Notice: This is the first of 30 articles that have previously been published in newspapers. They are for your enjoyment, but cannot be reprinted or used without permission. Most of the people in my address book are retired, but they have children and grandchildren that I think will benefit from these missives. That is my aim.
JRF
COLD SHOWER™
HOW TO ENSURE YOU NEVER GET FIRED!
(Article no. 1)
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 11, 2008
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Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr. is an industrial/organization psychologist and former corporate executive for Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe Ltd. For the past 30 years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is author of nine books and more than 300 articles on what he calls CULTURAL CAPITAL, that is, risk taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits and relation to power for a changing work force in a changing workplace. His focus is on the modern professional worker.
Dr. Fisher started out as a laborer in a chemical plant, worked his way through college to become a laboratory chemist and field chemical sales engineer. He retired in his mid-thirties, went back to school and received his Ph.D. in I/O psychology, became an OD consultant and adjunct professor, eventually returning to the corporation from which he retired in 1990 to devote himself to writing.
These columns in another form were first published in newspapers in the late 1990s. They have been updated and reissued on his website (www.fisherofideas.com) to provoke thought and discussion.
_________________
Question: Dr. Fisher, I understand you've written a book about how never to get fired? Is that possible in these times?
Dr. Fisher replies:
Absolutely! The key to ensuring you never get fired rests with the way you think about work. If you don't see yourself as part of the problem, then you are not going to be part of the solution.
You must see yourself as an owner of what you do, not a renter who brings his body to work but leaves his mind at home. Nor can you afford to turn your head when colleagues or bosses exploit the company. You are the company!
As to writing a book about this problem, I've actually written several books on the subject. SIX SILENT KILLERS (CRC Press 1998) and THE WORKER, ALONE! (The Delta Group Florida 1995) dealt specifically with the problem of being employed and remaining employable.
When workers are dissatisfied or miserable at work, they think and behave as social termites burrowing in and silently destroying the infrastructure of the place of their employment. More than $100 billion is lost every year for:
(1) Workers coming in late and leaving early, doing as little as possible to get by;
(2) Workers doing only what told to do and then waiting around for more instructions;
(3) Workers always having an excuse why something isn't done or done on time;
(4) Workers accepting assignments they don't have any intentions of completing;
(5) Workers obsessed with what other workers are and have and how they are treated;
(6) Workers spreading disinformation or holding back critical information to complete the job.
Eventually, the economic walls of the company come crashing in requiring it to resort to downsizing; moving to a cheaper place of operation, or totally imploding by filing for bankrutcy protection.
Social termites exist in virtually every operation, but when they are ignored and allowed to run rampant, the company will inevitably go into distress at some point, and no longer be competitive.
Too many workers are into comfort not contribution, retiring on the job, reacting to circumstances not anticipating them, searching for excellence not creating it, seeing themselves as part of the solution not part of the problem, behaving as renters not owners, bringing their bodies to work not their minds, behaving as counterdependent children not interdependent adults.
Far too frequently workers fall into a job or career, they don't plan for one.
They pursue a line of work because it pays the most, has the best benefits, is considered prestigious having little idea what they love to do, or why.
They play the blame game. To their mind, the reason they are miserable and not making satisfactory progress is because of the work, the boss, or the company. Wrong!
Workers make their own misery. A clerk's job can only pay so much. An engineer's job pays a lot better. But that means hitting the books when you are young, and sacrificing along the way to receive a quality education. No excuses. Anyone can improve their skill level, anyone! That's cultural capital! It is the only ticket.
It is a simple formula:
The more training you have and the higher your skill level the better your chances are for job security. The higher your skill level is in critical jobs the higher your pay and the more secure your future.
All jobs are limited by what the industry can afford to pay. If you need higher pay, then you need to be better qualified in high risk jobs because the highest pay is always in the highest risks categories, such as stockbrokers, salesmen, actors, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.
Far too many workers have bought into the idea that the way to get ahead is to please others not to please themselves. They fail to see the limits to opportunity but stubbornly push it beyond reality, and invariably experience disenchantment for the effort.
Work, so generated, becomes a contest of will rather than an expression of love. It becomes the dance of a whirling dervish.
In the midst of this social maelstrom, "scientific performance indices" are created to deal with incipient cultural disaster. Many of them have worn thin, but are still around:
1. Empowerment
2. Teamwork,
3. Seeing the company as family,
4. Company pride,
5. Professionalism,
6. Reengineering,
7. Just-in-time production,
8. Management by objectives,
9. Total employee involvement,
10. Participative management,
11. Total quality management,
12. Open-door policy,
13. Pay for performance,
14. Performance appraisal,
15. Professional pride,
16. Assessment centers,
17. Profiling for performance,
18. Personality inventory,
19. Value assessment, and so on.
Admittedly, they sound nice and are cosmetically attractive, but they are designed "for" workers but not "about" workers.
They measure workers as "things," which clearly are meant to produce "profits." This suggests profits are more important than people. It is the main reason they have not worked. Workers are not stupid.
A rule-of-thumb:
A healthy focus on people (process factor) and the profits will follow (product factor).
Everyone seems to be looking for the magic word, magic test, and magic bullet to turn things around. Notice it is always a thing that is sought not something "by" the workers but "for" the workers!
Yet, without workers, there are no products, no profits, no company, and workers have the answers. They have always had the answers.
The problem is that you have to ask workers the right questions to glean these answers. It is not an automatic proposition, where the company says, "Workers, what do you think?" Such questions are met always with silence.
Stoichiometry in chemistry teaches us that in order for a reaction to go to completion it must have the correct mix of mole fractions (workers) with the proper catalyst (worker involvement) to realize the results desired (meet the needs of the company and workers alike).
This represents a balanced equation.
Life is all about chemistry, and chemistry is all about life.
To ensure you never get fired there must be a place to work. You must own what you do; be a student of the job; a learner not a knower; a listener not a teller; a doer not a complainer; a thinker not an imitator.
No company on the face of the earth can any longer support a 40-year career in which the worker is a student of the job for 4-years and a coaster 36.
This does not mean you should point fingers at others who fall short of the mark. You should help them get better. You don't dodge problems. You embrace them. You appreciate your job. If you don't appreciate it, you should leave!
You do your best, pat yourself on the back, don't look for recognition or appreciation elsewhere. You are the total deal.
You accept peaks and valleys, good and bad days, and take surprises in stride.
You don't expect reward without risk, gain without pain, accomplishment without help.
You buy a ticket to adulthood and embrace your natural resistance to pain, self-doubt, confusion, and all the other idiosyncrasies that make you, you.
You become a leader by pushing the driver out of your chair, taking over the controls, and then driving yourself to your destiny. It will be a joyous ride because you are in charge.
To summarize:
1) Treat yourself as an employer not an employee. Think how to grow the business. It is your investment in cultural capital.
2) Don't manage up! Manage your boss by educating the boss on the tools, training and opportunities you need to do a good job. Be persistent and don't accept any excuses for not being trained in new skills. Nothing stays the same especially work.
3) Remember everyone has feelings and needs. That includes bosses. Tread lightly on others, as you would have them tread lightly on you.
4) Treat coworkers as customers. Make what you do user friendly to everyone.
5) Be more concerned about being useful than fearing being used. The reason you have a job is that you are value added to what is being done. Quit complaining!
6) Don't get buried in gender or ethnic politics. Losers use this to distract. Don't confuse role demands (the job) with self-demands (personal concerns). If the job is making you sick, leave! There is a near perfect job for all of us if we have the honesty to know ourselves as well as others do.
7) When you have a complaint, don't advertise it. Direct it to the source politely and in a timely fashion with emphasis on politely. Don't let anger fester. It will if you don't address the cause of your misery promptly. Manage your conflict. Conflict is the natural glue that holds work and workers together. You don't have to like everybody, but you do need to respect and give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
8) Say what you will do. Do what you say. Trust is built on doing, not promising to
do. A dependable, trustworthy, and resourceful person is three-people-in-one.
9) Do what you love, love what you do. There is no job, no amount of money worth existing in misery. Work is love made visible. When it isn't, it destroys, as hate is a disease of the soul. It weakens the body and poisons the mind against being effective.
10) Be part of the problem. If you foul up, admit it. If someone else fouls up, help get him or her back on track. If the company falls on bad times, thank it for the good times, and help it get back on its feet.
11) Take work seriously not yourself. Have a sense of humor about the flawed person you are. Humor gives balance and perspective, and others will love you for it.
12) Make others better for your being there. Share knowledge, good will and cheer with others. Bring out their best and you'll feel better about yourself.
13) Be a student of whatever you do, a learner in quest of all that you could be.
14) Be a performer not a personality, a doer not a pleaser, a problem solver not a pyramid climber, make a difference; don't worry about making an impression. Let your work speak for itself.
15) Don't hesitate to share critical information essential to a project. If you feel you have been taken advantage of or passed over for promotion, fight for it, but don't punish your colleagues or the company for your angst.
16) Don't misuse or misappropriate company property be it a single postage stamp or an expensive tool. You are stealing from yourself.
17) Be ever on guard that the six silent killers don't bite you in the ass!
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See the books listed in this article, and similar essays on Dr. Fisher's blog and website (www.fisherofideas.com.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
GEORGE WASHINGTON AND HIS SPECIAL BRAND OF AMERICAN LEADERSHIP
GEORGE WASHINGTON AND HIS SPECIAL BRAND OF AMERICAN LEADERSHIP
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 9, 2008
"His words were smoother than oil and yet be they very swords."
The Book of Common Prayer
"Through all the doubt and darkness, the danger and long tempest of war, I think it was only the American leader's (George Washington) indomitable soul that remained entirely constant."
English novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray ((1811 - 1863)
"I hope that calm counsel and constructive leadership will provide the steadying influence and the time necessary for the coming of new and more practical forms of representative government throughout the world wherein privilege will occupy a lesser place and welfare a greater."
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), message to Congress, January 4, 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression.
I BACKGROUND
Only a week ago I was in New York City enjoying its total ambiance with Beautiful Betty, my wife, when I was struck with a dominant presence that kept reminding me of this city's history, and its relationship with America's first president, George Washington. There is a bridge here named for him, parks and streets and circles, as well as buildings and monuments celebrating his connection to the isle of Manhattan.
There are literally hundreds of books written on Washington, and sometimes I think I've read most of them, which clearly cannot be the case. My interest in our first president is how he became the leader that he became. I would like to share some of my thoughts on this subject with you now and the possible lessons learned from his leadership.
II CHARACTER
George Washington was born of an affluent family, the first son of his father's second wife, Mary Ball Washington. She doted on her son as he doted on his half brother, Lawrence, who had military adventures and shared them with his brother.
Little is known about Washington's formal education, but it is agreed that it was meager. He showed a facility for arithmetic early on, and was a surveyor when he was 15, no longer in school.
Following his brother's footsteps, he rose to a major in the Virginia militia, training recruits in military discipline and weaponry. He was not yet 21.
His brother died of tuberculosis at 34, and Washington inherited part of his estate. Later, he inherited much of his father's estate. A young man, independently wealthy, he was no slave to baser appetites.
He was blessed by circumstances but circumspect about revealing his ambitions. Already, he understood the less he used his power the greater his influence; and the less he revealed his ambitions the less threatening he would be and the more likely they would be achieved.
He participated in the French and Indian Wars and had his first military victory at Fort Necessity when he surprised a small body of French troops. The French avenged this defeat on July 3, 1754. The twenty-two-year-old Washington reported dejectedly, "I went out and was soundly defeated."
LESSON: Washington was a learner, not a knower. He assessed all his activities without camouflage or rancor. He made it his business to determine the building blocks to character that would serve him for the long haul. He was a religious man in his commitment to excellence.
III DISCIPLINE
From his earliest childhood, he admired his father's discipline and his half-brothers use of self-discipline to promote his growth and development. He kept ledgers of what he did right and what he did wrong, and how he might rectify his errors. His ambition was not only for political and military prominence, but also for social distinction.
He practiced before a mirror with how he used his hands and body to express himself, and then studied the guide to correct manners and conduct in society.
He knew he was taller and better proportion than most men of his day at six feet two inches tall and 215 pounds, and so he used this as a conduit to satisfy his ambitions, feigning modesty to the contrary so as not to reveal his motivation.
Somewhat critical of his voice and command of English, he studied the language and practiced his elocution as if his life depended on it.
Early on, he concluded he was not a remarkable thinker, but felt satisfaction in the way men responded to him as commander. He analyzed this as if he were an independent source separate from himself, and concluded he had a capacity to take success and failure in stride without hubris or complaint.
This resilience was a measure of demonstrative courage and morale. It became his boilerplate.
LESSON: He was the quintessential didactic all his life. He kept track of his progress as if it were a report card with him the teacher and student recording the grades. His reserve, which was so characteristic of him, was something he coached into being. It supported his ramrod character.
IV USES OF SYMBOLISM
From his look, stance, how he carried himself and the manner of his walk, people said, "That fellow will go far." He was known for his manner and dress, but most importantly for his presence.
One of his initial goals was to become the best horseman in the colonies. He didn't simply ride a horse; he rode it with authority and command. Already at twenty, his horsemanship was noted as a surveyor. This became part of his mystique when later he was in command of troops.
Already as a young man, he demonstrated the persona of command, and a person that stood apart. A notable peccadillo was his aversion to be touch. Touching indicated familiarity, which was antithetical to his personality.
In the late 1770s, when the Continental Congress had formed, and it was on the verge of declaring its independence from Great Britain, an army had to be created and a commander-in-chief chosen.
John Hancock, then president of the Continental Congress, campaigned for the position; Washington did not. Hancock thought surely he would be chosen for such a command. John Adams thought differently. He designated that role for George Washington instead. He did this with a carefully presented dossier of Washington's achievements, which won approval.
Washington attended these Continental Congress meetings in the full regalia of the uniform of a general of the Virginia militia.
He accepted the position of Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army with modesty and humility, and wrote his wife, Martha, that he did everything possible to avoid this travail when, clearly, he had been quietly and symbolically campaigning for the command.
LESSON: Great ambition is a product of character and discipline, but great ambition that is palpable and brooding neutralizes its effective. Symbolism is the single most powerful weapon of the ambitious. It is expressed in a language beyond words or bellicose but in symbolic interaction. This metaphor breeds allegiance and enthusiasm, which is distilled into passionate followership.
V AS A LISTENER
Washington was aware as a child that he was surrounded by people with casual grace and gymnastic intellect, who could discuss and argue critical questions of the day beyond the purview of his limited education and comprehension. He found it natural to be a listener than a talker. It was equally natural to ask polite questions to inspire learning. This would spur the conversation on, and people would say how bright and affable Washington was, when he had hardly said a word. Making people feel wise is the most powerful kind of flattery.
Listening was characteristic of Washington as a boy, effectively using it throughout his social, military and political career. He would gauge the quality of what he heard, and process it to his benefit.
John Adams appreciated Washington, in part, because he was a good listener. Adams was a thinker who loved to talk; loved to command the attention of an audience, but hated to listen. Thomas Jefferson loved to hear his own voice, too, and was never threatened by Washington, but was by Adams. They were both cut from the same cloth.
LESSON: There is no learning when you are talking expressing what you already know. You learn by reading, doing, and listening. Listening is the hardest work of all. It is why most of us are poor listeners. Washington decided listening would be an important contributor to his didactic progress. Listening is the hallmark of good leadership
VI GRACE UNDER PRESSURE
The courageous stance of the colonial militia at Breed's Hill has come to be known as the "battle of Bunker hill." The Americans ran out of ammunition but lost only 200 men out of 1,000 whereas the British lost 1,000 out of a force of 2,000. This heightened colonial resistance and morale. It also relieved general Thomas Gage of his command for general John Howe.
General Howe then retook Boston, and had victory after victory the rest of 1775 and through most of 1776. It was the Continental Armies darkest hour.
In August 1776, Washington was unable to hold New York against General Howe, then losing Long Island, Harlem Heights, and White Plains.
Howe was set to capture Washington's total army, and thus quash the rebellion, but an impenetrable Manhattan fog rolled in from the harbor to completely cover the Continental Armies retreat.
Morale couldn't be lower, the army had inadequate food, clothing, and ammunition. This produced rumbling all the way to Philadelphia for Washington to step down.
In the midst of this, the Continental's general Charles Lee, who wanted Washington's job, relished his many defeats, while failing to send his troops when Washington requested reinforcements.
Lee was in constant conversation with his coconspirators including colonel Joseph Reed.
Accidentally, Washington opened a letter from Lee to Reed, which included reference to Washington's crumbling command and "it was time for a change in leadership."
Washington penned a note to it, "I opened this by accident. I thought it was office business," and sent it on to Lee.
This ended the intrigue. Lee was later captured by the British and imprisoned in England. Colonel Reed remained loyal to Washington during the rest of the war. He was never sanctioned or rebuked.
LESSON: Picture the darkest of times with little or no evidence of resolving the difficulty. Imagine accidentally uncovering a plot to dislodge you from command, and you have an appreciation of Washington's situation.
He had little difficulty separating self-demands (his fragile ego) from role-demands (the job at hand), or his "ideal self" (how he ought to be) from his "real self" (how he actually was).
When you have such balance, such extraordinary equilibrium, you cannot help but see the situation clearly, which Washington did.
He didn't become paranoid; didn't go off halfcocked; knew he had to maintain the rectitude symbolically consistent with his character and office; knew he needed every man.
He willed his men on by dressing every day resplendently in his uniform with all its campaign ribbons and with the care of a victorious general.
Washington's intuitive sense spoke volumes: never is one so much at the top of his game than at the moment of supreme distress.
VII THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
New York City and New York State were in the hands of the enemy. 1776 was the Continental Army's darkest hour. Washington knew Howe would be launching a major campaign in 1777 to control the Hudson and end the war.
It is December 1776, and a terrible dismal 1776 shows no prospects for a better 1777. Howe has stationed troops along the Hudson River at strategic points but has batten down for a spring offensive.
It is one of the worst winters in memory, and the temperature is consistently in the teens to low thirties.
Washington assesses his progress and setbacks and invites his generals and other officers to join him in this assessment.
He listens and sees a pattern: the Continental Army has always done what the British expect. Now, Hessians or German mercenaries, hired by the British, are doing much of the fighting and they have proven to be brutal adversaries.
Washington decides to cross the Delaware River at Trenton, New Jersey on the night of December 24, 1776 and to arrive before dawn.
He is looking for a surprise attack thinking the Hessians would have been celebrating Christmas Eve.
But before they embark, he has his officers read Thomas Paine's "The American Crisis" to their men. This is what the pamphlet says in part:
"These are the times that try men's souls. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value . . .Panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before."
It was written from Paine's talented pen, but spoke to the soul of Washington.
Washington launches the boats at 11 p.m. and finds the river badly frozen making it nearly impossible to move horses and canons across. Instead of arriving in the predawn, they cross the river by 4 a.m., and don't arrive at Valley Forge until 8 a.m., with little chance of surprise.
Washington considers abandoning the campaign and returning to the other side of the river. He counsels with his officers, and they agree to go forward with Paine's words echoing in their minds:
"It is not necessary to win the war on the battlefield; he must not lose it there."
The Hessians are surprised, sleeping off their partying Christmas Eve. It is a stunning victory with over 1,000 Hessians prisoners captured and the fort's commander Colonel Henry Knox killed. The fighting was over in less than an hour.
