The Peripatetic Philosopher pays tribute to Rita Turner!

  

 THE PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER PAYS TRIBUTE

TO RITA TURNER

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

© January 7, 2013 

For the past several years I have had the advantage of the wisdom of a woman in my hometown of Clinton, Iowa, who has studied the occult, metaphysics, and Eastern religions and has celebrated the blessings that can be derived from meditation. 

Whatever I write (books, articles, missives, e-mails) she is likely to remind me from whence my insights come, and how I have been blessed to have them from that Universal Source.

There is not a more kindly person on the face of the earth than Rita Turner.  She teaches, she counsels, she encourages, and she accepts the vicissitudes of man in stride, as they are a manifestation of the many faces and perspectives of man at various levels of consciousness, and she isn’t slowing down as she tip toes through her eighties.

More than forty years ago, long before I knew Rita existed, coming back from South Africa essentially a broken man, I found myself inclined towards the occult, towards the mystics and towards Eastern religions as I found little comfort and no direction to my conventional Irish Roman Catholicism. 

Krishnamurti taught me the importance of the quiet mind, the mind absent of thought, the mind that had no direction or aspiration, the mind willing to accept reality “as is,” and not to rationalize reality into semantic euphemisms or into what it isn’t. 

I had always found comfort in prayer even during my darkest periods, but never thought of prayer as meditation, but found that was precisely what prayer is.  

Meditation wasn’t repeating long ago memorized prayers but prayers that opened my eyes to see the wonders of nature, the industry of man, the lyrical tempo of the universe expressed in the frozen music of architecture, in paintings, in a sunset, or a ship’s crew unloading bananas in the Harbor of Tampa Bay harbor, and yes, even in the cleansing feeling of summer thunder storm. 

When in pain, when lost in thought, when it appeared all options were spent as well as passion, when feeling close to being totally alone, two things seemed to happen almost simultaneously: one my reptilian brain suddenly became activated urging me to retreat, abandon, escape; and the other, the realization that there is no exit. 

I played with the fantasy of joining that ship’s crew that was unloading bananas on the dock, imagining myself in the company of Herman Melville, who actually did such a thing.

Then I realized that like everyone else I was stuck with myself, which at that moment in time, nothing could have been worse.  If that should happen to you, the reader, it might be the first moment in your life forced to take a “time out,” forced to look at yourself in the mirror, and to realize you have a spiritual side that has been neglected, a side of you many times stronger than your material side, a side that is more resilient, more forgiving, but also more engaging, and blessed with far more energy than you ever thought you possessed.

Metaphysicians have been saying this for years, and now we find the science of the brain essentially concurs with them.

SCIENCE IS CATCHING UP WITH RITA TURNER

Maria Konnikova, a doctorate student in psychology at Columbia University, writes on the power of concentration in the Sunday edition of the Tampa Bay Times (January 6, 2013).  The piece is on cognitive functions and how vital they are to us, especially as we grow older.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, she writes, have demonstrated the benefit to daily meditation, as it shifts activity to the frontal cortex of the brain where positive emotions reside.  The result is that we are likely to engage the world rather than retreat from it burying ourselves in such escapes as nostalgia.  She verifies this with experiments conducted at that university.

Participants were instructed to relax with their eyes closed, focus on their breathing, and acknowledge and release (quiet the mind) random thoughts that might arise.  They experienced a significant shift in the frontal (brain) cortex asymmetry, which translated into improved awareness and attention.

This work goes beyond improving emotions and a more balanced perspective.  It also explodes the myth of multitasking, which plagues modern existence.  Look for Ms. Konnikova’s work on line, including this piece.  Suffice it to say here, people who pride themselves on doing several things simultaneously have proven to be far less efficient than those focusing on one task at a time.

This meditative process advocated by the author is called “mindfulness,” and it has shown to influence the brain’s so-called “default network,” that is, the network of connections that remains active when we are in a resting state.

Regular meditation, the author claims studies have shown, in this resting state, results in increased functional connectivity.  Why?  She writes:

“The default network has greater consistent access to information about our internal states and an enhanced ability to monitor the surrounding environment.”

In other words, meditation makes us more alert!

Konnikova has written a book on the fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes (“Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes”) to illustrate the benefit of centering attention on a single element.  The mind is quiet, configured to its ultimate awareness, for Holmes this is a pause, a puff on his pipe, a pensive withdrawal and then the tap of a finger against his nose, which is all part of his particular idiosyncratic meditative process. 

Further evidence that science is coming to understand, what Rita Turner has understood for ages, is the fallacy to the idea that our I.Q. (intelligence quotient) has reached its apogee by the time we reach the age of 20.  Science now has new evidence that our brains can continue to learn well into old age, as the structure of our brain continues to change and develop, that is, if we allow it to do so. 

This is the kicker.  It is never too late.  In 2006, a team of psychologists demonstrated that the neural activation patterns of older adults (specifically, activation in the prefrontal cortex), began to resemble those of much younger subjects after just five one-hour training sessions on a task of attention control.  Similar changes have been observed in the default network (i.e., the brain’s resting-state activity or during meditation).  The author concludes:

“Mindfulness may have a prophylactic effect: it can strengthen the areas that are most susceptible to cognitive decline.  When we learn to unitask, we may be doing more than increasing our observational prowess.  We may be investing in a sounder mental future, no matter how old we are.”

None of this is news to Rita Turner.  Nor is it likely that she will gloat that science is catching up with where she has been for years.  So, hurrah, for a grand lady and thinker of our times.

*     *     *

--
Posted By Blogger to The Peripatetic Philosopher at 1/07/2013 03:08:00 PM

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION

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

© January 3, 2013

REFERENCE:

There is a theory that “six degrees of separation,” the idea that everyone is approximately six or fewer steps away by way of introduction from any other person in the world, so that a chain of a friend of a friend statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy and popularized by a play written by John Guare. 

