Nothing is so strong as gentleness. Nothing is so gentle as real strength. — Saint Francis de Sales
Leadership requires values and values require integrity. As I look at the country today I see bitterness, division, class warfare, destruction, hate, racism, and a feeling of destruction.
How we got here is simple: The policies of the political class brought us to where we are today.
Welcome to part 4 of the Value series. In this post I want to address the leadership factor, because the bottom line is… We don’t have any type of leadership. So the question is: Why?
The answer is simple: Leadership requires integrity, values, and strength, and the political leaders, we the people elected, have none of these traits. There is no leadership coming from Washington. There is no leadership at many state levels. What we have is a desire which has infected man from the beginning of time: The desire to control and enslave.
America was founded on the principles of self-reliance, the ability to rely upon one’s self and not some government entity. If the Founding Fathers wanted a dictatorship we would still be part of England. Our Founders had a simple desire: To live free.
Yet somehow that message became: We’re the government and we control you.
But it is our fault because we the people believed the leaders we were electing had values, and when we discovered they didn’t we just said the hell with it and didn’t care anymore. Hence we let our country go to hell in a hand basket. And we wonder why we are so messed up.
So what can we do about it? Is it too late? The answer to both questions is fairly simple but I’ll start with the second question first: No it is not too late to save the country.
The answer to the first question is simple but a little more involved. The answer is we have take responsibility for our actions. Roll your eyes and say too simplistic if you want but reality dictates otherwise.
When you and I take responsibility for our actions we are developing the values of leadership. One does not have to be the president of a major corporation, or the president of the United States, or a manager of a store in order to create leadership skills. It starts within the heart of man, and woman, if you want to be politically correct (which I’m not).
Leadership begins with a feeling, an emotion within self. Small at first but capable of growing, unless it is aborted. Like a baby within the womb of woman it starts with a seed of man, combines with the seed of woman and creates life. It is the only way to create life and is the only viable form of life.
There is now a choice, destroy the life or let it grow. But what about the robots and artificial intelligence? What about them? They are not life forms, even DATA from Star Trek was portrayed by a human. No, life can only be created from life, it is the way of the universe and no one expect Divine Providence can change it. Despite what the political entities say.
You have the power destroy or save, abortion or full term. And like the baby, the seed of leadership has no choice except to submit to the whims of the master: You.
Unlike the baby the leadership seed can abide in both male and female and both have the capacity to carry it full term, but few do. People abort their leadership skill capacity for various reasons, I won’t even speculate as to why.
The human male often abandons the life he helped create, leaving the woman to fend for herself. When he does, he diminishes himself before the eyes of the universe, and he destroys the best part of himself. The same is true when he destroys his leadership seed.
When the woman aborts a child she loses a great deal of herself, a part of her is dead, never to return to the land of the living. Over time she becomes lost, despondent, hateful, and destructive. The same is true when she aborts her leadership skills.
But what if the baby develops full term, then what? Leadership skills are the same and follow the same growth pattern as a baby.
Leadership develops within the mind, and slowly over time develops until time to emerge into the world. Birth is given. Small at first, fragile, but the future beckons and the only thing that can happen now, given normal life, is growth.
Slowly leadership skills are acquired and tested. Some skills, ideas work, some don’t. It is all part of the learning process, accept what works, discard what doesn’t. Like a child who grows out of his clothes, change is always constant. Time controls all and no one can change that universal law, despite what science fiction tells us.
All leadership skills vary from individual-to-individual, so what works for you may not work for someone else. True there are basic leadership skills which are universal, like living species we all have the need to eat, breath, and rest. Just basic living elements common to all. But as the individual grows leadership skills become unique, like fingerprints. Hence one size fits all does not work but must be tailored to the individual. And that is your job, to tailor your skills to your personality, your life.
Some choices you make in life make you nervous, some frighten you, and others terrify you. But some choices become the skills you need for leadership. Most humans have the capability of becoming leaders, if nothing more than having control over their own life. It is this quality of mankind which determines the paths we choose.
However lately we have relinquished our choices to political entities which takes advantage and manipulates the system, and us, to do their bidding. And because we the people have given up on our own leadership capabilities we ignore the dangers these political entities are entrapping us with. Until it’s too late, like now in 2016.
We are in the mess we are in today because of ourselves, no one else to blame. We chose to abort instead of going full term, and then we let, on purpose, our leadership traits die. Since Nature abhors a vacuum the political elements swept in and filled the void.
When we abdicate our responsibilities we lose our values and our integrity. We delude ourselves into believing our political class have our best interest at heart and thus we fail to vote, we let others do our thinking for us, we refuse to learn, and we become cynical and leery. And we can blame much of this last point on our main stream media. A force purposely designed to control our attitude and our way of thinking. Make no mistake the main stream media, the entertainment industry, Hollywood, and the political class have become experts at manipulating what we see, what we are to believe, and how to think.
Can we save the country? Yes but only if we regain our values, our integrity and remove the political class from the power they are determined to keep at any cost. So when I think about it maybe our leaders do have leadership qualities: The leadership quality of destruction.
What are your values? Do they allow you to develop your personal leadership skills, or do you abort them and throw them away like a piece of trash?
Only you have the power to answer that question.
G.