The Darwinian approach to business, politics and life is encapsulated in the often heard phrase: “Survival of the fittest”. I don’t fault Darwin. There’s no way he could have foreseen how his theory would be misconstrued and abused in the world of human affairs. The same could be written about Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie, Wall Street, which has its deeply flawed character, Gordon Gekko, pronounce flatly that: “Greed is good”. How was Oliver to know that there were many wealthy people and people in the financial sectors that completely agreed with that statement and celebrated its being spoken aloud for them?
The only people extolling the ‘virtues’ of the aggressor, the go-getter, the ‘winning is the only thing’ individual, the ‘eat or be eaten’ mentality that fabricated its justification from Darwin’s natural order of things, are the people who are frantically practicing those supposed ‘virtues’ in their lives. I say ‘frantically’ because, to be honest, that’s the only sincere way to practice this way of life.
To everyone else living on the outside of that mentality, outside that mosh pit of seething and insatiable wanting for more of everything, that approach to life isn’t very appealing.
So what if we have been getting it backwards? What if the ‘leaders’ of any given organization aren’t necessarily the most capable, intelligent, creative or caring people but only those people who are compelled and obsessed with being ‘in charge’?
To be sure, these individuals are more single-minded than most. Many of them proclaim proudly that they ‘live for’ the good of their particular organization. We’ve heard that claim from them so often and in so many variations that we assume it’s part of what makes up a leader. It never occurred to us that these individuals might be suffering from a genetic deficiency…a color blindness of emotion, an inability to feel their own pain as they sacrifice more and more of the people they should value to their obsession to have more, to be more, to be the ‘leader’.
Most of us simply wouldn’t sacrifice everything and all else for the sake of an enterprise or organization. It doesn’t feel right. We were never told to trust that feeling though. We felt that there was something that was lacking in us, not something that was right in us.
Historically, the rest of us have simply presumed, or been coerced into thinking, that these individuals were supposed to be the ‘leaders’ simply because they were running like crazy to be out in front as they climbed to the top.
At every level, leaders of anything are all vying for a larger portion of something. They are dispositionally greedy. It’s part of their job description: advance and defend the interest of whatever they’re ‘in charge’ of.
As a result, where they have consistently been leading us to is the only place or world they know….a place of constant promotion of themselves and their cause, of regional or national claims of superiority, to places of suspicion, fear, collusion and competition and, eventually, to covert or open conflicts.
At the level of nationhood, every leader seems to adopt the same stance towards every other leader. Namely, they all secretly believe in their hearts that if another nation had half a chance, they would try to take them over, conquer them, steal their resources, enslave them in some form or fashion, destroy/corrupt/ruin their culture and ways of living.
But what if this perspective was not about ‘leadership’ but about their disease, their genetic deficiency? What if we have been mistaken? What if…?
What if the meek were truly supposed to inherit the earth…the meek…the personality types that quietly place their faith in cooperation and not competition…that have and keep an open mind and who don’t take offense at someone else’s idea…that toil collaboratively and shy away from the limelight…that are genuinely humble as they realize that we all were and are still in this lifeboat called earth together…that it is far more important for us to pay attention to how we are treating one another than it is to focus on what we think we are accomplishing….that respecting our differences while recognizing our equality is to truly love our neighbor as ourselves…
The meek…they’re not weak nor timid…they’re simply portrayed that way by those driven with ego based ambition.
Yeah, the meek, the solid individual who steadfastly does their best and doesn’t look around to see if anyone’s noticing. That kind of meek.
There’s nothing necessarily flashy about being human…but there is a real tenderness, beauty and love available to those who look for it and practice those behaviors that nurture and encourage one another. That kind of meek.
Which, of course, stands in stark contrast with those who practice withholding support from those they don’t like and bowling over anyone they perceive might be standing in their way. That kind of ‘leader’.
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