A Hessian colonel failed to arrive with the reinforcement promised. He decided instead to visit a young widow in Mount Holly, New Jersey, 20 miles away. The lady that delayed the Hessian colonel is reputed to have been Betsy Ross, designer of the American flag.
LESSON: This was consistent with Edward de Bono's now famous "lateral thinking," or thinking outside the box. Washington decided that speed and stealth, and striking the enemy where it is weak and hitting it hard there would have to be their strategy.
His other generals would follow his lead, and no one more successful than general Benedict Arnold, more about him shortly.
VIII SALESMANSHIP
The Continental Army has shrunken to only 5,000 men with the British more than 30,000 strong. It is December 31, 1976, and most of the fight has been taken out of the men despite this latest victory. Most of Washington's troops have completed their enlistment obligation, and are ready to return to their homes.
On this day, he assembles his troops, and addresses them candidly. He commends them for their loyal and courageous service. And then says,
"Your country is at stake. We know not how to spare you. If you stay, each man will be given a $10 bonus."
This was more than a month's pay, and money that the Continental Congress did not have to give. It sounds as if a paltry sum, but more than half of his men stayed, and as the word spread of the victory at Valley Forge, new recruits flooded in.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin was attempting to sell Louise XVI on entering the war in support of America. This was the court of Marie Antoinette, who like the king, would lose her head during the French Revolution of 1789, during the Reign of Terror.
LESSON: The fundamental nature of selling is that you sell the sizzle not the steak. The buyer translates the sizzle into the steak-of-his-mind.
Washington appealed to the patriotic spirit of his men who were walking with rags on their feet. He sold the sizzle of the steak with the promise of a financial bonus.
All they needed was a little sizzle to support their fragile wings of conviction, and that was the promise of money.
Franklin's problem in France was more challenging. He had to make the sizzle representative of victory, not only of the battle, but also of the war. He played on the French's hatred of everything British. This hatred was part of the sizzle, but it needed to be seasoned with a suitable victory. That would come with the Battle of Saratoga.
IX MANNERS, MORALS & VANITY
Imagine the British army the most powerful army in the world, and the British navy ruler of the seven seas, and then imagine an army of 12, 13, 14, and 15 year-old-boys, and old men, and you have the Continental Army for the most part.
Americans were ill trained, if trained at all, undisciplined, unsophisticated, poorly educated, and primarily farmers with little interest in city life or people of power.
These citizen soldiers don't like rules and regulations. They find Washington a hard taskmaster, but fair, consistent and unwavering. It rallies them.
Now consider general John Burgoyne. He loves the good life and travels with an ample supply of his favorites foods and liquors, in fact, with 30 carts of both. He likes to gamble and is known as "Gentleman Johnny." He also has a reputation as a playwright.
The Saratoga Campaign of October 1777 was meant to end the rebellion instead it turned the rebellion into an American Revolution that would last another five years.
Burgoyne's 8,000 troops were to move down the Hudson River to join Howe's 13,000 troops moving up the Hudson to take control of the Hudson River at Saratoga, and thus cut the Continental Army in half and take control of all its supply lanes.
It didn't happen.
Burgoyne failed to capture the fort because Howe didn't show up.
Howe was fixated on recapturing Philadelphia. He succeeded with his 13,000 men on 260 ships, but it was a victory that may have cost the British the war.
Word of Burgoyne's defeat was what Franklin needed to persuade the French to declare war on Great Britain and join the Americans in its fight for independence, which France did.
LESSON: Leaders are human, and perhaps even more human than most people. Therefore, it is likely that they have gigantic talents and equally gigantic shortcomings.
We tend to applaud their strengths or what they do well, and forgive their weaknesses, or what they do poorly.
We make them more than human so that we can treat them as less than human if they fail to perform as gods and only as men.
Generals Burgoyne and Howe were very capable generals but flawed human beings.
Burgoyne was a hedonist and Howe was an obsessive compulsive.
Washington was neither. Nor was he as brilliant a general as Burgoyne or as great a strategist as Howe. Equally true, he wasn't weighed down with their baggage.
X FATE
General William Howe could chalk it up to fate that the fog saved the Continental Army when it successfully retreated from New York under siege.
It may have been fate as well when officer Patrick Ferguson of the British army had Washington on horseback in his sights at Brandywine Creek and did not shoot. It was 18th century protocol not to kill the commanding officer on the battlefield as he roamed up and down his troop lines.
Then was it fate that general Benedict Arnold, the great strategist and bold warrior on the battlefield at Saratoga, should see the credit for his victory go to general Horatio Gates?
Arnold fought Indian style, putting snipers in trees and in blinds, causing the British army to constantly retreat and regroup.
It marked the most significant victory of the Continental Army. More than 6,000 British troops were captured and sent home.
But the celebrity went to general Horatio Gates, who was made senior officer of the combined Gates-Arnold command although he was an ineffective field commander.
Was it fate, then, when Benedict Arnold had the British general Simon Fraser in his sights and killed him with three shots disregarding 18th century protocol, which cemented the Saratoga victory?
Arnold was then shot but in the leg. When asked where he was hit, Arnold said, "It's my leg I wish it was my heart."
It was a prophetic reply. He would have been the hero of that battle and the Revolutionary War, but instead lived, and eventually became a traitor joining the British. To this day we call someone who has betrayed a trust, "a Benedict Arnold."
LESSON: The fickle finger of fate is not an honest or sympathetic Indian.
Any of us can look at moments in our life that pure luck or circumstance changed our plight and not necessarily because of our pluck.
Read any history of a prominent member of society and were it not for this or that fickle finger of fate he or she might never have made the cut to notice.
Fate touches all our lives, but we give it other names such as luck, bad fortune, karma, or simply s___ happens.
Washington felt from his earliest recollections that the hand of Providence guided him. It was something he believed in so completely that at his darkest hours came his greatest calm. He wanted from the beginning to make his mark and to be remembered as if an actor on a stage reading lines Providence provided.
XI Summary
When you think of leaders and leadership, wonder how they stack up in terms of character and discipline, as a listener, grace under pressure, thinking outside the box, salesmanship, manners, morals & vanity, and fate. Our first president used them all and well. My wonder is why they have fallen into disrepute. What do you think?
________
See John Buchanan's "The Road To Valley Forge: How Washington Built the Army that Won the Revolution" (John Wiley & Sons 2004), or any other of hundreds of books on the subject. This is an overview from my perspective and reading.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 9, 2008
"His words were smoother than oil and yet be they very swords."
The Book of Common Prayer
"Through all the doubt and darkness, the danger and long tempest of war, I think it was only the American leader's (George Washington) indomitable soul that remained entirely constant."
English novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray ((1811 - 1863)
"I hope that calm counsel and constructive leadership will provide the steadying influence and the time necessary for the coming of new and more practical forms of representative government throughout the world wherein privilege will occupy a lesser place and welfare a greater."
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), message to Congress, January 4, 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression.
I BACKGROUND
Only a week ago I was in New York City enjoying its total ambiance with Beautiful Betty, my wife, when I was struck with a dominant presence that kept reminding me of this city's history, and its relationship with America's first president, George Washington. There is a bridge here named for him, parks and streets and circles, as well as buildings and monuments celebrating his connection to the isle of Manhattan.
There are literally hundreds of books written on Washington, and sometimes I think I've read most of them, which clearly cannot be the case. My interest in our first president is how he became the leader that he became. I would like to share some of my thoughts on this subject with you now and the possible lessons learned from his leadership.
II CHARACTER
George Washington was born of an affluent family, the first son of his father's second wife, Mary Ball Washington. She doted on her son as he doted on his half brother, Lawrence, who had military adventures and shared them with his brother.
Little is known about Washington's formal education, but it is agreed that it was meager. He showed a facility for arithmetic early on, and was a surveyor when he was 15, no longer in school.
Following his brother's footsteps, he rose to a major in the Virginia militia, training recruits in military discipline and weaponry. He was not yet 21.
His brother died of tuberculosis at 34, and Washington inherited part of his estate. Later, he inherited much of his father's estate. A young man, independently wealthy, he was no slave to baser appetites.
He was blessed by circumstances but circumspect about revealing his ambitions. Already, he understood the less he used his power the greater his influence; and the less he revealed his ambitions the less threatening he would be and the more likely they would be achieved.
He participated in the French and Indian Wars and had his first military victory at Fort Necessity when he surprised a small body of French troops. The French avenged this defeat on July 3, 1754. The twenty-two-year-old Washington reported dejectedly, "I went out and was soundly defeated."
LESSON: Washington was a learner, not a knower. He assessed all his activities without camouflage or rancor. He made it his business to determine the building blocks to character that would serve him for the long haul. He was a religious man in his commitment to excellence.
III DISCIPLINE
From his earliest childhood, he admired his father's discipline and his half-brothers use of self-discipline to promote his growth and development. He kept ledgers of what he did right and what he did wrong, and how he might rectify his errors. His ambition was not only for political and military prominence, but also for social distinction.
He practiced before a mirror with how he used his hands and body to express himself, and then studied the guide to correct manners and conduct in society.
He knew he was taller and better proportion than most men of his day at six feet two inches tall and 215 pounds, and so he used this as a conduit to satisfy his ambitions, feigning modesty to the contrary so as not to reveal his motivation.
Somewhat critical of his voice and command of English, he studied the language and practiced his elocution as if his life depended on it.
Early on, he concluded he was not a remarkable thinker, but felt satisfaction in the way men responded to him as commander. He analyzed this as if he were an independent source separate from himself, and concluded he had a capacity to take success and failure in stride without hubris or complaint.
This resilience was a measure of demonstrative courage and morale. It became his boilerplate.
LESSON: He was the quintessential didactic all his life. He kept track of his progress as if it were a report card with him the teacher and student recording the grades. His reserve, which was so characteristic of him, was something he coached into being. It supported his ramrod character.
IV USES OF SYMBOLISM
From his look, stance, how he carried himself and the manner of his walk, people said, "That fellow will go far." He was known for his manner and dress, but most importantly for his presence.
One of his initial goals was to become the best horseman in the colonies. He didn't simply ride a horse; he rode it with authority and command. Already at twenty, his horsemanship was noted as a surveyor. This became part of his mystique when later he was in command of troops.
Already as a young man, he demonstrated the persona of command, and a person that stood apart. A notable peccadillo was his aversion to be touch. Touching indicated familiarity, which was antithetical to his personality.
In the late 1770s, when the Continental Congress had formed, and it was on the verge of declaring its independence from Great Britain, an army had to be created and a commander-in-chief chosen.
John Hancock, then president of the Continental Congress, campaigned for the position; Washington did not. Hancock thought surely he would be chosen for such a command. John Adams thought differently. He designated that role for George Washington instead. He did this with a carefully presented dossier of Washington's achievements, which won approval.
Washington attended these Continental Congress meetings in the full regalia of the uniform of a general of the Virginia militia.
He accepted the position of Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army with modesty and humility, and wrote his wife, Martha, that he did everything possible to avoid this travail when, clearly, he had been quietly and symbolically campaigning for the command.
LESSON: Great ambition is a product of character and discipline, but great ambition that is palpable and brooding neutralizes its effective. Symbolism is the single most powerful weapon of the ambitious. It is expressed in a language beyond words or bellicose but in symbolic interaction. This metaphor breeds allegiance and enthusiasm, which is distilled into passionate followership.
V AS A LISTENER
Washington was aware as a child that he was surrounded by people with casual grace and gymnastic intellect, who could discuss and argue critical questions of the day beyond the purview of his limited education and comprehension. He found it natural to be a listener than a talker. It was equally natural to ask polite questions to inspire learning. This would spur the conversation on, and people would say how bright and affable Washington was, when he had hardly said a word. Making people feel wise is the most powerful kind of flattery.
Listening was characteristic of Washington as a boy, effectively using it throughout his social, military and political career. He would gauge the quality of what he heard, and process it to his benefit.
John Adams appreciated Washington, in part, because he was a good listener. Adams was a thinker who loved to talk; loved to command the attention of an audience, but hated to listen. Thomas Jefferson loved to hear his own voice, too, and was never threatened by Washington, but was by Adams. They were both cut from the same cloth.
LESSON: There is no learning when you are talking expressing what you already know. You learn by reading, doing, and listening. Listening is the hardest work of all. It is why most of us are poor listeners. Washington decided listening would be an important contributor to his didactic progress. Listening is the hallmark of good leadership
VI GRACE UNDER PRESSURE
The courageous stance of the colonial militia at Breed's Hill has come to be known as the "battle of Bunker hill." The Americans ran out of ammunition but lost only 200 men out of 1,000 whereas the British lost 1,000 out of a force of 2,000. This heightened colonial resistance and morale. It also relieved general Thomas Gage of his command for general John Howe.
General Howe then retook Boston, and had victory after victory the rest of 1775 and through most of 1776. It was the Continental Armies darkest hour.
In August 1776, Washington was unable to hold New York against General Howe, then losing Long Island, Harlem Heights, and White Plains.
Howe was set to capture Washington's total army, and thus quash the rebellion, but an impenetrable Manhattan fog rolled in from the harbor to completely cover the Continental Armies retreat.
Morale couldn't be lower, the army had inadequate food, clothing, and ammunition. This produced rumbling all the way to Philadelphia for Washington to step down.
In the midst of this, the Continental's general Charles Lee, who wanted Washington's job, relished his many defeats, while failing to send his troops when Washington requested reinforcements.
Lee was in constant conversation with his coconspirators including colonel Joseph Reed.
Accidentally, Washington opened a letter from Lee to Reed, which included reference to Washington's crumbling command and "it was time for a change in leadership."
Washington penned a note to it, "I opened this by accident. I thought it was office business," and sent it on to Lee.
This ended the intrigue. Lee was later captured by the British and imprisoned in England. Colonel Reed remained loyal to Washington during the rest of the war. He was never sanctioned or rebuked.
LESSON: Picture the darkest of times with little or no evidence of resolving the difficulty. Imagine accidentally uncovering a plot to dislodge you from command, and you have an appreciation of Washington's situation.
He had little difficulty separating self-demands (his fragile ego) from role-demands (the job at hand), or his "ideal self" (how he ought to be) from his "real self" (how he actually was).
When you have such balance, such extraordinary equilibrium, you cannot help but see the situation clearly, which Washington did.
He didn't become paranoid; didn't go off halfcocked; knew he had to maintain the rectitude symbolically consistent with his character and office; knew he needed every man.
He willed his men on by dressing every day resplendently in his uniform with all its campaign ribbons and with the care of a victorious general.
Washington's intuitive sense spoke volumes: never is one so much at the top of his game than at the moment of supreme distress.
VII THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
New York City and New York State were in the hands of the enemy. 1776 was the Continental Army's darkest hour. Washington knew Howe would be launching a major campaign in 1777 to control the Hudson and end the war.
It is December 1776, and a terrible dismal 1776 shows no prospects for a better 1777. Howe has stationed troops along the Hudson River at strategic points but has batten down for a spring offensive.
It is one of the worst winters in memory, and the temperature is consistently in the teens to low thirties.
Washington assesses his progress and setbacks and invites his generals and other officers to join him in this assessment.
He listens and sees a pattern: the Continental Army has always done what the British expect. Now, Hessians or German mercenaries, hired by the British, are doing much of the fighting and they have proven to be brutal adversaries.
Washington decides to cross the Delaware River at Trenton, New Jersey on the night of December 24, 1776 and to arrive before dawn.
He is looking for a surprise attack thinking the Hessians would have been celebrating Christmas Eve.
But before they embark, he has his officers read Thomas Paine's "The American Crisis" to their men. This is what the pamphlet says in part:
"These are the times that try men's souls. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value . . .Panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before."
It was written from Paine's talented pen, but spoke to the soul of Washington.
Washington launches the boats at 11 p.m. and finds the river badly frozen making it nearly impossible to move horses and canons across. Instead of arriving in the predawn, they cross the river by 4 a.m., and don't arrive at Valley Forge until 8 a.m., with little chance of surprise.
Washington considers abandoning the campaign and returning to the other side of the river. He counsels with his officers, and they agree to go forward with Paine's words echoing in their minds:
"It is not necessary to win the war on the battlefield; he must not lose it there."
The Hessians are surprised, sleeping off their partying Christmas Eve. It is a stunning victory with over 1,000 Hessians prisoners captured and the fort's commander Colonel Henry Knox killed. The fighting was over in less than an hour.
A Hessian colonel failed to arrive with the reinforcement promised. He decided instead to visit a young widow in Mount Holly, New Jersey, 20 miles away. The lady that delayed the Hessian colonel is reputed to have been Betsy Ross, designer of the American flag.
LESSON: This was consistent with Edward de Bono's now famous "lateral thinking," or thinking outside the box. Washington decided that speed and stealth, and striking the enemy where it is weak and hitting it hard there would have to be their strategy.
His other generals would follow his lead, and no one more successful than general Benedict Arnold, more about him shortly.
VIII SALESMANSHIP
The Continental Army has shrunken to only 5,000 men with the British more than 30,000 strong. It is December 31, 1976, and most of the fight has been taken out of the men despite this latest victory. Most of Washington's troops have completed their enlistment obligation, and are ready to return to their homes.
On this day, he assembles his troops, and addresses them candidly. He commends them for their loyal and courageous service. And then says,
"Your country is at stake. We know not how to spare you. If you stay, each man will be given a $10 bonus."
This was more than a month's pay, and money that the Continental Congress did not have to give. It sounds as if a paltry sum, but more than half of his men stayed, and as the word spread of the victory at Valley Forge, new recruits flooded in.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin was attempting to sell Louise XVI on entering the war in support of America. This was the court of Marie Antoinette, who like the king, would lose her head during the French Revolution of 1789, during the Reign of Terror.
LESSON: The fundamental nature of selling is that you sell the sizzle not the steak. The buyer translates the sizzle into the steak-of-his-mind.
Washington appealed to the patriotic spirit of his men who were walking with rags on their feet. He sold the sizzle of the steak with the promise of a financial bonus.
All they needed was a little sizzle to support their fragile wings of conviction, and that was the promise of money.
Franklin's problem in France was more challenging. He had to make the sizzle representative of victory, not only of the battle, but also of the war. He played on the French's hatred of everything British. This hatred was part of the sizzle, but it needed to be seasoned with a suitable victory. That would come with the Battle of Saratoga.
IX MANNERS, MORALS & VANITY
Imagine the British army the most powerful army in the world, and the British navy ruler of the seven seas, and then imagine an army of 12, 13, 14, and 15 year-old-boys, and old men, and you have the Continental Army for the most part.
Americans were ill trained, if trained at all, undisciplined, unsophisticated, poorly educated, and primarily farmers with little interest in city life or people of power.
These citizen soldiers don't like rules and regulations. They find Washington a hard taskmaster, but fair, consistent and unwavering. It rallies them.
Now consider general John Burgoyne. He loves the good life and travels with an ample supply of his favorites foods and liquors, in fact, with 30 carts of both. He likes to gamble and is known as "Gentleman Johnny." He also has a reputation as a playwright.
The Saratoga Campaign of October 1777 was meant to end the rebellion instead it turned the rebellion into an American Revolution that would last another five years.
Burgoyne's 8,000 troops were to move down the Hudson River to join Howe's 13,000 troops moving up the Hudson to take control of the Hudson River at Saratoga, and thus cut the Continental Army in half and take control of all its supply lanes.
It didn't happen.
Burgoyne failed to capture the fort because Howe didn't show up.
Howe was fixated on recapturing Philadelphia. He succeeded with his 13,000 men on 260 ships, but it was a victory that may have cost the British the war.
