[From Bill Powers (920622.0800)]
Dag Forssell (920621) and Rick Marken (920621) --
Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I'll stick to my definitions. I'm
first of all an explorer of a new idea, second a teacher, and third a
student. These are things that anyone can be. On this net, everyone plays
these roles at one time or another. For one person to be any of these
things does not rule out another person being the same things, at the same
time, in the same group.
But "leadership," it seems to me, is a role in a social hierarchy. It
requires followers. It opens the door to competition and conflict ("I can
lead better than he can, so follow me and not him"). The worst result, from
my point of view and in my circumstances, is that followers learn from a
leader how to follow, not how to explore, teach, and learn.
The attitude of followers toward leaders, in my experience, often tends to
be one of admiration, deference, blind loyalty, and even hero worship. It's
the attitude of a child toward a favored adult. Many leaders like being on
the receiving end of this attitude. It confers power, it allows the leader
to indulge in egocentric thinking, it protects the leader from criticism
and accountability. The leader can arrive too easily, with the connivance
of the followers, at the idea that he or she makes fewer mistakes than
ordinary people do. The leader can point to the support of the followers as
a way of showing others, outside the group, that there must be something
superior about the leader (so they would be better off becoming followers,
too). Leaders are corrupted by their followers, and willingly.
I do have things to teach. I like teaching. I have a lot to learn. I like
learning, too. But the main thing about me is that I was lucky enough to
have the right, rather odd, combinations of knowledge and ignorance to make
something new of an idea invented by others. This new idea is far more
important than I am; it will be remembered long after I am forgotten. I
want to work beside others who also understand this idea and think it's
important, so the idea will go on living after I have lost the knack.
I don't want to think that when I disappear from the scene, my followers
will cast around for someone else to follow, someone with another admirable
idea, and will never think of carrying on for themselves what we are doing
together now. But if they are followers, and don't think of themselves as
independent explorers, as teachers with something to teach -- if they have
learned only to follow -- how can they carry anything onward when they are
cast adrift?
I'm too conscious of my own failings and ignorance to have any confidence
of maintaining my integrity without others who will tell me when I'm making
a fool of myself, or have misunderstood something, or have overlooked
something, or am simply on the wrong track. Followers won't believe that
I'm ignorant or have any failings; to tell me I'm a fool would make them
fools, too; to tell me I've misunderstood would be to dare to have an
independent opinion contrary to the guru's. To think that I've
misunderstood something would be to make room for the thought that I have
taught something wrong, maybe the whole thing -- after all, if you just
take the word of the leader for everything, the only reason you have for
believing anything is that the leader said it was true. If the leader is
clearly wrong about something, the whole flimsy structure collapses.
I don't need followers. I need friends, people I love and who feel love for
me, colleagues, equals. I don't want to be all alone on a pedestal.
So I don't want to be a leader, or a guru, or a saviour. I refuse. Just as
I refuse, for all the same reasons, to be a follower.
Mary says that the second answer to the question, "What kind of idea are
you?" is -- "How will you behave when you win? When your enemies are at
your mercy and your power has become absolute, what then?"
Salman Rushdie, _Satanic Verses_, p. 369.
Best,
Bill P.