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PEOPLE

LEADERSHIP, PART ONE

December 16, 2015
EDUCATION AND LEARNING, PEOPLE, PHILOSOPHY-ETHICS, THINKING AND THOUGHT

James Stockdale, an eight-year prisoner of war in Vietnam, a vice admiral, a college professor, a college president, and a vice presidential candidate, proposed a “discipline founded by Socrates–a discipline committed to the position that there is such a thing as central, objective truth and that what is ‘just’ transcends self interest.”

What will it take to get a worker, student, soldier, follower to reach a conclusion, to see the “vision” of a Stockdale leader?

The leader (or leader to be) must endorse the following:

1. You are your brother’s keeper
2. Life is not fair
3. Duty comes before defiance
4. Compulsion and free will can co exist
5. Every man can be more than he is
6. Freedom and absolute equality are a trade off
7. People do not like to be programmed
8. Living in harmonious “ant heaps” is contrary to man’s nature
9. The self-discipline of stoicism has everyday applications
10. Moral responsibility cannot be escaped.

It all seems so simple, simply put, clear. But it is not easy to be the moral leaders Stockdale wants. (Having a clear conscience is the foundation of Stockdale’s presentation.)

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SOME HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE

November 23, 2015
PEOPLE

(Read about “The Cult of Efficiency.”)

Thesis/premise: “People are more important than things.”

EFFECTIVE works with PEOPLE.

EFFICIENT works with THINGS

Some highly effective persons: Charles M. Schulz; Douglas McGregor; Tom Peters; Tom Hanks; Robert F. Mager; Peter Drucker; Ivan Pavlov; Carl Rogers; Erich Fromm; Mohandas Gandhi; Dag Hammarskjold; Viktor Frankl.

More? Alvin Toffler; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; Stanley Kubrick; Abraham Maslow; Erik Erickson; Gail Sheehy; Frank Capra; Kenneth Blanchard; Stephen R. Covey; Myers and Briggs/Myers-Briggs; Paul Hersey; Edw. T. Hall; Sun Tzu.

Even more? Amatai Etzioni; George Patton; Fareed Zakaria; Sidney Simon; Kurt Lewin; Orson Welles; William Ouchi; Albert Camus; Ayn Rand; Max Weber; Carl Jung.

And so forth…

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THE BI-POLAR SEMICOLON

July 27, 2015
PEOPLE
7 Comments

Many writers fear the semicolon! They stay away: too difficult to understand. Too confusing. What are the rules for using it? Well, first, it has NOTHING to do with the colon (another story there).

Of late, the semicolon has had a revival of interest because of Project Semicolon/The Semicolon Project (which see). Then the meaning of the semicolon project morphed into a tattoo movement: [colon used here to explain what follows]: “A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life.”

Others use the punctuation symbol to help remind themselves of struggles with mental illness–much like AA members have tattoos. Those curious ask, “What does that tattoo mean?” Struggle, survival, addiction, strength, adversity.

Imagine that a piece of punctuation [in the Greek language it represents a question mark!] has become more than the-dot-on-the-comma. It’s the talk of the town! Media publications, social media, classrooms, blogs about writing, and publications about punctuation.

Nevertheless, it’s a grammar thing/punctuation mark: IT IS A SEMI-PERIOD! A partial stop, a slow period/end stop that keeps going. It ends a sentence, yet connects within that sentence.

A. It connects when and, or, nor, but, for, so, yet, still are not used:
–I earned my pay increase; Fred is still working for his. [a full, yet slow stop]
–Our sales are a bit slow; however, they will pick up during the winter.
–Her maintenance fees overwhelmed her; then she moved out.

And a semicolon can separate, like a super-special comma, for clarity in a sentence.

B. It separates in long sentences, or sentences with many commas:
–Next year we will have offices in Winona, Mississippi; Winona, Minnesota; St. Cloud, Florida; St. Cloud, Minnesota; and in Denver.
–He recently started a new hobby, collecting model airplanes; but he still has his collections of stamps, coins, and model trains.

The semicolon isn’t really manic or depressive; it’s not bi-polar; it’s not suicidal. It is, however, a “big-people” piece of punctuation, needing to be understood. It produces a marriage of sentence parts (I kissed her on the mouth; she, in turn, slapped me.)