Word of Burgoyne's defeat was what Franklin needed to persuade the French to declare war on Great Britain and join the Americans in its fight for independence, which France did.
LESSON: Leaders are human, and perhaps even more human than most people. Therefore, it is likely that they have gigantic talents and equally gigantic shortcomings.
We tend to applaud their strengths or what they do well, and forgive their weaknesses, or what they do poorly.
We make them more than human so that we can treat them as less than human if they fail to perform as gods and only as men.
Generals Burgoyne and Howe were very capable generals but flawed human beings.
Burgoyne was a hedonist and Howe was an obsessive compulsive.
Washington was neither. Nor was he as brilliant a general as Burgoyne or as great a strategist as Howe. Equally true, he wasn't weighed down with their baggage.
X FATE
General William Howe could chalk it up to fate that the fog saved the Continental Army when it successfully retreated from New York under siege.
It may have been fate as well when officer Patrick Ferguson of the British army had Washington on horseback in his sights at Brandywine Creek and did not shoot. It was 18th century protocol not to kill the commanding officer on the battlefield as he roamed up and down his troop lines.
Then was it fate that general Benedict Arnold, the great strategist and bold warrior on the battlefield at Saratoga, should see the credit for his victory go to general Horatio Gates?
Arnold fought Indian style, putting snipers in trees and in blinds, causing the British army to constantly retreat and regroup.
It marked the most significant victory of the Continental Army. More than 6,000 British troops were captured and sent home.
But the celebrity went to general Horatio Gates, who was made senior officer of the combined Gates-Arnold command although he was an ineffective field commander.
Was it fate, then, when Benedict Arnold had the British general Simon Fraser in his sights and killed him with three shots disregarding 18th century protocol, which cemented the Saratoga victory?
Arnold was then shot but in the leg. When asked where he was hit, Arnold said, "It's my leg I wish it was my heart."
It was a prophetic reply. He would have been the hero of that battle and the Revolutionary War, but instead lived, and eventually became a traitor joining the British. To this day we call someone who has betrayed a trust, "a Benedict Arnold."
LESSON: The fickle finger of fate is not an honest or sympathetic Indian.
Any of us can look at moments in our life that pure luck or circumstance changed our plight and not necessarily because of our pluck.
Read any history of a prominent member of society and were it not for this or that fickle finger of fate he or she might never have made the cut to notice.
Fate touches all our lives, but we give it other names such as luck, bad fortune, karma, or simply s___ happens.
Washington felt from his earliest recollections that the hand of Providence guided him. It was something he believed in so completely that at his darkest hours came his greatest calm. He wanted from the beginning to make his mark and to be remembered as if an actor on a stage reading lines Providence provided.
XI Summary
When you think of leaders and leadership, wonder how they stack up in terms of character and discipline, as a listener, grace under pressure, thinking outside the box, salesmanship, manners, morals & vanity, and fate. Our first president used them all and well. My wonder is why they have fallen into disrepute. What do you think?
________
See John Buchanan's "The Road To Valley Forge: How Washington Built the Army that Won the Revolution" (John Wiley & Sons 2004), or any other of hundreds of books on the subject. This is an overview from my perspective and reading.
Friday, March 07, 2008
AN IOWAN IN NEW YORK CITY, WHERE ALL ROADS MEET, FALL APART & COME TOGETHER!
AN IOWAN IN NEW YORK CITY,
WHERE ALL ROADS MEET, FALL APART & COME TOGETHER
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 5, 2008
“Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy,
And always blind, and often tipsy;
Sometimes for years and years together,
Bestowing honour, pudding, pence,
You can’t imagine why or whence;
Then in a moment – Presto, pass!
Your joys are withered like the grass.”
Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802 – 1839), poem titled “The Haunted Tree.”
The fickle finger of fate touches us all, even if we don’t believe in such things as fate. I was reminded of this most recently on my return to our Eternal City, the Big Apple, New York City.
I
Beautiful Betty (BB), my wife, was attending a conference of school executives for the National Association of Independent Schools. She is Business Manager of Hillel, a Jewish Day School, preschool through eighth grade, located in Tampa, Florida.
The theme of BB’s conference was “Schools of the Future: Embracing The Educational Renaissance.”
The conference had some great speakers such as Sir Ken Robinson, author of “Out of Our Minds: Learning To Be Creative”; Daniel Pink, author of “A Whole New Mind”; Roland Fryer, author of “Economics of Incentives”; and Faith Popcorn, author of “The Trend Oracle,” among other notable educators and thinkers. I would have loved to hear them speak, but I came in our Friday to stay the weekend as the conference was ending.
II
Friday night we attended the Broadway musical “Wicked” at the Gershwin Theatre, a play, which has received rave reviews and been on Broadway for sometime. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the “Lion King,” which I saw with BB in Toronto earlier in 2003 when I was there to speak at the Conference Board of Canada on the “Fisher Paradigm.”
Not being familiar with television’s “American Idol,” I found it interesting that BB thought the singing in “Wicked” resembled the screaming of contestants on that show. I thought it sounded more like screeching.
“Wicked” is the story of the Good Witch and Bad Witch as prelude to Dorothy and “The Wizard of Oz.” The story line was interesting, but the play was mediocre, in my view, but I’m certainly no expert when it comes to musicals.
III
On Saturday, we took a bus tour of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, Harlem, Little Italy, Chinatown, Soho, Central Park, Greenwich Village and several points between. We could get off the bus wherever we wanted to and visit some site, and get another bus later as tour buses would come on the half hour.
In Manhattan, we got off and took a tour of the Guggenheim Museum. Featured were the artist Cai Guo-Qiang, born in China, resident of Japan, and now a New Yorker since 1995.
The title of his exhibition was “I want to believe.” The exhibition was a little heavy for my tastes, mainly because it was so strategically provocative. I suffer from the same heavy hand.
Cai is creative and an assimilator of ancient mythology, military history, Taoist metaphysics, cosmological science, Maoist revolutionary tactics, and most demonstrative of all, pyrotechnic technology and terrorist violence.
He puts blunt images on canvas of burnt impressions of the world as he sees and has experienced it. This is shocking, disturbing, and not a pretty sight. Cai is telling us, “Welcome to the violent modern world.”
For example, suspended from the ceiling in the center of the museum are two automobiles with rods of light as arrows penetrating the vehicles from every angle, illustrating the combative clash of cultures between the East and West for this lucrative market.
If that is not disturbing enough, there are lions suspended along the passageway to the next level with hundreds of arrows penetrating their bodies. My mind thought of the nature of overkill that is unique to our postmodern society.
Everything is symbolic. Nothing is more symbolic than the work titled, “Borrowing Your Enemy’s Arrows.” It illustrates China’s dramatic new and dominant role on the world stage. Displayed is an excavated fishing boat with the hull pierced with 3,000 arrows as its support structure, and decorated with a Chinese flag that flutters at the stern from the wind of an electric fan. Imagine, if you will, only the frame of this fishing boat is covered with “Western” arrows to make it viable. This is powerful imagery to say the least.
I am neither an art critic nor a connoisseur of art, but as disturbing as these works the pyrotechnic displays were more disturbing. It reminded me that the East has never forgotten or forgiven the United States for its nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atomic bomb was dropped on those cities in 1945 to bring World War II to an end. Tens of thousands of civilians perished in that mushroom cloud
Cai uses the mushroom cloud to deftly transmute pejorative nuclear tropes into “art” and “culture.”
There are several videos along the way that you can view which comprise gunpowder-exploding events. At first, I could not comprehend the sense of these until I studied the several canvases with imprints of these explosions as montages.
Remember the Rorschach inkblot test, where you were shown inkblot patterns, and invited to interpret them in terms of images, which you thought the blots might represent. Such interpretation was meant to unlock the unconscious mind. Cai is attempting to do this with these canvases. He uses the violence of our times with atomic explosion and suicide bombing to underscore his overall strategy of art as a tool of cultural provocation. He succeeds.
Cai is a student of history and paradigm shifts. He sees violence inextricably linked to creativity with violence a transformation phenomenon. He does this by taking us back to the invention of gunpowder and a new kind of warfare, and then moving swiftly to the development of nuclear weaponry. Now he sees in the confusion and chaos the current shift away from high science to the current rash of suicide bombings. He does with visual art what I attempted to do with words in “A Look Back To See Ahead” (2007).
He understands the fragility of human nature and its penchant for oscillating paradigm shifts within the history of civilization. He uses his art to display the dialectical nature of man as a self-creator and self-destroyer in a climate of constant change oblivious to his ultimate race to self-extinction.
I told BB when I left that I did not like the show. It was too disturbing; too much; too clearly provocative of our turbulent times on our way to eternity, wrenching the mind from its complacency to its benign and terrifying nature.
IV
We waited to be picked up by our tour bus and dropped off shortly thereafter at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It had been many years since I had last visited this museum having forgotten how mammoth an undertaking it is to take it all in. We were there for more than three hours and hardly touched the surface.
This was BB’s first visit to New York City and therefore to this museum. No one enjoys art, sculpture, architecture and antique artifacts more than she does. I am less cosmopolitan in my tastes than she is. She loves everything. I am impressed with the artifacts that are thousands of years old, illustrating the genius of man over the centuries. This includes the works of artisans making jewelry out of precious stones, elaborate paintings on the surface of clay pottery, hand formed metallic arms and armor, eating and drinking utensils, but after a while it is too much. BB never tires of studying such craftsmanship. Sometimes I think she approaches the monumental patience of those that once produced them.
Man is storyteller and all art is telling a story. In the Greek and Roman Art gallery, I overheard a mother asking her daughter, no more than ten or eleven, what story a Greek vase was telling. She answered her mother promptly explaining the Greek mythology it depicted and the story it told. I was embarrassed that I didn’t pay more attention to this aspect of my education.
It isn’t only the Greeks and Romans that adored the human form, it is apparent in the Arts of Africa, Egyptian Art, and Modern Art, all different art forms and cultures, and all with an eye rising out of their respective cultures.
Now Medieval Art, which I have seen tons of in museums across Europe, idealizes the human form in almost a beatific way that makes it seem less human. It is art that tires me whereas these other expressions, which are less idyllic and more primitive, do not. I wonder if it is because these other art forms are more honest, or less iconic.
In any case, it is apparent that innovation, creativity and great craftsmanship are a natural expression of the human spirit throughout time.
It happened to me again while I was walking through this museum. I felt timeless. I felt as if I could step into Einstein’s time warp and go back to the future where the future and past collide into a common collage. People like myself produced all this, finding some way to get beyond their petty problems to touch eternity.
In the Guggenheim, you had a headset with a panel of 15 numbered commentaries that accompanied you around the gallery. This was also available at The Metropolitan, as well as guided tours, but we chose to go wandering about on our own.
My favorite gallery was Modern Art, not BB’s favorite, but she tolerates my preference. Unfortunately, it was in our final hour when fatigue was visiting us, and I was becoming increasingly aware of my shingles, which I put out of my mind to take this trip. Antibiotics and painkillers kept the shingles abated, but also sapped my strength.
That said the abstract and impressionism wing of Modern Art once again transfixed me. Each artist tells a different story. Matisse shows his joy of life in nudes dancing in a ring, playing musical instruments, or standing or lying in indolent grace. He captures the same verve with his still lives of a basket of fruit or a view of the sea through a curtain.
The gallery also displays works of O’Keefe and Dali. I sometimes thought the work of O’Keefe’s was that of Dali. O’Keefe’s depiction of skeletal horns titled “From the Faraway Nearby” had the florid flow of Dali. I had the same problem with Matisse and Gauguin. I looked for Munch, Hopper and Peter Max, but if they were there I didn't see them.
Then we were in the middle of abstract art of Picasso, Chagall, Miro, Klee, Klimt, Braque, Modigliani, and Rouault. Most of the cubism on display was created before or early in the twentieth century up to World War II. It was a period of ripeness and decay, many highs and many more lows. That is what I like about this art. It flourishes in the worst of times, moving away from sensible landscapes and impressive nude studies to color patterns on flat surfaces that speak volumes moving on to the crazy quilt of cubism, which has been called “the sum of destructions.” This art is a record of chaos and confusion, which I find calming perhaps because it seems most honest and naked.
As I was thinking this, BB asked me, “Why do you like abstract art?”
“I think for two reasons. I think in a strange way it speaks to me. That is not to say I necessarily understand it, but it speaks to me in a language beyond words, or what the camera eye sees.
“I think artists see far more than we see. The intensity of their soul gives them a vision into life as it evolves and devolves, which they translate into art.
“Take a Picasso abstract of a woman. It is like looking at a woman from several perspectives simultaneously, all of which collide into a kind of violence and incoherence that can be expressed in no other way.
“I see abstract sculptures in the same sense. There was one of a giant leaf that was designated a bird in flight. I think that was accurate.”
Then I mentioned the architecture of Manhattan buildings. “These look like giant sculptures to me, some like birds ready to rupture from the surface and take to flight, and others like Modigliani flat planes of colored squares and rectangles.”
These artists used their whole system to display what lies beyond the eyes and in the mind. They have given much. I find it interesting and restful. It is eerie but a piece of art can lose its separation from you, if that makes any sense.
V
Aside from the beauty and transcendence of New York City, you cannot escape the more pragmatic fact that it is amazingly expensive.
This is no abstraction as virtually everyone has a hand out waiting for greenbacks to grace their palms. If you come to NYC, bring buckets of cash.
It cost us $100 for the tour bus, and $5 every time we got off as a tip for the tour guide and bus driver. Then you pay to get into the art museums, and then an inflationary price for any postcards or knickknacks you acquire from the museum.
It cost $40 for the cab to the city from the airport. Our hotel was the Grand Hyatt next door to Grand Central Station, and in the heart of Manhattan, for which you pay dearly.
Our tour bus didn’t stop for us outside The Metropolitan Museum because we weren’t standing precisely where we should for being picked up. So, we waited for nearly 30 minutes in sub freezing temperatures, and decided to take a cab, which was only a few blocks away: another $12.
We were a bit cold, so we got a cup of soup, no coffee or milk or tea, just soup: $24. We went out to dinner at a nice Irish Pub where we had a nice dinner and coffee, and since neither of us drink, no booze: $100.
Then the next day, Sunday, we checked out of the hotel, paid our bill, and checked our bags for a few hours: $10. We then walked from the hotel to the United Nations Building, only to find none of the flags were up.
We then stopped in at a small Catholic Church on the way back, the Church of the Holy Family. This church was dedicated to Pope Paul VI. He was pope when I was an executive with Nalco Chemical Company. My driver in Rome, who now drove for my company, had driven for the pope. He used his influence to get my family and me into Vatican City, extremely rare for tourists. It was 1968. Unfortunately, the pope was not in residence but at his summer home.
Back in the hotel, we showed our baggage stub to another bell captain, and he took our bags to the curb: $5. A doorman opened the taxicab door for us while the cab driver put our bags in his taxi: $2. Then we were off to the airport where there was some confusion about what I paid the driver. BB thinks he slipped a $5 aside claiming I didn’t pay him, so that was $45. We ate some junk food in the airport, got on the plane, were met by our towering grandchildren and their mother, my daughter, and went to dinner, and arrived safely home, very happy, and a lot lighter in the wallet. My granddaughter, Rachel, asked if we went shopping. We didn’t. We didn’t even go to a bookstore.
VI
I would love to live in Manhattan, but that will never happen. When I was first here, it was more than forty years ago, and I was with Nalco. I would stop off here on my itineraries to South America, Europe or South Africa. People from Nalco’s regional office would treat me as if a celebrity, picking me up at the airport, making arrangements for my accommodation, and taking me to dinner, and picking up the tab. They would even out do themselves when my family accompanied me. That all changed when I retired in my mid-thirties to become a writer.
I let Nalco know I was coming to New York to promote my first book (Confident Selling 1970), and no one showed up. I called to set a luncheon date with the regional manager, and he never returned my calls. Power is a diminishing construct.
VII
New York City is a very safe city, and you feel secure going about Manhattan at any time during the day or night. Everywhere we went we saw New York’s finest, NYPD.
Manhattan is also a very clean city. Nearly every block you see men and women in attractive orange uniforms picking up trash and keeping the streets and sidewalks sparkling clean.
People are generally polite if not always. We all have good and bad days and so allowances have to be made for that whenever you encounter someone out of sorts.
Members of the tour company were stationed at all the critical stops in Manhattan. I asked one young man how long he had to stand out there in the 20 – 30 degree cold, and he said, “Nine hours.” He didn’t say it with sarcasm or resentment, but as fact.
The tour guides on the bus were courteous to a fault with one exception. We failed to put $5 in the coffer in our initial drop off, not knowing the procedure, and this Irishman (I have to admit that, unfortunately) had to say, “Look at those people! They didn’t leave a tip!” So embarrassed, I wanted to crawl under the payment if I could.
The weather in New York City during our stay was in the teens to the low forties. The night we went to the play it was supposed to snow, and we were looking forward to it not having seen snow for years. But instead of snowing it was a cold, sleeting-like rain, which we endured in our mile walk back to the hotel. Tampa was in the low 80s.
Cabs don’t like short fares so it is better to walk the short distance than constantly be turned down by cabbies.
There are black cabs and yellow cabs. We stuck with yellow cabs because they have a meter which shows what you owe as you go. The black cabs may be okay, but we heard stories, and so stuck with what we knew. Yellow cabs also have union licensed drivers.
People that hold the door for you, make up your room, carry your bags, carry you about the city, wait on you in restaurants and so on are my people. I come from their station. I have left money for maids in hotels since I was in my twenties. Every time someone serves me, I pay 20 percent or more for their service.
BB says, “You’re generous, but that’s okay.”
I answer, “No, I’m not. This is how these people make their living. Even if I’m generous, they still don’t make that great a living.” So, we let it go at that.
VIII
We took a night tour of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Harlem, Greenwich Village, Chinatown and Little Italy. The Brooklyn Bridge and the Washington Bridge were lit up, as were the cafes and restaurants along the shores of the Hudson River. Many of the skyscrapers are lit up at night as well, and appear as if majestic towers of power and purpose. Then there are the nightclubs, the theatre district, the movie theaters, and Time Square, a psychedelic montage of flashing marques of moving images, along with a colorful flow of streaming people.
The crowning jewel is New Yorkers themselves. They move so fast it is hard to believe they are doing this without running. It is why you seldom see an overweight New Yorker. Always on the move, they are like an abstract painting, a changing blur of color.
New York women seem especially beautiful as they crash out of skyscraper doors into the streets in droves as if connected to each other in a single train of movement. It is a wonder how they can move so fast without looking up or at anyone and avoid running into the flow from the opposite direction. They weave in and out with a cell phone, or a contraction strapped to their ears, text messaging without colliding, amazing!
When we went to the play, we dressed to the teeth, only to find most people in jeans, sneakers and anoraks, even older people. Since it cost a ton to see this play, you know it wasn’t because there wasn’t a different wardrobe at home.
What I especially like about New York City is that you can have green hair, black lips, and a purple beard and no one pays you special notice. There is a kind of individualism and independence that pervades New Yorkers’ consciousness. People fly by talking about finance and philosophy, art and politics, in several languages and dialects, leaving a word dangling in the wind like a participle.
The cacophony of sounds, the staccato of workmen drilling through concrete, sirens of police and ambulances, voices from the four corners of the earth, and in the midst of this, the cries of children who cry in a common language to all. You feel you are in the center of the earth where all roads meet, fall apart and come together.