Dr. Donald Farr and I grew up in the same small city of Clinton, Iowa (33,000) going to different public high schools and different state universities in Iowa but never meeting.  Our careers, although different, indicate a movement from the physical to the social sciences in something approaching lockstep. 

Along the way, I wrote a book (Work Without Managers) living in Florida and got a note from an auhtor in New York City, William L. Livingston IV, who had seen the book at a book fair, and wrote, “Send me your book and I’ll send you mine (The New Plague).” 

That established a twenty-two year personal and professional relationship.  Here is where the “six degrees of separation” get interesting.

Dr. Don taught human engineering in design for years and lectured at CSUN, and helped form the Human Factors Society back in the 1950s.  He worked in Aerospace (weapon systems and on space vehicles including the first space shuttle at NASA).  He also worked on commercial nuclear power (redesign of control rooms), commercial product designs and system safety designs, buidling flow block diagrams and providing detailed failure analysis reports. 

As you will see, while Don Farr and I assumed similar careers, Bill Livingston was in the process of doing this as well perfecting his Design for Prevention book.  Even more incredible, he has a connection to Don Farr in nuclear research but without the two ever having met. 

In a previous missive, I wrote about the masculine (left) and feminine (right) brain and how they complement each other with a preference in the left brain for rational determinism as opposed to a penchant of the right brain for irrational unpredictability.

Scientists, such as Dr. Donald Farr and William Livingston, have seen the merits of marrying the two sides of the brain to a common cause.  Rita, the writer here, is a student of the occult and a systematic thinker in the meditative life.  I am not, but have dabbled in these areas.  It is for that reason why I respond to her as I do

*     *     *

A READER WRITES:

Drs. Don & Jim,

Do note, with interest, your communication of participation.  Don, your work most notable, and both you and Jim contribute to the beneficence of mankind.  Jim, your expression makes impression. 

Don, appreciate your sharing about past, present work and whatever new endeavor you select. So essential to keep the mind busy.......It helps the memory process.   Yes, every individual has the feminine and masculine side within them.... Female known as the "Magnetic Pole' .... the Male known as the 'Electric Pole'.  

And, speaking of poles,  I am not doing any 'pole dancing' tonight... (Haha....just wanted to know if you are still reading my e-mails?)

Jim, you mentioned the book  'Bhagavad-Gita.'  I study this book on daily basis.   Call it 'Rita's Gita'. Excellent material. Have several metaphysical books that I embrace.

Jim, what other metaphysical books do you study?   Do keep all my metaphysical books in special place...... quickly accessible.  I am not a lover of fiction, always appreciate fact.  Know many women do enjoy reading novels, but I prefer substance. However, diversification always appreciated.   Voice of Choice always in style.

Don and Jim, you gentlemen could be called 'Parallel Pals' with congenial circuitry.

Always enjoy reading your missives.   Been another Wonderful Wednesday

Happy New Year to You and Yours,

Always,

Rita

*     *     *

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Rita,

First of all, Happy New Year to you, too.  You make all of us happier.

You are quite perceptive in saying Don and I are “parallel pals” with congenial circuitry. 

We have never met but thanks to this medium have gotten to know each other.  Often, I have written about another friend, William L. Livingston IV, whom I have met and have had a close relationship over the past several years.  He is a fellow author of several books, and like Dr. Don, a quintessential engineer, as well as a student of human nature and natural law.  Livingston writes to me:

“Sir James: FYI, Farr and I go back to the TMI nuclear aftermath when human factors become big plant operations.  He was prominent then in the HF (human factor) field.  I’m not sure we ever met but we were preaching to the same choir at the same events.”

Livingston built nuclear power plants in such places as Korea.  Trained in science, he came to appreciate the daunting impact of human factors.  He continues:

“My view is that the sciences, hard or soft, are constrained by the same institutional proclivities, enforced by natural law I yammer about.  There is the dude, like Farr, who is one dude in a setting like this and another dude when he is doing HF society stuff.”

This acknowledges the special person Dr. Don is, a person who wears many hats with the acumen of science and humanity’s touch to do what he does so splendidly well. 

I go on about my humble beginnings failing to note that Dr. Don grew up in similar circumstances losing his father quite young.  He took a circuitous route to his achievements always helping people along the way.  The behavioral side of enterprise can be more demanding than pursuing the laws of science.  Livingston continues:

“Otherwise, I find the soft science institutions to be more brutal than the hard ones.  Look how they treated you.”

He is referring to my constant war with academics, which was similar to my war with the corporation and corpocracy.  Author Charles D. Hayes in “The Rapture of Maturity” (2004), a book I recommend everyone read, writes perceptively about my inclination:

“Life is full of contradictions.  James R. Fisher, Jr. provides an interesting example.  He is an expert on organizational psychology but has never found an organization where he fit in.”

This brings this “outsider-insider” (me) to your question of metaphysics.  Since returning from South Africa in 1969, you could say I have made an eclectic spiritual journey to apprehend my spiritual side so as to balance with my material side. 

I am not a student, per se, of metaphysics as you are, although I have read widely on the periphery if not the core of this discipline.  Being born and reared Irish Roman Catholic Christian, I have read many of the works of scholars of the early church (they are not mentioned here), and have an extensive library on that subject, alone. 

Being trained in both the hard and soft sciences, many writers in those disciplines have also flirted with metaphysics to a greater or lesser degree.  In my more than 4,000 book collection, I suspect I have a minimum of 500 books on this and related matters.  This has made me neither wise nor especially informed. 

Readers of my blog have told me (mainly respondents from other countries) that the mystical influence in my writing is apparent.  For the curious, I will list books that I have read commencing in my teens to the present.  Again, these referenced works are listed in no special order of influence:

(1)   Works of Aldous Huxley including “Brave New World,” and “Point Counterpoint.”

