Chapter 7
The Age of Authenticism
The world has enough Fiction,
Façade,
Farce,
Fraud, &
Facsimile.
The world needs more TRUTH and integrity.
It needs more authenticity, and it needs it badly.
 |
René Descartes
1596-1650 |
Life is REAL...
It is not a dream or mirage. It is not some ethereal hallucination we merely imagine is occurring. It is an authentic experience rooted squarely in reality that exists just as surely as YOU and me. As the famous French philosopher, Réne Descartes, so cogently argued some four centuries ago: I think, therefore, I am.
"I think, therefore I am."
—Réne Descartes
There are a lot of philosophies and ideologies out there willing to fill your mind with fiction and fear. My job in creating this Life Leadership textbook is to fill your mind with facts and FAITH—faith in Universal Laws and faith in your own capacity to understand and abide by the True Principles that accompany them.
At Freedom Focused, we further aim to fill your mind, heart, and soul with HOPE—hope for the endless happiness and blessings that eventually accompany authentic personal and professional freedom and growth.
As human beings our experiences are shaped and ultimately defined by the choices we make. Regulated by the passage of time, right choices will result in success, happiness prosperity, and most importantly, freedom. On the other hand, wrong choices will result in failure, misery, penury, and bondage.
In the final analysis, life really is that simple—not to be confused with that easy.
Human beings have a remarkable capacity for creativity and stubbornness when it comes to making excuses for why things didn't, or aren't, turning out quite right in their lives.
From blaming genetic predispositions, chemical imbalances, and mimetic influences to scapegoating structural inequities, past disadvantages, and bad luck—a wide swath of humanity seems convinced they are not to blame when their state of mind, heart, body, career, or life is in disarray or distress.
While past and present life adversities and unfairness present real challenges that should be appropriately addressed insofar as possible, they don't have to completely define your life's story—unless you choose to let them.
Things typically turn out badly for those who harbor a victim's mentality. In the mind of a victim, undesirable life scenarios and circumstances are always the fault of someone or something else. Such is the distorted belief system of those inhabiting the bubble world of blame.
In reality, the results you get
in the long-run are determined with quasi-mathematical precision
by the
choices YOU make. There are, of course, legitimate exceptions to this overarching generalization, something I'll discuss at great length in BOOK the THIRD, Chapter 7, which is entitled:
Life Leadership Variables.
Nevertheless, the universal Law of the Harvest—as you sow, so shall ye reap—remains an irrevocable and effervescent truism that can never be wished away by the whimsy of mankind's sometimes flimsy intellect and mercurial inclinations.
This particular "True Principle" is further illuminated by the "Karma concept," which posits that, what goes around comes around, or, put another way: whatever you send out into your life will inevitably boomerang right back to you... with interest!
Making right choices is not always that easy.
But the formula for achieving lasting success in any life arena is that simple.
Fortunately, Universal Laws exist, govern absolutely, and provide a sure way to happiness, success, and freedom. They are also relatively easy to understand.
If you are interested in becoming a self-action leader, the time has come for YOU to stop making excuses for your personal problems, inadequacies, and failures, and begin taking complete personal responsibility for everything in your life that you can either control or influence.
I recognize this is a very black-and-white way of looking at a world ever colored in a spectrum of situational grays. Such circumstantial cloudiness can create profound ambiguity about the way things really are in the world and universe. In the midst of such mortal mystifications—which we all must pass through—dark distortions and dour delusions often
seem like horrifying realities. The
only escape from the ashen lenses through which we all must peer in this world lies in right thinking, speaking, doing, and being.
There is no other way.
The principle is that simple in theory.
And the application is that difficult in practice.
The Need for Unsophisticated Truisms
I am aware how naïve and provincial such statements sound to many in our postmodern world, and that is precisely what makes them so beautiful, profound, and desperately needed throughout our troubled nation and planet.
The world has enough sophistication and rationalization; it needs more common sense and integrity. It has enough selfishness and hedonism; it needs more self-restraint and honor. It has enough sarcasm and greed; it needs more sincerity and goodness. It has enough deception and derision; it needs more truth telling and encouragement. The world has enough fake; it needs more real. It has enough authoritative caricature; it needs more authentic character. (1)
In short, the world needs more self-action leaders, and the key to their development and proliferation lies in the pedagogical promotion of basic, unsophisticated truisms rooted in common sense.