Then there are joggers of all shapes and sizes, all ages, too, running as if their lives depended on it in weather not far above the teens, and you marvel at their dedication. There are cyclists, too, that weave in and out of traffic oblivious to the weather and with the apparent same goal in mind. Some of them, of course, could be working as messengers.
We learned from our tour guides that the Upper West Side has all the millionaires, and the Upper East Side has all the billionaires. The Irish tour guide pointed out the “largest cathedral in the world,” which was about the size of the kitchen at St. Peters Basilica in Rome. So I took these things with a grain of salt.
We also saw John Lennon’s Dakota Building where he lived and was killed by the gate. It was a somber moment for me because he was a favorite of mine.
IX
We never did see Ground Zero or the Statue of Liberty on this trip. In an earlier iteration, when I came out with my second book (Work Without Managers 1990), I was invited by William L. Livingston, also an author, to visit him at the Twin Towers where he was an international consultant designing nuclear power plants for South Korea.
My second time in the Twin Towers was in the late 1990s, when I was invited by Solomon Brothers of Wall Street to be considered as director of organizational development (OD) for the firm. I didn’t get the job, but I did conduct a seminar for about thirty stockbrokers, all of whom I was told later made at least $1 million in bonuses that year. Incidentally, had I gotten the job, I would have most likely been in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
X
Another time when I was in New York in the 1970s I was hired to conduct a company search for Jacque Leviant, a New York Board Member of the Stock Exchange, and an entrepreneur. I gave a seminar for his staff of stockbrokers as well on his Lexington Avenue offices, which took up two floors.
I had retired from Nalco, but he heard of me and asked if I would survey about 15 – 20 specialty chemical companies for him for possible purchase by Leviant’s firm.
My advance airfare for that jaunt was $12,000, which gives you some idea of my traveling plans. It was as if I was running for public office. One of the memorable places I visited was Green Bay, Wisconsin, home of the Green Bay Packers. It was in the middle of winter and I had to take a small play from Chicago to Green Bay because there was no easy access.
When I completed my survey, Leviant went into negotiation to purchase one company with stock, alone, and asked me if I wanted to run the start up operation. I said, “No, Mr. Leviant, I want to be a writer.” That may seem strange to those who know me realizing thirty-five years later, after publishing nine books and hundreds of articles I have failed to establish myself as a writer. I could have made enough in that one year working for Mr. Leviant that is several multiples over which I have earned as a writer.
Instead, I went back to school, and became a contract consultant with the Professional Institute of the American Management Association. That work became fodder for my Master’s thesis (A Social Psychological Study of the Police Organization: The Anatomy of a Riot, 1976). I spent nine-months in Fairfax, Virginia, the richest county in the US, where a white police officer shot and killed a young African American in a 7-11 Convenient Store in Herndon over an altercation concerning an expired driver’s license. The police officer nearly pushed the man through a cooler. In self-defense, he grabbed the police officer’s nightstick and attempted to club him over the head, but hit only his shoulder, at which the police officer unloaded his service revolver on him killing him. A riot followed, and I was called in to sort out what happened and why. I wrote my thesis on this work.
My doctorate dissertation (The Paradoxical Dilemma Between the Police and the Policed 1978) was based on work from John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York City, to an OD intervention in Fairfax, Virginia, to an OD intervention in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a police force of 350 sworn officers went on mutiny to work conducted in Richmond, Virginia to Dade County and Miami through the auspices of Biscayne University.
Joseph Wambaugh, former police officer of Los Angeles Police Department, and novelist, once said, “A community gets the police force it deserves.” I found that corroborated in this research. For example, Fairfax County Police Department had less than 5 percent of its officers living in the county, as it was too expensive. Consequently, they were policing a county in which they had little sense of ownership.
XI
The Free Press Publishing Company of New York City considered publishing my master’s thesis as a book, but one of its readers said it read too much like fiction and should be better placed in the New Yorker magazine or the New York supplement to the New York Times Sunday edition. It never happened.
One of the members of dissertation committee was a former Harvard professor currently at the University of Southern Illinois. He thought I had written the best dissertation he had ever read, and made that same comment about the flow having the consistency of fiction. It, too, has never been published.
Still, Prentice-Hall of Long Island did publish my first book (Confident Selling 1970), and gave me the courage to continue writing. In rambling on about New York City and what it has meant to this aging Iowan, it has had a permanent impermanence that is consistent with the fickle finger of fate that I have shown here has often touched me. I have been moved to write this because New Yorkers are resilient, as they have been since the dawn of our history. I find it catching.
XII
At the darkest hour things can change and New Yorkers know such times – remember the New York City “black out” in the last century – but they have always risen from the ashes to create a better tomorrow. We see this resilience in their faces since 9-11. So, revisiting the city is like a booster shot of courage.
New Yorkers can be falling apart, in foreclosure; in bankruptcy; their kids out of control or in trouble with the law; their marriages falling apart; having difficulty making ends meet; having lost their job or made redundant; having trouble living for another day; thinking why not give up the ghost and end it all; but staying the course; muddling through with a cocky strut looking at what they have built and what they are; and what they have endured to come together; and take control. They go to a play, a ballgame, a film, a neighborhood bar, or simply walk the streets and take energy from the passersby.
You see it in their faces where they show their determination but not their hand. There are millionaires and billionaires but they can never rise above being simply New Yorkers whomever or whatever they are. There is power in this. It is truly “The Haunted Tree,” and Praed’s magic poem captures this, “Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy,” indeed.
______________________
Check out Dr. Fisher’s website: www.fisherofideas.com, where you will find more than 300 essays such as this free for your enjoyment.
WHERE ALL ROADS MEET, FALL APART & COME TOGETHER
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 5, 2008
“Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy,
And always blind, and often tipsy;
Sometimes for years and years together,
Bestowing honour, pudding, pence,
You can’t imagine why or whence;
Then in a moment – Presto, pass!
Your joys are withered like the grass.”
Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802 – 1839), poem titled “The Haunted Tree.”
The fickle finger of fate touches us all, even if we don’t believe in such things as fate. I was reminded of this most recently on my return to our Eternal City, the Big Apple, New York City.
I
Beautiful Betty (BB), my wife, was attending a conference of school executives for the National Association of Independent Schools. She is Business Manager of Hillel, a Jewish Day School, preschool through eighth grade, located in Tampa, Florida.
The theme of BB’s conference was “Schools of the Future: Embracing The Educational Renaissance.”
The conference had some great speakers such as Sir Ken Robinson, author of “Out of Our Minds: Learning To Be Creative”; Daniel Pink, author of “A Whole New Mind”; Roland Fryer, author of “Economics of Incentives”; and Faith Popcorn, author of “The Trend Oracle,” among other notable educators and thinkers. I would have loved to hear them speak, but I came in our Friday to stay the weekend as the conference was ending.
II
Friday night we attended the Broadway musical “Wicked” at the Gershwin Theatre, a play, which has received rave reviews and been on Broadway for sometime. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the “Lion King,” which I saw with BB in Toronto earlier in 2003 when I was there to speak at the Conference Board of Canada on the “Fisher Paradigm.”
Not being familiar with television’s “American Idol,” I found it interesting that BB thought the singing in “Wicked” resembled the screaming of contestants on that show. I thought it sounded more like screeching.
“Wicked” is the story of the Good Witch and Bad Witch as prelude to Dorothy and “The Wizard of Oz.” The story line was interesting, but the play was mediocre, in my view, but I’m certainly no expert when it comes to musicals.
III
On Saturday, we took a bus tour of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, Harlem, Little Italy, Chinatown, Soho, Central Park, Greenwich Village and several points between. We could get off the bus wherever we wanted to and visit some site, and get another bus later as tour buses would come on the half hour.
In Manhattan, we got off and took a tour of the Guggenheim Museum. Featured were the artist Cai Guo-Qiang, born in China, resident of Japan, and now a New Yorker since 1995.
The title of his exhibition was “I want to believe.” The exhibition was a little heavy for my tastes, mainly because it was so strategically provocative. I suffer from the same heavy hand.
Cai is creative and an assimilator of ancient mythology, military history, Taoist metaphysics, cosmological science, Maoist revolutionary tactics, and most demonstrative of all, pyrotechnic technology and terrorist violence.
He puts blunt images on canvas of burnt impressions of the world as he sees and has experienced it. This is shocking, disturbing, and not a pretty sight. Cai is telling us, “Welcome to the violent modern world.”
For example, suspended from the ceiling in the center of the museum are two automobiles with rods of light as arrows penetrating the vehicles from every angle, illustrating the combative clash of cultures between the East and West for this lucrative market.
If that is not disturbing enough, there are lions suspended along the passageway to the next level with hundreds of arrows penetrating their bodies. My mind thought of the nature of overkill that is unique to our postmodern society.
Everything is symbolic. Nothing is more symbolic than the work titled, “Borrowing Your Enemy’s Arrows.” It illustrates China’s dramatic new and dominant role on the world stage. Displayed is an excavated fishing boat with the hull pierced with 3,000 arrows as its support structure, and decorated with a Chinese flag that flutters at the stern from the wind of an electric fan. Imagine, if you will, only the frame of this fishing boat is covered with “Western” arrows to make it viable. This is powerful imagery to say the least.
I am neither an art critic nor a connoisseur of art, but as disturbing as these works the pyrotechnic displays were more disturbing. It reminded me that the East has never forgotten or forgiven the United States for its nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atomic bomb was dropped on those cities in 1945 to bring World War II to an end. Tens of thousands of civilians perished in that mushroom cloud
Cai uses the mushroom cloud to deftly transmute pejorative nuclear tropes into “art” and “culture.”
There are several videos along the way that you can view which comprise gunpowder-exploding events. At first, I could not comprehend the sense of these until I studied the several canvases with imprints of these explosions as montages.
Remember the Rorschach inkblot test, where you were shown inkblot patterns, and invited to interpret them in terms of images, which you thought the blots might represent. Such interpretation was meant to unlock the unconscious mind. Cai is attempting to do this with these canvases. He uses the violence of our times with atomic explosion and suicide bombing to underscore his overall strategy of art as a tool of cultural provocation. He succeeds.
Cai is a student of history and paradigm shifts. He sees violence inextricably linked to creativity with violence a transformation phenomenon. He does this by taking us back to the invention of gunpowder and a new kind of warfare, and then moving swiftly to the development of nuclear weaponry. Now he sees in the confusion and chaos the current shift away from high science to the current rash of suicide bombings. He does with visual art what I attempted to do with words in “A Look Back To See Ahead” (2007).
He understands the fragility of human nature and its penchant for oscillating paradigm shifts within the history of civilization. He uses his art to display the dialectical nature of man as a self-creator and self-destroyer in a climate of constant change oblivious to his ultimate race to self-extinction.
I told BB when I left that I did not like the show. It was too disturbing; too much; too clearly provocative of our turbulent times on our way to eternity, wrenching the mind from its complacency to its benign and terrifying nature.
IV
We waited to be picked up by our tour bus and dropped off shortly thereafter at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It had been many years since I had last visited this museum having forgotten how mammoth an undertaking it is to take it all in. We were there for more than three hours and hardly touched the surface.
This was BB’s first visit to New York City and therefore to this museum. No one enjoys art, sculpture, architecture and antique artifacts more than she does. I am less cosmopolitan in my tastes than she is. She loves everything. I am impressed with the artifacts that are thousands of years old, illustrating the genius of man over the centuries. This includes the works of artisans making jewelry out of precious stones, elaborate paintings on the surface of clay pottery, hand formed metallic arms and armor, eating and drinking utensils, but after a while it is too much. BB never tires of studying such craftsmanship. Sometimes I think she approaches the monumental patience of those that once produced them.
Man is storyteller and all art is telling a story. In the Greek and Roman Art gallery, I overheard a mother asking her daughter, no more than ten or eleven, what story a Greek vase was telling. She answered her mother promptly explaining the Greek mythology it depicted and the story it told. I was embarrassed that I didn’t pay more attention to this aspect of my education.
It isn’t only the Greeks and Romans that adored the human form, it is apparent in the Arts of Africa, Egyptian Art, and Modern Art, all different art forms and cultures, and all with an eye rising out of their respective cultures.
Now Medieval Art, which I have seen tons of in museums across Europe, idealizes the human form in almost a beatific way that makes it seem less human. It is art that tires me whereas these other expressions, which are less idyllic and more primitive, do not. I wonder if it is because these other art forms are more honest, or less iconic.
In any case, it is apparent that innovation, creativity and great craftsmanship are a natural expression of the human spirit throughout time.
It happened to me again while I was walking through this museum. I felt timeless. I felt as if I could step into Einstein’s time warp and go back to the future where the future and past collide into a common collage. People like myself produced all this, finding some way to get beyond their petty problems to touch eternity.
In the Guggenheim, you had a headset with a panel of 15 numbered commentaries that accompanied you around the gallery. This was also available at The Metropolitan, as well as guided tours, but we chose to go wandering about on our own.
My favorite gallery was Modern Art, not BB’s favorite, but she tolerates my preference. Unfortunately, it was in our final hour when fatigue was visiting us, and I was becoming increasingly aware of my shingles, which I put out of my mind to take this trip. Antibiotics and painkillers kept the shingles abated, but also sapped my strength.
That said the abstract and impressionism wing of Modern Art once again transfixed me. Each artist tells a different story. Matisse shows his joy of life in nudes dancing in a ring, playing musical instruments, or standing or lying in indolent grace. He captures the same verve with his still lives of a basket of fruit or a view of the sea through a curtain.
The gallery also displays works of O’Keefe and Dali. I sometimes thought the work of O’Keefe’s was that of Dali. O’Keefe’s depiction of skeletal horns titled “From the Faraway Nearby” had the florid flow of Dali. I had the same problem with Matisse and Gauguin. I looked for Munch, Hopper and Peter Max, but if they were there I didn't see them.
Then we were in the middle of abstract art of Picasso, Chagall, Miro, Klee, Klimt, Braque, Modigliani, and Rouault. Most of the cubism on display was created before or early in the twentieth century up to World War II. It was a period of ripeness and decay, many highs and many more lows. That is what I like about this art. It flourishes in the worst of times, moving away from sensible landscapes and impressive nude studies to color patterns on flat surfaces that speak volumes moving on to the crazy quilt of cubism, which has been called “the sum of destructions.” This art is a record of chaos and confusion, which I find calming perhaps because it seems most honest and naked.
As I was thinking this, BB asked me, “Why do you like abstract art?”
“I think for two reasons. I think in a strange way it speaks to me. That is not to say I necessarily understand it, but it speaks to me in a language beyond words, or what the camera eye sees.
“I think artists see far more than we see. The intensity of their soul gives them a vision into life as it evolves and devolves, which they translate into art.
“Take a Picasso abstract of a woman. It is like looking at a woman from several perspectives simultaneously, all of which collide into a kind of violence and incoherence that can be expressed in no other way.
“I see abstract sculptures in the same sense. There was one of a giant leaf that was designated a bird in flight. I think that was accurate.”
Then I mentioned the architecture of Manhattan buildings. “These look like giant sculptures to me, some like birds ready to rupture from the surface and take to flight, and others like Modigliani flat planes of colored squares and rectangles.”
These artists used their whole system to display what lies beyond the eyes and in the mind. They have given much. I find it interesting and restful. It is eerie but a piece of art can lose its separation from you, if that makes any sense.
V
Aside from the beauty and transcendence of New York City, you cannot escape the more pragmatic fact that it is amazingly expensive.
This is no abstraction as virtually everyone has a hand out waiting for greenbacks to grace their palms. If you come to NYC, bring buckets of cash.
It cost us $100 for the tour bus, and $5 every time we got off as a tip for the tour guide and bus driver. Then you pay to get into the art museums, and then an inflationary price for any postcards or knickknacks you acquire from the museum.
It cost $40 for the cab to the city from the airport. Our hotel was the Grand Hyatt next door to Grand Central Station, and in the heart of Manhattan, for which you pay dearly.
Our tour bus didn’t stop for us outside The Metropolitan Museum because we weren’t standing precisely where we should for being picked up. So, we waited for nearly 30 minutes in sub freezing temperatures, and decided to take a cab, which was only a few blocks away: another $12.
We were a bit cold, so we got a cup of soup, no coffee or milk or tea, just soup: $24. We went out to dinner at a nice Irish Pub where we had a nice dinner and coffee, and since neither of us drink, no booze: $100.
Then the next day, Sunday, we checked out of the hotel, paid our bill, and checked our bags for a few hours: $10. We then walked from the hotel to the United Nations Building, only to find none of the flags were up.
We then stopped in at a small Catholic Church on the way back, the Church of the Holy Family. This church was dedicated to Pope Paul VI. He was pope when I was an executive with Nalco Chemical Company. My driver in Rome, who now drove for my company, had driven for the pope. He used his influence to get my family and me into Vatican City, extremely rare for tourists. It was 1968. Unfortunately, the pope was not in residence but at his summer home.
Back in the hotel, we showed our baggage stub to another bell captain, and he took our bags to the curb: $5. A doorman opened the taxicab door for us while the cab driver put our bags in his taxi: $2. Then we were off to the airport where there was some confusion about what I paid the driver. BB thinks he slipped a $5 aside claiming I didn’t pay him, so that was $45. We ate some junk food in the airport, got on the plane, were met by our towering grandchildren and their mother, my daughter, and went to dinner, and arrived safely home, very happy, and a lot lighter in the wallet. My granddaughter, Rachel, asked if we went shopping. We didn’t. We didn’t even go to a bookstore.
VI
I would love to live in Manhattan, but that will never happen. When I was first here, it was more than forty years ago, and I was with Nalco. I would stop off here on my itineraries to South America, Europe or South Africa. People from Nalco’s regional office would treat me as if a celebrity, picking me up at the airport, making arrangements for my accommodation, and taking me to dinner, and picking up the tab. They would even out do themselves when my family accompanied me. That all changed when I retired in my mid-thirties to become a writer.
I let Nalco know I was coming to New York to promote my first book (Confident Selling 1970), and no one showed up. I called to set a luncheon date with the regional manager, and he never returned my calls. Power is a diminishing construct.
VII
New York City is a very safe city, and you feel secure going about Manhattan at any time during the day or night. Everywhere we went we saw New York’s finest, NYPD.
Manhattan is also a very clean city. Nearly every block you see men and women in attractive orange uniforms picking up trash and keeping the streets and sidewalks sparkling clean.
People are generally polite if not always. We all have good and bad days and so allowances have to be made for that whenever you encounter someone out of sorts.
Members of the tour company were stationed at all the critical stops in Manhattan. I asked one young man how long he had to stand out there in the 20 – 30 degree cold, and he said, “Nine hours.” He didn’t say it with sarcasm or resentment, but as fact.
The tour guides on the bus were courteous to a fault with one exception. We failed to put $5 in the coffer in our initial drop off, not knowing the procedure, and this Irishman (I have to admit that, unfortunately) had to say, “Look at those people! They didn’t leave a tip!” So embarrassed, I wanted to crawl under the payment if I could.
The weather in New York City during our stay was in the teens to the low forties. The night we went to the play it was supposed to snow, and we were looking forward to it not having seen snow for years. But instead of snowing it was a cold, sleeting-like rain, which we endured in our mile walk back to the hotel. Tampa was in the low 80s.
Cabs don’t like short fares so it is better to walk the short distance than constantly be turned down by cabbies.
There are black cabs and yellow cabs. We stuck with yellow cabs because they have a meter which shows what you owe as you go. The black cabs may be okay, but we heard stories, and so stuck with what we knew. Yellow cabs also have union licensed drivers.