(2)   Works of Alexis Carrel including “Man, the Unknown,” and “Reflections on Life.”

(3)   “The Odyssey of the Self-Centered Self” by Robert Eliot Fitch

(4)   All the published works of Kahlil Gibran including “The Prophet” and “The Madman.”

(5)   All the published works of Krishnamurti including “You are the World” and “Think on these Things.”

(6)   Most of Gurdjieff’s works including “All and Everything” and “Meetings with Remarkable Men.”

(7)   “Power of Will” by Frank Channing Haddock.

(8)   “The Mythic Imagination” by Stephen Larsen

(9)   “Going Home – Jesus & Buddha as Brothers” by Thich Nhat Hanh.

(10)   The Philosophy of Humanism by Corliss Lamont.

(11)   “Teachings of Buddha” by B.D.K.

(12)   Several works of C.S. Lewis including “God in the Dock” and “Abolition of Man.”

(13)   Several works of Michael Novak including “The Experience of Nothingness” and “Ascent of the Mountain Flight of the Dove.”

(14)   “Human Destiny” by Lecomte du Nouy.

(15)   Works of James Redfield including “The Celestine Vision” and “The Tenth Insight.”

(16)   “Christ” by Edward Schillebeeckx.

(17)   “The Unconscious Civilization” by John Ralston Saul.

(18)   “The Amazing Secrets of the Masters” by Robert Collier.

(19)   “The First Secret” by Lao Tze, “The Second Secret” by J. B. Priestley, “The Third Secret” by Alfred North Whitehead, “The Fourth Secret” by Michelangelo, “The Fifth Secret” by Buddha, “The Sixth Secret” by Buddha, and “The Seventh Secret” by Montesquieu.

(20)   “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a’ Kempis.

(21)   Several works by Joseph Campbell including “Mythical Image” and “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.”

(22)   Several works by Fritzof Capra including “The Tao of Physics” and “The Turning Point.”

(23)   “Awakening the Buddha Within” by Lami Surya Das.

(24)   “The Wisdom of Eck” by Paul Twitchell.

(25)   “Ego & Archetype” by C. G. Jung.

(26)    All of P. D. Ouspe4nsky including “Tertium Organum” and “In Search of the Miraculous” and “The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution.”

(27)   “Radhakrishnan: The Man and his Thought” by S. J. Samartha.

(28)    All of Alan W. Watts including “The Book” and “Does it Matter?” and “The Wisdom of Insecurity.”

(29)   “Flesh of Reason” by Roy Porter.

(30)   “The Heresy of Self-Love” by Paul Zweig.

(31)   “Existentialism” by Patricia F. Sanborn.

(32)    Most of Jean Paul Sartre including “The Word” and “Situations.”

(33)   “Animal Faith and Spiritual Life” by Santayana.

(34)   Vedanta or Hindu Upanishads.

(35)   The Jewish “Torah.”

(36)   “Collectio Rituum” of Roman Catholicism.

(37)   “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po.”

(38)   “The Seat of the Soul” by Gary Zukav.

Reading perhaps more than meditation has been my sanctuary (actually, its a form of prayer).  I find all these creative wonderers reducing their thoughts to print with validation and/or refutation of cherished beliefs.  Perhaps it could be no other way as they have the same intellectual equipment we all have. 

When I came back from South Africa in 1969, I was a very disturbed young man and took the drastic step of retiring.  I found sanctuary at the Haslam Book Store in St. Petersburg, Florida where I spent many hours of many days over a two year period doing little else in a self-imposed sabbatical (1969-1971) then reading books, playing tennis and teaching myself how to write, publishing one book (Confident Selling Prentice-Hall 1971). 

After South Africa, I choose my life to be one of continuous surprise.  The only thing that has been orderly has been in pursuit of becoming a writer.  Otherwise, it has been a roll of the dice.

I believe I wanted to be a writer since a little boy because it was a way to take me out of myself in language, while at the same time registering a modicum of control.  I never worried about the lack of talent.  I couldn’t be discouraged even by a da who said I couldn’t write a good letter. 

In a strange way, I have never worried much about what other people thought about me, only what I thought about them.  If I liked them, and they hated me, it made no matter.  Nor if they liked me, and I disliked them, it made no matter. 

This gave me an amazing degree of freedom, which became my form of meditation.  It is how I happen to write that poem at the beginning of “In the Shadow of the Courthouse,” which I sense was first composed in my head when I was about five-years-old but did not find the language of fruition to express it until I was middle aged.  For those not familiar with the poem, it follows:

“I have never lost my affection for this edifice (The Clinton County Courthouse).  It was like a parent that never wavered, never changed.  I am sitting here now, reflecting on the fact that it is forty-five years since I have spent any time with my old friend.

“If I were a poet, I would give it metaphorical significance, like a giant knight, standing ever at attention to protect my neighborhood from itself and from the dangers outside.

“If I were a poet, I would see it as a Greek god, an Adonis, a Zeus, a mighty warrior who never falters from its vigilance.

“If I were a poet, I would sing the praise of this frozen music, this enchanting melody which never varies in my head, this quiet dignity, this sculptured perfection, this sensible grace as common as a pair of old shoes.

“If I were a poet, I would wonder why we could have such stability, such reasoned continence against the harsh reality of tumultuous change, as it has not varied for me one iota from what it was a half century ago.

“If I were a poet, I would remark that the tower and the time and the psychology of its movement is frozen like magic so that wherever I go it is stop time to my mind.

“If I were a poet, I would tell the world that it has been so important in making this fumbling, stumbling, bumbling individual, called “me,” to always feel a mystical anchor to my roots of being.

“If I were a poet, I would exalt its unique character with Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons” to dramatize how the earth around may change, but the spirit within remains forever constant.

“If I were a poet, I would note that men live and die, but that this structure is immortal because it exists beyond nature.

