the urging of my mother, I pursued educational goals without any special talent for academics as athletics came more naturally. I studied hard in high school and college, while receiving no free passes at either level because I am not easy to take.  I am in your face challenging (as is true in my writing) to those reliant on special crutches, who expect gain without pain, success without failure, and a comfortable lifestyle without any effort.

The masses don’t like upstarts who succeed especially while choosing to be different. Jealousy and envy and a potpourri of justifiers surface when driven by a “compare and compete” mania.  This sponsors imitation, which is a weakness of critical thinking. So, outliers are finding a way outside the main stream, not expecting anyone to carry their baggage or displaying any interest in carrying other people’s. They prefer to think creatively knowing to think otherwise corrupts everyone involved.

My da once told me I’d never make it because I had too much asshole in me. My mother responded, “Asshole or not, Ray, if Jimmy brings something new to the table that is wanted, rest assured, they’ll find a place for him,” and she was of course right as my long career has shown.

In high school, taking the toughest courses, I was an “A” student, and went up for “National Honor Society” every semester from my sophomore year on, and never made it, whereas my Beautiful Betty (BB) made it on her first try. I was in the top 10 percent of my high school graduating class, and made every honor society offered in undergraduate through graduate school, being elected into Phi Beta Kappa at Iowa, an honor only 1 percent of college graduates achieve.

Academic honors are based on academic achievement, not personality.

Charles, unfortunately, much of life is however based on personality, on being connected, or in the desirable crowd, not simply achievement. Read J. Robert Oppenheimer’s biography, “American Prometheus,” and you will see it happens to our geniuses as well as ordinary sorts like myself.

Charles, I have often thought that you and William L. Livingston IV are the only geniuses I know, personally. Like Walt Whitman, you are cut from a common stock. The same is true of Ben Franklin, another genius simpatico with Whitman.

Whitman used poetry in the “celebration of self” to create a new prosody; Franklin used curiosity to demonstrate the source of electricity with his kite, using humor and guile to create his niche in history with his diplomatic skills in Paris during the American Revolution.  This helped to transform a rebellious people into the mindset of a nation.

You have used the celebration of self-university through self-initiative, which is what learning is about whether experienced formally or informally.

My parents were staunch Democrats, my mother a devote Roman Catholic, saying her Rosary every day, while my da identified with the Irish Roman Catholic culture but preferred, with his Irish cronies, to take false comfort in being dealt an unfair hand by being Irish, making no attempt to change their circumstances.  I did, and have had the life I have enjoyed using my world, small as it is, as my learning zone.

I have no plans to contest what you have said, or to persuade you to think otherwise, knowing people who think just as passionately obverse to your views, and they are, like you, equally nice people.

Economic and political systems change with war or when they are no longer useful or relevant. It has been so for the past 2,000 years. Our time is no different. Free public education is more than 100 years old and yet 30 million Americans cannot read these words. Since public education is free many if not the majority look on it as a right rather than the privilege that it is.

Many of these nonreaders are immigrants, people who don’t want to assimilate the American culture or its traditions, such as learning English, observing its sacred and secular holidays, or going to school. They want to continue living in their conclaves as if they are still “back home.”

Consequently, we have cultural and societal conflict in our cities and small communities rife with violence. In the midst of this insanity, some politicians want to offer free college education to all Americans as if this is a solution when a quarter of Americans don’t appreciate free public education.

There are cheaters at the top, but cheaters at the bottom as well. The former CEO of Wells Fargo was recently fined $17.5 million for encouraging employees to create false accounts to provide a fake bottom line. And yes, the 1 percent control the wealth of the United States; and yes, Walmart and MacDonald’s do not provide a living wage, but these businesses are not built to provide a living wage, essentially offering entry level jobs, like I had at the A&P Supermarket when I was a boy.

When you have a permissive society, when the culture looks for what it doesn’t have with hard eyes on those who do, a President, a Congress or a Corporation is expected to assuage angst and anxiety as surrogate parent.

Statistics and analytics, notwithstanding, communism is the extreme of socialism and fascism of capitalism. Democrats, incidentally, became a political power when they engineered the repeal of prohibition. Ironically, there was more drinking during prohibition than after its repealed. Go figure!

Still, you are right. Your generation is moving off stage; mine has already departed. The masses ultimately move the dial either to self-responsibility or self-absorption.  Painting a President as the epitome of evil or his election as illegitimate has the taste of sour grapes. How can one person who came into office only three years ago be held responsible for the nation’s decline since the 1960s?

With reference to Artificial Intelligence or AI, it started its creep into our midst in the 1930s, spirited by the code busters in WWI and WWII. As a result, today we have robotics, drones, and automatic assembly lines, invasive ubiquitous surveillance, laptops, iPhones, the Internet, automobiles without drivers, and airline pilots “managing” automated electronic dashboards. These pilots, always suing for more pay and benefits, have jobs that have become as anachronistic as coal tenders to railroad locomotives after diesel fuel replaced that function. These sinecure positions in the engineer’s cabin still existed for thirty years after they became redundant. 

We have had nearly 100 years to prepare for this information electronic invasion, but our schools, churches, businesses, workplaces, homes, and, indeed, our politicians still live in nostalgia forever denying encroaching reality, which is now here.

It seems unreasonable to blame this all on a sitting President, or the Republican Party, religion in general or the church in particular, or on the rich. Fully 3 to 4 billion people believe in and practice some form of religion, and that is half the world’s population, while half of Americans are either Republicans or Independents who are equally inclined to paint economic issues as black and white as are many Democrats.

It doesn’t make any difference when society is out of sync because nothing diminishes polarity. 

My generation, The Great Depression Generation preceded the “Spoiled Brat” generation of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, into the cynical generations that have followed, who believe in nothing and are willing to ignore the nation in its free fall.

Even members of my own generation, when I was a sacker at the A&P Supermarket, forced to lie about my age when I was 14, saying I was 16, to get a job to help support the family, already nearly 6’2” tall, people would ask, “Why do you always have a book in yours hands? Don’t you know we’re all going to be blown to smithereens by the atomic bomb?” This ambiguity that there is no point to anything has gotten legs.

My philosophy of life is to leave something that might prove useful. I have no interest in recruiting people to this or any other philosophy while I suspect I write for a generation not yet born.

Finally, in a conversation with Stanley Reeves, an educator, the Afterword posits the idea the controller and the controlled are one and the same in The Worker, Alone!

Stanley:

"I wish we could think of the controller as the leader. It is my belief that the majority of people will respond to good leadership. They resent being managed. . . controlled. You suggest a changed society may take a century. Are we sure enough of the right course? Can we remain firm of resolve for that long? Not trying doesn't present a very pretty picture. It seems a given that to succeed managers and workers must share each step of the process. As to consultants, shouldn't they be part of the process instead of outside it?"

With control, Stanley, as with everything, it starts with the indi­vidual. The individual is the controller, or the leader, if you prefer, or of that which is controlled, which is himself. The two cannot be separated. The individual cannot depend on a "leader" to rescue him from chaos and disorder. It is his individual responsibility.

A leader can only symbolize what is already established. There are no miracles. Should this be construed as minimizing the tra­ditionally understood power of the leader, per se, in leadership, so be it.

Leadership has attempted to buy, bargain, cajole and/or coerce workers into the desired behavior without success. The quest for freedom, control and order rests with the worker, alone.

Control is a sequential product of order, and order comes from within, one person at a time.  The multiple of this process leads to communal order.  And so it is as well for life in a world out of sync with its times.