People that hold the door for you, make up your room, carry your bags, carry you about the city, wait on you in restaurants and so on are my people. I come from their station. I have left money for maids in hotels since I was in my twenties. Every time someone serves me, I pay 20 percent or more for their service.
BB says, “You’re generous, but that’s okay.”
I answer, “No, I’m not. This is how these people make their living. Even if I’m generous, they still don’t make that great a living.” So, we let it go at that.
VIII
We took a night tour of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Harlem, Greenwich Village, Chinatown and Little Italy. The Brooklyn Bridge and the Washington Bridge were lit up, as were the cafes and restaurants along the shores of the Hudson River. Many of the skyscrapers are lit up at night as well, and appear as if majestic towers of power and purpose. Then there are the nightclubs, the theatre district, the movie theaters, and Time Square, a psychedelic montage of flashing marques of moving images, along with a colorful flow of streaming people.
The crowning jewel is New Yorkers themselves. They move so fast it is hard to believe they are doing this without running. It is why you seldom see an overweight New Yorker. Always on the move, they are like an abstract painting, a changing blur of color.
New York women seem especially beautiful as they crash out of skyscraper doors into the streets in droves as if connected to each other in a single train of movement. It is a wonder how they can move so fast without looking up or at anyone and avoid running into the flow from the opposite direction. They weave in and out with a cell phone, or a contraction strapped to their ears, text messaging without colliding, amazing!
When we went to the play, we dressed to the teeth, only to find most people in jeans, sneakers and anoraks, even older people. Since it cost a ton to see this play, you know it wasn’t because there wasn’t a different wardrobe at home.
What I especially like about New York City is that you can have green hair, black lips, and a purple beard and no one pays you special notice. There is a kind of individualism and independence that pervades New Yorkers’ consciousness. People fly by talking about finance and philosophy, art and politics, in several languages and dialects, leaving a word dangling in the wind like a participle.
The cacophony of sounds, the staccato of workmen drilling through concrete, sirens of police and ambulances, voices from the four corners of the earth, and in the midst of this, the cries of children who cry in a common language to all. You feel you are in the center of the earth where all roads meet, fall apart and come together.
Then there are joggers of all shapes and sizes, all ages, too, running as if their lives depended on it in weather not far above the teens, and you marvel at their dedication. There are cyclists, too, that weave in and out of traffic oblivious to the weather and with the apparent same goal in mind. Some of them, of course, could be working as messengers.
We learned from our tour guides that the Upper West Side has all the millionaires, and the Upper East Side has all the billionaires. The Irish tour guide pointed out the “largest cathedral in the world,” which was about the size of the kitchen at St. Peters Basilica in Rome. So I took these things with a grain of salt.
We also saw John Lennon’s Dakota Building where he lived and was killed by the gate. It was a somber moment for me because he was a favorite of mine.
IX
We never did see Ground Zero or the Statue of Liberty on this trip. In an earlier iteration, when I came out with my second book (Work Without Managers 1990), I was invited by William L. Livingston, also an author, to visit him at the Twin Towers where he was an international consultant designing nuclear power plants for South Korea.
My second time in the Twin Towers was in the late 1990s, when I was invited by Solomon Brothers of Wall Street to be considered as director of organizational development (OD) for the firm. I didn’t get the job, but I did conduct a seminar for about thirty stockbrokers, all of whom I was told later made at least $1 million in bonuses that year. Incidentally, had I gotten the job, I would have most likely been in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
X
Another time when I was in New York in the 1970s I was hired to conduct a company search for Jacque Leviant, a New York Board Member of the Stock Exchange, and an entrepreneur. I gave a seminar for his staff of stockbrokers as well on his Lexington Avenue offices, which took up two floors.
I had retired from Nalco, but he heard of me and asked if I would survey about 15 – 20 specialty chemical companies for him for possible purchase by Leviant’s firm.
My advance airfare for that jaunt was $12,000, which gives you some idea of my traveling plans. It was as if I was running for public office. One of the memorable places I visited was Green Bay, Wisconsin, home of the Green Bay Packers. It was in the middle of winter and I had to take a small play from Chicago to Green Bay because there was no easy access.
When I completed my survey, Leviant went into negotiation to purchase one company with stock, alone, and asked me if I wanted to run the start up operation. I said, “No, Mr. Leviant, I want to be a writer.” That may seem strange to those who know me realizing thirty-five years later, after publishing nine books and hundreds of articles I have failed to establish myself as a writer. I could have made enough in that one year working for Mr. Leviant that is several multiples over which I have earned as a writer.
Instead, I went back to school, and became a contract consultant with the Professional Institute of the American Management Association. That work became fodder for my Master’s thesis (A Social Psychological Study of the Police Organization: The Anatomy of a Riot, 1976). I spent nine-months in Fairfax, Virginia, the richest county in the US, where a white police officer shot and killed a young African American in a 7-11 Convenient Store in Herndon over an altercation concerning an expired driver’s license. The police officer nearly pushed the man through a cooler. In self-defense, he grabbed the police officer’s nightstick and attempted to club him over the head, but hit only his shoulder, at which the police officer unloaded his service revolver on him killing him. A riot followed, and I was called in to sort out what happened and why. I wrote my thesis on this work.
My doctorate dissertation (The Paradoxical Dilemma Between the Police and the Policed 1978) was based on work from John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York City, to an OD intervention in Fairfax, Virginia, to an OD intervention in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a police force of 350 sworn officers went on mutiny to work conducted in Richmond, Virginia to Dade County and Miami through the auspices of Biscayne University.
Joseph Wambaugh, former police officer of Los Angeles Police Department, and novelist, once said, “A community gets the police force it deserves.” I found that corroborated in this research. For example, Fairfax County Police Department had less than 5 percent of its officers living in the county, as it was too expensive. Consequently, they were policing a county in which they had little sense of ownership.
XI
The Free Press Publishing Company of New York City considered publishing my master’s thesis as a book, but one of its readers said it read too much like fiction and should be better placed in the New Yorker magazine or the New York supplement to the New York Times Sunday edition. It never happened.
One of the members of dissertation committee was a former Harvard professor currently at the University of Southern Illinois. He thought I had written the best dissertation he had ever read, and made that same comment about the flow having the consistency of fiction. It, too, has never been published.
Still, Prentice-Hall of Long Island did publish my first book (Confident Selling 1970), and gave me the courage to continue writing. In rambling on about New York City and what it has meant to this aging Iowan, it has had a permanent impermanence that is consistent with the fickle finger of fate that I have shown here has often touched me. I have been moved to write this because New Yorkers are resilient, as they have been since the dawn of our history. I find it catching.
XII
At the darkest hour things can change and New Yorkers know such times – remember the New York City “black out” in the last century – but they have always risen from the ashes to create a better tomorrow. We see this resilience in their faces since 9-11. So, revisiting the city is like a booster shot of courage.
New Yorkers can be falling apart, in foreclosure; in bankruptcy; their kids out of control or in trouble with the law; their marriages falling apart; having difficulty making ends meet; having lost their job or made redundant; having trouble living for another day; thinking why not give up the ghost and end it all; but staying the course; muddling through with a cocky strut looking at what they have built and what they are; and what they have endured to come together; and take control. They go to a play, a ballgame, a film, a neighborhood bar, or simply walk the streets and take energy from the passersby.
You see it in their faces where they show their determination but not their hand. There are millionaires and billionaires but they can never rise above being simply New Yorkers whomever or whatever they are. There is power in this. It is truly “The Haunted Tree,” and Praed’s magic poem captures this, “Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy,” indeed.
______________________
Check out Dr. Fisher’s website: www.fisherofideas.com, where you will find more than 300 essays such as this free for your enjoyment.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR., WHAT HE MEANS TO ME
WILLIAM FRANK BUCKLEY, JR., WHAT HE MEANS TO ME
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© February 28, 2008
“Charlie Rose: Would you like to be twenty again? William F. Buckley, Jr.: “Absolutely not." CR: Would you like to be twenty-five years younger? WFBJ: “Not at all." CR: Why? WFBJ: Because I'm tired. I’m tired of life. I’m ready to go.”
Charlie Rose on PBS television, December 8, 2007
I
William F. Buckley, Jr. died yesterday, February 27, 2008, at his desk working on a biography of his most cherished friend and the acolyte of his conscience, Ronald Reagan. Buckley was the sixth of ten children of a patrician Connecticut family in which his father was worth $10 million at his death.
William, Jr., named after his father, didn’t abuse his father’s wealth, or remove himself from the family’s deep devotion to the Roman Catholic Faith, or the conservative politics of his father’s Republicanism.
He went to Yale, wrote a book about “God and Yale,” and fifty-four other books of which a handful were spy novels. He had been an operative in United States Intelligence Service during World War II.
My first acquaintance with Buckley was reading op-ed columns written by him in newspapers in Indianapolis when I joined Nalco Chemical Company as a chemical sales engineer. It was September1958.
II
With a son, two, and a daughter of seven months, I entered a strange and foreboding world. My safe haven since college had been the chemical laboratory for which I had been trained. I took the job with Nalco under false pretenses, as I was to continue my education in theoretical chemistry at a major eastern university on a fellowship that was due to start the following fall. I had to make and save more money quickly in order to handle the expenses of such an adventure, as the academic stipend was not enough to pay for a family of four.
Theoretical chemistry appealed to me after the success of James Watson and his “double helix” fame of discovering the structure of DNA. It was also because I am something of a control freak and like to know exactly where I am, what I am about, with no surprises.
It never occurred to me that technical sales would be strung out into a three-year training program and that I would not be able to make commissions until after this period. I felt trapped in a situation of my own creation.
What also never occurred to me was that selling, especially technical sales, was constructed on the premise of complexity and superiority in which the seller was to play God as the omniscient one to the customer’s total ignorance. Given this premise, it was deemed necessary that three years were required for the seller to gain the encyclopedic knowledge of the customers business and the proper application of Nalco’s products.
Nor did it occur to me that this attribution of omniscience would find the people with whom I worked condescending to customers as if lucky to have them solving their problems.
Characteristically, when asked what I thought of this approach, I answered candidly. I told my management I wasn’t comfortable playing God, and that I noticed people I traveled with never sold anything to anybody, suggesting it wasn’t working.
So, here I was with two small children and a wife, making less than I had made in the laboratory, and in foreign territory away from the safety of the lab, told in a huddle between the district and area manager, that I wasn’t cut out for this work, and should look for another job. I had been with Nalco two months, one of which was in a company training program in which “how to sell” was never a subject.
As an expression of the company’s compassion, the district manager told me, I to be accounts to service as a chemical engineer with the added option of upgrading them and calling on competitive accounts in the area if I like. Both managers smirked with deep grins, as I was given these instructions. I was also given the drop dead date of my final paycheck: “You will be off the payroll in two months, so in your spare time you had better look for another job.”
I am an emotional guy, a big guy, and a guy that can get quite angry, but not a malicious guy or vengeful guy. It was scary when I went out on my own not knowing the products and having no idea how to sell them if I did know. It was “system selling,” not products, per se, and I was supposed to be an expert of all these systems.
For starters, I was handicapped. I am not a mechanical person in the least, but a guy that could manage chemical symbols pretty well. It was already apparent in my lab work that I was not good at setting up experiments, or improvising instrumentation that was not already available. I was a book chemist, not a lab chemist.
The symbols up to that point had been all chemical symbols, which I could move about with alacrity and panache. I was so good at it that I set the curve in practically every test I took in every course in my curriculum. Where I had trouble was in the laboratory, where I was asked to make things, as you do in such a major.
III
It was in this precarious state that I wandered unto an op-ed column by William F. Buckley, Jr.
Buckley is an Irish name as is Fisher. Both names are first taken to be English, but we share a common heritage. I liked that. I read him and was moved by his vocabulary. I had read the dictionary as if it were a novel before I was a teenager. There was one word he used, which I cannot recall at the moment that explained the entire article. One word! The word was most appropriate but a word with which I was not familiar. I loved it.
Buckley also wrote with such unabridged confidence that I found him exhilarating, plus he was not afraid of ideas that were outside the mainstream at the time. I came out of the university full of country bumpkin idealism as a Roman Catholic from an agricultural state in a Protestant dominated community, and Irish descendents who were more often complainers than contributors.
Here was a man from my heritage that was urbane, witty, affluent, positive, cocky, cerebral, intellectual, and with writing aplomb I had seldom encountered. He did it all without apology. He was from the Eastern establishment but not of it, a Renaissance man in a time of a non-intellectual bias with an anti-intellectual president, Dwight David Eisenhower in office.
I watched his “Firing Line” on television at a time when I seldom ever watched television at all, and collected the summaries of those programs, which I still have, and referred to in my most recent book (A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD AuthorHouse 2007).
It was watching those “Firing Line” programs that I came up with the idea of how to conduct myself in my limited time with Nalco. I would do it in a similar fashion to the way Buckley interviewed and treated his guests.
Buckley would probe them with a question, then sit back with that pencil between his middle finger and smile and let them seemingly take over when he was always in control. It had never occurred to me before that listening was such a powerful instrument in the human language. But here I saw it demonstrated. Buckley took his pompous all-knowing guests down to comprehensive level by this simple process. I said to myself, why can’t I use it? What have I got to lose? I’m going to be fired anyway.
So, I would enter these accounts with little knowledge or understanding of what Nalco did for them, and ask them to explain how Nalco’s products worked or failed to work. If they were not working as well as expected, what would they like to see Nalco do? The approach melted away antagonism and suspicion, and opened the way for conversation.
It was amazing. They would look at me to see if I was sincere. One of my most engaging qualities has always been my sincerity. Noting this, they would explain their systems, how they worked, what role Nalco’s products played in each case, and how satisfied or dissatisfied they were. They went out of their way to be obliging, to be the knowledgeable ones while I played student to them as teacher.
In almost every instance, they wanted to improve their systems. I would go back to my motel, being by nature a reader, I would peruse the comprehensive manuals Nalco had produced in succinct language, and find products that would better meet their needs. As a consequence, almost without effort, I would upgrade the value of the account by their initiative, and not mine.
Returning the next day, I would often sell the customer more expensive products, but products that would be more cost effective. For this attention, I upgraded all these accounts I was given by 100 percent or more. In addition, I started to call on competitor accounts in the area with this new knowledge of Nalco’s successes and failures, deducing that this must equally apply to competitor accounts as well.
In the process of doing this, I called on a plant that was making home appliances, a factory covering seven acres, and so enormous that it gave me trepidations to show my card at the receptions desk. The account had been in Nalco’s competitor’s hand for many years, so long that Nalco no longer called on the account.
Using the same Buckley strategy that had been successful before, I sold the account in my first visit. It so happened that I came at a time when the plant was totally frustrated with our competitor, and was willing to try anyone or anything.
The problem for me was that I took a blanket order, meaning I was given a purchase order for a three month trial of Nalco chemicals in their system, when I didn’t know the systems, or the hundreds of Nalco products to choose from to apply to these systems.
My selling approach had been theoretical not application intensive. Nor did I have sufficient knowledge of Nalco’s mechanical systems (i.e. pumps, etc.) to choose much less install automatic feeding equipment in the optimum places. I had to call my district manager with my problem. He didn’t believe I had made the sale. He called the account to confirm and learned I had received a blanket order, which was rare in those days.
Having it confirmed, he had the area manager travel with me to set up the trial. The incredulity was palpable from Indianapolis to Nalco’s Chicago headquarters. How did he do it?
It didn’t end there, as two other sister plants in the city were automatically turned into Nalco accounts. I had sold more on that one visit than six other veteran sales engineers had sold in the entire year. No one understood my success, not even me, so it was hard for me to explain it to others. That said I started to get that opportunity.
Regional managers asked for me to be loaned to them to share my success during their regional meetings. I had to read selling books to come up with the vocabulary, knowing no one would believe the “William F. Buckley, Jr. story.” Such exposure made me a person of interest to senior management. This was in the days before human resources came up with the gimmick of “high talent.”
Soon I was made a manager, and then after only two more years in the field, promoted to the executive vice president’s staff, and from there made a vice president to facilitate the formation of a new company in South Africa. After completing that assignment, only thirty-five, and after only ten years with Nalco, I retired. The reason for retiring so young is another story. I plan to tell it in a novel I am now writing titled, GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA.
IV
In Buckley’s last program on “Charlie Rose,” he was asked about leadership. Rose was interested in leadership in the mega sense or at the geopolitical level. Buckley replied that leadership is a function of the situation. Rose replied, but isn’t it more a case of a transformational experience? Going through the crucible of experience? Buckley replied it was that, but it was a case of both not one or the other.
Hearing that from Buckley with that winkled grin and those knowing eyes, I got tears in my own. I knew he was no longer with us. Little me, a nobody in the firmament “out there” in the, then, television land, and now cyberspace, I could say, “both apply to me.”
It was the experience of “being fired,” and then finding the Buckley formula of listening that placed me in a situation that gave me a prominence I didn’t anticipate, nor certainly not my superiors. Going through the crucible of South Africa apartheid would also change my life forever, and find me writing these words.
I had been a student at Buckley’s knee. He helped me overcome my adversity and realize some measure of success. He hardened my determinism to be my own man on my own basis as the complete individual. Obviously, others helped as well but he was a force that I studied and admired.
My success at Nalco, and the fact that my third child was on the way, made it impossible for me to punish the family by taking that fellowship for chemistry. I instead stayed with Nalco through South Africa, then took a two-year sabbatical, read a lot of books and wrote one, CONFIDENT SELLING (Prentice-Hall 1970). That book was an elaboration of what I spoke about during those regional meetings when asked to explain how I sold.
Buckley taught me that you could have a strong point of view and yet not be intimidated or intimidating. I have not kept the Catholic faith as he did all his life. I wonder if he would have been able to think the same way after experiencing South Africa as I did. We will never know. South Africa did not add up to a balanced equation for me, and I have been struggling with that reality ever since.
He made me aware of the nature of leadership, not as a mega force but as a mini activity of individuals. It is how I came to believe we are all leaders or no one is. I have attempted to convey my fragmented philosophy in all my writings.
His legacy? I would imagine it is the conservative magazine he created, NATIONAL REVIEW. When you imagine a man of fifty-five weighty books being reduced to a single thing, it is humbly indeed. May his soul forever rest in peace, and thank you, Mr. Buckley for being you.
_______________
Dr. Fisher's essays are available on this blog for your free review and comment.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© February 28, 2008
“Charlie Rose: Would you like to be twenty again? William F. Buckley, Jr.: “Absolutely not." CR: Would you like to be twenty-five years younger? WFBJ: “Not at all." CR: Why? WFBJ: Because I'm tired. I’m tired of life. I’m ready to go.”
Charlie Rose on PBS television, December 8, 2007
I
William F. Buckley, Jr. died yesterday, February 27, 2008, at his desk working on a biography of his most cherished friend and the acolyte of his conscience, Ronald Reagan. Buckley was the sixth of ten children of a patrician Connecticut family in which his father was worth $10 million at his death.
William, Jr., named after his father, didn’t abuse his father’s wealth, or remove himself from the family’s deep devotion to the Roman Catholic Faith, or the conservative politics of his father’s Republicanism.
He went to Yale, wrote a book about “God and Yale,” and fifty-four other books of which a handful were spy novels. He had been an operative in United States Intelligence Service during World War II.