“If I were a poet, I would sit here and wonder as I am now, over the happiness I feel for having the opportunity to once again ponder the regard I hold for it.  And finally

“If I were a poet, I would want the world to know of the many lives that this edifice, this sentinel has influenced in the course of my fleeting life.  How many young who are now old have been given succor and sustenance, and semblance of order in their lives because they have lived In the Shadow of the Courthouse.” © James R. Fisher, Jr., 1995.

Be always well,

Jim

*     *     *

 Is Society Mentally Ill?

It’s an intriguing question. Three generations ago Sigmund Freud posed the same question:

“May we not be justified in reaching the diagnosis that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilizations, or some epochs of civilizations – possibly the whole of mankind – have become ‘neurotic’? We may expect that one day someone will venture to embark upon a pathology of cultural communities.”

Nearly three quarters of a century later, sociologist Ernest Becker speaking of mental illness, wrote:

“The great breakthrough in the contemporary theory of mental illness is that it represents a kind of stupidity, a limitation or obtuseness of perception, a failure to see the world as it is. It is not a disease in the medical sense, but a failure to assign correct priorities to the real world.”

The suggestion, implicit in these remarks, is that society is indeed sick, being simply a matter of definition. Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz asserted that mental illness, per se, is a myth that has been gaining momentum since the nineteenth century. He writes about this with reference to psychiatry:

“A person might feel sad or elated, insignificant or grandiose, suicidal or homicidal, and so forth; he is, however, not likely to categorize himself as mentally ill or insane; that he is, is more likely to be suggested by someone else. This, then, is why bodily diseases are characteristically treated with the consent of the patient, while mental diseases are characteristically treated without his consent. In short, while medical diagnoses are the names of genuine diseases, psychiatric diagnoses are stigmatizing labels.”

Psychologist Bernie Zilbergeld sees the trend towards 'shrinking', i.e., the rush to consult psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and psychiatrists, as a desire to believe therapy is the painless solution to the most pressing problems of modern life with no intention whatsoever to pay a personal price for changing.

When therapy falters, we turn to self-help books, or seek the counsel of gurus; their instant cures. When the guru disappoints, as they invariably do, we retreat into one of an assortment of obsessions or addictions, a shield from the uncomfortable reality we mean to avoid.

If these experts agree on anything consistently, it is that we inhabit an anxious age. Since we cannot retreat from ourselves, and since we clearly have no intention of changing our ways, many of us have embraced a culture of narcissism, of self-absorption, one that Christopher Lasch insists has led to conspicuous consumption as therapy for our anxiety.
Obedience Blind

What, you ask, keeps a person from dealing head on with his own demons? C. B. Chisholm writes:

“It almost always happened that among all the people in the world only our own parents, and perhaps a few people they selected, were right about everything. We could refuse to accept their rightness only at the price of a load of guilt and fear, and peril to our immortal souls. This training has been practically universal in the human race. Variations in content have had almost no importance. The fruit is poisonous no matter how it is prepared or disguised.”

We are taught at an early age not to think, just to obey, to submit to the regimented programming of society. The same message is articulated at home, then reinforced at school, in church and dutifully reinforced by various media.

The incessant barrage of acceptable ‘points of view’ and expected behaviors for every situation smother our natural curiosity. Consequently, the most unlikely person we are inclined to consult, much less trust is ourselves.

Yet, absurdly so, the authority we ought most to heed, the ultimate authority according to Krishnamurti is our own person. He writes:

“There is no intermediary between you and reality; and if there is one, he is a perverter, a mischief maker, it does not matter who he is, whether the highest savior or your latest guru or teacher.”

It may seem an over-simplification, but if society is sick, mentally ill in fact, it must be from the interplay, the conflict actually, between self-demands and role demands. It does not occur to us that the life roles we try to play were designed for another time; a time long past. While various therapists go to great lengths to expose the underlying motives for our behavior and to reveal the root causes of our unhappiness and dysfunction, this effort may be entirely unnecessary. Fortunately, it may be enough simply to examine the life role a person has assumed, and assess how satisfying, how suitable, or esteeming that may or may not be.

People often pursue professions and career paths that their families urge them to follow. It is important, we are told, that we don’t become misfits, thereby embarrassing our family. This striving to please others can result in personal tension, internal conflict, a battle between external role demands and internal self-demands.

On the other hand, if we occupy a role that is energizing, representing norms and goals consistent with our better lights, our actions will be faithfully guided by how we see ourselves, how we see the situation and how we relate to others. Our ego state of the adult, our “real self,” will be evident and the situation will be well defined, in terms of reality, and the role demands of the job at hand. This will guide us, unscathed, against formidable obstacles. In other words, we will be in a healthy state of self-realization and self-expression and thus, self-satisfaction.

However, if the role we try to play is punishing and unsatisfying, then the superego state or the righteous parent of our personality will surface. This draws out our “ideal self”, the self we pretend to be or think we ought to be. The situation becomes sub-optimal, and self-demands take precedence over the job or role-demands. This is a self-defeating, chaotic state, where confusion will lead us to aggressive and disruptive behavior.

Walking the Cat Back

There is a parallel between early twenty-first century America and the decade of the 1970s: young people being forced to participate in an unpopular war; political upheaval in the air, ruthless leaders subverting democracy (Nixon), political paralysis gripping the country (Watergate), drugs ruining lives with morality on holiday (Haight-Ashbury culture), new forms of bigotry and hatred arising, an automotive industry in decline.

In the ‘70’s, while American manufacturing entered decline, the “energy crisis” arrived; the OPEC oil embargo rocked our national confidence while a beleaguered president hunkered down and became a law unto himself. Congress, missing their cue, failed to react, to provide leadership. They refused to face the uncomfortable facts, leaving our future hanging in the balance.

This pattern of crisis following crisis following crisis, ought to sound familiar. It appears we have come full circle here in the early 21st Century.

