To Christopher: From a Father to His Son

By Frank Fiore

Under the guise of a book to my adolescent son, I've written one for adults. It guides the reader on a journey through the values, hopes and promises of the last three generations. Through personal experiences, teaching stories, and the social and cultural history of the last 100 years, I discuss with Christopher the values we must hold for the future and why we are here. I hoped that the book may act as both sage words for the reader and a valuable guide to Christopher as he grows up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 6, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469701776

Frank Fiore

Frank Fiore is the author of several books on eBusiness including The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting an Online Business, eMarketing Strategies, Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants, and TechTV's Starting an Online Business all published by Macmillan/Que Publishing; a shopping guide to cyberspace called Dr. Livingston's Online Shopping Safari Guidebook published by Maximum Press.

Book preview

All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Frank Fiore

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

Writers Club Press an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

For information address: iUniverse, Inc. 5220 S. 16th St., Suite 200 Lincoln, NE 68512 www.iuniverse.com

ISBN: 0-595-20454-6

ISBN: 978-1-4697-0177-6 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Epigraph

The Walrus and the Carpenter (1)

Preface

Prologue

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

Epilogue

LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

To Lynne, without whom Christopher would not have been possible.

Epigraph

Gentle reader;

This book was written 10 years ago to my son.

I find it amazing that some of the predictions I made about the challenges and opportunities facing his generation – especially in Chapter 8 – are coming true.

Peace.

The Walrus and the Carpenter (1)

The time has come, the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing wax And cabbages and kings And why the sea is boiling hot And whether pigs have wings.

Dear Christopher,

‘The time has come to talk of many things’

To talk of visions and values, meanings and morals, rules and reasons, and you and I. To talk of the world that created you, Christopher, and the world that you will create, and to talk of who you are and what you can be.

Over the last twelve years, and without too much formality, you’ve learned the little lessons of life. Brush your teeth, comb your hair, say ‘please’ when you want something and ‘thank you’ when you get it. You’ve learned the difference between knowing the truth and telling a lie, that stoves can be hot and paint can be wet, and you’ve learned your family’s traditions, your society’s culture, and a basic idea of your place in the world.

But these little bits of day to day knowledge will not prepare you for what’s coming next.

You’ve seen twelve birthdays come and go, now. Twelve birthdays and twelve years. And over those years, Christopher, I’ve seen you grow a little bit taller, a little bit smarter, and a little bit more aware of your world. I’ve watched you develop into a sensitive soul and, in some ways, a bolder soul as well.

But those twelve birthdays will pale in significance to the next few. For you are at a turning point in life—a time when you’ll be asked to leave a child’s world behind and embark on a wondrous journey. One filled with wonder and dismay; excitement and concern, apprehension and comprehension, problems and possibilities, and, at times, filled with frustration, disappointment and bewilderment.

The journey, Christopher, towards adulthood.

And as you begin a new decade of life, your world begins a new millennium. Both filled, not so coincidentally, with things in common. You, as you enter adolescence, and your world, as it enters the next millennium, are about to experience something totally new. Something both people and societies experience infrequently and at only certain points in their lives. It may be no accident that what you must learn to live in your world will be the same your society must learn to live in its. For as we entered the next millennium—when all those nines disappeared from our calendars—your society, too, is at a turning point.

And it knows it.

But even though it can’t quite put its finger on what will happen, our world knows that something important, something unprecedented in living memory is about to happen. No, Christopher, not the ‘Second Coming’ or the ‘New Age’ or the ‘End of History’. These are but the siren songs of the quick fix and the litany of the self-righteous who claim they alone speak for what is true now, then and forever more—drawing on any number of ‘traditional values’ for their support. And neither is it the claim of those who’s proof is ‘historical’, while at the same time being ignorant of history.

No, it will be something even more important and far reaching than all of that. We will not be saved from the responsibility of living nor be forced to resign ourselves to the inevitable. For there is no escaping one’s responsibility and there is no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to comprehend what is happening.

You and your generation will be coming of age at a time when humanity itself will be coming of age. That’s right, you will live your life through an historic period on this planet. A time when our planet becomes aware of itself.

Oh, you’ll see change just as my generation did and generations before that. But your experiences will be much different. Not because of the changes you will see, Christopher. These are but mere transitions. No. You will experience something that few people and few generations get to experience—the culmination of a transformation. And what you learn and how you use what you learn, will dictate its outcome. Your grandfather’s generation saved the world, mine changed it, yours will transform it. And what you make of it will determine—

what you make of it.

Now, you and your generation will be faced with many unique and uncommon challenges. Most will be personal, many will be political, some will be economic, and even a few will be spiritual. I want to explore these challenges with you in this book—a formal record that you can refer to five, ten, even twenty years from now as you and your world enfolds and what you read here becomes more comprehensible.

I’m not going to tell you that your life will be easier than mine. Far from it. In a way, my generation was luckier than yours. We had inherited the good fortune and the economic freedom to pursue our beliefs and aspirations in whatever direction they sent us. Your grandfather’s generation, that of my father, secured a way of life that gave my generation the freedom to evaluate, criticize and change the world that was handed to us.

And that was our purpose. But more of that later.

No, life will not be easy for your generation. You are growing up caught between two worlds, caught between two games, so to speak, with little to guide you.

And what do I mean by that, you ask?

Remember the games you played with your friends when you were young? Sometimes they were games with traditional rules, like go-fish, or chess, or basketball. But sometimes, you would make up your own games, with their own rules. And as long as everyone agreed to the rules, everyone enjoyed the game. And when you and your friends tired of a game, you created another, and another, and another.

You will find that life is that way—an ever-changing game. But the games that adults play are different from the games that children play. They have rules too. And as long as everyone follows the rules, the games can be played and enjoyed. And when adults decide that a certain game isn’t worth playing anymore, they change it too.

But what happened when you wanted to change a game or play another and your friends disagreed?

Odds were good you appeared in front of me with tears in your eyes saying ‘it wasn’t fair’. Well, sometimes adults disagree on whether they should continue playing a certain game or not. And when they do, there are also differences of opinion and, sometimes, even conflict.

Unfortunately, the disagreements of adults can rarely be wiped away with a tear. An example of that is my generation.

My generation didn’t want to play the games of our fathers. We didn’t agree with the rules. We saw their solutions as problems, and those problems as a cause. We knew what we were against, but not exactly what we were for. The result, Christopher, is that I have no tidy, neat little game to pass on to you. You’re generation will have to create it’s own game—and in the process, transform the world.

How?

You will have to learn a set of rules to a master game—rules that you can build on, rules that can help you and your generation make sense of the world that was handed to you. Rules that you can use to create your own game.

And what is this master game, you ask?

We’ll get to that later. For now, let’s just say that unlike your grandfather’s generation, you will have few absolutes and no consensual moral authority or even a framework of beliefs handed to you for support.

My generation made sure of that.

No, Christopher, you will have to take the cultural grit of my generation and create a new consensus that encompasses more than just a people, more than just a nation, more than just a culture—but a whole new view that encompasses the world.

This transformation is the formidable task of your generation and it’s my responsibility as a father to give you the tools necessary to help you accomplish it. And it all begins with the knowledge a father can

give to his son. A knowledge of experience that I have accumulated and live by. And that, Christopher, is what this little book is all about.

Good Journey. Your Father

Preface

SON: Daddy, how much do you know?

FATHER: Me? Hmm—I have about a pound of knowledge.

SON: Don’t be silly. Is it a pound sterling or a pound weight? I mean really, how much do you know?

FATHER: Well, my brain weighs two pounds and I suppose I use a quarter of it—or use it at about a quarter efficiency. So let’s say half a pound.

SON: Do you know more than Johnny’s daddy? Do you know more than I do?