That is what SAL principles and practices offer.
A Critique of Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a term assigned to an influential intellectual and cultural movement that has had a tremendous impact on academia, politics, entertainment, fashion, and virtually everything else in the Western World since World War II. Postmodernism posits that nothing really exists except that which is constructed through language, perceived through our limited senses, or that which is decreed by postmodernists themselves to be real, or true.
Postmodernism turns traditional notions of "Right" and "wrong"—and morality in general—on its head. To a postmodernist, there really isn't any right or wrong in any absolute sense. Instead of fixed and irrevocable truisms rooted in Universal Law, postmodernists see right and wrong as subjective terms that may be flexibly applied to different situations based on arbitrary agendas and personal pet (or political) projects.
Simply stated, postmodernism (aka poststructuralism) is: an over-zealous philosophical ideology that denies and discredits the existence of moral absolutes.
POSTMODERNISM / POSTSTRUCTURALISM
A philosophical ideology that denies and discredits the existence of moral absolutes.
Vestiges of postmodern philosophy can be observed in academe, politics, and culture throughout the Western World and beyond. The entertainment industry is particularly preferential of postmodern premises, evinced by their common iteration and reiteration in screenplays and musical lyrics.
"We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control ...
Hey! Teacher, leave them kids alone."
—Pink Floyd
From their hit song, Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2
"Pay my respects to grace and virtue
Send my condolences to good...
Wave goodbye ... You got to let me go."
—The Killers
From their hit song, Are We Human?
"Nothing really matters
Anyone can see ...
Nothing really matters to me."
—Queen
From their hit song, Bohemian Rhapsody?
Principles of postmodernism promote a convenient credo of moral relativism, thus affording human beings with pretended power to redefine moral principles to suit their own capricious conceptions of Right and wrong. However sophisticated or well-intentioned its authors and acolytes may be, the fruits of foraying into postmodern premises and practices have been frighteningly foul in the past, perennially perverted in the present, and point to an ever darker and foreboding future.
Wittingly or not, postmodernists seek to elevate human beings into godlike figures with the power to determine what is and isn't real on the contradictory premise that nothing really is anyway, except that which is critically constructed by language and the pompous proclamations of postmodernists themselves. And speaking of critics and criticism, postmodernism is full of both; after all, the movement is largely rooted in philosophical and literary criticism.
The problem with critics is that they are almost always "Big talkers,
but Little doers
."
"Big talkers, little doers."
—Benjamin Franklin
The cultural "produce" harvested from the "gardens" of postmodernism consists largely of selfishness, hedonism, narcissism, nihilism, confusion, and hopelessness.
Not exactly an honorable track record!
With the perpetual production of such unsavory fruit, one must wonder why Western society has—for the past 80 years—embraced postmodernism with such an ironically evangelical zeal.
Technological advancements, the Information Age, and the end of widespread agrarianism were bound to clamor for a contrast to erstwhile intellectual fashions and foundations. But sadly, their vacuously inauthentic product—bereft of any basis in reality—has borne the bitter fruit of a rotten crop.
The aim of Self-Action Leadership is not to create critics, but to develop doers. It seeks to teach and train those whose desires lie not outside the stadium in the cirque du critique, but inside the arena on the PLATFORMS of PERFORMANCE.
In the inspired and ennobling words of Theodore Roosevelt:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." (2)
As Bryant S. Hinckley once noted: Cynics do not contribute, skeptics do not create, doubters do not achieve.
"Cynics do not contribute, skeptics do not create, doubters do not achieve."
—Bryant S. Hinckley
Following World War II, the West entered a period of largely uninterrupted prosperity. These good times have blessed the United States—and the rest of the world—with the opportunity to develop an intellectual class of unprecedented size and scope. It has also afforded society with an unprecedented acquisition of both riches and leisure time.
These developments have provided legions of individuals with opportunities and mobility hitherto unknown in the annals of human history. But as is often the case, blessings often carry the seeds of accompanying curses, which must be carefully guarded against lest they spoil the fortune and favors.
Again, in the incisive words of Roosevelt:
 |
Anyone can stand around and criticize the work of others.
