World View & Personal Philosophy

Our personal experiences inform our world view. How accurately we view the world will affect how successful we will be. We can choose to make things better or choose to “game the system”. We can choose to be a Patriot or a Criminal.

Most of my world view and personal philosophy came from my family.  I was interested in learning how everything worked and how bad things happen.

I was raised as a conservative. My family schooled me on history and described events they had lived through and had been told about. I learned about the industrial revolution and the inventions that changed our daily lives.  I heard about my family getting electricity, their first telephone and radio,  My grandfather gave me a copy of “The American Communist Party Goals” to read while I was in grade school. My family was critical of unconstitutional laws like Social Security and would have preferred to establish individual retirement accounts to allow citizens to invest their own money.  I read “Conscience of a Conservative” by Barry Goldwater in 1964.

I remember reading the newspaper on the front porch of my grandfather’s house on a Sunday afternoon. I was 10 years old. There was an article on the front page showing a burned-out car. A labor union official had been assassinated by a car bomb.  I asked my uncles who could have done that.  They all said: “Mafia”. I said: “If we are allowing the Mafia to run the unions, we’re doing this all wrong.” That’s when I decided to become a Personnel Director.
 

My family had family schools. All went to Catholic, Parish-based grade schools.  The boys all went to Christian Brothers College Military and then to St. Louis University, where minors in Philosophy and Theology were required.

I won a scholarship to Christian Brothers College.

I went to St. Louis University and minored in English, Philosophy and Theology to develop my world view and personal philosophy. Novels based on history are studies in human behavior and its consequences. I took a lot of math and science to understand the equipment used in manufacturing. I majored in Psychology because the manufacturing companies were requiring that for all Personnel jobs. I would have preferred to major in Physics because it was a real science.

I found a lot of erroneous material in these courses, but I also found gems that resonated as true. Good and bad ideas permeated the coursework and my studies allowed me to decide what I thought was true.

My advisors knew I was preparing to be a Personnel Director in a manufacturing company, so they got me in to graduate Psychology seminars for undergraduate credit. I learned what current consultants were proposing to US manufacturing companies and had what I needed to get into Personnel.

I gravitated to Adam Smith and rejected Karl Marx. I preferred Abraham Maslow and Art Miller and rejected BF Skinner behavioral math models. I preferred Mother Theresa’s approach to helping individuals and rejected Liberation Theology. I liked self-reliance.

I knew that families supported their own members through sickness and disability. My mother came from a family with 12 kids.  Some of them became disabled and lived at home until they died and were cared for by my grandparents and other siblings.  It was a family home and functioned as the basic economic unit. That home is still in the family.

I only had 6 kids, but I am repeating the example my grandfather set to be the economic unit for my family. We have 13 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. We help whenever needed and are having a great time doing that.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader