Why Walk When You Can Fly?
In a sky full of people,
only some want to fly.
Isn't that crazy?
— Seal
I'll never ever understand this one. Maybe it's all in the language. I hope so, because if it isn't in the language it almost certainly has to be in the DNA. And I don't want to ever be that hopeless about humanity.
I'm talking about the ability to lead vs. the need to follow.
There are so many out there, just around me, that possess great, if non-obvious, qualities which would make them great leaders. Leaders of people, leaders among piers, leaders of policy, of society, of our own humanity.
Now, it's likely that my anecdotal evidence isn't a random sample, that the people who collect around me, and with whom I congregate, possess this quality in particular, but even so, I can't help but give humanity the benefit of the doubt on this one.
So the world is peopled with leaders? But, Skippy, you say, don't too many cooks spoil the broth? Well, no. Leadership doesn't necessarily work that way. Power does. Power requires the energy of the faithful diverted to unseemly projects. Annihilation is different to predation.
Projects of Self, projects of violence, projects of nothing but gathering more power. Strength is something that doesn't require material traction, but when applied, leaves the world a better place, restoring a certain balance of energy to the system.
The pack mentality is something we've brought with us in our DNA, over the eons of evolving, and under the laws of physics in general about tendencies for objects with mass to minimize their own surface areas: we are more comfortable huddled and hunkered down with friendlies and we'd rather be in the middle instead of at the edges where the enemy can more easily pick us off.
Except that in most packs and herds in most other species, individuals tend not to claw over the backs of other friendlies just to get a better position for themselves.
Those who would claw and scrape and clamor over the backs of their fellow humans just to get a better seat in the pack of humanity, contrapositively, view lack of Power as weakness and just ignore Strength altogether. Deep down they have to know they're backing a charlatan. I hope.
A good leader is what distinguishes a gathering from a mob, and haven't we all had enough of the mob mentality? Clubs with cross-arms on them. Beaded nooses counting decade-and-a-lord's-prayer, decade-and-a-lord's-prayer. Abortifetuses on piked posters paraded around like saints or kings or chairmen (hard pressed to choose the greater obscenity there). Fear Factor: Children and The Future.
It's so much easier to follow, but you end up paying for ease. A debt collects and is collected. Your ease now is someone else's dis-ease sooner or later. A leader knows that. A leader keeps an eye on the bigger picture, the bigger need, the qualities that emerge from the collected-led. The things no single follower might even be able to notice.
Good leaders have Strength. Power is a parlor trick that conflates the user and the used and brings both to a firey end. Power makes demands. Strength creates a space for choosing.
The charlatans will tell you Choice is Bad as they remove your ability to choose. They know they can't continue if you continue to lead your own life and choose your own path. Those with Strength applaud your successes and buffer your failures, knowing full well that success is airborne, contagious.
Lead. Choose. And tell those Power wielders about your own Strength.
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