Real credit should go to actual artists who produce the work. |
"There are certain failings against which it is especially incumbent that both [people] of trained and cultivated intellect, and [people] of inherited wealth and position should especially guard themselves, because to these failings they are especially liable; and if yielded to, their—your—chances of useful service are at an end. Let the [man or woman] of learning, the [person] of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the [person] who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the [person] to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many [people] who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no [person] less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief towards all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes second to achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities—all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the [people] unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the [person] who sneers alike at both criticism and performance." (3)
While postmodernist thought originated largely amongst the philosophical and literary intelligentsia, its insidious messages of moral relativism soon spread to infect entire cultures and governments throughout the West and beyond with the popular, albeit patently erroneous, notion that there really isn't any absolute truth.
The result?
Legions were sucked into an infernal black hole of cryptic and convoluted intellectualism as its message crept into—and eventually cloaked—the balance of society and culture in the corrupt philosophy of anything goes.
The collateral damage of this ideology to the moral pulse and existential progress of an entire planet has been, in many ways, calamitous—and in some cases, fatal. Postmodernism has even sought to rewrite history, or at least cast a negative shadow on some of history's greatest acts, actors, and achievements. Not all such aims have been bad. In some cases, history needed to be rewritten to reflect greater accuracy and holism in conjunction with removing some of the scales and shadows removed from some of its darker moments and secrets.
In many cases, however, in an attempt to achieve unrealistic social justice goals such as equality of outcome, history has too often been deconstructed and recast to make the good guys (who were certainly not perfect) out to be fiends, while re-diagnosing some of the genuine devils as being merely misguided, mentally ill, mismanaged, or misunderstood—rather than the diabolical tyrants that they actually were.
This Life Leadership textbook was written in part as a comprehensive response to the negative cultural consequences of postmodernism. It seeks to resurrect an academic accession of absolute truth along with its precious virtues of dignity, honor, self-discipline, self-restraint, self-reliance, individual liberty, personal freedom, and realism upon which all of history's lasting success stories were, are, and will yet be built.
This text further seeks to champion these virtues in nations, governments, states, communities, organizations, schools, families, relationships, and most importantly: individual lives.
I love my country—and the world at large—too much to stand idly by and watch it perish in the perfidious and profane pages of postmodern philosophy and philology. It took the better part of a century to get to the unstable place where we currently stand, and it will take several decades and much work to reverse the deep damage that has already been done.
The good news is the damage is not irreversible!
Indeed, I believe my nation and world's best days are still ahead of us.
Prestructuralism: Postmodernism's Polar Opposite
Postmodernism is an example of the philosophy embraced by the left-wing, liberal extremes in a society. But that is only one side of the danger. The far-right, conservative extreme can prove just as dangerous. While the pathways to these ideological polar opposites is extremely different, their terminal destination is, ironically, the same awful location—even that politically polluted place where liberty dies and freedom is suppressed.
The term we use at Freedom Focused to describe postmodernism's philosophical inverse is PRESTRUCTURALISM, which is defined as: an over-zealous philosophical ideology that postures erroneous ideas as moral absolutes.
PRESTRUCTURALISM
A philosophical ideology that postures erroneous ideas as moral absolutes.
Prestructuralism metaphorically refers to a state of mind or ideology that exists before a solid structure (philosophy) rooted in Universal Laws has been well established in a person's mind, or in a group, society, culture, or nation. It is a primitive state of morality marked by superstitions, false scientific conjectures, and perverted religious extremist paradigms.
Conversely, postmodernism metaphorically refers to a state of mind or ideology that exists after a solid structure rooted in Universal Laws has been eroded. It is a perverted scholarly version of morality that results when highly sophisticated academics try to rationalize away traditional moral structures and/or visceral wisdom (i.e. CONSCIENCE) rooted in Universal Laws that have stood the test of time.
The answer to mitigating these two problematic polar extremes in thinking and seeing lies in identifying a virtuous BALANCE between prestructuralism and poststructuralism (aka postmodernism).
At Freedom Focused, we refer to this balance as MORAL STRUCTURALISM, or just structuralism for short. Moral Structuralism refers to: a balanced moral philosophy based on True Principles rooted in Universal Laws.
MORAL STRUCTURALISM
A balanced moral philosophy based on True Principles rooted in Universal Laws.
 |
Moral structuralism is a means of
BALANCING the extremes of
prestructuralism and postmodernism |
Moral structuralism represents an Aristotelian "Golden Mean," or balance, between the two extremes of
prestructuralism and
poststructuralism (or postmodernism).
