Month: September 2019

I thought this was a very interesting video. I think it is very interesting how Plato suggest that we see things through socialization and how we perceive things could be in fact wrong. There are many factors that go into this such as social media, friends, family and multiple other things as well. While listening to the video a bunch of questions started to pop up in my head. I wondered why leadership really is and what characteristics go into one. There seems to be so many different characteristics, making it hard to define a good leader.

In the one article Gardner says “Leaders are almost never as much in charge as they are pictured to be, and followers almost never are as submissive as one might imagine.” I thought this was very interesting and I thought about it for a while because I wondered what he meant by “never as in charge as they are pictured”. And then later on in the text he says “A following must be earned” and I agree with this. The leader must do their job in order to gain followers such as earning trust, having the same beliefs, and goals.

After watching Allegory of the cave, it made me think a lot about how exactly it plays into our study of leadership. I had to rewatch the video again and break down some of the different things that Plato was trying to explain. I believe that by putting those prisoners in a world where they only know one thing is similar to how people in our world can be sheltered and we only know as much as we’ve experienced and thus were are in a bubble essentially. It’s an interesting concept to think that everything that we know is just how we have perceived things through our socialization factors and we could be looking at things in the wrong way. This can include our parents, media, school, peers, etc. Plato also brings up the idea of idolizing those who excel in something we think we understand. This made me think of the great man theory and the idea that we believe that certain qualities make one person superior because of the way we perceive society and the way that we believe that we should act. While I believe as a society that we are moving in the right direction, it’s hard to really understand what is right versus wrong.

Allegory of the cave also reminded me of the question of how we define morals and ethics. Of course, as a human, we have this conception that preservation of life is good and soo is progress however that is just in the scope of what our minds can comprehend. We also agree that death is bad and we want to bring about happiness as much as possible, however, our definitions only apply to humans and the way that we understand things.

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, prisoners are chained to the wall of a cave. The only thing they can see is the shadows on the wall, so they believe this to be reality because it’s all they have ever known. Socrates suggests that if one of the prisoners were to break free, see the real world, and share what he saw with the other prisoners, the other prisoners would reject his ideas and try to kill him. This idea reminded me of a conversation in my Justice and Civil Society class yesterday about how one of the reasons why issues like racism and sexism are so difficult to overcome is that it is extremely difficult to challenge such widely held opinions that have been around for a long time. Even if they are trying to make society better, people who challenge the status quo usually face a lot of resistance.

Something that I found very interesting in both the Mabey and Gardner articles is that the authors both argued that the perceived separation between leaders and followers, and the idea that people in positions of authority are automatically leaders, is actually an obstacle to solving problems. If the leader does not understand the needs of their followers, and the followers believe that the leader is the only one who can make change, then the group will have a lot of trouble getting things done. Mabey says that in order to change this idea, “socialization in homes and schools must include the recognition that every citizen will lead. Civic participation is not an elective but a given. Every person matters.” I think that if kids are taught this in school, then they will eventually take a more active role in causes they believe in because they believe that they have the ability to make change even if they are not ever in a position of authority.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave best showcases the power that followers possess and their necessity, perhaps more than leaders. Plato’s argument, at the end of the video,  is that once the freed prisoner attempts to show the captive prisoners the outside world, what he perceives as a better life, he will be killed. The captive prisoners will prefer their life inside the cave and resent the freed prisoner for trying to “blind” them in the same way he was initially not adjusted to the sun when he went outside. The mass of prisoners will not understand what the freed prisoner is showing them and they will revolt against him. The leader’s power, in this case, does not surpass that of his followers. He is not seen as a leader because his followers do not respect his ideas.

This theory, although established in 514A is relevant to the leadership styles that individuals aim to reach today. Many of our leaders present their followers with ideas which they think will beneficial to the entire population but often it is the decision of the population that dictates whether or not the idea is put into practice. Sociologist George Simmel articulated this argument best in saying that both followers and leaders are given the same amount of power and respect, due to the fact that one cannot exist or thrive without the other. There is an understanding that the collective population has most of the internal power because they are the majority. They may not be the face of an organization yet their views and principles heavily influence the goals and mission of that organization.

Another interesting point Garder mentioned was that leaders are born out of distress to lead the population. This leads (no pun intended) me to think about leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. who was given his power and position as a leader because of his situation. The discrimination and segregation that he and other African Americans experienced pushed him to see the suffering his people endured and rise to the occasion of being their leader. Alongside this, it is important to understand that he was able to remain in power because he represented the voice of the people. Although MLK was chosen, if he did not perform as was expected he would not have maintained his position as a leader. In fact, like the freed prisoner in Plato’s cave, if he was not able to give the people what they wanted and was thought to be leading his followers in the wrong direction he would’ve been demoted or killed.

