Earlier this semester I attended the play held on campus, Appropriate. Appropriate was a very interesting show. The setting was a living area in a plantation house. Frank, who is the first character introduced in the play, has a dead father who was the owner of the house. Frank also has two other siblings, Bo and Tony. Bo, is also at the house with his wife Rachel and their two kids. One of their kids discovers what Rachel says is pictures of “dead black people” and the other child discovers old body parts and bones being preserved in jars. This brings up one of the themes of the show which is racism. I think this play brought up a heavy topic in an interesting and creative way. It exposes horrible things from the past and brings them to the present. It reminds me of how our campus has a heavy connection with slavery. To buildings being named after slave owners, and our campus having the site of a salve graveyard.
Leave a CommentAuthor: Angel Burgos
In this reading the author touched on some interesting aspects of democracy. The part that was most interesting to me is when Williamson talked about the three civic virtues. He says the three civic virtues are awareness of others, a sense of fairness and fair play, and the ability to find the right balance between moral humility and moral courage. I like how he then breaks down each virtue and explains why people need to know them and understand them for a democratic society to work. After reading his in depth description of each virtue, I agree that those things are needed for a democratic society to function.
Out of the three civic virtues, the one I found the most interesting was having moral humility/courage. I also think this is one that a lot of people in today’s society do not possess. The requirement of this virtue is the ability for a person to somewhat have an understanding to other people’s views even if they are opposing views. Most people have a set view of their own and if it’s not their belief then it’s just wrong all together.
3 CommentsIn this chapter an ingroup is defined as a group that someone identifies strongly with. An outgroup is the opposite, and is a group or social category that you don’t identify with. From this reading it seems that ingroups and outgroups are determined by things like where you were born and raised, race, religion, language, and many other things rather than from individual choice. Related to this, one part of the reading that was interesting is when it touched on “intergroup boundaries”. It talked about how these group boundaries can even be found in food and how someone uses utensils. Americans don’t put their knives down while eating and that is identified by Brits just by seeing it.
One thing I was thinking while reading is how unfair the idea of ingroups and outgroups seems. Maybe I don’t completely understand the concept but it almost seems like a stereotype. There is not much room for choice and personal preference in ingroups and outgroups. Rather then getting to choose what group you identify with, you are placed there by how society sees you. Some things such as where you come from or what language you speak are automatically grouped in ingroups and outgroups, but there are some things I think should be more of a choice.
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I completely disagree with it, but I understand why white women at the time felt they had the unquestionable right to vote over black men. They had looked down upon black people for so long and now they had more citizenship than them. That was just the mindset back then. However, that absolutely does not make it right or excuse the fact the the women’s suffrage movement turned racist when they couldn’t get anything done just by preaching that women are equal to men no matter the color of their skin. As a woman and a black one at that, it’s disappointing to learn that on the path to getting equal rights for our gender, it had to become so disrespectful. One argument they mentioned in the first video was that they needed “educated white women to make up for the uneducated black vote”. This argument is not only extremely ignorant and racist, but it also turns it from being a movement for women’s rights into a movement for exclusively white women’s rights. So knowing this makes it hard to have any respect for those women who were brave enough to speak out for women because of how low they went just to gain a bigger voice during the movement.
4 CommentsIn this article Kelley explains that the followers are just as or more important than leaders are. Towards the beginning Kelley says “Organizations stand or fall partly on the basis of how well their leaders lead, but partly also on the basis of how well their followers follow.” I think this quote sums it up pretty well. I feel like we always talk about what traits make someone a good leader, but I thought it was interesting how this article touched on what it takes to be a good follower as well. Kelley says all followers are not automatically effective ones. An effective follower has things like intelligence, and active, enthusiastic participation. These things can make a follower more valuable than another.
I also thought it was interesting that the traits you need to be considered a good follower, are similar to those of a great leader. Kelley says, “Effective followers are credible, honest, and courageous.” Usually it is the leader who is described as either “honest” or “courageous,” so it is interesting to see it used to describe what an effective follower is. I think the way Kelley describes good followers sounds similar to servant leadership. As a follower you make sacrifices and put in hard work but still are not recognized as the head of whatever the cause may be.
5 CommentsI found this podcast very interesting. I was surprised I have never heard of Jim Jones and the things he did previously to listening to the podcast. It so intriguing how Jim Jones a person who started off as a leader with good intentions and practices turned insane. Jones is a good example of power changing someone completely. He admired Hitler and ultimately became a version of him by creating a massacre. It was ironic how someone who believed in racial equality would admire someone like Hitler.
One thing they said in the podcast I thought was interesting was that if a couple of things had went differently, we could be talking about Jim Jones as a hero rather than a murderer. He would still have his flaws as all leaders do, but he made decisions that made him go from charming and charismatic to evil.
6 CommentsThe idea of “groupthink” is an interesting form of decision making. Janis talks about how in multiple social-psychological studies, members of a group automatically feel more accepted than others. This causes members of the group that may think differently or have different opinions than the rest of the group to hold back on input they may have that they think would work better in whatever situation a decision is being made in. To me, this is a negative side effect of “groupthink.” Janis writes about “groupthink” as an inferior form of decision making in my opinion and I agree. There are so many factors such as invulnerability that make “groupthink” ineffective. I also believe that it is much easier to be overoptimistic and make dangerous and irrational decisions in a group.