According to Aristotle, virtue will never be found in extremes, but rather in a balance between extremes. Aristotelian extremes include "deficiency"on one extreme end of a spectrum and "excess" on the opposite extreme end.
Another name for the Golden Mean is the "Goldilocks Zone"—where things are "just right"—in the middle ground between extremes.
PRESTRUCTURALISTS inhabit the "deficiency" extreme and suffer from a lack of rational thought.
POSTMODERNISTS inhabit the "excess" extreme and suffer from rational thought gone awry.
MORAL STRUCTURALISTS inhabit the virtuous balance of Aristotle's Golden Mean between the two extremes and benefit from thought processes properly balanced between rationalism and visceralism (i.e. emotiveness and intuition).
Prestructuralists err because their intellect fails to reach the mark. Postmodernists err because their intellect overshoots the mark. Moral structuralists, on the other hand, hit the intended mark—or as close to it as is humanly possible.
And what exactly is "the Mark"?
"The mark" represents whatever goodness, rightness, truth, and virtue that is achieved by locating an ideal balance between prestructural and poststructural (or postmodern) extremes.
While prestructuralists zealously promote false notions they claim are absolute, postmodernists seek to rationalize away absolutes entirely. Both prestructuralists and postmodernists are misguided in their approach and results because they are extreme and fall far afield of the happy medium or Golden Mean.
Moral Structuralists, on the other hand, are laser-focused on identifying what is absolutely true (or false) and then abiding by whatever correct moral structures they ascertain, discover, learn, observe, et cetera in a balanced way that appropriately takes into account reasonable and rational "exceptions to the rule."
Two of the most poignant and salient historical examples of prestructuralism (far right political ideology) are Nazi Germany and Islamic extremist terrorists. Hitler's erroneous "truth" heralded his supposed superiority of the Aryan race. Islamic extremist terrorist's false "truth" sanctions the murderous killing of Christians, Jews, and other "heathens" (Westerners).
A prominent historical example of postmodernism (far left political ideology) is the former Soviet Union.
As Soviet communists made good on their efforts to eliminate dissent, squelch individual liberties, and control the press, truth itself began to die. The only "truth" that remained was the arbitrary messaging and iron-fisted will of the state apparatus. The result? Tens of millions of citizens and soldiers died in Stalin's far left famines and purges in the 1930s—and then later against Hitler's far right military might in World War II in the 1940s.
Ironically, both extremes—despite their ideological polar opposition to each other—end up in essentially the same place, which always bears the hallmarks of tyranny, deceit, destruction, and death. After all, which is really worse in the end: Hitler or Stalin? Sane-minded persons will rightfully eschew both extremes.
Given the self-evident reality that a better way exists than either of these two calamitous extremes, readers can take hope in the possibility of a new age, even an age of Self-Action Leadership, or an AGE of AUTHENTICISM.
The Age of Authenticism
The time has come for the candor and actuality of authenticity to eclipse the pernicious perjury and perfidious presumption of prestructuralism and postmodernism.
It is time for something REAL.
The dawning of a new age—even an AGE of AUTHENTICISM—answers this clarion call of the cynical, sarcastic, synthetic, and sinful era in which recent generations have too long resided.
I cannot claim credit for coining this new term, but I concur with its originator—the British novelist Edward Docx—that "Postmodernism is dead," (4) or at very least has finally begun to atrophy around its cancerous core, which will eventually cave in on itself as it gradually crumbles into the diabolical dust from whence it was constructed.
At Freedom Focused, we believe history will eventually credit authenticism with transcending postmodernism and replacing it with something as new as it is old, and that remains perennially and effervescently vital; namely: character, courage, goodness, love, kindness, truth, and virtue in all of their authentic splendor.
At Freedom Focused, we are absolutely committed to promoting and championing this new Age of Authenticism throughout the world, and invite YOU to add your passion, voice, and talents to our ever-increasing choir of self-action leaders.
Self-Action Leadership is designed to serve as an intellectual exponent of this new movement that is rejecting "postmodernism with all its detachment and deconstruction," (5) and entering a nobler place where "some things are pure and some things are right." (6)
Postmodernism is the business of critics, curmudgeons, and power-hungry politicians and potentates. Similarly, prestructuralism is the business of tyrants, terrorists, and irrational fanatics.