My first acquaintance with Buckley was reading op-ed columns written by him in newspapers in Indianapolis when I joined Nalco Chemical Company as a chemical sales engineer. It was September1958.
II
With a son, two, and a daughter of seven months, I entered a strange and foreboding world. My safe haven since college had been the chemical laboratory for which I had been trained. I took the job with Nalco under false pretenses, as I was to continue my education in theoretical chemistry at a major eastern university on a fellowship that was due to start the following fall. I had to make and save more money quickly in order to handle the expenses of such an adventure, as the academic stipend was not enough to pay for a family of four.
Theoretical chemistry appealed to me after the success of James Watson and his “double helix” fame of discovering the structure of DNA. It was also because I am something of a control freak and like to know exactly where I am, what I am about, with no surprises.
It never occurred to me that technical sales would be strung out into a three-year training program and that I would not be able to make commissions until after this period. I felt trapped in a situation of my own creation.
What also never occurred to me was that selling, especially technical sales, was constructed on the premise of complexity and superiority in which the seller was to play God as the omniscient one to the customer’s total ignorance. Given this premise, it was deemed necessary that three years were required for the seller to gain the encyclopedic knowledge of the customers business and the proper application of Nalco’s products.
Nor did it occur to me that this attribution of omniscience would find the people with whom I worked condescending to customers as if lucky to have them solving their problems.
Characteristically, when asked what I thought of this approach, I answered candidly. I told my management I wasn’t comfortable playing God, and that I noticed people I traveled with never sold anything to anybody, suggesting it wasn’t working.
So, here I was with two small children and a wife, making less than I had made in the laboratory, and in foreign territory away from the safety of the lab, told in a huddle between the district and area manager, that I wasn’t cut out for this work, and should look for another job. I had been with Nalco two months, one of which was in a company training program in which “how to sell” was never a subject.
As an expression of the company’s compassion, the district manager told me, I to be accounts to service as a chemical engineer with the added option of upgrading them and calling on competitive accounts in the area if I like. Both managers smirked with deep grins, as I was given these instructions. I was also given the drop dead date of my final paycheck: “You will be off the payroll in two months, so in your spare time you had better look for another job.”
I am an emotional guy, a big guy, and a guy that can get quite angry, but not a malicious guy or vengeful guy. It was scary when I went out on my own not knowing the products and having no idea how to sell them if I did know. It was “system selling,” not products, per se, and I was supposed to be an expert of all these systems.
For starters, I was handicapped. I am not a mechanical person in the least, but a guy that could manage chemical symbols pretty well. It was already apparent in my lab work that I was not good at setting up experiments, or improvising instrumentation that was not already available. I was a book chemist, not a lab chemist.
The symbols up to that point had been all chemical symbols, which I could move about with alacrity and panache. I was so good at it that I set the curve in practically every test I took in every course in my curriculum. Where I had trouble was in the laboratory, where I was asked to make things, as you do in such a major.
III
It was in this precarious state that I wandered unto an op-ed column by William F. Buckley, Jr.
Buckley is an Irish name as is Fisher. Both names are first taken to be English, but we share a common heritage. I liked that. I read him and was moved by his vocabulary. I had read the dictionary as if it were a novel before I was a teenager. There was one word he used, which I cannot recall at the moment that explained the entire article. One word! The word was most appropriate but a word with which I was not familiar. I loved it.
Buckley also wrote with such unabridged confidence that I found him exhilarating, plus he was not afraid of ideas that were outside the mainstream at the time. I came out of the university full of country bumpkin idealism as a Roman Catholic from an agricultural state in a Protestant dominated community, and Irish descendents who were more often complainers than contributors.
Here was a man from my heritage that was urbane, witty, affluent, positive, cocky, cerebral, intellectual, and with writing aplomb I had seldom encountered. He did it all without apology. He was from the Eastern establishment but not of it, a Renaissance man in a time of a non-intellectual bias with an anti-intellectual president, Dwight David Eisenhower in office.
I watched his “Firing Line” on television at a time when I seldom ever watched television at all, and collected the summaries of those programs, which I still have, and referred to in my most recent book (A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD AuthorHouse 2007).
It was watching those “Firing Line” programs that I came up with the idea of how to conduct myself in my limited time with Nalco. I would do it in a similar fashion to the way Buckley interviewed and treated his guests.
Buckley would probe them with a question, then sit back with that pencil between his middle finger and smile and let them seemingly take over when he was always in control. It had never occurred to me before that listening was such a powerful instrument in the human language. But here I saw it demonstrated. Buckley took his pompous all-knowing guests down to comprehensive level by this simple process. I said to myself, why can’t I use it? What have I got to lose? I’m going to be fired anyway.
So, I would enter these accounts with little knowledge or understanding of what Nalco did for them, and ask them to explain how Nalco’s products worked or failed to work. If they were not working as well as expected, what would they like to see Nalco do? The approach melted away antagonism and suspicion, and opened the way for conversation.
It was amazing. They would look at me to see if I was sincere. One of my most engaging qualities has always been my sincerity. Noting this, they would explain their systems, how they worked, what role Nalco’s products played in each case, and how satisfied or dissatisfied they were. They went out of their way to be obliging, to be the knowledgeable ones while I played student to them as teacher.
In almost every instance, they wanted to improve their systems. I would go back to my motel, being by nature a reader, I would peruse the comprehensive manuals Nalco had produced in succinct language, and find products that would better meet their needs. As a consequence, almost without effort, I would upgrade the value of the account by their initiative, and not mine.
Returning the next day, I would often sell the customer more expensive products, but products that would be more cost effective. For this attention, I upgraded all these accounts I was given by 100 percent or more. In addition, I started to call on competitor accounts in the area with this new knowledge of Nalco’s successes and failures, deducing that this must equally apply to competitor accounts as well.
In the process of doing this, I called on a plant that was making home appliances, a factory covering seven acres, and so enormous that it gave me trepidations to show my card at the receptions desk. The account had been in Nalco’s competitor’s hand for many years, so long that Nalco no longer called on the account.
Using the same Buckley strategy that had been successful before, I sold the account in my first visit. It so happened that I came at a time when the plant was totally frustrated with our competitor, and was willing to try anyone or anything.
The problem for me was that I took a blanket order, meaning I was given a purchase order for a three month trial of Nalco chemicals in their system, when I didn’t know the systems, or the hundreds of Nalco products to choose from to apply to these systems.
My selling approach had been theoretical not application intensive. Nor did I have sufficient knowledge of Nalco’s mechanical systems (i.e. pumps, etc.) to choose much less install automatic feeding equipment in the optimum places. I had to call my district manager with my problem. He didn’t believe I had made the sale. He called the account to confirm and learned I had received a blanket order, which was rare in those days.
Having it confirmed, he had the area manager travel with me to set up the trial. The incredulity was palpable from Indianapolis to Nalco’s Chicago headquarters. How did he do it?
It didn’t end there, as two other sister plants in the city were automatically turned into Nalco accounts. I had sold more on that one visit than six other veteran sales engineers had sold in the entire year. No one understood my success, not even me, so it was hard for me to explain it to others. That said I started to get that opportunity.
Regional managers asked for me to be loaned to them to share my success during their regional meetings. I had to read selling books to come up with the vocabulary, knowing no one would believe the “William F. Buckley, Jr. story.” Such exposure made me a person of interest to senior management. This was in the days before human resources came up with the gimmick of “high talent.”
Soon I was made a manager, and then after only two more years in the field, promoted to the executive vice president’s staff, and from there made a vice president to facilitate the formation of a new company in South Africa. After completing that assignment, only thirty-five, and after only ten years with Nalco, I retired. The reason for retiring so young is another story. I plan to tell it in a novel I am now writing titled, GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA.
IV
In Buckley’s last program on “Charlie Rose,” he was asked about leadership. Rose was interested in leadership in the mega sense or at the geopolitical level. Buckley replied that leadership is a function of the situation. Rose replied, but isn’t it more a case of a transformational experience? Going through the crucible of experience? Buckley replied it was that, but it was a case of both not one or the other.
Hearing that from Buckley with that winkled grin and those knowing eyes, I got tears in my own. I knew he was no longer with us. Little me, a nobody in the firmament “out there” in the, then, television land, and now cyberspace, I could say, “both apply to me.”
It was the experience of “being fired,” and then finding the Buckley formula of listening that placed me in a situation that gave me a prominence I didn’t anticipate, nor certainly not my superiors. Going through the crucible of South Africa apartheid would also change my life forever, and find me writing these words.
I had been a student at Buckley’s knee. He helped me overcome my adversity and realize some measure of success. He hardened my determinism to be my own man on my own basis as the complete individual. Obviously, others helped as well but he was a force that I studied and admired.
My success at Nalco, and the fact that my third child was on the way, made it impossible for me to punish the family by taking that fellowship for chemistry. I instead stayed with Nalco through South Africa, then took a two-year sabbatical, read a lot of books and wrote one, CONFIDENT SELLING (Prentice-Hall 1970). That book was an elaboration of what I spoke about during those regional meetings when asked to explain how I sold.
Buckley taught me that you could have a strong point of view and yet not be intimidated or intimidating. I have not kept the Catholic faith as he did all his life. I wonder if he would have been able to think the same way after experiencing South Africa as I did. We will never know. South Africa did not add up to a balanced equation for me, and I have been struggling with that reality ever since.
He made me aware of the nature of leadership, not as a mega force but as a mini activity of individuals. It is how I came to believe we are all leaders or no one is. I have attempted to convey my fragmented philosophy in all my writings.
His legacy? I would imagine it is the conservative magazine he created, NATIONAL REVIEW. When you imagine a man of fifty-five weighty books being reduced to a single thing, it is humbly indeed. May his soul forever rest in peace, and thank you, Mr. Buckley for being you.
_______________
Dr. Fisher's essays are available on this blog for your free review and comment.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
THE ESCALATING COSTS OF THE CONQUEST OF NATIVE AMERICANS
THE ESCALATING COSTS OF THE CONQUEST OF NATIVE AMERICANS
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© February 20, 2008
“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every port of earth is sacred to us . . . So if we sell our land, you must keep it part and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers. Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? . . . This we know: The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
Part of the famous letter Chief Seattle to the “white man” about selling the land to them.
“The medieval method of arguing the way to truth did not prepare Europeans for an extra continent. Nor did it help that primitive people discovered inhabiting this new continent, America, in early sixteenth century, were living in a relative state of harmony without the benefit or knowledge of progressive education, rule of law, politics, history, and of course, Christianity. It was clear to observers that these primitive people were surviving without European culture, happily so, thriving in voluntary, organized and functional societies of countless Indian nations and more countless tribes within these nations.
“Sixteenth century Europe was awash in utopian fervor looking for the cultural absurdity of an ideal society. Once word spread of the immaculate harmony of these primitives a world away, shock and awe led to mocking them, setting off the spread across Europe of radical concepts of free association. No longer should there be submission to the rule of law and authority, but communities should come together of their own free will and voluntarily agree to live in harmony sans laws. Europe, free association advocates insisted, should adopt what appeared to be the system of the American primitive tribes.”
James R. Fisher, Jr., “Nowhere Man” in “Nowhere Land” (2006 unpublished)
* * * * * * * * * *
I
What should we make of “Indian talk” from a Chief Seattle? Clearly he lost. Or what should we make of the reaction of European society after America was discovered with primitives living in harmony with nature?
To give you a sense of the impact on European intellectuals, one hundred years later or in the late seventeenth century, the British empiricist, John Locke (1632 – 1704) would come up with his theories of liberal democracy: "Two Treatises on Government" (1690). It was published anonymously. It constituted Locke’s reply to the patriarchal “Divine Right of Kings."
Locke’s work embodied the defense of natural rights and a justification for constitutional law, the liberty of the individual, and the rule of the majority. If the ruling body offends against natural law, he argued, it must be overthrown.
To show his debt to Native Americans, he claimed that all men are originally in a state of nature. He believed natural law provided certain rights to be gained by working for them.
The system of capitalism is an economic expression of Lockean principles, a system, of course, that provides goods and services for a financial profit. There was no such system or need for one with Native Americans. The cost of conquering the Indians leaves us where we are today.
II
The Indian or “primitive” culture as we prefer, in very general terms, involves a deep connection with nature and an understanding and respect for the inexorable cycle of life. Man is but a part of Nature and the cosmos. Man does not live by reason alone, but by intuition, imagination. Logic is not stressed as the path to wisdom. Emotions play a more important role. The expression of feelings doesn’t make a man weak.
There is no debate about the existence of God, no ontological argument, no inductive and deductive proofs about the Immovable Mover. The “Force” of Nature is a given, as well as the fact that there is a spirit world that coexists with the realm of physical reality.
There is order to the cosmos with higher powers (gods) at the top of the hierarchy followed by man, animals, and inanimate natural objects. All are part of God.
There is no debate or conflict between Rationalism and Empiricism. The world is neither an idea in the mind of man nor only understood through sensory experience. There is no Kierkegaard “either/or,” or conflict of opposites that permeates Western thought. No dualism in Native American culture.
III
The seamless harmony and flow of Nature is at the heart of its philosophy. Death is not an end; it is simply part of life and a journey into a new phase of existence of the spirit, although this belief is also true of religious people from all cultures. There is a healthy mind-body-spirit connection that is now more accepted in other societies and cultures. A human is one organism, not separate parts, and disease of the soul can become disease of the body. This is the basis of holistic medicine, which has grown in popularity in the West.
Mankind, then, is just part of a harmonious whole, not as the exalted center of the thinking universe, or as a malignant accident of nature. Sunrises, sunsets, and the changing of the seasons measure time, not clocks. Time is simply the life process. Of course, in this age of electronics and the Internet, Native Americans have had to adopt Western ways. The West, however, has never ceased to be intrigued by the philosophies and traditions of Native Americans. Nor have they been successful in burying them.
Native Americans are not a monolith. There are more than 700 nations, and many more tribes within these nations. Although there is diversity, there are common cultural philosophies.
IV
Traditional Native Americans believe whatever name or characteristics people give the Creator, they are all referring to the same deity. Christians, Muslims, Jews and Native Americans are what God made them.
Where Native Americans differ, they do not see themselves stained with Original Sin nor do they see themselves as inherently wicked needing to be saved. After all, they say, how can that be when God made you? So, they don’t need a Savior to redeem them.
Native Americans know mainly of their shared beliefs through oral storytelling rather than dogma or didactic lecturing. They don’t need an arm waving, histrionic and threatening rhetorical messenger to remind them of their sins and damnation. They know Nature gives and takes, and is a challenge to their existence from time to time as it is with every living thing. They take comfort in their oral tradition, and history, mythology, spirituality and philosophy that enlighten and entertain against this reality.
These stories describe a world where animals and humans are equals in the cycle of life. Animals, though hunted and killed, are revered for their sacrifice, and their spirits worshipped because without them humans would perish.
There is no sense, as in Genesis, that mankind was meant to have dominion over the earth and to subdue it, and the other creatures of the earth. The Native American sense of time is also based on natural rhythms of the seasons, cycles of the moon, and their own body clocks.
V
Native Americans don’t talk of a heaven and hell, but of other places of existence replete with spiritual life, and constant interaction between these other worlds. Spirit guides visit humans, and humans can, if they know how, visit other dimensions in astral projection.
VI
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961) incorporated a good deal of native spirituality into his paradigms.
Native Americans often have converted to Christian faiths only to eventually return to shamanic religious practices. Jung explained this in his psychiatric terms as the Shadow surfacing.
The Shadow is a person’s dark side, which remains suppressed after years of parental and societal pressure. It is a combination of Freud’s Id (our impulsive side) and Superego (our judgmental or moral side).
Jung claimed social conditioning creates a “good side,” compliant and passive, while containing a “bad side,” lustful and aggressive. Western culture and Christianity could be something strange to the natural culture of Native Americans. The more they strain to assimilate into the wider culture, in this case the American culture, the more likely their dark side will appear. Once it does, Jung suggested most people, no matter their ethnicity, are inclined to project negative shadow elements on people that they dislike or fear.
Native American Indians know that when they have dislike for someone for no reason at all it is perhaps because they see aspects of themselves in that person. It is as if they see their soul reflected back to them as a shadow of themselves.
Jung used this phenomenon in his therapy. He encouraged his clients to own their own shadows, and not try to bury them. Burying them never works. The shadow will be heard, usually when least expected. Similar to Native American philosophy, Jung believed we must own our shadow and integrate it on the path to Wholeness.
VII
A common tradition among Native Americans is the belief in the “Medicine Wheel.” The symbol of the wheel represents the cycle of life, both macrocosmically (the world) and microcosmically (the individual). The four spokes of the wheel are the four directions of the compass. Each direction has its own philosophy, a symbolic animal, and a color.
EAST is the beginning because the sun rises in the east. The color is gold, and the animal is the golden eagle. The philosophy is one of seeing the world as it really is with clarity and without illusions.
SOUTH is the color green, and the symbolic animal is the mouse. The mouse represents the striving and curious nature that is to be encouraged. The mouse is shrewd, savvy and dogged explorer.
WEST is where the sun sets, and the color is black. The animal is the bear. The bear is a nocturnal creature and hibernates in a cave. The bear is the symbol of introspection. Most of our minds are subconscious, and traverse darkened realms, as the bear prowls the night indulged in introspection to find illumination. This indicates a highly sophisticated understanding of the human mind.
NORTH represents winter, and the color is the white of the snow. The totem animals are the wolf and the buffalo. These animals represent intelligence and insight, things that often come too late in the winter of our lives.
Native Americans believe, should you reach the center of the wheel where the spokes meet, you will have perfect balance. This is similar to Jung’s notion of individuation in which there is the successful integration of all the disparate aspects of our body, mind, and spirit.
VIII
Some Native Americans regard a criminal as a sick person, not an evil person. What the sick person needs is healing rituals and ceremonies and rehabilitation until well. A repeated offender, who fails to respond to this wellness regime, and is deemed beyond redemption while remaining a threat to the lives of tribe members, is quickly dispatched.
IX
Everyone and everything are connected. Everything has to go somewhere. Nature knows best. We cannot change Nature. There is no free lunch.
Humans are just one small part of the cosmic picture. The cycle of life is one of constant change. But it is not one of chaotic or meaningless change. Everything that is happening is happening for a purpose. Nothing diminishes the purpose even if we have no sense of what that purpose maybe.
People have a body and live in the real world, but they also have a spirit and there is a spiritual world that is as real as the world we see and experience with our five senses.
We are on earth to learn. Learning requires a balance between the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of Nature. The spirit will give us help if we ask. We are meant to achieve maximum human potential and the only sin against God is our failure to use whatever gifts God has given us for our own good and the good of the community.
I share this with you as I reflect on two renditions of this and other related ideas that I have learned from Native Americans. It seems to me we are slipping over the precipice into the void of dangling participles.
I developed one rendition of this problem in NEAR JOURNEY’S END? CAN PLANET EARTH SURIVE SELF-INDULGENT MAN? (2004)
When I could find no publisher, I rewrote it in terms of the same three participles: Past Imperfect, Present Perfect, and Future Perfect.
The second rendition was NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND (2006). This is a take off on the meaning of “utopia,” which is essentially "nowhere."
Native Americans have never worried about utopia or dystopia, or of Sir Thomas More, Ayn Rand or George Orwell and their respective versions of this idea. We brought our cultural plague to Native Americans. Despite this insult, they attempted to teach us how to be good stewards of the earth. We have been poor learners.
