Nowhere Man in Nowhere Land
The Knowledge Keepers & Utopia!
PART TWENTY THREE
JAMES RAYMOND FISHER, JR., Ph.D.
© September 29, 2016
Amazon.com Kindle Library
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FOR YOUR INFORMATION
This is the penultimate
segment of NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND, which has been an effort to put our current
history and recent past into something of a perspective. I like to think
of this in terms of grammar (Past Imperfect, Present Ridiculous and Future
Perfect).
Those who have been
reading these segments on Kindle know that it is a project that has been with
me since the beginning of this new century with the first segment appearing on
these pages on March 10, 2016.
A version of this in book
form was written in 2002 (CAN THE PLANET EARTH SURVIVE SELF-INDULGENT MAN?),
then revised in 2004 (as NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND) and again in
2006 with the same title. In the process, I became more adapt at
adding graphics and pictures to the evolving story.
I have lived and worked in
Europe when I was young (in my twenties) and again when older (in my fifties),
and had a chance to see European colonialists in situ in South America, North
Africa and South Africa (in my thirties).
Moreover, I have spent
some time in Morocco and Egypt in North Africa, and in Lebanon, Baalbek and
Turkey in the Middle East. Each place I absorbed the local culture as
best I could.
Always a note taker, as I
suspect most writers are, I have lost myself in books about these places
transporting myself as if in a dream world. We are all more alike than
different.
Some forty years ago I
wrote a novel (A TRIPLE FOOL) about such a world which was never
published. As a writer, I have the peculiar distinction of not being
an expert in anything I write about, but a peripatetic philosopher with an
insatiable curiosity about people everywhere on this planet.
As an observer, I'm
sure I am also a captive of my culture (Roman Catholicism), the United States
(Midwest), and land grant public university education. I am also a
product of “The Great Depression of the 1930s” with a working class
upbringing.
You get the feeling when
you see a lot and read a lot and reflect a lot that man has not changed much in
2,000 years. Evidence of this is his insatiable attraction to Utopia, and
like Sisyphus, being clobbered again and again for the attention.
JRF
DESCRIPTION
Knowledge keepers have moved into prominence in the 21st century as the
explorer did in the 15th (discovery of America), theologian in the 16th (The
Reformation), the Pilgrim in the 17th (Plymouth Rock settlement),
lawyer/philosopher in the 18th (American/French Revolution), engineer in the
19th (Suez/Panama Canal), the manager in the 20th (mobilization in WWII), all
with apocalyptical utopian Christian zeal to improve human nature and save
humanity.
In the 20th century, this utopian passion appeared as a
quasi-religious/military attempt to change the social order. Nazi Germany and
Soviet Russia were principals in what became a reign of violence and terror.
More than 100 million people across Europe lost their lives, many as collateral
damage to the clash of these two ideologies, both of which failed to survive
the century.
Now, in the 21st century, we have the disruptive violence and terror
orchestrated mainly in a stealthy fashion by ISSI and al-Qaeda through utopian
jihads. The aim is to change human nature by first destroying it and then
replacing it with a new version of Islam.
Meanwhile, the knowledge keepers in the United States, Western Europe,
India and China are well ensconced in insular comfort mesmerized by the
possibilities of this “Information Age.” They are essentially oblivious to the
fact that this is their century, sitting at their work stations, dreaming of
hooking up or texting friends, failing to get off their duffs and taking
charge.
Terror and violence were the unanticipated product of the preemptive invasion
of Iraq by the United States after 9/11, a war launched with messianic utopian
zeal to right a wrong while unwittingly creating another. That tenebrous shadow
still haunts the West, as it has plagued utopian thinkers since the beginning
of the Christian era.
Nowhere Land is the inevitable destiny of Nowhere Man whether the drive is
predicated on improving or changing human nature.
NEXT:
PART TWENTY FOUR – A Way Out May Be Here!
