FEAR,
TICKET TO A SECONDHAND LIFE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 6, 2018
When I was in industry, we had a policy of holding quarterly seminars. It fell to a different district manager to be the host, once per year. Each manager tried to outdo his peers. After one such meeting, everyone was congratulating the host. He took the praise well enough but turned on his adulators with the question: “Why do you think I worked so hard on this? This met with dead silence matched only with puzzled expressions. “I’ll tell you why,” he continued, “It was simply fear of failure.” This candid admission led to frank exchanges. They all followed the fear line summed up with the comment, “I think that shoe fits us all. No one likes to get hammered.” Finally, as if an afterthought, I was asked my view. I had a great temptation to fall into line with the others, but I had thought too hard to conquer fear to con myself now. “What drives me to do my best,” I said seriously, “is the effective utilization of my inherent ability.” The reaction was immediate. It echoed around the room with this needling phrase, "How did we ever get a guy like you in this outfit?" Once the nervous laughter subsided, I smiled. “Isn’t it just a matter of chemistry, gentlemen, opposite charges attracting?” Even in jest there was a grain of truth as what I was expressing is the counterpart to the negative, fear.”
James
R. Fisher, Jr.,
Confident Selling, Prentice-Hall Publisher, 1971.
No country can give itself a new past. But it can alter the future and help change its identity by quitting its self-conscious fixation on its glorious past and embrace its fear of the future.
Dare to ask why this nation is stuck in a very different way than the rest of the world? Could it be fear of the future? Fear is on display in contentious and divisive polarity across the nation as if unable to rise above the immature temperament of six graders squabbling on the playground while leading essentially second hand lives. How so?
The
“spoiled brat” generation is now in charge, euphemistically referred to as
“baby boomers.”
They are reluctantly moving
off stage, leaving something of a vacuum, now in their sixties and early
seventies having perfected the habit of living second hand lives by aping each
other in dress and manner, speech and morals, attitude and values. Victor Hugo compared such conformity to
prison. In any case, this conformity has
made these Americans indistinct from each other as they have gravitated to what
is esteemed rather than preferred, leaving their children, the new millennials,
confused as to what they believe and stand for.
Millennials, as a consequence, are indifferent to authority and
tradition, to institutions and religion, to manners and morals for they look at
all this with naked eyes.
While the “spoiled
brat” generation likely had parents and grandparents who felt it their duty to
serve their country in the military, few of this generation has followed that
example. Where their parents and
grandparents knew scarcity and the pain of constant struggle as the nation
limped through the Great Depression
and then embraced the uncertainties and sacrifices of the Great War (WWII), they came into the world in the economic booming
years of the postwar that followed.
Their parents and
grandparents unwisely attempted to shield their precious egos from pain and
struggle, self-doubt and failure, discrimination and bias, delayed
gratification and disappointment to experience the Rites of Passage with no significant obstacles in the way.
Church was unwittingly the
casualty of this obsession, which at one time elevated man beyond himself to
unite with his God, while conformity and appetite has forced man down to flesh
against desire crushing him deeper into himself. Today, we are spiraling out of control as a
consequence of this predilection.
When
you only know plenty, and have never had to activate your reptilian brain for
survival, you retreat from adulthood as you plan never to grow old or be forced
to grow up.
People seem surprised
that a member of the “spoiled brat” generation would be elevated by popular
vote to the President of the United
States, yet that has happened with the president behaving characteristically
consistent with that prototype. In
retrospect, this was as inevitable as the consistency of meteorological
tides.
* *
*
One
hundred years ago the First
World War (1918) ended. It was
followed by the “Roaring Twenties”
with a relaxation of traditional social barriers, including an economic run on the
banks with wild speculation on Wall Street.
Ninety
years ago, the Great
Depression (1929) hit throwing the United States and the world of commerce
into crippling inflation and massive unemployment that found 25 percent of the American
labor force unemployed.
Life became a crushing
daily struggle for most Americans while, paradoxically, most families maintained
the stability of two parent homes as divorce, crime, and vagrancy were low. Through it all, self-sustaining
identification and stoic resolve prevailed against oppressive poverty. Presidential politics (re: US President Herbert
Hoover) were blamed for the Great
Depression, as often happens when a national scapegoat is needed to explain
a situation driven by other more complex circumstances.
