Author: Micaela Willoughby

In this essay, Williamson discusses the interesting period of change we are in now and tells us what the younger generation should know about democracy to keep it going. Williamson says that the growing human-technology relationship, coupled with the rapid advances in technology, is moving faster than democracy can. An “old v.s. new” conflict. (This is a conflict McFarland also talks about with leadership techniques). I found that statement interesting because the ideals that Williamson proposes are… kind of old news. In fact, the sources of Williamson’s civic virtues are historical figures and philosophers. It’s an interesting balance. The futuristic advances being balanced out by long-held values. However, these long-held values are so often forgotten by so many. Being only 19, I cannot say for sure whether that was always the case or not, but this essay claims it “feels different this time” (2). Awareness of others and moral humility are BIG values that I think could make a world of difference if they were more widely believed in/genuinely considered. It really is a cognitive exercise, depending on the issue… it isn’t easy. People don’t like gray areas, but the US (as we’ve read) has always been one BIG gray area.

This gray area is shown by Lincoln and by Fredrick Douglas’ description of Lincoln. How Lincoln was a prejudiced, white man. He was a “president of white men”, but he couldn’t have achieved what he did (abolishing slavery, which was an amazing thing) had he been anything else. Realism = gray areas. And this is why looking at all sides of one argument, understanding that you could be wrong, and trying to think about the situations of others is SO SO SO important!

**Tangent: It makes sense that this essay was written by someone who lives in Richmond. Richmond is the epitome of one of the crossroads Williamson mentions: accepting/embracing the new reality vs using public policy to blockade that reality. The monuments are a prime example. And Kehinde Wiley’s sculpture “Rumors of War” that is about to be placed in front of the VMFA is an example of the opposition.

“Fake news” has become a colloquial saying at this point, coined by Trump. It’s kind of a meme, it’s a little funny, but after reading Archer’s essay… it’s disconcerting. Taking a step back and looking at the scope of American history, it’s a bit phenomenal how much the press has been vilified. Freedom of speech and freedom of press are sewn into our constitution, as they have been for ages and yet… here we are.

The media being biased isn’t news (pun intended). There’s nothing recent about that. We’ve learned that anything written/said/recorded by a person… is biased. Covering one thing and not another… that’s bias, whether it’s intended or not. I don’t think such a thing as unbiased news can exist. But… the bias can be dialed back for sure. However, the media is a business… so they have to be exciting, inflammatory, shocking, and the like. It’s a dilemma that Archer shows as being exploited by politicians to distract from their own shortcomings.

Archer brings up Nixon, Bush 1, Bush 2, Clinton, Obama, and other presidents, showing an escalation in this politician vs media war. This escalation has reached a peak now, and I wonder if it will keep climbing (probably). This awareness, or as Archer says it, the way I’ve been primed to view the media makes it hard for me to believe anything I see on the news. I’m constantly wondering what’s not being said, what was actually said, if anything that I’m reading is true or not… It really turns me off from the news entirely. Because to understand one thing, you have to read from so many angles that it becomes an amalgamation of mismatches… or you can just take what you get from a single source and risk missing a pretty key detail.

Rather than declaring a war on the media… shouldn’t there be just a mutual understanding? I think the Machiavellian way to handle the media would just be to… do the things you say you’ll do. There might just be less for the media to attack that way. Easier said than done, I know.

**Fun fact: I had Archer for LDST 102!

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a short story I had heard of in comparison to the Lottery, but never got a chance to read. Because of this, the twist was spoiled for me, but it really didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the story at all. I really loved the casual unreliability of the narrator. I also liked that the narrator just came out and said imagine Omelas one way or another way, it doesn’t matter. Scene setting isn’t the purpose of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. What is important is the situation of Omelas. In that respect, the story also (probably intentionally) contradicts itself by criticizing those who only notice suffering and then only going into extreme detail on the suffering of the child in the base (that was hard to read and imagine). Everything else about Omelas is up for open interpretation except for this poor child’s situation.

Another very interesting aspect of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is what the speaker says people have to think about the child in order for them to be okay with it. “They begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a very little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy” (page 6). This explanation is dehumanizing to the poor child, the people of Omelas cease to view “it” (and the speaker refers to the child as “it”) as a human being! Don’t you just love groupthink? I was so mad when I read that.

The townspeople of the Lottery‘s justification for their violent ritual is even more flimsy than Omelas’. They are just creatures of habit, completely unable to change their ritual because it’s been done for so long because they are afraid of what will happen without it. Really it seems like they hardly think of stopping it. This is why, in my opinion,  The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is better at explaining this phenomenon of people forgetting their humanity, because it talks about (and is named after) those who can’t. The Lottery hints at this by mentioning other towns, but (and maybe it’s because I’ve read this story too many times in high school) the point doesn’t strike as well as it does in Omelas. What do y’all think?