Or have we? Consider that today we remain, as we were, stuck in the 1970s, battling the same crises, unable to free ourselves from their unyielding grip. Then maybe society is not mentally ill so much as stuck in the past, with protocols that no longer fit; no longer serve us.

“Time out for Sanity” demonstrates that we actually do now live in a continuation of the ‘70’s, not a repeat. We’re stuck, as it were. Becoming unstuck suggests an unavoidable fight for control. The key is to understand that whole societies behave much like individuals.

At the outset, one becomes stuck in intolerable situations because, paradoxically, we resist them. Tragically, the dreaded state we resist ends up controlling us. We feel we cannot let go, cannot trust, because we believe the thing that threatens us will destroy us. Only in crisis, and then only gradually, do we realize that our coping measures themselves, our habits, programmed values and beliefs, our sacrosanct ideals, alas, our control and controlling measures, are themselves inexorably destroying us. Only in desperation do we then let go.

Reaching a state of awareness, a level of maturity, we let go, let flow, only then are we able discern the shape of the enemy. This vague threat was something that simply had to be faced. There was no other alternative. Little did we know it was ‘change’ that we could face and could survive. As we let go, we see that ‘control’ naturally, reflexively, fills the void.

Individually and collectively, as a society, as a conscious social construct, why do we repeatedly push ourselves to the brink of despair, to a precipice, when our only viable option is to yield, to trust? To answer this crucial question we need to “Walk the cat back,” to retrace our steps to find that first wrong step that led us towards peril. You may recognize this expression from espionage novels. It fits our purposes here.

Time Out for Sanity “walks the cat back”, and demonstrates how we, society, have become trapped in a pit of angst.

The Manufacture of Madness

Time Out for Sanity points out that the more grown-up; the more sophisticated our electronic devices have become the more childishly we behave. We think we have conquered time but time always has the last laugh. We notice the abbreviated attention span of our children and we immediately want to designate these embarrassing states as syndromes or “disorders.”

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), among others, have conveniently transformed our stuckness into acronyms of diseases. Trauma is the new narrative and dominates our discourse.

The influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) published by the American Psychiatric Association in collaboration with nine other officially sanctioned organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association.

DSM-IV criteria serve as virtual medical gospel for millions of professionals worldwide. It suggests an ADD or ADHD diagnosis for someone who has trouble keeping attention on tasks or play activities, does not follow instructions or complete school work, and so on. These children reflect ‘stuckness,’ more as ‘coping habits’ than mental disorders. Take away too much sugar in their diet, too much television, too much time playing electronic games, and much more family involvement and, ‘voila,’ these ‘diseases’ disappear.

DSM-IV has elevated a cornucopia of behaviors to disease status, resulting on society being stuck on trauma. Alcoholism, alone, has hundreds of ailments treated as diseases: alcohol-induced anxiety disorder; alcohol-induced persisting amnestic disorder; alcohol-induced mood disorder; alcohol-induced persisting dementia; alcohol-induced psychotic disorder; alcohol-induced sexual dysfunction; or alcohol-induced sleep disorder. Behavior is the culprit with the perpetrator of the behavior the innocent victim. Name a behavior, say gambling or promiscuity, and you have the same litany of disorders. Addiction and dependency have been rescued from self-responsibility for the actions.

Astutely, Thomas Szasz has called this “the manufacture of madness.” It implies a whole ‘industry,’ of course, one supported by a cast of gurus, professionals and their courtesans, who claim ‘cures’ through occasional conversations, or magically with prescriptions of mind altering chemicals; all industrialized solutions. What so many doctors and gurus call mental illness, Szasz maintains, are inner human conflicts manifested outwardly in ways society can’t condone, but paradoxically, nonetheless unwittingly fuels. As a consequence, addiction is the fastest growing social psychological construct with the medical and pharmacology industries, and their subsidiaries, exploding in growth.

Intrepid psychiatrist Dr. Szasz maintains that science must stand on the side of the people, of and for whom it studies, rather than being aligned with social engineers, medical professionals, pharmaceutical companies and allied advertisers who have a vested interest in perpetuating what could only be construed as a sick society dependent upon their respective services.

Of course, there are always legions of champions for these manufactured pathologies ranging from professionals in medicine, psychiatry, psychology, sociology, as well as the media and government and corporate agencies. They have vested interests in society stuck in trauma, as mental illness and dysfunctional processes provide the narrative to their legitimacy.

Irish dramatist George Barnard Shaw famously said “every profession is a conspiracy against the public.” Nowhere has this been illustrated more compellingly than the 1970s as a mirror reflection of our current times, themes, and technological swirls.

Yet, the more our society becomes focused on information technology and electronic entertainment, the more it devolves into another swirl of addictive fantasy likely to be elevated to disease status. Media guru Marshall McLuhan envisioned the space between reality and virtual reality vanishing, driving a wedge between people as persons, and into the arms of despair.

Official Maladies, Official Cures

Time Out for Sanity asks the simple question: has the world changed and have we changed with it, and if not, why not?

The book argues that mental illness is only one of several myths into which we have retreated. We have many more choices than we had a short forty years ago, but we still show a propensity for entering and staying in a very narrow comfort zone to avoid dealing with the mounting complexities of the realities of our times.

To put it another way, the chronic problems of forty years ago seem to be remarkably similar while not the same as those we face today.

As a society we continue to repeat the troublesome patterns of the immediate past, ad infinitum. Given this premise, Time Out for Sanity is the equivalent of “walking back the cat” to the 1970s to show how we continue to ride the treadmill for fear of losing control, when our plight indicates it has already happened. We are out of control.

An indication of how life follows art rather than the other way around was the television series The Time Tunnel. The machine was meant for people to go back to the past or leap into the future at will. Some tried it and got stuck in the past and couldn’t get out. The program was very disturbing to viewers and lasted only one season. Unlike the characters of this TV series, figuratively speaking, we willingly book flights into the past, get stuck in that trauma, and then seek professional help for “illnesses” that lift the burden from us by the rationale of manufactured diseases.

Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1973, speaking of psychiatry, though he could have been addressing the claimed infallibility of several other professions, said:

There are fundamental similarities between persecution of heretics and witches in former days and the persecution of madmen and mental patients in ours. Just as a theological state is characterized by the preoccupation of the people with religion and religious matters, and especially with the religious deviance called heresy, so a therapeutic state is characterized by preoccupation of the people with medicine and medical matters, and especially with the medical deviance called illness.

The aim of a therapeutic state is not to provide favorable conditions for the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, but to repair the defective mental health of the subject-patients.

The officials of such a state parody the roles of physicians and psychotherapists. This arrangement gives meaning to the lives of countless bureaucrats, physicians, and mental health workers by robbing the so-called patients of the meaning of their lives.

We thus persecute millions, as drug addicts, homosexuals, 'suicide risks' and so forth, all the while congratulating ourselves that we are great healers curing them of mental illness.

We have managed to repackage the Inquisition and are selling it as a new scientific cure-all.

Time Out for Sanity attempts to penetrate our cool façade, the trite and ubiquitous rhetoric that masks chronic problems with semantics, refusing to address them directly.

The silent ninety percent of us lingered on the sidelines in the 1970’s, waiting for the ten percent in big science and big government to deliver us. But, people forgot, big science and big government are not immune to the currents of forward, aimless, inertia. In fact they prefer the ‘status quo’.

I strongly urge everyone to stop obsessing about the future, to open your minds and find fulfillment and involvement in the present. We all have the key that unlocks that all-important door. We just have to use it. Time Out for Sanity is a book that asks and shows you the way to do just that.

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

© December 29, 2012

THOMAS FRIEDMAN, YOU'RE FULL OF COW PIES!

 THOMAS FRIEDMAN, YOU’RE FULL OF COW PIES!

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

© December 27, 2012

GRANDPA AMERICA!

When I was an executive in Europe for Honeywell in the 1980s, and we would visit Norway, where my wife BB’s relatives still name in the hundreds, I called her uncle “Grandpa Norway” because he had all the answers to what ailed society. 

Over the last decade, I have watched opinionated commentator Thomas Friedman assume the mantle of  “Grandpa America” playing a similar role.  For instance, he concluded that the “world was flat” consistent with what pre-Christopher Columbus Europeans thought only his was a digital flatness that encompassed the globe. 

He has become the darling of those who choose to be stuck in the past, as others like Tom Brokaw have championed the “Greatest Generation,” always a backward glance to the past going forward looking through the rearview mirror.  It is indigenous to our nostalgic mentality.  The only way apparently to endure the pain of going forward with the appearance of confidence is to treat virtual reality as actual reality.

It seems to escape pontificators that a debtor nation has never long remained a superpower in the history of mankind.  Not to be dissuaded, however, confidence is celebrated as the American doctrine despite the evidence to the contrary that we lag in competence. 

In standards of math competency at the high school level, Korea is first and the United States is last.  In terms of confidence, the United States is first and Korea is near the bottom.  What does that tell us?  Sadly, I believe it tells us nothing.

We have had a half-century of advocates of “self-esteem” being careful not to often anyone who appears stupid or lazy or self-indulged or addicted to some manufactured disease by the American Psychiatric Association. 

Behaviors have become a cornucopia of syndromes, which is a polite way of saying those so addicted are not responsible because the offenders have no control over the "disease."  They are conveniently victims of such “diseases,” thus exonerating them from having made poor choices.  "Circumstances" are responsible for their condition.  This lets them off the hook of being responsible for the stupid behavior that led to the "disease." 

We have a whole society that has perfected the excuse syndrome to perfection.  As a consequence, anyone who would suggest that such an inclination is wrong if not stupid (I love using that word because language has been so euphemized), or would have the audacity to use a pejorative or expletive to describe the behavior would be tantamount to heresy.  Moreover, it would be blasphemous to suggest Americans were looking for a free lunch and were free loaders.  We like to hear we are a nation of hard workers when many of us are actually foot draggers not hard chargers at all.       

So, you ask, where does Grandpa America come in?

For the past decade, I’ve read his columns and some of his books, always exasperated in the end because they seem to make such sense when they are literally poppycock. 

Meanwhile, he is the darling of The New York Times, New York literary society, as he speaks the same doublespeak as others such as Charlie Rose, et al.  They allow such timid voices as David Brooks to interrupt their soliloquy occasionally, but nobody is really listening.  It does make the liberal establishment feel democratic and altruistic for allowing them to parrot their sentiments. 

The cable networks are strange societies of celebrity entertainers masquerading as journalists.  Fox and CNN are equal comfort zones for obligingly skewed audiences to the far right and far left, elevating common occurrences to "breaking news."    Hyperbole has found a home.

Liberals turn to CNN and conservatives turn to Fox hearing precisely what they want to hear while forever being stuck in views that no longer either serve liberals or conservatives.

But I wander. In this Thomas Friedman column, Grandpa America is telling Republicans what is wrong with their party, and why they lost the last election, and what they should do about it.  This is really crazy.  Here is a proposed rescue strategy for Republicanism when he would just as soon see the party go over the cliff that is now shaping up for the Obama administration.  Erasmus would see this as a “praise of folly,” but it is much more personal than that.

MANIA FOR THE QUICK FIX

The mania for the quick fix is not new, but has accelerated since the last decade or so with the electronic boom.  Grandpa America has climbed on to this missile and now soars with it in a new career.  He deduced that America was stuck on a lot of things but failed to understand it was stuck on the present.  We have lost the meaning of time, the importance of sacrifice, the necessity of grinning and bearing it, the inevitability of stumbling, and the constant need of picking ourselves up because it was not the responsibility of anyone else to do so. 

