BASKETBALL, NOW, AND BASKETBALL, THEN!

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

© March 22, 2011

REFERENCE:

Of late, I haven’t been taking my audiocassette recorder when walking.  I know it is an ancient tool, but I am ancient so at least it has that consistency.  Most of the time, in my peripatetic wanderings and wonderings, I excuse the dreamy suspension and consider my progress on the rewrite to A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEE.  This is the exception.

*     *     *

Watching the NCAA Final 68 teams play on television, I could not help but note how radically the game of basketball has changed since I played four years of varsity ball at an Iowa class AAA high school.  I went up to varsity as a freshman at sub state and stayed for the rest of my high school career.  My comments here are based on that experience and are not meant to reflect an official commentary as to how basketball was played 60 years ago, but as an approximate calibraion of that era compared to now.

SIZE

Basketball players today at the high school and college level – I’ve seen games played by both – indicate that it is common for players to be six feet or better and most are six-four to six-eight.  It was unusual for my generation to be tall.  I was six-one as a freshman and six-four as a senior, 175 pounds as a freshman and 190 pounds as a senior. 

Basketball players today spend a good deal of time in the weight room, something that didn’t exist in my day.  It shows in the definition of their muscles and in their bulk as well.  It is nothing for a six-one player today to weigh 190 to 210 and look lean whereas that was not the case 60 years ago.

My grandson, sixteen and a junior, plays basketball and he is six-six and weighs about 265.

AGILITY

Basketball players today, especially the final NCAA 68 teams, not only demonstrate great athleticism, I would even call it remarkable, but have an agility never witnessed before.  Were James Naismith to have lived until today – he died in 1939 -- he would not believe what an incredible sport he had created 120 years ago (1891). 

Basketball players today have the moves of ballet dancers, the skills of gymnasts, and the jumping and leaping ability of track & field performers.  They also have the speed and alacrity of sprinters, and the endurance of distance runners. 

The supreme conditioning of athletes allows them to play a type of basketball that never existed 60 years ago -- full court instead of half-court basketball. 

The fast break was exercised to precision by some teams 60 years ago, but not by most teams.  Most teams relegated the game to a half-court game.

Basketball players 60 years ago displayed athleticism but nothing close to the agility of basketball players today.  There are five-eight players in the NCAA tournament that can dunk.  There were six-six players in my day that couldn’t, although the point is moot because dunking wasn’t allowed, and I do believe the basket wouldn’t count and the team would be given a technical foul for dunking.  I may be wrong about this.

TYPE OF SCORING and BALL HANDLING

Basketball players 60 years ago scored lay ups, hook shots, set shots, reverse lay ups, and running jumpers. 

Basketball players today more often dunk, and leave the floor to shoot jumpers no matter where they are on the court.  They also arc the ball towards the basket so that a flying player can dunk on the run.  Lay ups of all descriptions are still part of the game with the player often in the air so long that he can improvise as to how the shot will be delivered. 

Scoring on the dribble was true 60 years ago, but like the psychological barrier of the 4-minute mile, no one could reach it until Dr. Roger Bannister did it in 1954, and now hundreds of runners run under four minute miles.  Likewise, it was thought that a basketball player had to have a low center of gravity, or be small, say five-eight or less to be a good dribbler.  Now, six-eight players can cover the full court on the dribble and score. 

The current NCAA Tournament demonstrates that ball handling and dribbling is a common skill to the average player in this elite company of players.

STRATEGY

Basketball players 60 years ago were unlikely to throw cross-court passes on the offensive side.  They do it now as a matter of routine.  Players 60 years ago were taught not to leave their feet on defense, whereas players do it all the time blocking shots because of their size and leaping ability. 

Basketball players 60 years ago were two guards and two forwards and a center.  Now, as demonstrated in the NCAA, there are often three forwards, a point guard and a center.  There is also the designation of strong and weak side forward, players that have the size and girth of a center.  It was unusual in my day, but I was a six-four guard, often playing the double post in center with the other center.  This was meant to confuse our opponents and increase the options.

Now players rotate much more than they did in my day moving quickly and strategically without the ball.  They still screen, and use a give and go routine that we used in grammar school.  Players never passed between their legs, or dribbled between their legs as they routinely do now. 

Strategies today are not that much different than 60 years ago.  For example, the weak side forward may go over and screen for the strong side forward, or vice versa, to open the player for a shot.  There are many other strategies, but what is different is that players today are more creative and spontaneous in reacting to defenses to discourage such strategies. 

DEFENSE and FOULING

Basketball players today, if there is one distinct measure of their supreme superiority over players of 60 years ago, it is their incredible defensive ability.  I marvel watching the NCAA Tournament how able these players are on defense. 

Speed is of the essence today as the game is terribly fast, but defensive players can stay with their man, full court, in a way that anyone who has ever played the game has to marvel at the skill. 

Perhaps the best measure of this is that these players today foul far less than they we did 60 years ago, yet they are more aggressive, tenacious, and effective than we ever were. 

A basketball scorer 60 years ago could rest on his laurels hoping the rest of the team would take up his defensive slack or lapses, not so today.  Everyone is a consummate defensive player who scores, or he is unlikely to make the team. 

SHOOTING and FOUL SHOT PERCENTAGES

As anyone who has watched the NCAA Tournament this year, it is not uncommon for both teams to shoot from the field in the neighborhood of 50 percent, and at the line in the neighborhood of 70 percent.  This despite three-point shooting should drop this average, as all NCAA teams today are good three-point shooters. 

Basketball players 60 years ago could sometimes reach these percentages but more often than not the percentages were closer to half what they are today, and the defenses were not nearly as good then, and they are excellent today.

RULE CHANGES

The three-point shot behind the key has changed the game, but what has changed the game more is the 24-second rule, or that the offensive team must hit the rim with a shot after crossing mid-court in 24 seconds or the ball is turned over to the opponent.  How I would have loved the three-point shot in my day, as I could hit better from outside than a lay up.