Moral Structuralism on the other hand—and the reality, truth, character, integrity, and authenticity that it spawns—is the business of principle-centered poets and self-action leaders.
In the invigorating and inspiring prose of G.K. Chesterton:
"There is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light, more blinding and unfathomable than any abyss of darkness; and it is the abyss of actuality, of existence, of the fact that things truly are, and that we ourselves are incredibly and sometimes incredulously real. It is the fundamental fact of being, as against not being; it is unthinkable, yet we cannot unthink it, though we may sometimes be unthinking about it; unthinking and unthanking. For he who has realized this reality knows that it does outweigh, literally to infinity, all lesser regrets or arguments for negation, and that under all our grumblings there is a subconscious substance of gratitude. That light of the positive is the business of the poets." (7)
If you seek greater authenticity in your life and relationships, as well as throughout your nation and world, I invite you to join us in this fresh new movement of education and action that engenders real hope and leads to authentic change and growth. This place of light, of reality, of authenticity, is a glorious place to live and work. It is the promised land of hope and the real address of growth and change.
Most importantly, it is the gateway to both individual liberty and personal freedom.
We at Freedom Focused further invite YOU to join us on this journey to truly authentic living—a land where all people possess opportunities that are both real and endless. There can be no greater opportunity, speaking individually or collectively.
Avoiding Victimization and Discouraging Grievance
Every human being has so much potential that it sincerely saddens me when I see victimization heralded and grievance trumpeted upon the rooftops while opportunity is but whispered—and especially in segments of society where opportunities are most scarce and hope is most vulnerable.
Indeed, it bereaves all of us at Freedom Focused to see the best in human beings and communities being squandered on residual reflections on the worst that may have happened to individuals or groups in the past—or on real or perceived slights in the present.
The time has come for society-at-large to spend less time talking about how oppressed some people were in the past, and spend a lot more time proclaiming how profoundly capable these same people are in the present—and how tremendously positive their potential is for the future if they are given the opportunity to learn SAL and apply it in concert with the grace, mercies, and powers of Serendipity.
Instead of crying out about limitations, let's proclaim from the tallest towers in the land how innately creative, talented, and intelligent
all human beings are, and how limitless their potential is when properly taught, positively encouraged, productively directed, and rightly resourced.
Let's spend less time telling people how hard they had it (or have it) and invest more time and effort in promoting their potential for transcendence and success—even in the face of great external difficulties or persisting structural inequities—if they are but given a chance to learn and then demonstrate a willingness and desire to diligently apply their acquired knowledge.
Please don't misunderstand what I am trying to say here. I am not suggesting we ignore persisting structural inequities in society. Indeed, we must continually fight against the pernicious problems of bigotry, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and evil of all kinds wherever it nestles and festers. At the same time, however, we must be cautious of going to extremes in such crusades, lest we fall prey to the ironic trap of engaging in a reverse form of the very thing we claim to be fighting against.
What I am suggesting is the promotion of a pedagogy of possibility as an alternative to the derailing dogma of grievance that has been proven to be such a prevailing co-conspirator with postmodernism to poison the waters of hope, optimism, and possibility for so many otherwise creative, intelligent, and capable human beings in our twenty-first century global society.
Our Call for Widespread Cultural Change
The rooftop and bell tower cry of Freedom Focused, and our grand, overriding purpose of introducing Self-Action Leadership to the world, is our clarion call for widespread—even international—cultural change.
Nay; that is too weak.
Our call is for global cultural TRANSFORMATION.
The societal renewal and reinvigoration we speak of will be rooted in
self-renewal, and will occur ONE person at-a-time in absolute accordance with the free will of each individual. In other words, Freedom Focused will
never coerce anyone to
become a self-action leader.
Attempting such a perverted pathway of conversion would not only compromise our own clearly proclaimed values, principles, and practices. Moreover, it would ultimately prove untenable—even impossible!
While human beings can be coerced to say or do some things against their will at gunpoint or through fear or other threats, no one can ever truly be coerced to think or believe something against their own, free will. Our recognition of this great truth is so fundamental and primal that it undergirds everything we think about, say, and do as individuals and an organization.
We can promote, persuade, instruct, and invite... but never force Self-Action Leadership.
Nor will we ever try to do so.
Over time, as the numbers and quality of self-action leaders willingly increases, said individuals will eventually lead to organizational, national, and then international reformation, reinvigoration, restoration, reimagining, and finally reinventing. As a result, and despite whatever challenges and calamities we may collectively face in the years ahead, individual self-action leaders have every reason to be hopeful, optimistic, and even excited about the future.
I am under no illusions about the difficulty of the task that lies before us.
Cultural transformations do not happen overnight.
It took many decades—eight (8) to be exact—for postmodernism to become sufficiently entrenched in academe and the media to pollute our culture to the point it has today. More recently, prestructuralist extremists have further complicated things with initiatives of an opposing extremity. It will, therefore, take at least a couple of decades for the AGE of AUTHENTICISM to effectively eclipse both prestructuralism and postmodernism and reverse their poisonous effects on a large scope and scale.
In the meantime, the cycles of history suggest that we may in coming years be approaching another national and/or international calamity and conflict on part with the two World Wars and the economic Great Depression of the last century.
Dubbed "the Crisis of 2020" by generational scholars William Strauss and Neil Howe, it is predicted that this pending crisis will occur sometime before the end of the 2020s and "will be a major turning point in American [and World] history." (8) At this "adrenaline-filled moment of trial" people everywhere "will feel that the fate of posterity—for generations to come—hangs in the balance." (9)
"The crisis will be a pivotal moment in the lifecycles of all generations alive at the time. The sense of community will be omnipresent. Moral order will be unquestioned with 'rights' and 'wrongs' crisply defined and obeyed. Sacrifices will be asked, and given. [We] will be implacably resolved to do what needs doing, and fix what needs fixing." (10)
History is not a perfect predictor of the future, and even if it were, self-action leaders understand the futility in living anywhere other than the PRESENT. Nevertheless, by seizing present moments to study the past and ready ourselves for the future, we will be better prepared to effectively combat whatever internal enemies or external foes that cross our path in days to come.
However long it takes, our efforts to be victorious in this crucible-to-come, as well as our endeavors to transform culture into a place that values character, competence, and integrity—will be worth it. Moreover, the exhilarating journey that takes us to that promised land will be packed with opportunities for personal growth and positive relationship building at every turn.
We are excited about this journey and hope you will choose to join us for the ride of your life and/or career. Join us, and together we will travel ever-closer to our still unreached potential as a nation and planet. There can be no greater national or global quest, a crusade that beings with the ONE—with YOU and with me.
In the meantime, may each of us continually recall the timeless wisdom of one of the greatest self-action leaders the world has ever seen, who reminds us that: YOU
must be the change you wish to see in the world.
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
—Mohandas Gandhi
- Do you ever fall prey to mindsets of petty cynicism, unfair criticism, or irresponsible victimization? If so, how so, and what is something you could do beginning TODAY to rise above these negative and counterproductive mindsets?
- Think about the last time you blamed someone or something else for the state of your education, career, relationships, or life. Do YOU bear any personal responsibility for your situation or circumstances being what they are?
- What is something you could do TODAY to change your thoughts, speech, or behavior in a way that would have a positive impact on your present circumstances over time?
—Dr. JJ
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA
Author's Note: This is the 373rd Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 185th consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.
.........................
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Chapter 7 Notes:
1. The literary style and rhythm in this paragraph—and others like it throughout this
book—are borrowed from a similar style used in paragraph 16 of an October 2000
speech entitled The Joy of Womanhood, delivered by Margaret D. Nadauld. My thanks to Mrs. Nadauld for inspiring me with her stirring delivery and well-crafted
prose.
2. Roosevelt, T. (1910). Citizenship in a Republic. Speech delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910.
3. Ibid.
4. Docx, E. (2011). Postmodernism is Dead. Prospect Magazine. 20 July 2011. URL: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/49336/postmodernism-is-dead
5. Pastabagel (2011). Partial Objects (blog article). 19 August 2011. URL no longer available.
6. Arcade Fire. (2010). Month of May. Written by: Win Butler, Regine Chassagne, William Butler, Tim Kingsbury,
Richard R. Parry, Jeremy Gara.
7. Chesterton, G.K. (2008). Geoffrey Chaucer. Cornwall, UK: House of Stratus.
Page 15.
8. Strauss W. & Howe, N. (1991). Generations: The History of America’s Future,
1584-2069. New York, NY: Quill (William Morrow). Page 382.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