This led to the
inauguration of what would become a four-term election of a president (Franklin
Delano Roosevelt) and to the “New Deal,” which was essentially a
social-democratic agenda that changed the template of American society, and the
will of the people.
President Roosevelt
pieced together a welfare system
taking the power and control of survival from the people (Social Security System) and corporate pursuits from industry and
commerce (tax concessions) changing
forever representative democracy into a shell game for lobbyist.
To wit, this strategy
and policy failed to energize banks, revitalize Wall Street, or, indeed, make a
significant dent in either inflation or national unemployment. That would be provided by Europe when Adolf Hitler came to power as Germany’s Chancellor
through the democratic elective process.
Eighty
years ago (1939), Adolf Hitler, now operating as
Germany’s dictator, invaded Poland with Great Britain declaring war on Germany,
initiating World War Two. The United States would enter the war two
years later once the Empire of Japan
bombed the US Naval Base of the 7th
Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu on December 7, 1941. The war, the most devastating in history,
decimated Europe and much of Asia leaving only continental United States
untouched with such massive destruction.
Seventy
years ago (1945) the United States dramatically ended the war
in the Pacific and the will of the Japanese people by dropping two atomic bombs
on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, killing more than
100,000 people, thus ending World War Two.
Estimates of the number
of deaths attributed to WWII vary between 50 and 80 million. Meanwhile, the stigmata of that war and the devastation
of that atomic bomb lurks in the memory of civilization to this day as if a bad
dream. In a curious way, it has led to
essentially world peace into the 21st century.
American industry from
1942 to the conclusion of WWII created the greatest war machine known to man. The war effort also led to full employment
although Americans had to endure rationing of household goods, along with delayed
gratification for such luxuries as new automobiles, boats, household appliances,
clothing fashions, construction materials and leisure ware.
Sixty
years ago (1958) the economic boom was in full swing and Americans
were swimming in cash no longer experiencing restrain or delayed gratification
buying houses, cars, boats, clothes, taking luxurious vacations, having
children, and then giving them everything they wanted but not necessarily needed,
forgetting why or how they came to be so fortunate.
Consumption
became therapy for delicate psyches not used to struggle or failure or delayed
gratification as the new lexicon was, “See it, feel it, have it, do it now!”
Communities of a
thousand new homes in the suburbs seemed to spring up everywhere as if
overnight. Most Americans had jobs and
good incomes with a compulsion to imitate and emulate the rich and famous with
homes that mirrored theirs, but more modestly with attached garages of one, two,
or three spaces for automobiles. Paved
driveways and manicured lawns were part of the imitation on postage stamp
pieces of real-estate. Hugh factories
and giant interstate highways of concrete crisscrossed the country over what was once fertile farmland.
Suddenly, with no
discernible barriers, parents and their children retreated deeper into
themselves to entertain the luxury of worrying about their delicate
psyches. The shrinking of America into a
psychological nation was now established. The new priests were psychologists, psychotherapists,
mystics and gurus. Paradoxically, rather
than this army of palliative prescribers calming anxiety, the attention seemed only
to spike anxiety creating a counter dependent industry whose greatest product
was the quality of their listening and tolerance for people suspended in
adolescence.
Meanwhile, children in
school or play now had to be given awards for their participation, as no one must
be stained with the stigma of failure, of losing, or unable to keep up with
others. Elitism was anathema as the
drive was relentlessly to mediocrity and a culture of sameness.
Grades escalated in
elementary and high school, and then even at our most prestigious universities. For no other reason than because we could,
Americans came to believe in American
exceptionalism, failing to realize that Russia lost 20 million (military
and civilians) and Germany and the Allies nearly as many (military and
civilians), while America lost 400,000 and almost no civilians as no battle was
ever fought on the continental United States.
The 1950s marked the
appearance of Hugh Hefner who exploited the mood of the times with Playboy Magazine, becoming the Marquis
de Sade of his generation promulgating his narcissistic Playboy philosophy to
an eager affluent audience of self-indulgent males who had too much time on
their hands.