OFFICIATING

Basketball officiating today is an art form.  That is the only way I can put it.  I think officials do a great job.  They did a good job 60 years ago, but like everything else this has improved with the game.

AFRICAN AMERICANS

Some forty years ago, I was asked to give a speech at a community center in a largely African American section of St. Petersburg, Florida.  I came early, as was my inclination only to find the gym alive with about thirty African American boys playing basketball.  They were all sizes and shapes, some tall and lean, others short and fat, some agile, some not, but all playing a spirited game.  Players would substitute for each other so that ten players were always on the floor. 

The only way I can put it is that I was mesmerized by the whole affair.  They played hard and clean, and when someone was fouled, the player who fouled would say, shoot, meaning shoot a free throw.  It was autonomous fun with no supervisors’ only young boys alive with the spirit of basketball. 

In my speech, I mentioned my reaction and applauded the community leaders that allowed the gym to be open at night so these boys could play. 

Over the years I have watched boys playing in outdoor courts, usually African American boys, seeing before my eyes the skill level increasing, and the inventiveness with it.

This is not a scientific declaration but I would say 80 percent of the players in the NCAA Tournament in 2011 are African American boys, boys, I suspect, who honed their skills a long time ago on some outdoor court, or in some gym provided by wise community leaders.

MEANING NO DISRESPECT BUT

It occurred to me watching women play in the NCAA WOMEN’S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT that they play more like men and boys played 60 years ago.  They don’t leave their feet, as a rule, to shoot set shots, they play mainly a half court game, and even tall players don’t dunk.  I don’t know if this is because they can’t or are disinclined to dunk.  They are athletic but not as agile as the men’s basketball, but as athletic and agile in many cases as players were 60 years ago. 

Where they are like men’s basketball today, which is different to men’s basketball 60 years ago, they are better at the foul line, and better scoring from the field.  When they attempt to full court press, they remind me a lot of the problems we had with it in my day. 

WHAT AM I TRYING TO SAY?

I am absolutely certain that were I a basketball player today with the same skill set I had 60 years ago I would not make the squad much less the first team.  Moreover, I would say I would only have a marginal chance to make the girls basketball team today with that same skill set. 

Girls’ basketball 60 years ago didn't allow the guards play in the offensive court, therefore they couldn't score.  It was a different game.  Now, girls’ basketball is played up-tempo with similar rules but with a smaller basketball than that of boys.

One young lady that I watched play in high school, who is now a student at Columbia, was an excellent ball handler, and scored over 1,000 points in high school.  She decided not to go out for basketball in college.  She is short, and like men’s basketball, women’s basketball in college has gone for size with it not being  unusual to have several players in the range of six-four to six-eight class.

Sixty years ago it was unusual for many people to be six foot tall, now it is common.  Not only are players taller but also they seem to have longer arms, bigger hands, bigger feet, greater wing span than players had 60 years ago. 

I’m saying my nostalgia for basketball of another time is not diminished because of this great leap forward.  I applaud this remarkable evolution of the sport, but still take solace with my memory of earlier days

THE FIRE WAGON FIVE.

When I was a boy, I was a tremendous fan of the “Fire Wagon Five” of Clinton High School, one of the larger schools in the state, a team that was expected to win the high school state championship for their legendary "fast break," that is, rebounding the defensive board and getting the basketball down the court before the opposing team could set its defense and scoring. 

Clinton High School lost to the smallest school in the tournament. Danbury Independent School, a country school, 25 – 24 in March 1946, or sixty-five years ago.

Dean Burridge, five-eight, all-state first team in football, was also all-state first team in basketball, and my hero.  He was fast and smart, but not on this night. 

There was a little fellow named Dick Reicks of Danbury, who dribbled the game away.  The only way he could be stopped was to foul him, and then he’d go to the free throw line, and score.  Therol Petersen, Clinton High's center, was six-two, but was kept from scoring by Elton Tuttle, the six-four center for Danbury.  The combination of Reicks and Tuttle killed Clinton’s chance for a state title. 

Clinton’s Petersen went on to star in basketball at Iowa State University while Dean Burridge played football for Illinois Normal University. 

It was a different kind of basketball, but I found it thrilling with my best friend, Bobby Witt, and write about it IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE.

Almost as a harbinger of things to come, on that Clinton High basketball team was a young African American, called Negro in those days, named Le Roy Watts. 

Le Roy was six-four with the agility and wingspan of players of today.  He never started a single game, always coming off the bench to rebound and score like players of today.  It is said that this was his choice.  In any case, he made history in 1946 in the Iowa High School Athletic Association State High School Basketball Tournament by being named to the all-tournament third team, setting a new precedence as a non-starter earning such distinction. 

If you love this sport, I hope you find time to watch some great basketball as the "Sweet Sixteen" vie for the NCAA National Championship during this 2011 March Madness!

*     *     *

WHY ONLY THE PROLOGUE TO "GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA"?

Some readers have questioned my publishing the Prologue of A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA with no scheduled planning date for publication. 

Quite frankly, I don’t even know if the manuscript will be published. 

I apologize for this if it seemed crass, but I am often asked about the book, and thought this brief introduction to it would suffice.  Given this interest, I will attempt to explain the scope of the book here.

It is a parody on our secular society that has lost its spiritual way, and therefore its moral compass, while being preoccupied with the pornography of the body at the expense of pornography of the spirit and will.  The great betrayal is love has been locked out.

The novel is true but fictionalized to protect the guilty.  It is set in South Africa at a time of the cruelty, illegitimacy and terror the policy of apartheid, where the 20 percent white population dominated with draconian zeal the 80 percent black population.

The mockery of Christianity is on display with the principal religion of the minority white population (Afrikaners and Brits) that of the Dutch Reform Church and the Church of England in support of the Afrikaner policy of apartheid, while the Roman Catholic Church acquiesced in that same support. 

