I AM CHARLIE
1
Ethical Leadership
It is behest of community leaders, Political, Religious, Social, Medical, Military, Educational, to show Ethical leadership.
Ethical Leadership means, leadership with acknowledges the power of words on thought, the power also of silence on thought. The ethical use of these qualities.
Leadership has to acknowledge the ability of a few poorly chosen words or even a poorly chosen silence to effect the perception of others.
Using the language of gain leads to delusion of possession, language of hurt, infers the attachment to right, the language of anger, to destruction.
A leader who recruits and calls upon followers to gain an ideal, leads them posses that delusion. Using the language of hurt, pain, victimization a leader causes people to believe they have a right, and from that deluded belief in their right to hurt, he causes destruction and killing. Whether material destruction or psychological, it is the same.
Educated leaders do not use such language, in particular strong minded leaders do not. The weak leader plays to the audience, the weak minded leader when faced with ethical struggle retreats to these three poisons for the mind, and poisons others around him. It’s important to recognize that as the trait being played out.
Ultimately all that people listen to such a person hoping to gain, is destroyed, the search for Heaven becomes it’s own Hell.
The simple fact is that human social reflex is like water to seek the lowest ground and pool there. A leader that plays to that, fails to lead others to rise, and the individuals who follow such a person are victimized.
Ethical leaders instead through education instil wisdom, in using the language of middle ground they instil non-attachment, and through the true quality of Compassion.
2
Beyond Compassion
Compassion is the quality of the true leader and intolerance and entitlement the quality of the weak leader who is clinging to their position by leading others to believe that there position is being eroded by others and not by the person they are following.
In the matter of Religious tolerance, tolerance of what? What insult to be tolerated? Except in the deluded mind attached to a manufactured absolute, a belief in entitlement. There is no insult unless we bring it into existence through our own mind, who then is doing the insulting? Are we spoilt children demanding our self entitled privilege above the rest of society? What kind of leadership is that showing?
When religion it has lost touch with humanity, looses it’s sense of humour, it loses it’s sense of the profane and the sacred, it is no longer a bridge between Heaven and man, a light on the road, instead it has become a weight around our necks, an institutionalized self entitled dinosaur. At that point the ‘pious’ have turned scripture into not even toilet paper, because at that point the words of the holy and wise have no use at all. Words and cartoons at that point hurt because they have a painful ring of truth.
Religion or spirituality is innate to being human. In this time when we are passing from one eon to another there is a need for spiritual direction, a need to retain our humanity. However the balance is delicate and spiritual leaders can all too easily appear to be in a game of tug, that is so far from the function of Religion in people’s lives, that people are left leaderless.
When we surrender the error of seeking a position or an entitlement we move beyond Compassion.
3.
Opportunity not Crisis
The age old function of Religion is to inform people spiritually of the purpose of their lives, whether it is faith based, or practiced based. We are globally finding ourselves in many ways feeling we are in a new world, a new eon of humanity. Of course our daily lives continue to be filled with the same needs and wants that have been the human condition since life came into existence, but we live in a time that seems more removed from that condition than ever before. Our social orders of thousands of years have broken or come under stress, we have technological advances not paralleled since we first began making tools and left our primordial Eden*. We have entered into the last 100 years of unparalleled social conflict and the discarding of ways of thinking and living that were normal and universal to all who lived before us, to ways which are becoming increasingly unknown to any of us.
Faced with the reality that we will one day soon, at least in the human timeframe, walk on Mars, what a small minded thing to struggle among ourselves. How can we while we deliver payloads to orbit around our planet still contemplate demanding rights for our beliefs based on entitlements and identification? It is not consistent with the advances we are making as Humanity. When we are faced with a global opportunity of true freedom and advancement we are instead being plagued by weakness stemming from ignorance in the very people who claim to know best for Humanity. In fact such people feel they know best for themselves.
It is the equivalent of arguing for which seat in the row boat while adrift in the ocean with land finally in sight of the horizon.
Stuck in the past, superstitious, narrow and archaic, and incorrect and relative interpretations of history and poisoning the present, and damaging the future.
4.
Maturity
Spirituality and Superstition are not mutual. Superstition means, a of fear of the unknown or breaking some rule, believing in some promise as yet unfulfilled. Including superstitions about Birth, Death and Rebirth. Superstition is at it’s heart close to the fear of the unknown and replacing it with promises of fixed conditional substituted absolute proposed reality. Proposed reality because there is in fact no reality in clinging to an absolute. Does anyone really believe each day of the year where ever they live will be sunny and mild? So why would a person listen to another tell them there is a five step plan toward that or anything else with absolute certainty?
Clinging to superstition is childish, and further weakens a person’s ability to make ethical evaluations. A manipulative, weak leader likes nothing more than people who are easily bent to his or her doing by the threat of the unknown in the guise of substituted reality.
Faith whether Spiritual or Political is not correctly used as a substitute for the unknown, rather faith should be used to reconcile the ever present fact of the unknown. This paradox is the only absolute fact that true faith actually leads to. The weak leader who has not yet arrived spiritually and ethically themselves cannot lead from this position and therefore finding themselves inadequate to any other means to skilfully lead, falls into relying on the threat of superstitions through ignorance to reinforce their position for their own gain of power.
Political systems and political leaders often rely on the faith of their followers. Our bureaucracies may deal in facts and statistics, projections of trend. But our leadership often relies on faith. Democracy is fundamentally linked to faith in the political elector, and even an absolutist ruler relies on faith to maintain them. A skilful leader therefore is one who realizes that these two elements are not his/her tools against those who trust, but these qualities are the basis of responsible leadership.
Using facts as they are, aware of the faith of others a skilful leader is responsible to facts and faith in leadership. This is ethical leadership.
Aware of facts, aware of the responsibility of faith a leader ethically adds to the maturity of the community and leads them out of the childhood of fear and ignorance.
*I make no assumption that Eden existed or did not, only that for all of mankind regardless of tradition and geo-religious background there was before we developed technology including Neolithic technologies an Eden like naive existence.