Lastly, Mabey’s article about citizen leaders pushed me to ask the question do we demand too much or too little from our leaders? On one hand, Mabey made the argument that we have many different types of transitional leadership traits which we expect our leaders to fulfill. We expect them to be able to identify problems and find solutions, as well as generally leading the organization, focusing on the future of the company and at the same time teaching and preparing their followers to be great leaders when they are gone. These are all different theories developed which we, ideally, would like all of our leaders to possess, even if it may not be possible. Yet, on the other hand, Mabey argued that within the liberal society we have today, many of our leaders are egotistical, focus on their own good and are simply given a title of leader once they fill a position, not necessarily reliant on their action and involvement as a leader.

“It can also be the art of the impossible, that is, the art of making both ourselves and the world better”

I found these readings to be really timely given the climate strike taking place on Friday. I think people today frequently forget that individual and community actions can go farther than they think. We have come to rely so heavily on our leaders to create change for us when that simply is not always going to be the most effective way to get things done. It is important that we remeber to take it upon ourselves to create change. In terms of the environmental movement, it feels like people often rely on the President and Congress to make changes to improve the health of our environment, but forget that their actions, even if they are small, will accrue and can cause change. With the political gridlock we have in D.C. it is unlikely for serious changes to be made, especially considering that there has been no environmental legislation passed since 1990, unless we demand it. We need to take responsibility for our earth and each do what we can to help save the planet. We all need to be advocates for the movements like this that we believe in. 

It was also interesting to read the “Leader’s and Followers” section during a time where the U.S. is so politically polarized. The Trump Administration is incredibly controversial and people that do not agree with his politics can feel helpless or powerless. It is important to remebers that followers do not need to be submissive to the whims of their leaders and have more power than they believe. The President is still deeply influenced by the wants and needs of the people he leads. Even if Trump has a political ideology opposite yours, we still have the ability to influence his decision making by demonstrating our expectations and demanding action.

Finally The Allegory of the Cave was interesting to learn about during a time when people are asking for so much change. It illustrated to me that we can not accept the world as it is, but instead strive for something better. Though we will never live in a perfect world we can always be making progress. We should not just sit back and accept the problems that we see in the world but actually get up and do something about them and prove that the world can be better.

Leaders, Followers, and the Cave Allegory

Susan Nevin

The whole idea of the Cave Allegory is extremely interesting. The concept that the prisoners are living in what they believe to be a reality, when in fact, shadows aren’t real beings, but rather just a part to a whole. However, the prisoners have no idea, and think that the shadows and echoes of voices may be the real being. But, Socrates questions that if one of the prisoners were to break free and see the whole world, would the prisoners reject his radical ideas and try to kill him? I think that this whole idea is really compelling, and it begs the question that is it better to be aware but be killed or permanently hurt for the knowledge, or it is better to live in harmony and ignorance with everyone else. 

In addition, I think that this whole metaphor relates to the leader follower dynamic, and how sometimes people reject a leader because they are scared of their unique ideas, and the group mentality always wins against an individual. For example. John W. Gardner argues in his novel, Leaders and Followers, that, “leaders must have a capacity for rational problem solving; but they also must have a penetrating intuitive grasp of the needs and moods of followers.” Therefore, I would claim that these articles and videos argue there is a fine line between what they should tell their followers versus what should be kept in the dark to keep the peace and avoid utter chaos.

The Great Man Theory, to put it simply, is the idea that the most influential men in history  were great leaders because of certain personality traits they possessed. The Great Man Theory completely cuts out women, and this Lady Science podcast dives into the problems it presents, specifically in the context of science. So many women have gone unrecognized, and it is because this theory guided the general public in what to value.

The most interesting point that was brought up in this podcast was that even if we looked back through history to find great women, we would be looking for women that held the same characteristics as “Great Men.” This means that only a handful of women would reach this bar, which is obviously an unfair assessment of the contributions of women in history. This is painfully evident in the story Marilyn Ogilvie, the episode’s guest, tells. Two students in one of her classes decided to research women in science, and the only woman they could find enough material on was Marie Curie. Of course, it is assumed that this is because Marie Curie holds many of the qualities of men working in science.

At the same time, if we were to search for more women contributors, we would be looking at the more privileged women. So, in my mind, the question becomes what makes a person great? In this podcast, there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer. It appears that every class, gender, and race has to be assessed with different standards. This would make it easier to compare people within their class, gender, and race, but it would make it nearly impossible to compare people across different classes, genders, or races. Then again, history is not exactly cut and dry. In my opinion, there is not really a right way to gauge the importance of one person over another, but there are certainly wrong ways.

This podcast had really opened my eyes as to how back in those days, the women of the time had really not been recognized for their hard work and the great doing that they had successfully achieved. This is sort of astonishing because we have extremely import role models that are women, like Rosa Parks, that have achieved excellence for our world and for them to not be recognized because they aren’t males is extremely passive.

In the podcast it had also brought up the point of only being recognized for intelligence or making an act of doing so. Also, being recognized especially if you were a make and had done something astonishing for your country or for the overall greatness of our world. Being a man comes with a lot of responsibility and I agree that if a male role model has done something great, then he deserves to be recognized in the correct manner. On that same not this podcast really opened my mind to how sexist our country really was back in those years and how acts of greatness was only achieved through fitting the “spectrum” of being a “countries good look”.

This podcast was very interesting as it started out talking about history in general and how we choose to only highlight certain pieces of history. When intertwining this with the Great Man Theory, people worthy of being recorded mostly had military prowess, and intelligence which is a deciding factor when selecting what should be recorded. This was interesting to hear because it shows how the history recorded was just a small piece of what actually happened. Within the recorded history, most of the people behind it were male and held positions of high power.

The podcast continues to say how women received no credit for work that they did and were only there to have children. I thought it was interesting when they introduced “herstory” and how one of the girls in the podcast writes about one woman in history every month. It’s another example of how people today are shining light on important women in history who had made an impact. overall, this podcast was intriguing to listen to and learn from with the idea of the Great Man Theory.

Yesterday evening I went to the first presentation of the Digital Dystopias series. Katie Hafner presented The Origins of the Internet. Her research covered the time period of 1965-1990, focusing on the precursor to the internet and some of the basic structuring behind how it works. One of the most interesting facts to me was the exponential growth of hosts between 1965-1999 (20 million) and since then it has grown to 150 billion. It was strange to think about the invention of something that I have been familiar with my whole life was just coming into existence about 50 years ago.

Hafner also talked about the development of how the internet was structured and packet switching. The precursor to the internet, ARPAnet was developed by Bob Taylor and Larry Roberts to solve a problem that Taylor was having – the three computers in his office couldn’t communicate with each other. It was fascinating to learn that the internet was (and is) created on a decentralized network, because it allows for information to reach a source regardless of if there is damage along the way. Similarly to that, I found it very interesting that packet switching – breaking up information, sending it to the destination, and then reassembling it – was not only invented in the 60’s-70’s, but is still one of the primary ways information is sent securely.

Overall, I enjoyed learning about the positive, hopeful start to the internet, and I am interested to see what dystopias the next speakers will bring up.

As I was listening to the podcast, I was fascinated by the beginning. I am a feminist myself and I loved that they were drawing attention to the fact that the recorded history we have is only a small picture of what actually happened in the past. This depiction that we have only included people of high status, wealth, or in positions of power. But what about the rest of the people in the world? Were their stories not important enough to be passed down or written down? A lot of these stories that we don’t have are the story of women. Throughout history, women have been seen as pretty things that should be seen and not heard. This means that the idea of women is that they weren’t often doing work that actually mattered to the world. They were just having babies and serving their husbands. This podcast sheds some light on a lot of the good that people are doing to try and get women’s stories out into the open. They talk about some of the female scientists that are covered up by the skewed version of history that is heavily dominated by men. I especially liked the example that they gave about the woman who was called the prettiest woman in the world and that’s what people knew her as. She was also an inventor but no one bothered to think about that. She was just seen as a pretty girl and not as the intelligent woman that she was.

This is why I think that the great man theory is just wrong. History was not made by men, it was just recorded by men who didn’t want to share the spotlight. The history that we know is not a full, well rounded, view of what happened in the past it is only one side of the story. There are so many people who aren’t included in the world history that deserve to have their stories told.  Women are consistently held back from achieving everything that they could in a world that is built on the ideas and fundamentals of sexism. This is why women in STEM has been a historically low population. It is hard for women to make it in such a male-dominated workforce.  Great-Man theory, or the idea that history is shaped by notable men, is no longer, and never truly was, an accurate depiction of what happened in the past

Listening to this podcast brought up a couple of different points, but one in particular caught my attention. It discussed how we look at history through the lens of diversity. People are often taught that women do not regularly appear in history because they were not present in prominent roles; the podcast used the example of women in science to refute this claim. People attribute the lack of female Nobel prize winners to the lack of women in science. I know that this is what I was taught, and I accepted it because based on my knowledge of older time periods, I knew that women had less opportunities. After that one sentence remark, the class would move on and continue to talk about the prominent white males that made landmark discoveries. I thought it was interesting how the podcast highlighted that the lack of women in prominent roles is, yes, partially symptomatic of the lack of women in science, but we must go one step deeper. Why are women not in scientific fields? Also, it is doubtful that there were quite literally no women in science, so for those who were, who were they? What did they do and how did they contribute? These are the crucial questions we fail to ask.