The story follows the exploits of the protagonist, Seamus “Dirk” Devlin, and his family as they engage South Africa in 1968 at the height of the apartheid policy.  This marked, in my view, the end of the twentieth century.

The world, and in particular the United States commenced to change radically in its descent in 1968 into the present.  Lance Morrow wrote in Time (January 11, 1988), "1968 like a knife blade severed the past from the future."

Devlin is a young idealistic lower class American, and first generation college graduate in his family, who has found his anchor in Irish Catholicism, only to find it grumbling to dust, who believed in the American corporate society only to discover its duplicitous agenda exploiting  the weak across the globe in the post-World War Two era, who believed in society’s institutions such as marriage and education only to find he was not prepared for a world bent on self-alienation and creative destruction of the environment.

The book opens, as you have read, with him retiring at only 31 as life and the pursuit of happiness no longer make any sense to him. 

He says to the priest in the confessional, “Bless be Father for I am bored.”  And then he tells his story, which is a declaration of the pointlessness of a life of meaningless success.

This is the story of a lower class kid who has risen to mahogany role and its rarefied counterfeit world, only to find it wanting, and then quitting as his career and future appar to be soaring.

Someone wrote, why “boring” as a metaphor for the story?  Is it meaningful to the story?

That, of course, is for the reader to decide. 

I can tell you this, the so-called “seven deadly sins” had nothing to do with Jesus or the bible, but were a product, not of St. Augustine as many think, as they are a product of the mind of a 4th century monk named Evagrius Ponticus .  Actually, Ponticus authored “eight deadly sins,” which is germane to the book.

What was the eighth deadly sin?  He called it “acedia,” or boredom. 

Boredom can be characterized as apathy, passivity, compliance, failure to take a stand, saying “shit happens,” or “life is a bitch and then you die,” all favorite expressions of boredom in the present age

I have been writing about this malaise in nonfiction for the past thirty plus years without much impact. 

I’ve turned to the novel because the few readers who read books generally read fiction more than nonfiction. 

Should the book be published, many who have read me before will most likely burn the book once they start reading bercause of their conservative or traditional orientation.  I share this with you because it is likely for them to find the book offensive.  The book doesn't spare anyone including the protagonist and his family. 

A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA is a book that might have a better audience fifty or a hundred years from now when historians have a better read on our duplicitous and hypocritical society. 

We all live in the cage of our cognitive biases, and we tend to think the problem is with other people not ourselves.  We don't like to think, to process information in view of its content and context against the reality of experience, but to fall back on common held views that are a function of societal bias.

We look for bromides, for anchors in religion, education, home, family, ethnicity and in our social connections.  The book suggests these have all betrayed us.

Ergo, the book is about the systemic failure of our system and our culture.  It suggests the only sensible action in a world of failure is retreat, reflection and regeneration.

The book ends with the young man cut off from the world that programmed and molded him into the person he no longer chooses to be. 

In a real sense, the book is a continuation of IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE, which ends in 1947.

A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA skips twenty-one years, bypassing high school and college with only background references to those pyrotechnical years, while concentrating on 1968, a metaphorical year of crashing, burning and epiphany.

It took me forty-three years to complete this second part of a trilogy.  Since I am in the afternoon of my senior years, it is doubtful if the third part will be completed, which has already been started. 

Were I to describe these three efforts in a single word it would be:

IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE – INNOCENCE

A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA – BETRAYAL

DELIVERANCE FROM ALL EVIL – LOVE

It may seem that I procrastinate, but that would not at all be true.  I quote a story from Krishnamurti in the book, where a painter sets up his easel and collapsible chair, sits down, takes out his paints, and then studies a tree. 

He does this for days, when a man who has observed him is finally provoked to say, "You come here every day, set up to paint but never paint, why is that?"

The painter answers simply, "I will pain when I become the tree and the tree becomes me."

As a writer of this book, I can relate to that.

Finally, some of my readers are atheists and of other persuasions of human behavior.  I respect them if I fail to understand them and their passions.  We are all children of God even if the God we believe in is a scientific equation.

Be always well,

Jim

"I MISS YOUR BLOG!"

"MISS YOUR BLOG!"

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

© February 17, 2011

A READER WRITES:

Dear Jim,

I miss your blog.

L

*     *     *

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Dear L,

Thank you for your interest.  You deserve an explanation.

On February 4, 2011, a hit-and-run driver on 66th street in Pinellas Park (Florida) cut down my daughter, Jeannie.  The driver first hit my daughter at a high rate of speed, threw her into the air, and then ran over her, seeing what he or she had done, making a U-turn (caught on tape) and going the opposite direction.  Jeannie bled to death on the street. 

This senseless act has left me numb barely able to cope, confused at the insensitivity of the act, and unconscionable behavior of one individual.

Since I cannot comprehend the brutality of this act, much less no longer see the cheerful smile and experience the free spirit of my daughter, my ability to think and compose missives has been seriously impaired.

All of my missives rise out of a sense of things I observe, have experienced, and fit into the lexicon of personal archives.  I am never out to celebrate one faction at the expense of another, or to imply that I have special knowledge, but rather to show how I, one individual, see things. 

My missives are meant to stimulate thought and reflection, to generate assessment and calculation of where we are versus where we claim to be and why we are in this neighborhood of behavior.

We congratulate ourselves repeatedly on the progress we have made, of the wonders of the electronic age, but we fail to examine the calculus of regression that has accompanied this progress.  Many who call themselves human beings are more callous and primitive than wildest beast of the jungle.

Be always well,

Jim

*     *     *

AN OPEN LETTER TO CORPOCRACY!

AN OPEN LETTER TO CORPOCRAY!

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

© February 11, 2011

Thomas L. Friedman wrote a book to explain the changing nature of society across the globe, THE WORLD IS FLAT (2005).  The essence of what Friedman was saying was that with the rise of China and non-Western countries economically, politically, militarily, and socially, was introducing an increasingly level playing field that was more consistent with that enjoyed in the West. 