FATHER: Hmm—there once was little boy who asked his father, Do fathers always know more than their sons? and the father said, Yes. The next question was, Daddy, who invented the steam engine? and the father said, James Watt. And then the son came back with, —but why didn’t James Watt’s father invent it? (2)

Prologue

A long, long time ago in a decade far, far away, cigarette smoking was fashionable, grass was mowed, coke was a drink and pot was something you cooked in. Hardware meant hardware, and software wasn’t even a word yet—and a ‘chip’ was a piece of wood. You got married first and then lived together, and it was widely believed that you needed a husband to have a baby. Having a meaningful relationship meant getting along with your in-laws, and aides were helpers in a Principal’s office. The family that prayed together stayed together, and father always knew best. (3)

That was the world of your grandfather, Christopher. A world seemingly untouched by the problems of today.

But if you took a closer look, you would find that he lived in another world as well. A world of economic depression, social upheaval and global change. He saw his father, your great grandfather, faced with the challenge of providing for his family in a time of massive unemployment and uncertainty. He saw his government forced to deal with an unprecedented economic and social crisis. And he saw his world threatened by the onslaught of global aggression.

These challenges galvanized your grandfather’s generation and unified them in purpose against a common enemy. But his generation knew that individuals or small groups could not muster the necessary resources to meet these enormous challenges. His response, and that of his father, was to create something greater than themselves, something that could deal with these unprecedented problems.

What they created was a level of organization parented by the experience of their times. An organization of ideas that the world had never seen before. What they created was a new game. A potent game. One with new rules and new goals that would re-shape the world they lived in. And their new game was successful. So successful in fact, that your grandfather’s generation believed it could do anything, answer any question, solve all problems, provide all the answers.

And it seemed that way.

Their game created the American Century. It gave them a New Deal and a Great Society. It nurtured a science and technology that created a quality of life unseen before on this planet. It brought them to the New Frontier, it took them to the moon.

There was nothing it couldn’t do—or so it seemed.

Why am I telling you all this? Because without a sense of history, without an understanding of how the world that you live in came to be, you and your generation will not be able to understand the challenges you face and how to be successful in your century. Now, by history I don’t mean just the history of events, but also the history of ideas and ideals—the history of the values we hold and how we change them. Values that tell where we came from, what we are, and what we want to become.

You must have a good understanding of the world that created you in order to recreate the world. And for that, we must first look at your grandfather’s generation and ask what perspective, what philosophy, what device gave this generation the ability to understand and shape their world?

Remember those trips you took in grammar school every October to some farmer’s pumpkin patch? Or the friend’s ranch we visited where you fed the goats and rode the horses? Well, that’s about as close as you got to the kind of living that was dominant before the turn of my century. Most of the world was rural. Most of the people either lived on farms or in small villages. It was a time of handmade products and homegrown food, of hard work and long hours. And for the vast majority of people, mere survival was a top priority.

Then, a miracle happened. Or at least, it was a miracle to your great-grandfather.

At the Great Paris Exposition of 1900—sort of a World’s Fair—there stood an exhibit hall called the Gallery of Machines. In it were miracle devices that promised to make your great-grandfather’s and grandfather’s life safer, easier and with more control over their world. Outside the Gallery was a 1000 foot monument to what the machine could do—the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower, built from large pieces of iron, was constructed 10 years earlier and was the marvel of the industrializing world. It stood for what the miracle of the machine could and would do.

Thanks to the development of the machine, the tools to make those machines and the creation of the assembly line to create the products of the machine, it was finally possible to provide for all the everyday creature comforts that you take for granted today. The automobile. The airplane. The radio. The television. And a host of other machine miracles.

To your grandfather and great grandfather, the machine was the answer to all of society’s problems. It captured the imagination of their generations and provided a model—a world view, so to speak—to create that new game I spoke about earlier.

And what things that new game could do!

If one played by its rules, it could eliminate want, it could make what was scarce plentiful, and it could provide goods and services in abundance unheard of in history.

And what was this new game your grandfather and great grandfather played? It was the game of the machine.

And to play the game and win, you had to follow its rules. And the rules stated that all things were seen and explained in terms of the machine. The universe, for instance, society, even people—all parts of a machine. All cogs in a