I was used to see the management and self-improvement bookshelves in bookstores and libraries flooded by titles with the word “leadership” in them but now the omnipresent catchword has slopped over to inundate other areas as well.
I have taken a few books home from the local library on adolescent psychology and character education and was surprised to see that the obsession with the concept of “leadership” has already reached the shores of parenting, too. The author - otherwise a knowledgeable expert – just could not get out of the mythical circle of the label “leadership”. Looking into the details of how we should educate our teens to “become leaders of valued community activities” it turned out that behind the catchword “leadership” the author hid such useful notions as the skills of organization and time management, responsibility and considerateness.
Now, if everybody is a “leader”, who will be the followers?
The infatuation with “leadership” has blessed humanity with an endless row of Alexanders (greater or smaller), Napoleons, Hitlers, Mussolinis, Stalins who all founded huge empires that lasted from 3 to 30 years.
The cultivation of the “skills”, “virtues”, “attitudes” of sheer practice of followership has produced, on the contrary, billions of “average” (a negative catchword for the arithmetically uneducated) decent, reasonable and rational individuals over thousands of years across different cultures. The cult of inconspicuous happiness had few preachers (Lao-Tze, Buddha, Epicurus) and its “success” has never become overly visible. And justifiably so: fame is seldom an ingredient of happiness – if ever.
The silently smiling masses simply “followed” their normal and “average” instincts in the pursuit of happiness, contained in the teachings of the above mentioned preachers. Billions of them. Thousands of years.
Tags: Alexander, average, Buddha, Epicurus, followership, Hitler, Lao-tze, leadership, Mussolini, Napoleon, Stalin
‘Capitalism Has Degenerated into a Casino’
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus says that greed has destroyed the world’s financial system as Spiegel Online reported: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,583366,00.html
My question:
Degenerated from what? From profit maximization out of greed to profit maximization out of greed? If “greed has destroyed the world’s financial system” it has only destroyed that what it has created, hasn’t it?
His diagnose:
Today’s capitalism has degenerated into a casino. The financial markets are propelled by greed. Speculation has reached catastrophic proportions.
His prescription:
socially minded companies, where earning as much money as possible can only be a means to an end, not an end in itself. One has to invest money in something meaningful – and I would make a case for it being something that improves the quality of life for all people
But Mr Yunus has nothing to tell us about how to handle
the cause: greed.
Buddha and Epicurus tackled that question pretty efficiently.