This momentous change has been influenced if not led by the Internet and the increasingly sophisticated and available technology in the form of information and communication electronically through many new inventions and interventions, which continue unabated at an alarming pace.

We have seen this most recently in the rise of the people of Egypt as the children of Egypt have risen against the Pharaoh of Egypt in the totalitarian rule of Hosni Mubarak.  Change is from the bottom up, no longer from the top down.   Corpocracy, please make note of this. 

In a series of books, I have attempted to map out a similar development in the corporate world but have encountered the soft bigotry of low expectations of the majority popluation of professional workers in Western corporate society. 

Professionals, seemingly locked into the culture of complacency and the language of corpocracy, a status which I have also outlined in a series of books, have allowed Chief Executive Officers and their staffs to operate in collusion with their Board of Directors to rubber stamp decisions that maintained top down corporate authority and infallible rule.

Under the guise of cosmetic change that changes nothing at all, corpocracy has instituted empowerment practices, which purport to be empowering when they are not, worker friendly compensation programs which buys loyalty and quiets reaction, claimed to be open to change when it reinforces the idea of profits before people, and seen itself as egalitarian when it pays itself 500 to 1,000 times the wage of the typical hourly worker, and bought loyalty of the professional and management staff by making them appear affluent enough to identify with top management if they cannot replicate their advantages.

Corpocracy, your days are numbered.  Professionals have the power because knowledge is power and they control knowledge, which is the source of power in the electronic age. 

Workers will no longer allow corpocracy to summarily reengineer, reorganize, flippantly create and implement redundancy exercises, close plants and leave workers in their fifties without access to the careers and economic stability they spent their youth in school in preparation for.  

Corpocracy, you are no longer in charge, and what is happening in Tunisia and Egypt in a political sense is to happen in a corporate sense very soon.

*     *     *

TEN-PERCENTERS & THREE-PERCENTERS: NEW INSIGHT INTO THE PYGMALION EFFECT, AND HOW WE SEPARATE INTO CLASSES

 TEN-PERCENTERS & THREE-PERCENTERS: NEW INSIGHT INTO THE PYGMALION EFFECT, AND HOW WE SEPARATE INTO CLASSES

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

© February 6, 2011

*     *     *

Today BB and I spent the day at Tampa Preparatory School, and with our granddaughter, Rachel, and grandson, Ryan, and then attended a junior varsity basketball game in which Ryan, played.  It was GRANDPARENTS DAY.

This is the sixth of these outings we have attended.  Over the years, I have developed a sense of the place and space and what it means in a wider context.

Tampa Prep cost between $18,000 - $20,000 per year with more than seventy-five percent of the students going on to Ivy League schools, or one tier below them, while nearly one hundred percent go on to college, with more than ninety percent of them graduating.

Walking towards the school today, I said to BB, do you notice anything unique about these young people.  She said, “No, but I have a sense you’re going to tell me.” 

“Well, first of all,” I said, “they look like they deserve to be here, that they belong, and secondly, I suspect 90 percent of them are not anymore gifted than the general population of students in the public school system.  The difference is the 90 percent here expect to succeed whereas the 90 percent in the public school sector are much less certain or inclined.”

“So?” BB says, “What’s so unique about that?”

“I’ll tell you after we attend classes with them.”

“Why does everything have to be a mystery with you?” she says, “Why the suspense?”

“Because, my dear, then you’ll have empirical evidence to support my claim.”

“Okay,” she says, “I’ll go along with you on this.”

“Thank you.”

*     *     *

GRANDPARENTS DAY – TAMPA PREPARATORY SCHOOL

TAMPA PREP does a remarkable job of welcoming Grandparents.  There is a continental breakfast, then a welcoming ceremony by the head of school, followed by the Middle School Chorus, the School Orchestra, and the School Dancers performing for the Grandparents.

Then the Grandparents are taken to classes selected by their grandchildren.  This gives the grandparents a chance to meet their teachers and interact with their grandchildren and teachers in a mock session of regular classroom activity, including student presentation.

This years BB and I went together whereas in the prior years we split up.  We went to Ryan’s advanced physics class for juniors, and Rachel’s advanced English class for freshmen.  I mention, “advanced,” because even in a private school they still pander to the outstanding.

The physics class was conceptual physics on satellites with the mathematics that underpin the physics being applied to theoretical and mathematical propositions regarding outer space, no rote learning here.

Grandparents were asked to talk about their careers, and how physics and mathematics influenced their career choices.  BB took one look at me, and said, “This teacher doesn’t know what he’s let himself in for.”

Perhaps no surprise, some Grandparents have made significant societal contributions.  There were a couple West Point graduates, a man who ran for governor, and a woman who has had been in the legal profession and philanthropic work.  Grandparents who had expected to succeed apparently had.

In the English class, students read essays they had created regarding the origin of their given name, how they got it, what it means, and their comfort level with the name. 

Significant, if the student was not comfortable with this idea, they enjoyed the flexibility of writing about a family member’s given name, or to invent a totally imaginary story.  All of the stories were brief, catchy, and some outstanding.  One notable essay was by a ninth grader who has an ancestor that crossed the Delaware that terrible winter in December 1776 with George Washington. 

Grandparents were asked to share how they came by their given name, which was interesting as many of these Grandparents had origins in other countries in the not too distant past. 

*     *     *

The class meetings were then followed by a box lunch in the school gymnasium where the head of school gave insight into what Grandparents Day has always meant to him.  The basketball game came in early evening, so we had to come back for it.  Tampa Prep Junior Varsity lost to Berkley Preparatory School.

*     *     *

THE PYGMALION EFFECT: TEN-PERCENTERS &  THREE-PERCENTERS

“So, what is so unique about TAMPA PREP?” BB asked me on the way home.

