Instead of boring readers with a lot of details about my life, I thought I might explain how it is that I became a writer. I should like to mention, however, that I was born and raised in Canada. I graduated from University of British Columbia with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and served three years in the Royal Canadian Air Force before immigrating to the United States in 1959.

After an interesting career in engineering, manufacturing and management, and picking up a couple degrees: Masters in Engineering from Yale University and a MBA from University of Kentucky, I discovered at the age of 55 that my services were no longer in demand. I, like many of my colleagues, was deemed obsolete. Near the end of my career, in 1988, I discovered W. Edwards Deming, his ideas and philosophy. Based on what I learned from Dr. Deming, I endeavored at consulting.

As a consultant, one of my clients asked me to write a chapter on each of Deming’s Fourteen Points for Management. This request launched me into a new career: writing.

Writing now is one of my passions. I write because I must. And through writing I have acquired excellent means for learning and growing. As readers may or may not know, writing requires considerable reading and research.

It was through my research that I encounter many interesting people and with interesting ideas. So that now I have stored in my memory a wide range of knowledges: from stuff on mythology to quantum physics. But although I thought I knew a lot, just last year, 2000, I discovered Nietzsche. I was so impressed by his art as a writer and his ideas that I believe my ‘real’ education is only beginning. Nietzsche’s objective, insightful and honest discourses changed my outlook on the world and life. (Or maybe he realigned my concepts to agree with his because now I have a clearer perspective of history’s wisest philosophers.)

Readers will learn more about me: my life's journey, my character, attitude and opinions, as they read my books and essays.

My other passions are: photography, philosophy, (maybe psychology – understanding man’s nature), investing and golf. A person who loves golf, dogs, and children would have some good in him, wouldn't  he?

NIETZSCHE

Nietzsche has so many great ideas that it is hard to remember them all even when I reread his books. Hence, I decided to make notes. And, who knows, I might write a book on Nietzsche because of his amazing insights into mankind and his remarkable ability to prophesize the future. In all of history there has never been a man like him. He is something like the famous Greek philosopher Socrates, or Plato, only better because he not only could philosophize, and think rationally, he was also an artist – made music with his words. Above all, he was honest, brutally honest.

I don’t intend to write his biography, because readers can turn to many books that do. I would like to mention the time in which he lived. He was born in 1844 and died in 1900. You might say he lived in a transitionary period when the world was changing from concepts of the old world to ideas originating in the new world.

Nietzsche was ahead of his time in most things, but at the same time he held on to popular notions that were soon coming to an end. For example, he didn’t believe mixing of races was a good idea because the result produced inferior offspring. Unfortunately he didn’t travel as much as I did. If he had, he might have noticed that mixing of races usually resulted in more attractive, stronger and probably equal in intelligence and character with races that did not mix. He also didn’t agree with new democratic notions such as equality. He believed there is rank and order difference among people that ranged from nobility to untouchables. Since he was born of noble class, he believed nobility of character, social graces, intelligence and wisdom were inherited characteristics from parents. In other words, nobility comes from breeding. If that were true, no way could a mutt like myself be noble. He also believed the primary function of everyone below the noble class, which included the very talented as well as the dukes and duchess, was to work for and support this upper class. (Today this idea sounds foreign to us but there is still an upper class in our society. They are the CEOs, top executives, and company board members who still feel that is the way it should be. In other words companies are run for their benefit.)

On the other hand, I noticed Charles Dickens portrayed characters arising from the very bottom social class with noble traits. In one book there was a very desirable young women who worked with her father in retrieving bodies from a river. I don’t know anyone born to a lower class. Yet this woman possessed strong noble characteristics. In fact, she was nobler than people born into noble families. I tend to agree with Dickens that true nobility may be found in all social classes. Furthermore, when ordinary people occasionally rub shoulders with nobility, either by chance or by necessity, many of them proved to be weak, incompetent stupid, and utterly lacking in intelligence or social graces.

I don’t know how people acquire noble characters: Is it through nurture or nature? Is it learned from the school of hard-knocks? In other words, does a person need to face tough, rather harsh circumstances and survive them cheerfully when he or she is a child in order to develop noble character? Or is it simply the result of random chance? Or is it fate, a gift? None the less, Nietzsche was right and honest to say people are unequal.

The nineteenth century was a remarkable period of history, and it marked the end of a remarkable era that began with the Renaissance in Italy. In this era there were many giants in philosophy, art, science, engineering, music and literature. The exclamation mark of its ultimate end was the First World War. (The beginning of the modern era began at the end of the Second World War.) Nietzsche’s writing began in 1872 and ended in 1889. During his lifetime very few of Nietzsche’s books were published, nor were they widely read. Only after his death did the intellectual community take notice of his work. A work that essentially summarizes mankind’s ascendance, from Grecian times to the end of nineteenth century. He himself read a lot. I think he may have read every book written on philosophy, and made comments about every know philosopher and the ideas they brought forth.