Janis uses the Bay of Pigs as an example of a “groupthink” decision. It is pointed out that some of the greatest intellectual minds of American government were involved in making the Bay of Pigs decision. I also think it is interesting how Janis says that the people involved with big failures in decision making in history are “victims” of “groupthink.” I think this is true because of course people want to make the right decisions that will lead them to success, but working in a group can unintentionally ruin intentions.
3 CommentsAfter reading the articles, they cleared up the meanings of the types of leadership even more. I feel as though I have an even better understanding of transactional leadership especially because of the article by STU. However in the article is says, “Transactional leaders differ from charismatic and transformational leaders in both structure and method.” I believe transactional leaders have to have some degree of charisma as well. A transactional leader is usually in a commanding role so charisma is needed in order to get people to do what you want even if it’s negative enforcement.
I thought it was interesting how they distinguished the pros and cons of transactional leadership. One con that stuck out to me was when it said transactional leadership “Does not reward personal initiative.” If that is the case the whole method seems pointless to me. That is why I think transformational leadership is more effective, especially for long term situations.
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I definitely agree that the best leaders start as a servant or a role that is similar rather than someone who goes straight into a leadership position that has never been under someone else. These type of servant to leader people are more natural in the position. They can relate to their followers and have a better connection with them making their bond stronger because they have humble beginnings. This relates to the idea that humility is an important trait to have as a leader. The servant as a leader has humility without even trying or forcing it.
Even though Hesse’s story Journey to the East is fictional, the idea of Leo joining them as a servant, but when he was no longer there and the journey falls apart is realistic because they needed his presence and energy there all along. When a person brings great energy and positive presence to a group they are not appointed to lead in the first place, shows great potential for that person to eventually become a good leader.
4 CommentsI thought that Machiavelli made a decent point when he said, “Those who rise from private citizens to be princes merely by fortune have little trouble in rising but very much in maintaining their position” (106). Getting to a position of power is not difficult for these people, but once they are there, they may have a difficult time in said position, because maybe they don’t deserve to be there in the first place. I think he focuses on how to maintain power because a lot of the time in the past and present, power is inherited, therefore they are not necessarily built for a leadership position.
Machiavelli also talks about how it is important for a prince to want to be seen as merciful rather than cruel. This is another way to maintain power and obviously you would want your followers to see you this way. However, in my opinion yes a leader should be merciful, but instead of worrying about ones image, a leader should put all their focus onto what their followers want and believe in.
Leave a CommentThe idea of the Great Man Theory is that men, especially white men, have been the primary shapers of history and that they are superior in most ways and that they are the best leaders. There are so many things in history about women that are untold and left in the past. This made me think about when we were talking about MLK in class and we started talking about Rosa Parks. We all know Rosa Park’s name, but there was a woman(Claudette Colvin) who did what she is known for before Parks and nobody even knows her name. Both Parks and Claudette Colvin who is unrecognized should both be important historical figures in our textbooks. But because men were always the superior leaders, we mostly only know their names.
The feminists in this podcast want to put these unrecognized women in the spotlight as they should be. The accomplishments of women and minorities are silenced and put below the the things that the white man has done. It is going to be interesting to see when the Great Man Theory isn’t relavant anymore in the future.
6 CommentsRichard III is a perfect person to tie together what we have been talking about in class which is leadership and tyranny. He made his way to the throne by using toxic charisma and this shows the bad type of charisma. Bezio compares Donald Trump to Richard III. Trump is a modern day Richard III. He is in the way of how he used toxic charisma to get the the “throne”, or presidency, minus the murders of course. Richard III was an actual tyrant while Trump only shows characteristics of one and can’t be truly named one.
Personally I could always see how Trump used Toxic charisma to gain supporters even before he was elected. However, it was interesting to see how Richard III could gain supporters while being such an evil tyrant. As humans in the past and in the present day you would think we would see the signs of a sort of tyrannic leader and wouldn’t let the gain power, but as we can see one case from the past (Richard III), and one case from the present (Trump), we continue to let these people who use toxic charisma to gain power.
6 CommentsWe know that Martin Luther King was a great peaceful and charismatic leader, so choosing him to represent what a charismatic leader should represent is only right. In the reading it was interesting when it said, “The fact that he has more prestige than power; the fact that he not only criticizes whites but explicitly believes in their redemption…”(27). In other words he was willing to forgive those who had judged him for the color of his people’s skin. It takes the right type of good charisma to forgive those who have hurt you for that long.
I think it was also interesting how Carson noted how King “rejected” charismatic traits assigned to him because they conflicted with his own self-doubts and limitations. I think this made him an even greater leader, because being able to recognize your weaknesses while knowing how important you are to the movement made him connect with his followers better and made the whole movement more genuine. He still naturally used Being in a leadership role can blind people of the fact that they are still human just like any one of their followers, but King knew that he was just as vulnerable ass any other person.
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