___________________________________
Dr. Fisher is an organization/industrial psychologist and former international corporate executive who lives in Tampa, Florida and writes in this genre. He is currently working on a novel of South Africa.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© February 20, 2008
“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every port of earth is sacred to us . . . So if we sell our land, you must keep it part and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers. Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? . . . This we know: The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
Part of the famous letter Chief Seattle to the “white man” about selling the land to them.
“The medieval method of arguing the way to truth did not prepare Europeans for an extra continent. Nor did it help that primitive people discovered inhabiting this new continent, America, in early sixteenth century, were living in a relative state of harmony without the benefit or knowledge of progressive education, rule of law, politics, history, and of course, Christianity. It was clear to observers that these primitive people were surviving without European culture, happily so, thriving in voluntary, organized and functional societies of countless Indian nations and more countless tribes within these nations.
“Sixteenth century Europe was awash in utopian fervor looking for the cultural absurdity of an ideal society. Once word spread of the immaculate harmony of these primitives a world away, shock and awe led to mocking them, setting off the spread across Europe of radical concepts of free association. No longer should there be submission to the rule of law and authority, but communities should come together of their own free will and voluntarily agree to live in harmony sans laws. Europe, free association advocates insisted, should adopt what appeared to be the system of the American primitive tribes.”
James R. Fisher, Jr., “Nowhere Man” in “Nowhere Land” (2006 unpublished)
* * * * * * * * * *
I
What should we make of “Indian talk” from a Chief Seattle? Clearly he lost. Or what should we make of the reaction of European society after America was discovered with primitives living in harmony with nature?
To give you a sense of the impact on European intellectuals, one hundred years later or in the late seventeenth century, the British empiricist, John Locke (1632 – 1704) would come up with his theories of liberal democracy: "Two Treatises on Government" (1690). It was published anonymously. It constituted Locke’s reply to the patriarchal “Divine Right of Kings."
Locke’s work embodied the defense of natural rights and a justification for constitutional law, the liberty of the individual, and the rule of the majority. If the ruling body offends against natural law, he argued, it must be overthrown.
To show his debt to Native Americans, he claimed that all men are originally in a state of nature. He believed natural law provided certain rights to be gained by working for them.
The system of capitalism is an economic expression of Lockean principles, a system, of course, that provides goods and services for a financial profit. There was no such system or need for one with Native Americans. The cost of conquering the Indians leaves us where we are today.
II
The Indian or “primitive” culture as we prefer, in very general terms, involves a deep connection with nature and an understanding and respect for the inexorable cycle of life. Man is but a part of Nature and the cosmos. Man does not live by reason alone, but by intuition, imagination. Logic is not stressed as the path to wisdom. Emotions play a more important role. The expression of feelings doesn’t make a man weak.
There is no debate about the existence of God, no ontological argument, no inductive and deductive proofs about the Immovable Mover. The “Force” of Nature is a given, as well as the fact that there is a spirit world that coexists with the realm of physical reality.
There is order to the cosmos with higher powers (gods) at the top of the hierarchy followed by man, animals, and inanimate natural objects. All are part of God.
There is no debate or conflict between Rationalism and Empiricism. The world is neither an idea in the mind of man nor only understood through sensory experience. There is no Kierkegaard “either/or,” or conflict of opposites that permeates Western thought. No dualism in Native American culture.
III
The seamless harmony and flow of Nature is at the heart of its philosophy. Death is not an end; it is simply part of life and a journey into a new phase of existence of the spirit, although this belief is also true of religious people from all cultures. There is a healthy mind-body-spirit connection that is now more accepted in other societies and cultures. A human is one organism, not separate parts, and disease of the soul can become disease of the body. This is the basis of holistic medicine, which has grown in popularity in the West.
Mankind, then, is just part of a harmonious whole, not as the exalted center of the thinking universe, or as a malignant accident of nature. Sunrises, sunsets, and the changing of the seasons measure time, not clocks. Time is simply the life process. Of course, in this age of electronics and the Internet, Native Americans have had to adopt Western ways. The West, however, has never ceased to be intrigued by the philosophies and traditions of Native Americans. Nor have they been successful in burying them.
Native Americans are not a monolith. There are more than 700 nations, and many more tribes within these nations. Although there is diversity, there are common cultural philosophies.
IV
Traditional Native Americans believe whatever name or characteristics people give the Creator, they are all referring to the same deity. Christians, Muslims, Jews and Native Americans are what God made them.
Where Native Americans differ, they do not see themselves stained with Original Sin nor do they see themselves as inherently wicked needing to be saved. After all, they say, how can that be when God made you? So, they don’t need a Savior to redeem them.
Native Americans know mainly of their shared beliefs through oral storytelling rather than dogma or didactic lecturing. They don’t need an arm waving, histrionic and threatening rhetorical messenger to remind them of their sins and damnation. They know Nature gives and takes, and is a challenge to their existence from time to time as it is with every living thing. They take comfort in their oral tradition, and history, mythology, spirituality and philosophy that enlighten and entertain against this reality.
These stories describe a world where animals and humans are equals in the cycle of life. Animals, though hunted and killed, are revered for their sacrifice, and their spirits worshipped because without them humans would perish.
There is no sense, as in Genesis, that mankind was meant to have dominion over the earth and to subdue it, and the other creatures of the earth. The Native American sense of time is also based on natural rhythms of the seasons, cycles of the moon, and their own body clocks.
V
Native Americans don’t talk of a heaven and hell, but of other places of existence replete with spiritual life, and constant interaction between these other worlds. Spirit guides visit humans, and humans can, if they know how, visit other dimensions in astral projection.
VI
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961) incorporated a good deal of native spirituality into his paradigms.
Native Americans often have converted to Christian faiths only to eventually return to shamanic religious practices. Jung explained this in his psychiatric terms as the Shadow surfacing.
The Shadow is a person’s dark side, which remains suppressed after years of parental and societal pressure. It is a combination of Freud’s Id (our impulsive side) and Superego (our judgmental or moral side).
Jung claimed social conditioning creates a “good side,” compliant and passive, while containing a “bad side,” lustful and aggressive. Western culture and Christianity could be something strange to the natural culture of Native Americans. The more they strain to assimilate into the wider culture, in this case the American culture, the more likely their dark side will appear. Once it does, Jung suggested most people, no matter their ethnicity, are inclined to project negative shadow elements on people that they dislike or fear.
Native American Indians know that when they have dislike for someone for no reason at all it is perhaps because they see aspects of themselves in that person. It is as if they see their soul reflected back to them as a shadow of themselves.
Jung used this phenomenon in his therapy. He encouraged his clients to own their own shadows, and not try to bury them. Burying them never works. The shadow will be heard, usually when least expected. Similar to Native American philosophy, Jung believed we must own our shadow and integrate it on the path to Wholeness.
VII
A common tradition among Native Americans is the belief in the “Medicine Wheel.” The symbol of the wheel represents the cycle of life, both macrocosmically (the world) and microcosmically (the individual). The four spokes of the wheel are the four directions of the compass. Each direction has its own philosophy, a symbolic animal, and a color.
EAST is the beginning because the sun rises in the east. The color is gold, and the animal is the golden eagle. The philosophy is one of seeing the world as it really is with clarity and without illusions.
SOUTH is the color green, and the symbolic animal is the mouse. The mouse represents the striving and curious nature that is to be encouraged. The mouse is shrewd, savvy and dogged explorer.
WEST is where the sun sets, and the color is black. The animal is the bear. The bear is a nocturnal creature and hibernates in a cave. The bear is the symbol of introspection. Most of our minds are subconscious, and traverse darkened realms, as the bear prowls the night indulged in introspection to find illumination. This indicates a highly sophisticated understanding of the human mind.
NORTH represents winter, and the color is the white of the snow. The totem animals are the wolf and the buffalo. These animals represent intelligence and insight, things that often come too late in the winter of our lives.
Native Americans believe, should you reach the center of the wheel where the spokes meet, you will have perfect balance. This is similar to Jung’s notion of individuation in which there is the successful integration of all the disparate aspects of our body, mind, and spirit.
VIII
Some Native Americans regard a criminal as a sick person, not an evil person. What the sick person needs is healing rituals and ceremonies and rehabilitation until well. A repeated offender, who fails to respond to this wellness regime, and is deemed beyond redemption while remaining a threat to the lives of tribe members, is quickly dispatched.
IX
Everyone and everything are connected. Everything has to go somewhere. Nature knows best. We cannot change Nature. There is no free lunch.
Humans are just one small part of the cosmic picture. The cycle of life is one of constant change. But it is not one of chaotic or meaningless change. Everything that is happening is happening for a purpose. Nothing diminishes the purpose even if we have no sense of what that purpose maybe.
People have a body and live in the real world, but they also have a spirit and there is a spiritual world that is as real as the world we see and experience with our five senses.
We are on earth to learn. Learning requires a balance between the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of Nature. The spirit will give us help if we ask. We are meant to achieve maximum human potential and the only sin against God is our failure to use whatever gifts God has given us for our own good and the good of the community.
I share this with you as I reflect on two renditions of this and other related ideas that I have learned from Native Americans. It seems to me we are slipping over the precipice into the void of dangling participles.
I developed one rendition of this problem in NEAR JOURNEY’S END? CAN PLANET EARTH SURIVE SELF-INDULGENT MAN? (2004)
When I could find no publisher, I rewrote it in terms of the same three participles: Past Imperfect, Present Perfect, and Future Perfect.
The second rendition was NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND (2006). This is a take off on the meaning of “utopia,” which is essentially "nowhere."
Native Americans have never worried about utopia or dystopia, or of Sir Thomas More, Ayn Rand or George Orwell and their respective versions of this idea. We brought our cultural plague to Native Americans. Despite this insult, they attempted to teach us how to be good stewards of the earth. We have been poor learners.
___________________________________
Dr. Fisher is an organization/industrial psychologist and former international corporate executive who lives in Tampa, Florida and writes in this genre. He is currently working on a novel of South Africa.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
THE GENESIS OF A THINK TANK, NOT ALWAYS SMOOTH SAILING!
THE GENESIS OF A THINK TANK, NOT ALWAYS SMOOTH SAILING
Reference: As a founding member of THE NAPLES INSTITUTE, conversations between members can set off sparks. What follows is a reaction to a piece by a fellow member. He was sharing how a family friend rose from humble beginnings to some wealth, and his own personal connection in that drama from being a boy of three until the present, nearly forty years later. We are working out the bugs as to what THE NAPLES INSTITUTE proposes to be as a "think tank." This is my reaction to my colleagues defense of his family friend.
START WITH A DEFINITION OF WHO WE ARE
This is touching and personal, but I am still mystified as to what THE NAPLES INSTITUTE is meant to stand for:
(1) Is it to be a think tank to manufacture ideas, or
(2) Is it to spawn millionaires and billionaires, or
(3) Are we to be about wealth creation or
(4) Are we to be about ideas meant to influence people to accept their freedoms and the responsibilities that they entail, or
(5) Are we to be an extension of your interventions into neglected communities?
Notice I’ve not mentioned an “enlightened leadership” foundation. There are enough of those. If our pandemic of leaderless leadership is any indication, they still have not touched the surface of their mission. No, I think a clash of ideas with no single thrust but around a common theme is more appropriate.
There is a Talmudic saying:
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself only, what am I? If not now -- when?"
I WHAT DO PEOPLE WANT?
That is the conundrum of life in which you share quite beautifully the nature of yours, and as I have often done, I share the nature of mine.
They are both subjective truths that are relevant to each of us, individually. In getting beyond ours, we open others to discovering their own. To my mind, it is all about freedom, something that terrifies us, and which few of us practice in its most elemental form, while projecting the blame for our angst everywhere but where it belongs -- with us!
We want comfort not conflict, security not opportunity, safety not challenge, someone to think for us not to think for ourselves. We are attracted to the cage, and it is of our own making, while conning ourselves to believe that "we are free!"
The world is turning a corner that I see very clearly and wonder if others do as well. That corner is less interested in wealth creation than better asset distribution so that people, for starters, can have safe drinking water and adequate plumbing to combat disease.
You give an example of rags to riches. That is a Horatio Alger story, a good story, a personal story, and one that resonates with you. I don't happen to think most of us can identify with Warren Buffet, nice as he is, or Bill Gates, as generous as he is now that he is wealthy. They are like Rock stars in a celebrity universe that doesn’t interest much less touch us.
II THE IDOLS OF OUR WAYS ARE NOT NEW
So late we learn. Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) took to science to get away from idolatry. He came up with impediments preventing people of his times from seeing things clearly and called them "idols":
(1) Idols of the tribe. Bacon was referring to the sense of self-importance some people have of their place in the scheme of things. Hollywood actors, who mouth other people's lines, think their opinions count for more than Joe Blow working in a diner.
(2) Idols of the Cave. This is the idea of ethnocentrism where a country such as the United States projects its model of economics and politics on Third World countries irrespective of the in situ cultures. Bacon saw a more cynical factor surface in his times. The privileged few thought they could live the good life on the backs of the poor as their divine right. One hundred years later it led to the American and French Revolution.
(3) Idols of the Marketplace. Since the world of business speaks American, the US peddles its products and services without having a clue to the cultures it serves, and is therefore constantly compromised by them. It was the same in Bacon’s day.
(4) Idols of the Theatre. Bacon was talking about the faulty construction of ideas. We in America buy the sobriquet of "lone superpower" and then stumble about the globe on faulty premises and even more faulty perceptions. We like to throw such words as "brilliant" and "genius" and "great" about our leaders and thinkers, which reveals the inherent flaws in our culture.
III WALKING AS A BOY AMONG GIANTS
We are still surfing on economic waves that bless our shores, but we are not necessarily the model for the future of the world much less our own American destiny.
I don't write to be admired. I write to get people on the same page and off the dime doing what they do best in an effort to get the ball rolling toward self-acceptance and self-reliance.
My books and articles are not translated into other languages, but they are meant for peoples of all cultures. Many of these cultures are repressive cultures. It may be that people in these repressive cultures, if they were totally honest, want gain without pain, comfort without conflict, and authority without having to think, which they already have.
I don't have any wealth creating models in my background but I do have a slender connection to idea models.
My one uncle, whom I've written about rather extensively, took Ph.D.'s in economics and psychology after having had to quit high school as a sophomore to help support his two sisters and five brothers after his mother died.
He did four years of high school and four years of college in four years. He taught at St. Ambrose University (Davenport, Iowa), DePaul University (Chicago) and Detroit University (Detroit), all Catholic institutions, the latter a Jesuit university.
He maintained an office as a management consultant and psychologist in the Fisher Building in Detroit across the street from the General Motors Building. He was a consultant for years to the envy of his academic colleagues.
I spent my summers with him at Higgins Lake in central Michigan along with his son, Robert, who died last year, and his personal secretary who traveled with him and who was an outstanding athlete. My uncle's wife died when Robert was born.
My uncle was an intellectual, and one summer when Robert and I were arguing baseball, he decided that he would give seminars at our meals on the great religions of the world.
That happened during summers from my age of 12 to 15, after which I was too active in sports to take these summer vacations any longer.
I tell you this because, unknown to me at the time, these ideas stuck. I became interested in the philosophy of religion and in great religious leaders and philosophers.
My uncle knew many esoteric authors personally: Edgar Casey (the prophet) and Dr. Smiley Blanton (author of LOVE OR PERISH), and Arnold Hutschnecker (author of THE WILL TO LIVE). He introduced me to them at his seminars. He gave seminars in Detroit to the general public on "How to Think," and the "Decline of Our Western Culture." I was then a boy of ten or twelve, and would assist with Robert handing out programs. I always marveled at the confidence of these friends of my uncle.
My mother, his sister, was a reader but much more down to earth. She was also his favorite and the youngest of his siblings while he was the second oldest. The other five brothers all were laborers in Clinton, Iowa factories or railroad workers.
My da, who only went to the seventh grade and was intimidated by books and ideas, wanted me to quit high school after my sophomore year. "But da," I said, "I am an 'A' student." He said, "What has that got to do with the price of bread?"
My mother saw that I was kept in school. She also went to all my football, basketball, baseball games and track meets. My da never attended any of these events. One time the newspaper had me on the "3 A's and B" honor roll in high school when I had four "A's". My mother called the newspaper for a retraction on the front page for the error. My da was embarrassed.
I was an all-state (honorable mention) football player, and played four years of varsity basketball. I received letters-of-intent in football from Northwestern (Chicago), Notre Dame (South Bend), Purdue (Lafayette) and Iowa (Iowa City). My da didn't want me to play college sports, and I wasn’t too interested myself. College athletics are a most demanding job leaving little time for academic study. I was going to college to become educated, not a better athlete.
Athletic scholarships in those days covered books, tuition and boarding. I instead took an academic scholarship that covered tuition only. I kept it all five years of my time at Iowa despite carrying a full load in chemistry, physics, mathematics and other sciences.
I come out of the brutal clay of failed Irish potato farmers, grubby and grimy factory workers, and a community that looked mainly to high school sports for its entertainment of the day. My sadness is that there were many bright students that never received the kind of support athletes received, and moved naturally into predictable and safe careers.
My high school basketball coach was like a surrogate father to me from the age of ten or eleven. He would come over to the courthouse to watch us play baseball (see IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE). I loved and respected him. He once said, "You're a reluctant athlete. I wish you were as interested in basketball as books." My football coach was not as empathetic. He never spoke to me after high school when I didn't play college football.
IV THE NATURE OF MY HARDWIRING
Like you and your inclinations, and me in mine, the die was clearly cast early in our lives.
The difference is you are in the exploratory period that I was in during the 1970s after coming back from South Africa. I was looking for an anchor. It has taken me this long to realize there isn’t one nor should there be. So, we best go with the flow.
The past thirty years I've been in this discovery mode, which I have shared with my readers, hoping that they benefit. I am on a discovery mission to create an understanding of the world I have experienced that may prove helpful to others in the process of discovering and then creating theirs.
Simply put, I am an autodidact when it comes to philosophy. There is not a lot of room with chemistry, physics, mathematics, tons of labs, and languages, outside of a few required core courses, for much philosophy exposure in a scientific curriculum.
However, I did take electives in "understanding fiction" and "understanding poetry," along with a graduate seminar in "Shakespeare.” That is how I got exposure to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The University of Iowa is a haven for writers.
That said you are the writer and thinker you are, and I am the writer and thinker I am. Both are relevant to our times. You may be less conflicting than I am because I am clearly a Catholic thinker with a renegade spirit.
Catholicism believes in religious dogma (with the pope infallible as custodian of dogma), which must be mediated by the middleman that is the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Catholicism has thirteen layers of hierarchical authority, which, incidentally, as once did the secular complex organization until recently.
Protestantism believes religion should be directly between the individual and God with no middleman. Strangely, the "Protestant Work Ethic" has created all these layers of management not unlike the Roman Church with the concomitant pittfals.
This is the reason for my writing, WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990).
V KIERKEGAARD - A PARADOX IS A CONTRADICTION THAT APPEARS NOT TO BE CONTRADICTORY
If you examine my writing, I hold a critical eye up to the complex organization, which has created an army of middlemen between work and workers and has taken for itself most of the economic pie in non performance jobs.
Kierkegaard is right when he says there is "objective truth" and "subjective truth."
Objective Truth, according to him, is something that is true whether you know it or believe it, while Subjective Truth may be true for me but not for you. Krishnamurti said the same thing.
THE GROUP CREATES OBJECTIVE TRUTHS.
The Catholic Church, or the gang of clerics, is an objective truth factory. There we have all the dogmatic "Thou shalts." Opinions of the group, however, are usually wrong.