“I’m not trying to make this a play on words, but the first thing that is obvious is that the school is not unique.  This is our sixth year of attending these Grandparent Days, and the pattern seems pretty obvious by now, and that is, what is unique is that the students are not unique at all, whereas you expect them to be.  Do you follow?”

“Not at all.”

“Okay, let me put it another way.  Any population of students is likely to fall within the parameters of a BELL CURVE.  There are the high achievers, foot draggers at the two tails of the curve, and in the middle, the middle-of-roaders.  Despite the efforts to defy this curve, chances are it will prevail in the public or private school with once exception.”

“Which is?”

“It goes back to my original comment when we came to the school today.  I said, you look at these young people and you can see they have a sense of belonging.  I meant they assume in this high expectation climate they, too, whatever their aptitude or drive, will succeed.  It is called the PYGMALION EFFECT.”

“Pygmalion effect?”

“Yes, in 1965, a study was made of a normal bell curve population of students.  The population was divided into two sections, one section was designated as ‘gifted students,’ and the population of students was designated as ‘average students.'  The teachers didn’t know the two populations were practical identical in IQ distribution.”

“How did they know that?”

“They were all given IQ tests before the study, and IQ tests again after the completion of the study.  Students designated as ‘gifted' scored ten points, on average, greater than the mean average of the group, whereas students designed as “average” scored ten points, on average, below the mean average of the group prior to the study.” 

“And so are you saying TAMPA PREP is like this?”

“Not just TAMPA PREP but education in general.  Permit me to explain.  Uniqueness is a function of expectations.  It is a sensible conclusion in our culture that since education costs so much that students who register significant SAT scores, manage the entrance examination successfully, or have a legacy of attendance at such elite schools have more than an even chance of becoming ten-percenters”

“Ten percenters?”

“Yes, the ten percent that get ninety percent of the great jobs and influential positions in American society, where they enjoy the benefit of an affluent existence.”

“I get it.  You’re saying they get ninety percent of the good jobs but they are in reality a bell curve, in other words, not much different than those that don’t get such treatment.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“But why is this so?”

“It is a manifestation of the PYGMALION EFFECT.  Looking at the faces of young people here, didn’t you notice they all have a kind of presence?”

“Yes?”

“Consciously or unconsciously, they see themselves as a cut above public school students because they are here.  When they’re out in public, they wear tee shirts and sweaters with the Tampa Prep logo, or the logo of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Northwestern on them.  They want the world to see they are ten-percenters, when in reality only 10 percent are.  The other 90 percent, because they are in association with the ten-percenters, have the same expectations, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“And you’re saying they’re not?”

“I’m saying no such thing.  I’m saying there are the ten-percenters here as there are ten-percenters in the public school.  Only here everyone is treated as if they are ten percenters.  This is consistent with the PYGMILION STUDY in which half the class was treated as gifted.  Here everyone is treated as gifted.  That is what I am saying.  As consequence, ordinary students are treated as extraordinary and are likely to win admission to prestigious colleges and universities.”

“What is wrong with that?”

“Nothing at all.”

“So why the diatribe?”

“I don’t see it as a diatribe.  I see it as explaining why educators bemoan the fact that 90 percent of Harvard students, for example, graduate as ‘A’ students with graduate honors.  At this level, ten-percenters are reduced to three-percenters.”

“Come on now, you’re making this too difficult to understand, why three-percenters and no longer ten-percenters?”

“Please, be patient with me.  Education is social, economic and political as well intellectual.  There is a dumbing down that has been reported over the past hundred years from elementary through high school through college and graduate school with inflated grades, lower expectations, and increasing inability to think and process information significantly to make game changing contributions to society. 

“As a consequence, in high school, only 10 percent are significantly ten-percenters, the rest or 90 percent are likely to fall into the bell curve I’ve already described.  The most difficult thing is to get into Harvard or its equivalent.  Once there, ten-percenters now become three-percenters, that is, important movers and shakers, or change masters of society, while 97 percent of these privileged students, who are all treated as three-percenters, fall into rest of the bell curve.  Do you see my point?”

“Yes. And again I ask is that bad?”

“BB, it is not simply bad, it is horrific.  We listen to, follow, believe and trust these privileged ninety-seven-percenters as if they are three-percenters because they have graduated from, say, Harvard, when in fact the three-percenters are now buried in the ninety-seven-percenters.”

“I think you exaggerate.”

“I hope so because something is wrong when credentials mean more than legitimate voices.”

*     *     *

ADDENDUM:

When I was in high school more than a half century ago, ten percent of the students took four years of mathematics, along with physics, chemistry, and biology, four years of English, two years of foreign language, and four years of history and social science.  They were the same faces in all those classes. 

These students didn’t consider themselves ten-percenters, but they were treated and inculcated as such. 

Every one of these students was expected to do well in life, and has, whereas the other 90 percent were not expected to be or treated as potential ten-percenters.  They were not encouraged to take the more challenging courses, but to slide by as comfortably as possible. 

Imagine if all these public school students had been treated, whatever their socio-economic status, as “gifted,” what a different world they would be handing off to their children and grandchildren. 

*     *     *

WHEN A PERSON MURDERS SOMEONE, WE ALL DIE A LITTLE, AND OTHER PONDERINGS ON THIS SUNDAY

WHEN A PERSON MURDERS SOMEONE, WE ALL DIE A LITTLE, AND OTHER PONDERINGS THIS SUNDAY

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

© January 30, 2011

*     *     *

MOM ADMITS KILLING KIDS

My expectations, when I came back from South Africa in 1969, were that I wouldn’t make it to the end of the century, and here I am eleven years into the new.  It has given me the opportunity to ponder a world that is having a nervous breakdown that I never expected to see, a world that seemingly has everything and nothing at all.

*     *     *

A well educated mother with a very successful husband, living in an upscale neighborhood here in Tampa, picked up her thirteen year old son from soccer practice drove him home, then shot and killed him. 