Instead, Grandpa America celebrates the “Relaxation Revolution,” a sensual insurgency, a living self-indulgency without pending consequences, a permanent coffee break while the rest of the world carries our note, and puts us in a coffin. 

A high school in one of the most liberal states in the union has a high school in which 75 percent of the students have cell phones, and nearly a 100 percent of the students are below the poverty line, while the school struggles to get above a “D” rating. 

Phones in the pockets of everyone have transformed responsibility from us to a new kind of degeneracy, a kind of infant dependency in which the state has the responsibility to manage our lives, which is ultimately a form of dictatorship.  But is anyone noticing?

An army of self-help gurus follows the dictates of Grandpa America everywhere advising grown ups how this newest gadget age shall become their ultimate salvation. 

Lost in this is that the more grown up our gadgets the more childish we all become.  We brag about children still in the crib who can use these devices, and they can, because the devices spawn the infantile, the coddled, and the look, point and click generation.  Also lost in this is the more infantile we are the more we are stuck in the present. 

Grandpa America is scolding the Republican Party for paying attention to the Tea Party that wants us to behave as grown ups, pay our bills when they are due, live within our means, not make apologies for people who want to be carried but are put to work or put out to pasture by the choices they make. 

If people want to kill themselves with drugs or drink or gambling or promiscuity or some other addiction, the Tea Party is saying, “it is not our problem.”  Why?  Because it is not. 

People don’t grow up if they don’t have to, and when they don’t have to, the nation that spawns them will pay the ultimate price.  History like nature has no conscience.  Are these Tea Party people terrible for wanting us to get our house in order, and for people to get off their behinds and take responsibility for their lives?  No, they are grown ups acting like grown ups and asking us to join their ranks.

Yes, the Republicans lost the election!  Yes, members of the House of Representatives refuse to budge any further to what President Barak Obama says is “a perfectly reasonable compromise,” when it clearly isn’t.  The president initially proposed tax revenue of $800 billion, then raised it to $1.6 trillion, but “compromised” by rolling it back to $1.2 trillion to look as if this is a generous move on his part.  Grandpa America doesn’t point this out. 

You are always seen as the heavy, as the person who is “angry” who points out a bad trend and goes against the grain of popular sentiment, not out of spite, but out of a sense that it is both the necessary and sufficient condition to survival.

The American character has always been flawed.  Reality has never found a comfortable place in our mentality, and so it has been throughout our history.  One hundred and forty two years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

“I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on the midnight tables (he was referring to the fad for séances), to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology (fad for linking personality traits with the contours of the head), or skill without study, or mastery without an apprenticeship.”

Shortcuts were already a national trend, which was infusing the national character, and which has since been perfected by corpocracy.   Emerson went on as if he were talking to us today:

“Excellence is lost sight of in the hunger for sudden performance and praise.”

The television program “American Idol” is indicative of this trend and this misplaced and unearned confidence, as literally tens of thousands of youngsters compete for their moment of fame without a bit of talent, and which would be an embarrassment if they had even a remote notion of reality.

I wrote in an essay thirty-five years ago before it was published:

“The president became a law unto himself, Congress stayed the same, missed the changes, wouldn’t face them, and left the future up for grabs.”

Being stuck in the present boils down to choosing the comfort of gridlock to the pain of growth.

Grandpa America brings up in this piece the Sandy Hook tragedy of the innocent being killed by the mad gunman, and in the same voice, Hurricane Sandy that hit the North East.  Never having owned a gun, and not being interested in weapons of any kind, I still defend the rights of Americans to have their guns, and see no correlation between these guns and Sandy Hook.  Nor do I find a correlation with Hurricane Sandy and global warning, which has scientists divided on the issue. 

But leave it to Grandpa America to make the most of the moment correlating the availability of guns with violence, and this hurricane with global warming. 

Grandpa America fails to mention that in survey after survey gun owners are known to be the most law abiding citizens in the country; they work a job; they pay their taxes; they are home owners; they are community leaders; and they have an indigenous resemblance to the Minute Men of our American history.  Grandpa America knows this but it doesn’t gain much resonance with his audience.

If we don’t go over the Fiscal Cliff on January 1, 2013, wait until Obamacare and all these other entitlements kick in the next year, while we remain essentially a debtor nation.  What then?  For the record, I’m not a Tea Party member, and I voted for Obama in his first term, but was so disappointed I voted for Romney in this past election. 

Historian Christopher Lasch warned that Grandpa America would appear as apologist for the “Age of Narcissism,” and he was prophetic.  He also predicted the decline in the “culture of competitive individualism.”  Lasch would not be surprised, had he lived, to find a presidential candidate get into trouble for pointing out that half the people in the nation paid no federal income tax, while the top 10 percent, who already paid more than 60 percent of all federal income taxes, were expected by Grandpa America and his legions to pay even more. 

Thomas Friedman as Grandpa America is full of cow pies, and any Iowan knows precisely to what I am referring.  The common thread to his hosannas celebrating the Information Age is the permanence of impermanence as this age is totally materialistic and devoid of any spirituality.  The most obvious outcome of the Information Age, which is already apparent, is a straightforward celebration of the self. 

A psychologist wrote a book on America’s self-indulgence in psychotherapy, calling it “The Shrinking of America.”  My sense, as we become increasingly confident without competence, continue to inflate our grading system while lowering our expectations of young people, and depend more on devices to do the hard work with little personal involvement, is that this represents another kind of American shrinkage, both economic and prominence on the world stage.

*    *     *

WHAT IS BURIED UNDER TECHNO-UTOPIA?

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

© December 25, 2012

Christmas Eve dinner was a festive occasion in our home as I suspect it was in most others.  The conversation was not about the joy of being together, or of meaningful experiences during the year.  It was about the latest technological gadgets and how they could do so many things, and with their many aps, programs, options, and of course the readiness of those present to display mastery of these machines.