The humble and often-misunderstood and misused semicolon is special for readers and for writers. IT MUST NEVER INSTILL FEAR.

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THE ART OF WAR (LOVING)

July 4, 2015
ARTISTIC VENTURES, GROWING UP, PEOPLE
1 Comment

BY: JAMES F. O’NEIL

I have been a War Lover as long as I can remember. I loved John Wayne as a military hero: Flying Tigers, The Fighting Seabees [the word “Seabee” comes from initials “CB” which in turn comes from the term Construction Battalions], They Were Expendable, Sands of Iwo Jima:

john wayne sands of iwo jimaJohn Wayne

 Then Steve McQueen, in The War Lover or Hell Is for Heroes or The Great Escape.

 I grew up with Two-Fisted Tales comics, and Frontline Combat.

 frontline combatFavorite War Comic Book

“CALL UNCLE BILL!” my mother shouted from the bathroom. He came on a Saturday morning, March 10, 1951. Off I went to see The Steel Helmet at the Ogden Theater in Chicago (at 63rd and Marshfield, a favorite place I could walk to). And after the movie–VOILA!–I had a new baby brother. That was neat. Go to the movies–and get a brother. (That is one of my fondest memories of a time–and one of my favorite movies, yet to this day.)

And then, older, I became so aware of content and history. In addition, after years with studying and teaching Shakespeare–and reading of war, like The Iliad and The Aeneid, like For Whom the Bell Tolls or All Quiet on the Western Front–I realized that if the essence of a tragedy is our awareness of the WASTE OF GOOD, then surely the essence of war is double tragic: waste upon waste.

I asked, What of this loss of all that is good or could be good in a man?

War brings out the worst: disregard for all that has been taught to be valued, to be sacred: life and property, manhood itself. It is often a rite of passage, a ripping from the womb of adolescence or youth (or younger, with boy-soldiers), tearing at morals, sensibilities, a sense of love and decency. And war tears apart, rips from limb to limb, often literally.

This is nothing new: we have wars, we live war. Some live for war itself; for some, it is a job, maybe even a duty. Sometimes only the players change; sometimes the same territory is fought over and paid for again and again, in human life, in human misery.

Arma virumque cano: “I sing of arms and the man,” Virgil put it so aptly many years ago (29-19 BCE) in a “great” war story. However, what is so “great” about a war story, so great that I “love” such tellings of action or characters in military situations.

A war story is truly a work of art, a play that pits human against human in extremis, in the extreme. It is a show from an artist’s perspective, a show of good and goodness–if such is possible in this Game of War, which relates hurt and hurting, winners and losers, death and destruction.

“Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies,” said Picasso (1923). The artist of war, as in Guernica, shows the truth of the story: that war IS hell, that war IS a double tragedy, that the truth of war needs to be told, to be shown: heroes die, we die. Death is real: portrayed, acted, dramatized.

guernica Guernica

Of course, there is often much more to it: morality, politics, history–even theology (a story of gods and about God, perhaps?). For me, however, it is character (Saving Private Ryan), story (The Hunt for Red October), emotion (even with Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” mournfully played while I watch Platoon, tugging at my senses). Sometimes I cry, I mourn, I laugh (even); I am moved. I often think of the artist trying to exorcise his devils (Shakespeare’s “war” stories like Othello?), showing the waste of souls (like Apocalypse Now), or relating war’s errors and futility (A Bridge Too Far).

I am a War Lover. I have my favorites, even those about love-in-war (like The English Patient). But I do hate war and what necessitates it and what it does solve or not solve. Yet I am not a “hawk” by any means. Nevertheless, I have accepted the reality of it. And I am aware as an American citizen that I am a recipient of the spoils of war (The Patriot). And so it goes (Slaughterhouse–Five). Perhaps, someday–highly unlikely–we may experience A Farewell to Arms.

© James F. O’Neil   2015

ADDENDUM: Full Metal Jacket was recently “voted” the best war movie ever made–arguably, very arguably. Stanley Kubrick’s film was “victorious” in a title matchup of Military Times‘ “Military Movie Madness,” downing Patton by a sizable margin vote to determine the best military movie ever made.

full metal jacket