Nietzsche also foretells the coming of WWI and possibly WWII. He is sometimes accused in influencing the brutality of the Germans in WWII, because he did favor men with hardness in their souls over pity. Pity, to him was weakness and sign of degeneration. However, hardness to make tough decisions and choices is not the same as brutality and cruelty. It was German brutality and inhumanity that ended the Third Reich after a couple of years instead of lasting a thousand years as the Germans expected. And yes, it takes hardness and courage to tell the truth, for example. Nietzsche, more than any other philosopher who ever lived, could stand mankind before a mirror and describe faithfully and honestly what he saw. And what he saw was very close to the mark and that made many very uncomfortable.

From time to time I’ll keep adding to this page as I encounter important ideas. I am now reading his works for the fourth time. This time I might read only a page or two at one sitting. And when I find an important concept worth remembering, I reread it several times more. I will begin with the question: What do philosophers do?

Philosophers? If you’ve noticed, in my home page I call myself a philosopher. It’s a nice title and puts me into a respected class of people. But what is a philosopher and what do they do? If you asked me this question when I published my Website in May, 2001, I probably couldn’t give you a good answer, because I wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do until I found Nietzsche’s definition in his book Beyond Good and Evil, section, We Scholars. (All my knowledge about Nietzsche comes from books translated and published by Walter Kaufmann.) In just three words Nietzsche describes philosophers as: furtherers of man. Neat, huh?

As furtherers of man we are supposed to examine the virtues and values now in play, take them apart, try to understand their need and relevance to the present times and to the future. We play the roll of ‘devil’s advocates’ or bad conscious of mankind. To fill this roll, philosophers by necessity must learn to be: beyond good and evil. As Nietzsche wrote: " Every time they expose how much hypocrisy, comfortableness, letting oneself go and letting oneself drop, how many lies lay hidden under the best honored type of their contemporary morality, how much virtue was outlived". And if you read my books: CHANGE MASTER and IS THIS IT? (and my third book, soon to be published: FIRST STEP), I think you may agree that I’ve done exactly that. For example, I’ve written: "We of today and of the future have outlived the need for a anthropomorphic God, especially an Abrahamic God". (Anthropomorphic God means: something that is almost transparent but has an identifiable image of something. In the case of an Abrahamic God, the image looks like an old man with a long white beard who looks angry and frightening. You know, of course, we were supposed to worship and fear this imaginary thing that in fact does not exist.)

And as furtherers of man, philosophers must think ahead. Or as Nietzsche wrote: "More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow"--. Now this is the most difficult part of our task because we must outline for you as Nietzsche prescribed: "We must get there, that way, where you today are least at home". In other words, we prescribe bitter medicine.

At no time in history has there been a greater need for philosophers than now. This simply because scientists have pushed us the limits with their inventions and there so much hypocrisy and hidden lies inundating our lives, people have no idea where there is let alone the way. As a consequence we doing so many things: wrong, stupidly, irrationally, insanely that we have become our, our neighbor’s, and our planet’s worst enemies. Without doubt the task at hand is too much for one man. Others that I recommend readers look for insight and direction where we must get there and the way are: Marva Collins in schooling young children (It is time teachers learned how to teach and how children learn. Marva is light years ahead of other teachers who think they are performing satisfactorily, but are failing. Monty Roberts in animal-to-human communication and relationship, and human-to-human relationships. Monty’s philosophy, violence is never the answer, is worth studying and understanding if we are to rise above the level of brutes. (Is brute too hard a word to describe ourselves, us moderns?)

I must tell you: I’m pessimistic about the future of mankind surviving this century. The chances, in my estimation, are about 50%, a flip of a coin. We, and most things on this planet, were almost eliminated at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Since then, more nuclear weapons abound with much greater destructive power, and we’ve developed many other means for self-annihilation. And the people leading us aren’t getting smarter. In fact, the opposite is true. For myself, I can’t bear to listen to the leader of the one-superpower because when he talks he reveals so much about himself.

If we are to survive, I believe, it will because of women and what they decide and do. Women for the first time are being educated at universities in record numbers. At universities they will encounter powerful ideas and thoughts that take them beyond black magic, superstitions and prejudices that for centuries have held mankind in chains. They will learn that we are responsible for everything happening in our lives, and that we must take charge of what is to be. Then, because they are now educated, knowledgeable and self-responsible, and because they have the greatest influence on children and how they turn out, they will teach future generations principles which ultimately may save and further mankind. Its time for them to step up to the plate, not as imitators of man as Mrs. Clinton, and others, is doing, but with a new there and a new way. By the way, the WAY is not through Buddha, or Jesus, or Mohammad, nor through any latter day saint or holy man. The WAY is through knowledge, respect, freedom and truth. When women enter the ‘circular pen’ there is but one goal, and that is survival. TUUM EST (Its up to you).