After listening to this portion, I had an “a-ha I’m enlightened” feeling, which was basically crushed a few minutes later. They began to move away from women in general and speak about minorities and minority women. Why were they not recognized in scientific fields? I thought to myself, again, that these groups of people just weren’t in scientific fields. Immediately, my “a-ha I’m enlightened” feeling dissolved. Just because one becomes aware of their bias/ignorance does not mean that they are instantly cured of it. This ties into the way we study history. We answer the first question (“why are women not in scientific fields?”), accept that answer, and simply move on with our day. To fully understand history, you have to keep digging for the next question, which leads to the next question, which leads to the next, etc. Fixing this flaw is not a one-and-done, but the beginning step is being able to recognize it.

I am not sure that before this podcast I ever noticed that “everyday” women do not show up in history. It makes total sense how it took a certain privilege throughout history to be able to “misbehave”. This allows us to, oftentimes, only recognize the women throughout history who were in the upper class and able to achieve upward mobility in spite of their risk on the societal standpoint that came along with going against the status quo. At the same time, women of color who often did misbehave are still erased from history from the sheer fact of them not being acknowledged, so there were prerequisites to having the ability to gain general traction in the event that some marginalized “Great WOmen” did “misbehave”.

I love the point they made about describing ladies of science as beautiful. This is what draws away from their contributions and plays into gender roles and expectations. It is bothersome that women are not acknowledged enough for our contributions throughout history as a whole. Women often do immense amounts of work to either support men or have men take credit for their achievements very often and this is so sad.

What is even sadder and eye-opening is how easy it is for women to fall into the great man theory as well. It was crazy to hear the story from the special guest about how she and her students could only find one example of a woman in science to write about from their science literature at their entire university. It is sad to say that there are a lot of examples of how history is often only told from one perspective. There are so many great people that get lost along the way.

This reminds me of the idea of implicit bias. Everyone is primed so often to believe that men belong in the positions that society deems to be powerful. Everyone is then also primed to believe that women are not only supposed to support these men in doing so but to also get used to not getting credit for their actual contributions. Men built the system this way, and women live in it and perpetuate it. I am grateful, as a STEM woman of color, for this podcast highlighting this for its listeners and for myself.

It is sad that I have to actively seek information on people whom I know existed, that fought odds and made waves and also looked like me. It is because society does not value them enough to teach anybody, even little girls who also like me.

The podcast was quite interesting in the approach it took to the entire Herstory section of thought and how it directly contradicts the idea of The Great man theory by Thomas Carlyle. It intrigued me how they pointed out how much of what we view as history is thanks to “crazy Victorians and their ideas about how the world works.” it was eye opening that one group of individuals, from 200ish years ago, could have so much impact on how social standards are followed, and viewed today.

It was also nice how they ladies mentioned the people’s history movement. I strongly believe that telling history/herstory form all angles is so very important as it shows us what everyone is and was thinking about a topic at a certain time, not just those with lots of money and prowess. The part where the Smithsonian writer talked about how she would write stories on the true unsung heroes of science, not just the well known ones like Marie Curie, really shows the importance of people’s history as great people tend not to get recorded unless they break all the rules.

On a side note I loved how they just kept trashing the people who acted like they knew something about women in history just due to the fact they knew about Marie Curie

I think it is interesting how they talk about history needing to be defined more specifically when looking at the involvement of women. But the question about how to decide what that definition means is a fair point because it’s subjective and whoever is asked could have a varying view on what history is and how it should be accounted for than the previous person asked. The Great Man Theory is of course based off of men because they were the ones who were allowed to thrive in that society and so that is why we have to make assumptions on the build up of history, not saying that it is right.

I think another important aspect that they brought up was that it wasn’t that women just did not participate in science or any kind of daily life that was not family oriented, they merely had to improvise by taking a man’s name or dressing as such so that they could contribute to the developing world. I don’t think that this was right, but in some ways, it was a good thing to have happened because now we see the importance of involving women and trying to recover from those times in history, no matter the definition, that women were always less represented in. In school and growing up, I just remember hearing how being a woman in STEM is important and rare and that if I like science, I should definitely be proud of that and I like that that is the message being sent to kids these days. Of course, the ideal would have been that women were always represented equally but in reality, being able to recognize the importance now is a vital step in our society today.