Then the conversation, while still focused on technology, related to how a child, only four, could already do her numbers, recognize words, navigate the aps, and play games.

Then one in the group, in an attempt to be humorous, made the remark that I, meaning me, would still only be comfortable with a stone slab and a chisel. 

This was a veiled indication that my reservations about the Information Age was not only suspect, but dated me to be oblivious to the times.

To defend me, another person, said, “we are always evolving with changing times.”

It was then that I reacted, and not tactfully, to the cliché, and then left the room. 

Techno-utopia is a matter not only that I have thought much about but have committed many missives to my blog, as well as written one on the subject in a book, soon to appear on Amazon Kindle, “Time Out for Sanity! Blueprint for Dealing with an Anxious Age."

*     *     *

The January 2013 issue of Smithsonian magazine has an interview with digital genius Jaron Lanier, who expresses apostate views consistent with ones I have expressed.  He, of course, has much more credibility, as he is one of the giants of this digital age. 

Lanier, one of the creators of digital reality, desires to subvert the “hive mind,” as he sees the web world has become, before it engulfs us all, destroys political discourse, economic stability, the dignity of personhood, and leads to “social catastrophe.” 

He attacks the "complicity of the crowd," something that Gustave Le Bon wrote about some one hundred years ago (check this out on this blog).  This mania of conformity is not new.  The Information Age is simply its newest iteration. 

While the idea, Lenier says, was the belief that it would result in ever-upward enlightenment, it is just as likely that the crowd will devolve into an online lynch mob.

Although one of the creators of Web 2.0 futurism, he now sees it as “digital Maoism,” indicating that “internet intellectuals” such as Facebook and Google creators are actually “spy agencies.”  He continues:

“I think you can draw an analogy to what happened with communism, where at some point you just have to say there’s too much wrong with those experiments.”

The idea seems innocent enough, “information wants to be free.”  It is “the wisdom of the crowd."  But is it?

A confidante of Steve Brin and Steve Jobs, he has watched with some apprehension virtual reality becoming reality.

“There’s no vehicle that wasn’t designed in a virtual reality system first.  And every vehicle of every kind built – plane, train – is first put in a virtual reality machine and people experience driving it (as if it were real) first.”

Why is he so concerned?

The crowd pours their hearts and minds unto the web; they share their most private intimate thoughts, and worst of all, give up (for free) their intellectual capital for the big stars and celebrities of the medium to consume while everyone else is consigned to the bread lines. 

Who are these people?  He claims it is the middle class, which is shrinking rapidly.  Google and Facebook, among others, “monetize the work of the crowd.”

How does it do this?  It sells people (their advertiser-targetable personal identities, buying habits) back to themselves.  Lanier sees a file-sharing service and a hedge fund essentially the same exploitative systems. 

It goes back to the biggest the fastest not only being the best but also the most beneficial when this is seldom the case.  What it does mean is that the biggest computer can analyze everyone's data swiftly and to its advantage, which translates into the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. 

“Meanwhile, it’s shrinking the overall economy and that is the mistake of our age.”

He goes on,

“I think it’s the reason why the rise of networking has coincided with the loss of the middle class, instead of an expansion in general wealth, which is what should happen.  But if you say we’re creating the information economy, except that we’re making information free, then what we’re saying is we’re destroying the economy.”

He sees a connection between techno-utopianism, the rise of the new machines, and the Great Recession of 2008. 

“W are outsourcing ourselves into insignificant advertising-fodder.  Nonobytes of Big Data that diminish our personhood, our dignity.”

Lanier sees it also as a morality and spiritual issue as well (there is another article in this issue about the newborn: “Born to be bad?” This covers the new science of morality). 

[An aside: I could see it around the dinner table on Christmas Eve.  The young people at the table have little interest in the true Christian meaning of Christmas, while the adults seemed more preoccupied with talking about making money or about the newest big cars, material things.]

The digital genius continues:

“The problems with techno-utopians are not just about the crashed economy, but that they’ve made a joke out of spirituality, and worshiping, the Singularity – the Nerd Rapture …(it is) the belief that increasing computer speed and processing power will shortly result in machines acquiring artificial intelligence, consciousness, and that we will be able to upload digital versions of ourselves into machines and (thus) achieve immortality.”

Perhaps the most interesting point Lenier makes, which resonates with my writing is that of the irresponsibility of the age, the failure of the nanosecond generation to face growing old and therefore the need to grow up to accept these primary conditions of life, which are the inevitability of pain, the necessity for struggle, and the vital importance of failure in a meaningful life.

To avoid pain is to retreat from life.  To circumvent struggle is to remain in a vegetated state.  And to not embrace failure is never actually to experience success.

The Web 2.0 creator has a slightly different take on this.  To be obsessed with technology and its elaborate tool kit is “to forgo taking responsibility, saying, ‘oh, the computer did it not me’.”  The loss of the middle class, 'oh, it’s not me.  The computer did it'.”

He then goes into the cruelty and anonymity of networking outlets that surreptitiously have been known to destroy people’s lives.  It is what Gustave Le Bon called “the psychopathology of the crowd.”  Lenier again:

“We have economic fear combined with everybody joined together on these instant twitchy social networks which are designed to create mass action.  What does it sound like to you?  It sounds to me like the prequel to potential social catastrophe.”

Having spent a lifetime going against the grain when the sense of the times made nonsense to me, I share his concern.  I’ve never joined Facebook or LinkedIn, but I do use google, and I do have a website, which I use to express my concerns. 

Lenier is a critic, and I think a healthy one, of an industry and a way of life that will increasingly dominate the globe more than it does today.  I am a dinosaur, and my time is past.  But as long as I have the breath of life, I will express my views.  It is encouraging to find someone within the techno-utopian sphere has similar concerns to my own.

*     *     *