Best To Worst
17
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.
If you don’t trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.
The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, “Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!”
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell
This meditation upon leadership implies that leadership of the highest quality employs a light touch, a timely, deft nudge. Next best is the style that evokes praise, adulation by the masses. Loved for what is believed to be true. The truth seldom spoken is that myths are imaginary projections of the mind. A type of love that is expressed by the roar of massed ticket holders at a political rally is fickle, enduring until the myth wears thin. In No. 3 position is the style that extracts obedience from his/her subjects. “My way or the highway.” I understand this style is ascendant now in some American corporations. Today’s New York Times reports on the cosmic realignment of Silicon Valley companies:
“It’s the shut up and grind era,” writes Kate Conger, who has a great dispatch about life inside the big companies. As one recent Google alumna told her, “the level of fear has gone way up” even as offices still offer free food and high salaries. “I suppose it’s better to have lunch and be scared to death than to not have lunch and be scared to death.”
The No. 4, bottom-cellar style of management is that of a heavy handed autocrat, evoking loathing by all who are exposed to his/her whim.
This short list suggests a diminishing capacity to “let be,” to trust the judgment, to respect the capacity for self care inherent within institutions, subcultures, organizations constituting the zone of leadership’s influence. A measure of good-will, of trust – is reciprocated in proportion to what was received.
A cautionary post script: trust is an involuntary feature of character, of self-definition.
I am what I am.
4 thoughts on “Best To Worst”
Very timely. Of course my question, as always, is: What the Fuck are We Doing to Ourselves? Greed and hunger for power are akin to a heavy fog where one cannot see their own hand in front of their face. But these people can feel the venom of their desires spread through their bodies where they believe it is a form of strength. So what if they can’t actually see six inches beyond their noses, the feeling is all that counts. So keep going. At least until they walk off the edge of a cliff, at which point, as they fall to the jagged rocks below, you can hear them screaming out to blame others for this ending. Even as they plummet towards death they cannot see themselves for who they truly are.
Yes, the self that we endorse, cultivate can be in sync with nature and cosmos as I prefer to think, or as a rolling contradiction that self-destructs. As I was conversing with a friend this morning sometimes you hear of an individual falling from the back of the bleachers at the ballpark. Whatever the reason, over indulgence with alcohol, or simple inattention, such happenings ought not to be “news.” Individuals and entire societies are subject to a “crash” as you point out.
Seems to me the question that perennially faces us is “What do I want?”
In my next post, as you will see, I ask the question “How Do I Stop Caring?” I don’t know if I can stop, but I wish I could. A part of me wants to put on blinders and just find a safe and comfortable place for the remainder of my days. The world is currently gruesome and getting gruesomer (not a word) by the day.
My sentiments parallel yours. Perhaps caring as well as not caring is involuntary? Desire is relevant, along with other factors. Also, I suspect it is possible to care in a nuanced way, rather than caring absolutely or not caring…