She then went upstairs where her honor student sixteen-year-old daughter was studying and shot her in the back of the head.  She lost the courage to make it a murder/suicide. 

The mother is 50, the father is 48, a US Army colonel currently out of the country on assignment in the Middle East. 

The crime of these two young promising teenagers was that of back talking and bad mouthing their mother.  She had had it and lost it.  They lost their lives for this crime.  We have lost the contribution of two young people who were on their way to making meaningful contributions to American society. 

It is the DNA of our times to think this mother is disturbed with some psychobabble description of her sickness, failing to realize the seeds of her sickness are in us all. 

It was not an impulsive act.  The mother planned the killings purchasing a 38-caliber pistol for this precise act.  It was not a happy home as police cars were periodically at the home.  Why she did it only she and God know, or maybe that is not the case.

I don’t know her, or her children, or her husband or actually anything about the family other than what is in the newspaper or on television but I mourn them all. 

Intelligence is not enough to get any of us through this life, especially if it is only cognitive intelligence.  It never was.  It is not easy being a human being.  This life gets more demanding, more ruthless, more punishing every day, mainly, I believe, because we look for guidance outside ourselves, for coping through some outside agency. 

We are still programmed, but not to be self-sufficient, or not to trust our own instincts.  We have lost our spiritual connection with the land, with each other, with our heritage, with our culture, and therefore with ourselves. 

*     *     *

COPS AND COP KILLINGS

For a decade (1970 – 1980), I was a police consultant as an organizational development psychologist, consulting police departments from Connecticut to Miami along the eastern seaboard. 

My studies have been used in course work at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, and the University of North Carolina.  I wrote my master’s thesis and doctor’s dissertation on my empirical work in the field. 

I conducted long-term studies in a number of police departments including Fairfax, Virginia, Raleigh, North, Carolina, Richmond, Virginia, St. Petersburg, Florida, and Miami, Florida.  I have given executive development seminars for senior police officers in Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Kansas City, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, and Orlando and Tampa, Florida for the American Management Association. 

And I have ridden more than a thousand hours with police officers on the job over the course of this work.  I mention this involvement as prelude to saying I have developed great affection and respect for police, and the job.

There is no profession, in my experience, that sees society as naked as do the police.  Yet, police are made up of ordinary men and women who have a sense of duty and honor to protect and serve the community. 

Police deal in human combustibles every day and of a variety that no priest, rabbi, minister or Moslem cleric, psychologist or psychiatrist is likely to ever encounter. 

My work was with them when many were called “pigs,” abuse which they took and still did their duty.  I have been present when they have been spit upon and thrown up on, pushed and shoved, showers with the most vile language I have ever heard, from both men and women, young people, too, and they showed restrain.  It was often hard to watch.

My wonder is where society would be today without police, without their sense of duty and their capacity to absorb hate, vilification and societal pathology?

Eleven police officers have already been killed this year in the State of Florida, two only a few days ago in St. Petersburg, men in the flower of life, with wives and families.  They were attempting to arrest a felon whose marriage had gone awry.  The felon’s brother is a champion boxer, and a solid citizen. 

*     *     *

As one who has never owned a gun, never gone hunting in his life, only fired a gun during military training when in the US Navy, I look at guns, the gun control lobby, and the whole violence with guns from a rather unique perspective. 

Guns don’t kill.  People who own guns do.  Why do people own guns?  Why do people own assault weapons, weapons that are designed for warfare?  Why do people have a weapon in the glove compartment of their vehicles?  Indeed, why does a jogger carry a gun while jogging?  A jogger recently killed a man while jogging who attempted to rob him here in the Tampa Bay area.

The short answer may be – I say may be because I don’t know – because of fear.  The longer answer is that we have always been a violent society since our earliest days. 

The Pilgrims brought guns to this country to hunt and then fight off the Indians.  The early settlers would feel naked without a weapon.  We have made national heroes of Daniel Boone, and James Fennimore Cooper's fictional gun totters in his Leather Stocking Sagas.  During the "The Age of Jackson," senators and congressmen would feel naked without a weapon during legislative sessions. 

The cartoon, Doonesbury, is currently lampooning Congressmen for carrying guns as if this is unique to the American character, which it is not.    

Chances are we never would have won the American Revolutionary War without the “Minute Men.”  There is one story of that early war in 1777, when it was going bad for the Americans, and General John Burgoyne sent out a company of men to flush out the Americans north of New York City and take prisoners.  Not a single British soldier returned. 

Bearing arms is a right in the American constitution, and having that right or denying that right would be even more insane than was prohibition (18^th amendment) in 1919 and then repealed in 1933 (21^st amendment).  Prohibition gave birth to speak easies and Al Capone.  You cannot legislate morality.  Morality is always in the mind of the time.

It is interesting to report as a non-gun citizen that most of our celebrated belief in individualism has eroded to the point of being nearly totally gone.  The right to bare arms is apparently the last vintage of that individualism that still exists.  

Rather than paying so much attention to guns and gun control, I think it would be time better spent paying attention to the evolution of our American culture.  We are changing.  And with change chronic perturbations need attention.  We might start with why we are so self-hating and how we might rectify this draining predilection.

*     *     *

ARE HUMAN BEINGS BY NATURE THEIVES?

When New Orleans suffered the terrible effects of Hurricane Katrina, my heart went out to the desperate straits of most citizens.  What I wasn’t prepared for was the terrible looting. 

Then I thought of the Riots of Watts, Chicago, and Detroit when ordinary citizens looted the stores in which they shopped as if, given the circumstances, they had a right to loot, or to break the law.

I recent days, I’ve watched the peaceful marches for regime change in Egypt collapse into street riots, burning automobiles, breaking windows, torching commercial and public buildings, and, then most unbelievable of all, looting the Egyptian Museum of cultural artifacts that go back to the beginning of our common civilization. 

Who would do this?  How would students committed to building a better society resort to this cultural carnage?  What gives anyone permission to take their anger out on merchants and officials, who in the main are good and decent people? 

People who devote their lives to public service, contrary to stories on the media, are in the main good and decent individuals.  I wouldn’t want to change places with them in a million years.  But somebody, thank God, is willing to make the sacrifice and endure the abuse that public service entails. 

Remember this, the media don’t sustain themselves on good news.  They don’t sustain themselves on pictures of tranquility and peaceful assembly.  They don’t sustain themselves on people doing the mundane things that Erving Goffman wrote about in “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” (1959).  Media are looking for stories that get our attention, the more the macabre the better, as the public feeds on the sensational aspect of otherwise ordinary existence.  It is part of our appetite for collective insanity.

*     *     *

Are we by nature thieves?  I wonder.  When I was a young executive with a chemical company, we had a meeting of top managers in Chicago.  Each manager at his placemat had a cigarette lighter with a diamond embedded in the casing along with the company’s logo and date of the conference. 

We took a break, and I came back and my lighter was gone.  Everyone knew I didn’t smoke, but my mother did, and I was going to give her the lighter.  I would imagine at the time the lighter was worth about $1,000, ten times that in today’s dollars.  None of those executives were hurting for cash or perks, and no hotel employee took it, as it was stipulated there would be no interruptions. 

One of those top executives was a thief, pure and simple. 

Why?  I don’t know.  I’ve tried to answer it for forty years.  My senses keep being bombarded with the idea that thievery is natural to us, if we think we can get away with it, or justify it – Fisher doesn’t smoke – we steal! 

Material possessions have never meant much to me.  Perhaps it is because I come from so little, I’m not sure.  But our society, indeed, Western civilization more specifically, has made material wealth important, which brings me to my next pondering.

*     *     *

WHERE IS THE CHURCH WHEN WE NEED IT?

Culture always starts with religion, leastwise this is the case of the last thousand years or so.  When we think of culture, we usually think of European culture and the Renaissance.  Islam and Jewish culture were underway long before the Renaissance came.

The origins of science, commerce, poetry, art, and yes, tolerance did not originate with European Christianity. The Moors from Africa, the Muslims, if you well, brought those gifts to Europe in the eighth century. 

The Moors dominated Spain, which was then the seat of learning, for nearly eight hundred years (711 – 1492).  Their dominance ended the same year Columbus discovered America (1492). 

This period was also called “The Golden Age of Jewish Culture in Spain.”  Judaism flourished under Muslim rule, as the Moors were far more tolerant of Jews than Christians.  It was the Christians that established the Spanish Inquisition and persecuted non-Christians or ostracized Jews who would not convert to Christianity.  It is all a matter of our Western history. 

Christianity, both Catholicism and Protestantism, has reason to celebrate its cultural heritage, but it owes a deep debt to Muslim and Jewish cultures, which co-existed rather well for centuries. 

Now, we have Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan and Egypt in a state of turmoil with little Israel right in the middle of this instability with few aware much less interested in a common history that Judaism and Islam once enjoyed during their “golden age.”

Religion, whatever the book that justifies its existence, is a human group.  Religious denominations have all had rocky histories.  And religion, whatever the naysayers may say, such as Christopher Hitchens, have had an important, no, vital role in the history of mankind.  Most people believe in God – all three great religions believe in the same God – because God is a way to get outside oneself to see more clearly what is inside.

*     *     *

Even worshiping the same God has not made life any easier.  We are in a period of transition.

Pitrim Sorokin wrote that this transition would be painful, but inevitable, that religions would lose their way, and as a consequence, so would their followers.  The sociologist wrote these words three-quarters of a century ago:

“We are seemingly between two epochs the dying Sensate culture of our magnificent yesterday, and the coming Ideational culture of the creative tomorrow.  We are living, thinking, and acting at the end of a brilliant six-hundred-year-long Sensate day” (Social and Cultural Dynamics, Volume III, page 535).

This explains why we are so materialistic, so preoccupied with our sexuality, so superfluous in our motivation, and so ambivalent in the choices we make. 

Sorokin predicted we would become increasingly fatalistic, increasingly enamored of fantasies, the fanatical and the transitory, increasingly self-abusing and self-destroying, increasingly skeptical of law and order and social restrain, indeed, increasingly out-of-control and therefore suicidal, homicidal and genocidal.  Like the phoenix, we would rise out of our own self-destruction to a new creativity. 

Wars, he said, would become more devastatingly senseless and monstrous as we fought our way through our dying Sensate to the new Ideational day.

*     *     *

By the accident of my birth, I carry the toxins of this insanity in my genetic code.  When I was a born, I never ate meat on Friday, I went to Mass and Communion every week, I married didn’t practice birth control nor did I believe in divorce.

Likewise, my Jewish friends, whether orthodox or not, married Jews, practiced their faith, kept to the strict code of observing the Sabbath and the diet of the Torah.

Catholics didn’t marry Protestants or Protestants Catholics.  Both Christian faiths, they kept in the main separate from each other.

That has all changed in this period of transition and not necessarily for the worse.  Yet, some aspects of that early training stay with us.  I still don’t believe in abortion, that life begins at conception.  However, I have divorced.  I no longer go to Mass, and I infrequently attend church, and then it is usually a Baptist church, as my wife, Beautiful Betty, prefers that.

My Jewish friends often marry gentiles, who often convert to Judaism, although born Catholic.  On the other hand, I’ve known Jews who have converted to Christianity as well. 

Most Jews I know, even those that do not attend synagogue, observe the Sabbath and the Jewish diet.  Moreover, Jewish respect for knowledge and the diligence required in pursuit of it has not diminished from any Jews I know.

The Protestant work ethic has influenced my own development in high school and at university.  Less apparent is my tolerance for people who differ with my cultural roots.  For example, I have always been surprised at the antipathy towards people of Islam and Judaism, or for minorities for that matter of any ilk.  We’re told that education liberates us from such hatreds and fears, but my parents could hardly be called educated. 