We managed our society with polls and look at the shape society is in. Polling is a major industry, which even became more major in this electronic age. We seldom read a book; go to a film, or restaurant, much less send our kids to a college that doesn’t have the seal of approval of the "Top Ten."
OBJECTIVE TRUTHS ARE WHAT WE OURSELVES THINK.
People of objective truth are suspicious of groupthink. They are mavericks. They base what they think and believe from sensory experience and what they read and observe that confirms such subjectivity.
When I was with Honeywell, "brainstorming" was big. This is groupthink taken to the absurd.
It is the reason why writers of provocative ideas become the focus rather than what they say.
The messenger is killed before the message is perceived.
The very legitimate filter of suspicion we all have and should use is directed at the credibility of the messenger rather than the credibility of the message.
The filter asks: what are his or her credentials, how does she or he fit in the scheme of things; what university did he or she attend; and what jobs has she or he held? The message is lost. The exploiters of this advantage are everywhere with uncanny success.
Only this past weekend I went to Sam's Club, Walmart, and Barnes & Noble, looking at the books on display at the three places as BB shopped.
Sam's Club had ten books and Walmart had five books prominently displayed --- all national best sellers. Barnes & Noble had all of these best sellers displayed in a tapestry of books in front as you come in the door.
I smiled to BB. "The self-fulfilling prophecy works here, too."
"What?"
"You can't help but be a best seller if the only books displayed prominently are best sellers."
"Oh."
"That's all, oh?"
She looks at her list. "You going to buy a book?"
I smiled again, thinking, BB you are so precious. You keep me tethered.
* * *
"If you show it, it will sell." This is "groupthink" worthy of readers. It is a catholic tradition spawned by the Catholic mystique. It is something the Roman Catholic Church slid into Western culture without anyone noticing.
VI TO HAVE A FRIEND YOU MUST BE A FRIEND TO YOURSELF
My Catholic education taught me discipline, completing my work, punctuality, to value reading (we had to make 18 book reports each year in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade), the power of myth and the intoxication of rites of passage and ritual.
Now, an old man, although I don't attend Mass, the Church knows it still owns me.
One of the objectives of my writing, and the reason I desire to be part of the think tank, is not to do wonderful humanitarian things for everybody, but to encourage people to think on their own.
People are perfectly capable of thinking given the inclination. But that means swaying them to think differently than their neighbors; to decide things for themselves; and then to have the integrity to stand up for what they believe despite the inevitable pressure to conform to groupthink.
Erich Fromm wrote a wonderful and perceptive book called "Escape From Freedom" (1941). We are, most of us, afraid to live an uncompromising life. It is a scary prospect. A think tank can nudge us in the right direction.
We are afraid not to belong, not to be accepted, not to be recognized, not to be noticed, when we don't belong to ourselves, don't accept ourselves as we are, don't take honest pleasure in our little victories, and fail to be self-aware, and therefore aware of others. Think of it. Each of these is a wall of our own cage. No wonder we have a sense of anxiety. No wonder we are afraid of freedom.
The Catholic Church builds on this angst. It is why I wrote THE TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND (1996).
There is only one posted review of THE TABOO on www.amazon.com, and that reader trashes the book.
She was looking for a book on how to be self-assertive. In other words, how to give as well as she got, not to have a meeting of the mind with herself.
True to objective truth, she attacked the author, not his message. She was in form and a predictable member of groupthink. Yet, I applaud her for going to the effort of expressing her anger so that everyone could see it. That was a step in the right direction. She may not have noticed but she was demonstrating the spirit of the book she trashed.
VII MAYBE I SHOULD BE A BUDDHIST
I will close this with: my first introduction to Jean Paul Sartre was reading his play, "No Exist," in the original French in college. I was never much of a French student, but he got my attention.
Wow! Did he ever! Sartre claimed we were condemned to freedom, and I think he has a point. But we don't want its responsibility, which I think is also true.
We conform to the comforts we derive from being subsumed under a structured culture because our culture is a refuge from freedom: in the home, community, at school, and in our work and play.
My focus in my books and articles has been on the professional worker. I attempt to rally him or her against this dread of authenticity in a world of inauthentic camp followers, cookie-cutter ciphers, true believers, bureaucrats, and automatons.
The score so far is "Them - 40,000 -- Fisher - 4 (but who’s counting?)." Maybe I should become a Buddhist.
Be always well, and keep thinking and believing and growing,
Jim
PS In 1440 Johannes Gutenberg, a gold smith and gem cutter, got the date of the fair wrong and found himself in the hapless position of all his wares to sell and no market. He needed to get the word out quickly, and perfected a movable type cast in metal that could be evenly spaced and set on a printing press. The rest is history. He revolutionized the world for the next nearly 600 years. What will the world be like 600 years from now with the Internet? LOOKING BACKWARD (1888) by Edward Bellamy, a medical doctor, envisioned a Utopian society in the year 2000, or 112 years after he published his book. Maybe in a few hundred more years, who knows?
_________________
Dr. Fisher books mentioned here are available on this website or from your Internet provider.
Reference: As a founding member of THE NAPLES INSTITUTE, conversations between members can set off sparks. What follows is a reaction to a piece by a fellow member. He was sharing how a family friend rose from humble beginnings to some wealth, and his own personal connection in that drama from being a boy of three until the present, nearly forty years later. We are working out the bugs as to what THE NAPLES INSTITUTE proposes to be as a "think tank." This is my reaction to my colleagues defense of his family friend.
START WITH A DEFINITION OF WHO WE ARE
This is touching and personal, but I am still mystified as to what THE NAPLES INSTITUTE is meant to stand for:
(1) Is it to be a think tank to manufacture ideas, or
(2) Is it to spawn millionaires and billionaires, or
(3) Are we to be about wealth creation or
(4) Are we to be about ideas meant to influence people to accept their freedoms and the responsibilities that they entail, or
(5) Are we to be an extension of your interventions into neglected communities?
Notice I’ve not mentioned an “enlightened leadership” foundation. There are enough of those. If our pandemic of leaderless leadership is any indication, they still have not touched the surface of their mission. No, I think a clash of ideas with no single thrust but around a common theme is more appropriate.
There is a Talmudic saying:
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself only, what am I? If not now -- when?"
I WHAT DO PEOPLE WANT?
That is the conundrum of life in which you share quite beautifully the nature of yours, and as I have often done, I share the nature of mine.
They are both subjective truths that are relevant to each of us, individually. In getting beyond ours, we open others to discovering their own. To my mind, it is all about freedom, something that terrifies us, and which few of us practice in its most elemental form, while projecting the blame for our angst everywhere but where it belongs -- with us!
We want comfort not conflict, security not opportunity, safety not challenge, someone to think for us not to think for ourselves. We are attracted to the cage, and it is of our own making, while conning ourselves to believe that "we are free!"
The world is turning a corner that I see very clearly and wonder if others do as well. That corner is less interested in wealth creation than better asset distribution so that people, for starters, can have safe drinking water and adequate plumbing to combat disease.
You give an example of rags to riches. That is a Horatio Alger story, a good story, a personal story, and one that resonates with you. I don't happen to think most of us can identify with Warren Buffet, nice as he is, or Bill Gates, as generous as he is now that he is wealthy. They are like Rock stars in a celebrity universe that doesn’t interest much less touch us.
II THE IDOLS OF OUR WAYS ARE NOT NEW
So late we learn. Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) took to science to get away from idolatry. He came up with impediments preventing people of his times from seeing things clearly and called them "idols":
(1) Idols of the tribe. Bacon was referring to the sense of self-importance some people have of their place in the scheme of things. Hollywood actors, who mouth other people's lines, think their opinions count for more than Joe Blow working in a diner.
(2) Idols of the Cave. This is the idea of ethnocentrism where a country such as the United States projects its model of economics and politics on Third World countries irrespective of the in situ cultures. Bacon saw a more cynical factor surface in his times. The privileged few thought they could live the good life on the backs of the poor as their divine right. One hundred years later it led to the American and French Revolution.
(3) Idols of the Marketplace. Since the world of business speaks American, the US peddles its products and services without having a clue to the cultures it serves, and is therefore constantly compromised by them. It was the same in Bacon’s day.
(4) Idols of the Theatre. Bacon was talking about the faulty construction of ideas. We in America buy the sobriquet of "lone superpower" and then stumble about the globe on faulty premises and even more faulty perceptions. We like to throw such words as "brilliant" and "genius" and "great" about our leaders and thinkers, which reveals the inherent flaws in our culture.
III WALKING AS A BOY AMONG GIANTS
We are still surfing on economic waves that bless our shores, but we are not necessarily the model for the future of the world much less our own American destiny.
I don't write to be admired. I write to get people on the same page and off the dime doing what they do best in an effort to get the ball rolling toward self-acceptance and self-reliance.
My books and articles are not translated into other languages, but they are meant for peoples of all cultures. Many of these cultures are repressive cultures. It may be that people in these repressive cultures, if they were totally honest, want gain without pain, comfort without conflict, and authority without having to think, which they already have.
I don't have any wealth creating models in my background but I do have a slender connection to idea models.
My one uncle, whom I've written about rather extensively, took Ph.D.'s in economics and psychology after having had to quit high school as a sophomore to help support his two sisters and five brothers after his mother died.
He did four years of high school and four years of college in four years. He taught at St. Ambrose University (Davenport, Iowa), DePaul University (Chicago) and Detroit University (Detroit), all Catholic institutions, the latter a Jesuit university.
He maintained an office as a management consultant and psychologist in the Fisher Building in Detroit across the street from the General Motors Building. He was a consultant for years to the envy of his academic colleagues.
I spent my summers with him at Higgins Lake in central Michigan along with his son, Robert, who died last year, and his personal secretary who traveled with him and who was an outstanding athlete. My uncle's wife died when Robert was born.
My uncle was an intellectual, and one summer when Robert and I were arguing baseball, he decided that he would give seminars at our meals on the great religions of the world.
That happened during summers from my age of 12 to 15, after which I was too active in sports to take these summer vacations any longer.
I tell you this because, unknown to me at the time, these ideas stuck. I became interested in the philosophy of religion and in great religious leaders and philosophers.
My uncle knew many esoteric authors personally: Edgar Casey (the prophet) and Dr. Smiley Blanton (author of LOVE OR PERISH), and Arnold Hutschnecker (author of THE WILL TO LIVE). He introduced me to them at his seminars. He gave seminars in Detroit to the general public on "How to Think," and the "Decline of Our Western Culture." I was then a boy of ten or twelve, and would assist with Robert handing out programs. I always marveled at the confidence of these friends of my uncle.
My mother, his sister, was a reader but much more down to earth. She was also his favorite and the youngest of his siblings while he was the second oldest. The other five brothers all were laborers in Clinton, Iowa factories or railroad workers.
My da, who only went to the seventh grade and was intimidated by books and ideas, wanted me to quit high school after my sophomore year. "But da," I said, "I am an 'A' student." He said, "What has that got to do with the price of bread?"
My mother saw that I was kept in school. She also went to all my football, basketball, baseball games and track meets. My da never attended any of these events. One time the newspaper had me on the "3 A's and B" honor roll in high school when I had four "A's". My mother called the newspaper for a retraction on the front page for the error. My da was embarrassed.
I was an all-state (honorable mention) football player, and played four years of varsity basketball. I received letters-of-intent in football from Northwestern (Chicago), Notre Dame (South Bend), Purdue (Lafayette) and Iowa (Iowa City). My da didn't want me to play college sports, and I wasn’t too interested myself. College athletics are a most demanding job leaving little time for academic study. I was going to college to become educated, not a better athlete.
Athletic scholarships in those days covered books, tuition and boarding. I instead took an academic scholarship that covered tuition only. I kept it all five years of my time at Iowa despite carrying a full load in chemistry, physics, mathematics and other sciences.
I come out of the brutal clay of failed Irish potato farmers, grubby and grimy factory workers, and a community that looked mainly to high school sports for its entertainment of the day. My sadness is that there were many bright students that never received the kind of support athletes received, and moved naturally into predictable and safe careers.
My high school basketball coach was like a surrogate father to me from the age of ten or eleven. He would come over to the courthouse to watch us play baseball (see IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE). I loved and respected him. He once said, "You're a reluctant athlete. I wish you were as interested in basketball as books." My football coach was not as empathetic. He never spoke to me after high school when I didn't play college football.
IV THE NATURE OF MY HARDWIRING
Like you and your inclinations, and me in mine, the die was clearly cast early in our lives.
The difference is you are in the exploratory period that I was in during the 1970s after coming back from South Africa. I was looking for an anchor. It has taken me this long to realize there isn’t one nor should there be. So, we best go with the flow.
The past thirty years I've been in this discovery mode, which I have shared with my readers, hoping that they benefit. I am on a discovery mission to create an understanding of the world I have experienced that may prove helpful to others in the process of discovering and then creating theirs.
Simply put, I am an autodidact when it comes to philosophy. There is not a lot of room with chemistry, physics, mathematics, tons of labs, and languages, outside of a few required core courses, for much philosophy exposure in a scientific curriculum.
However, I did take electives in "understanding fiction" and "understanding poetry," along with a graduate seminar in "Shakespeare.” That is how I got exposure to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The University of Iowa is a haven for writers.
That said you are the writer and thinker you are, and I am the writer and thinker I am. Both are relevant to our times. You may be less conflicting than I am because I am clearly a Catholic thinker with a renegade spirit.
Catholicism believes in religious dogma (with the pope infallible as custodian of dogma), which must be mediated by the middleman that is the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Catholicism has thirteen layers of hierarchical authority, which, incidentally, as once did the secular complex organization until recently.
Protestantism believes religion should be directly between the individual and God with no middleman. Strangely, the "Protestant Work Ethic" has created all these layers of management not unlike the Roman Church with the concomitant pittfals.
This is the reason for my writing, WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990).
V KIERKEGAARD - A PARADOX IS A CONTRADICTION THAT APPEARS NOT TO BE CONTRADICTORY
If you examine my writing, I hold a critical eye up to the complex organization, which has created an army of middlemen between work and workers and has taken for itself most of the economic pie in non performance jobs.
Kierkegaard is right when he says there is "objective truth" and "subjective truth."
Objective Truth, according to him, is something that is true whether you know it or believe it, while Subjective Truth may be true for me but not for you. Krishnamurti said the same thing.
THE GROUP CREATES OBJECTIVE TRUTHS.
The Catholic Church, or the gang of clerics, is an objective truth factory. There we have all the dogmatic "Thou shalts." Opinions of the group, however, are usually wrong.
We managed our society with polls and look at the shape society is in. Polling is a major industry, which even became more major in this electronic age. We seldom read a book; go to a film, or restaurant, much less send our kids to a college that doesn’t have the seal of approval of the "Top Ten."
OBJECTIVE TRUTHS ARE WHAT WE OURSELVES THINK.
People of objective truth are suspicious of groupthink. They are mavericks. They base what they think and believe from sensory experience and what they read and observe that confirms such subjectivity.
When I was with Honeywell, "brainstorming" was big. This is groupthink taken to the absurd.
It is the reason why writers of provocative ideas become the focus rather than what they say.
The messenger is killed before the message is perceived.
The very legitimate filter of suspicion we all have and should use is directed at the credibility of the messenger rather than the credibility of the message.
The filter asks: what are his or her credentials, how does she or he fit in the scheme of things; what university did he or she attend; and what jobs has she or he held? The message is lost. The exploiters of this advantage are everywhere with uncanny success.
Only this past weekend I went to Sam's Club, Walmart, and Barnes & Noble, looking at the books on display at the three places as BB shopped.
Sam's Club had ten books and Walmart had five books prominently displayed --- all national best sellers. Barnes & Noble had all of these best sellers displayed in a tapestry of books in front as you come in the door.
I smiled to BB. "The self-fulfilling prophecy works here, too."
"What?"
"You can't help but be a best seller if the only books displayed prominently are best sellers."
"Oh."
"That's all, oh?"
She looks at her list. "You going to buy a book?"
I smiled again, thinking, BB you are so precious. You keep me tethered.
* * *
"If you show it, it will sell." This is "groupthink" worthy of readers. It is a catholic tradition spawned by the Catholic mystique. It is something the Roman Catholic Church slid into Western culture without anyone noticing.
VI TO HAVE A FRIEND YOU MUST BE A FRIEND TO YOURSELF
My Catholic education taught me discipline, completing my work, punctuality, to value reading (we had to make 18 book reports each year in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade), the power of myth and the intoxication of rites of passage and ritual.
Now, an old man, although I don't attend Mass, the Church knows it still owns me.
One of the objectives of my writing, and the reason I desire to be part of the think tank, is not to do wonderful humanitarian things for everybody, but to encourage people to think on their own.
People are perfectly capable of thinking given the inclination. But that means swaying them to think differently than their neighbors; to decide things for themselves; and then to have the integrity to stand up for what they believe despite the inevitable pressure to conform to groupthink.
Erich Fromm wrote a wonderful and perceptive book called "Escape From Freedom" (1941). We are, most of us, afraid to live an uncompromising life. It is a scary prospect. A think tank can nudge us in the right direction.
We are afraid not to belong, not to be accepted, not to be recognized, not to be noticed, when we don't belong to ourselves, don't accept ourselves as we are, don't take honest pleasure in our little victories, and fail to be self-aware, and therefore aware of others. Think of it. Each of these is a wall of our own cage. No wonder we have a sense of anxiety. No wonder we are afraid of freedom.
The Catholic Church builds on this angst. It is why I wrote THE TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND (1996).
There is only one posted review of THE TABOO on www.amazon.com, and that reader trashes the book.
She was looking for a book on how to be self-assertive. In other words, how to give as well as she got, not to have a meeting of the mind with herself.
True to objective truth, she attacked the author, not his message. She was in form and a predictable member of groupthink. Yet, I applaud her for going to the effort of expressing her anger so that everyone could see it. That was a step in the right direction. She may not have noticed but she was demonstrating the spirit of the book she trashed.
VII MAYBE I SHOULD BE A BUDDHIST
I will close this with: my first introduction to Jean Paul Sartre was reading his play, "No Exist," in the original French in college. I was never much of a French student, but he got my attention.
Wow! Did he ever! Sartre claimed we were condemned to freedom, and I think he has a point. But we don't want its responsibility, which I think is also true.
We conform to the comforts we derive from being subsumed under a structured culture because our culture is a refuge from freedom: in the home, community, at school, and in our work and play.
My focus in my books and articles has been on the professional worker. I attempt to rally him or her against this dread of authenticity in a world of inauthentic camp followers, cookie-cutter ciphers, true believers, bureaucrats, and automatons.
The score so far is "Them - 40,000 -- Fisher - 4 (but who’s counting?)." Maybe I should become a Buddhist.
Be always well, and keep thinking and believing and growing,
Jim
PS In 1440 Johannes Gutenberg, a gold smith and gem cutter, got the date of the fair wrong and found himself in the hapless position of all his wares to sell and no market. He needed to get the word out quickly, and perfected a movable type cast in metal that could be evenly spaced and set on a printing press. The rest is history. He revolutionized the world for the next nearly 600 years. What will the world be like 600 years from now with the Internet? LOOKING BACKWARD (1888) by Edward Bellamy, a medical doctor, envisioned a Utopian society in the year 2000, or 112 years after he published his book. Maybe in a few hundred more years, who knows?
_________________
Dr. Fisher books mentioned here are available on this website or from your Internet provider.
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