Fifty
years ago (1968) everything in the United States commenced to
unravel. It was as if a knife cut
through the fabric of American history separating that year and the past from
the future.
In
January, the USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea; the
Viet Cong launched the Tet offensive in Vietnam; in April Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated; Columbia
University students seized administrative buildings; 367 students were injured
in student peace riots in Paris; in June
Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated; the “Poor Peoples March” on Washington, DC promoted economic justice
for poor people; in August Richard
Nixon was nominated for president at the Republican
Presidential Convention in Miami; Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia ending
the “Prague Spring”; riots broke out at the Democratic
Presidential Nominating Convention in Chicago led by the “Chicago Seven”; in October, at the Olympic Games in
Mexico City two American African American sprinters defied tradition at the
awards ceremonies with “Black Power” salutes as the US National Anthem was played;
in November, Nixon was elected
president; in December, the Pueblo was
released by North Korea; and Apollo 8 circled the moon.
In the span of the
twelve months that followed, America experienced the Woodstock Music Festival, the Battle
of Hamburger Hill, the occupation of
Alcatraz, the collapse of moral boundaries
on stage (with “Oh! Calcutta!”), on
screen (“Midnight Cowboy”), and in
print (“Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex but Were Afraid to
Ask”). This also marked the genesis of
the Gay Rights Movement; introduced the
era of the “no fault” divorce; marked
the rise of the Silent Majority; and solidified
the Peace Movement of young people who
now burned their draft cards and fled to Canada to avoid serving in the US Military and the Vietnam War. It also marked the explosive growth of the
pornography industry that successfully sought shelter under the First Amendment of the Constitution leading
to a billion dollar business.
Forty
years ago (1970s), the sanctity of the home was essentially derailed
as children became their own parents as parents were now too busy making double
incomes to keep pace with the financial demands of their extravagant lifestyles, thus having little time for domestic responsibilities.
Children were given
“things” rather than love or time and attention from their parents. No surprise, children came to associate love
with material substitutes. Chaos
followed.
The abrupt decline of
parental authority was in turn manifested in the classroom, which more resembled
a war zone than a learning laboratory. Crime
was on the rise and out of control with the president (Nixon) declaring “War on
Crime” and then “War on Drugs.” Neither war proved an effective deterrent.
The unpopular Vietnam War led to cover ups, which in
turn led to corruption as politicians first deceived the electorate and then
themselves which reached a crescendo with The
Watergate Scandal. Drugs at all
levels of society were now in children hands as parental discipline was now a charade,
as adults came to mimic their children in dress and behavior.
New forms of bigotry
and hatred were hatching as scapegoat to offset personal anxiety and unhappiness. Meanwhile, European and Japanese automobile
manufacturers were eating America’s lunch, only to have an energy crisis rock
the land with OPEC’s oil embargo. President
Nixon, forever paranoid, became a law unto himself while Congress stayed the
same, missed the changes, couldn’t face them, leaving the future up for
grabs.
Today, forty years later, the 1970s now a bitter memory, the United
States remains a divisive and polarized nation with Democratic and
Republican members of Congress stoking the fires of discontent by throwing
abuse at each other rather than finding some reason for compromise leading to a nation in constant turmoil.
Problems
have become too complex to consider much less solve.
Problems require facing
our fears, our ineptitude, our incompetence and, yes, our lack of initiative
and originality. Instead, what is feared is uniqueness, of people of difference, of people who don’t see all news as “fake
news,” of people who don’t have to tattoo most of their bodies to have a sense of
identity, of people who don’t have to look to experts to tell them what is
important or what is not, of people who don’t have to follow a diet or belief
system currently a bestseller, of people who don’t worry about what other
people think before they form their own opinions, of people who aren’t afraid
to differ with the prevailing norm, of people not interested in getting
something for nothing, of people who believe in themselves without pretending
to have no faults, of people who accept themselves as they are and other
people as they find them.
The latter is an expression
of “tolerance” that is seriously missing from the conversation of the day. That is because most people are too busy
living second hand lives.