That said I’ve encountered bias against Catholics, sometimes of the most virulent kind, but I never thought to feel hatred or fear when I traveled through or worked in Islamic countries when I was young.  True, I was ignorant of Islam but never thought to see the person I was dealing with as other than a businessman.  Call me naïve but I was attracted to Jewish students in college, but never thought of them as Jewish, but simply the smartest ones in the subject at hand. 

During my Christmas vacations while at university, I would spend a good deal of time at the library.  My mother once asked, “Do you see any of your friends at the library?”  I told her only my Jewish friends, which was true.  I suppose a lot of college students partied during my era on holidays, but I wasn’t so inclined or felt I could afford it, academically. 

*      *     * 

It has been my experience in working across a good part of this world that most people, whatever their cultural programming, are decent and most comfortable living among their own kind without hassles or confrontations. 

Religious leaders once were the messengers of tolerance and understanding but too often today they are possessed with the same toxic fears of ethnic assimilation that terrorist use so effectively to keep us hostage to their sickness and demands.

There was a time I thought I would be a priest, a Jesuit priest, because I had heard Jesuits were given great freedom to study where knowledge took them.  I would imagine had that happened, given my mindset, I would by now have been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church as a troublemaker. 

Why?  Because I would challenge many of its tenets, including the infallibility authority of the pope, why priests couldn’t marry, why women couldn’t become priests, why homosexual men or women couldn’t become priests, and I would have demanded (I’m good at demanding) that all priests that had abused children be not only removed from the presence of children, but be counseled to redirect their lives to useful pursuits. 

Sickness is sickness, and one type of sickness is not to be esteemed more or less than another.  We are all fallible, weak and needy human beings, all of us.

*     *     *

HUMAN RIGHTS, DICTATORS AND SOCIAL UNREST

Some fifty years ago, when I was working in South America, I made a call on the chief chemist of a bauxite (aluminum) refinery in Jamaica.  He was a black man who had studied at Stanford University where he acquired his Ph.D.  With me was an assistant, that I must admit wasn’t involved in much of the conversation.  As we were driving across Jamaica, he finally cut into the conversation and said, “I can’t believe what terrible conditions these people in.”

The Jamaican chemist turned to him, “Don’t attempt to judge another’s culture by your own standards.  Whatever you think you see, it is a lie.”

That was the end of that discussion, but the comment has stayed with me all these years because I know it to be so true.

*     *     *

The President of the United States, in my view, misuses his bully pulpit and influence by advocating “human rights” as he perceives them to be as American standards.  It would seem that he believes it is innocuous to say, “everyone wants the right to free speech, the right of assembly, and the right to free elections.” 

The problem with such a declaration is that it is better to be worked out through diplomatic channels fully understanding where the country is in terms of stability, and democracy.

It would seem that only spasmodically is our foreign policy prudent in this way.  A nation is no different than an individual.  You can lead the individual to water but you cannot force him to drink, even if it would save his life. 

Remember those crying for democracy have within their midst those people who are looting and stealing and shooting or throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at police.  The unsavory element always seems attracted to chaos.  There are other ways to change.

The Czech “Velvet Revolution” of 1989 was led by the poet Vaclav Havel who was not histrionic or given to pyrotechnics.  He did not seek retribution of the abuses of power of the Communist regime through vengeance, as did Robespierre of the French monarchy in the French Revolution.  Havel led to the establishment of a stable government.  Robespierre gave birth to the Reign of Terror. 

Power has a way of corrupting, and it is unusual when it doesn’t corrupt in regime change. 

The current issue of the Smithsonian (February 2011) has an article on George Washington, “The Reluctant President.” 

After the Revolutionary War, Americans wanted to make him king, and when he refused that they elected him president unanimously (the only time).  They then wanted him to be president for life.  He refused that, too, serving two terms glad to escape back to his home at Mount Vernon.  He set the precedence.

Nelson Mandela set a similar precedence in South Africa.  He avoided Civil War, which people feared when I lived in South Africa in 1968.  He made peace with the government that had instituted the draconian practice of apartheid, which gives some testament to the amazing man that he is.

What Washington, Havel and Mandela have in common is an enter calm, a moral center, a compass that directs their behavior.  They were soldiers of the mind in different ways but they understood retribution or insane vengeance would make of them what they fought to overcome.

*     *     *

The stability of the world depends on the stability of the Middle East.  This cannot be argued.  But imagine if China were today reduced to civil war with its tens of millions, indeed, hundreds of millions of people still living and surviving in a putative nineteenth century existence, what then? 

It is my view, given the situation in China, that the government, which could be called a dictatorship the same as Egypt, would introduce utter chaos should it lose its grip on control. 

Dissidents don’t rule, dissidents disrupt.

Dissidents are driven by dreams, by ideas and ideals that are hypothetical and therefore untried.

Dissidents have no interest, time or inclination to examine their own motives or draconian drives.

Dissidents have no inclination to either suspect or inspect their means, as they believe their ends justify them.

Dissidents see themselves as good and those in power as evil, all issues are black or white, never gray.

Dissidents don’t have the time or the inclination to think of the disruption or the repercussions of the disruption to wholesale chaos, or to the impact on ordinary citizens, citizens who may not have had the advantages they have enjoyed to luxuriate in idealism.

Dissidents believe they know what is best for the majority when they are always in the minority.

*     *     *

We in the West think everyone wants to be American or European, that everyone wants our form of government and to adhere to our ideologies, wants to be Americanized, Europeanized, Westernized, when much of the world would prefer to be left alone. 

This is not a history lesson but much of the damage that now is around Western ears goes back to World War I, and even earlier in the administration of Theodore Roosevelt who decided that America should be an empire.  Well, now we are an Empire in Decline, and are having to deal with that fact.

*     *     *

These are some of the things crossing my mind of a Sunday morning.

*     *     *