The other night I watched Rafiki (2018) (part of the international film festival), a Kenyan film directed by Wanuri Kahiu. Rafiki, which translates to “friend,” is a drama with LGBTQ+ themes. This film is the story of Kena and Ziki, both daughters of rival political candidates, as they fall in love. While I don’t want to spoil this film, it’ll be hard to relate it to leadership without doing so. After Kena and Ziki enter a relationship with each other, they are soon found out about (as you’d expect) and are harassed by their family and neighbors. Both of them are physically assaulted by people in the small town they grew up in. It was a hard scene to watch. Then they face potential jail time for being lesbian (how is that a threat!? How can you be arrested for that?!). Furthermore, both sets of parents struggle to continue loving their daughters after their homosexuality is revealed.

What is the cause of all this? What could possibly tear families and neighborhoods apart like this? Rafiki does a great job of highlighting two causes: sexism and homophobia that is so deeply ingrained in society because of religion. The church is a place of high tension in Rafiki. Every service is full of nervous glances from the leading characters. There is one scene in which the pastor discusses homosexuality and claims that God’s laws can’t be broken, that changing the laws of man won’t save people who are homosexual. Furthermore, there is another scene in which he discusses the significance of matrimony between a man and a woman; how they need each other to be complete. During the discussion after the film, a student (who is from Kenya, herself) brought up the point of how she hadn’t even realized how many expressions were sexist or homophobic, she hadn’t thought about how accustomed Kenyan society was to excluding/degrading/alienating these groups of people. This reminded me of the Zinn readings on slavery and racism. While the origins are different, the way these mentalities stick and stay in society is very similar. And the violent reactions to these minority groups of people (though women aren’t really a minority)… just going through life is much like Plato’s Cave Allegory; people don’t want change/new/different/ Even if it’s for the better, even if it stops suffering. Even if it doesn’t affect them at all.

You know, the title of this section really threw me at first, but I’m impressed with how accurate it ended up being. Early on in the first reading (the one this post is named after) a question is introduced, “Are the conditions of slavery as important as the fact that it happened?” This question is pretty loaded, but I’m going to go ahead and say yes. The conditions are important to remember so that the reality of the situation cannot be glossed over or said to “not have been THAT bad.” In that respect, this question is trying to protect against that exact mindset. Later in the reading (page numbers didn’t print out, so I can’t site, sorry), it gave the example of how “Half of all slaves were whipped” has a different feeling than “Every few days, some slave would be whipped.” And that is the point this question is trying to bring home. You have all the loopholes caused by phrasing, all the forgotten rights of those mistreated because some document someone didn’t explicitly say something, or explicitly note that one specific thing needs enforcing. It’s ridiculous and almost comedic.

On Abraham Lincoln. So, I’ll be honest, I’m not a history buff and I’ve kinda forgotten way more than I should have from AP US History (APUSH, ykwgo). That said, I was pretty shook when I read the excerpts from Lincoln’s speech. Yknow, the whole white supremacy strand, not wanting equality, and all that. And, I get it, I do. Those were the times, blacks weren’t even considered full-fledged humans at this point (which is just, uhhh disgusting? Appalling? Horrifying?). But Lincoln lost respect points from me today, I don’t think I even like $5 bills anymore. Mostly kidding, but lowkey triggered. YET, there is hope and I’ll cling on to it—Lincoln could have been lying. He lied in the next quote about not planning to free the slaves at all. So maybe he was just saying what people wanted to hear in order to get their support. I don’t think anyone knows for sure, but I feel like someone as smart and successful as Abe Lincoln… would understand ridiculous the notion of black people being not-people was. Maybe he somehow knew he was ahead of his time.

This reading was really frustrating for a variety of reasons. America’s history with racism and slavery is so murky and one-step-forward-two-steps-back that it’s really no wonder why we’re still having issues today. Slavery and Racism were said to have been ingrained in our society in the 1800’s. Not to mention, a lot of the events from “Or Does it Explode?” were… pretty recent in the grand scheme of things. Freaky.

One immediate lesson that I took away from this reading is that it is truly the BEST move to do something you love as a job. Because, while I was reading this, all I was imagining were sales jobs and marketing and it kind of made me want to cry. In a job that one doesn’t like, of course you’ll be a sheep! You don’t care to do more, you don’t care to know more, and you’ll only do what’s mandatory.

When I changed lenses though, I imagined a job I liked. Like publishing or editing or something. That’s something I would work to get better at. Go to workshops, go to readings, read, read, and read. Because my values and my interests would line up with my job. Of course, the reading seemed… almost too peachy to me. Work is work, granted I’ve never had a job outside of being a barista (which sucks), but I’ve heard from friends and family that there are always gonna be days you just have to grind through.

Finally, I want to say that I really love the idea of redefining our notions of leaders and followers. Followers SHOULD see themselves as equals to their leaders in the workplace, and if the leader expects anything else… they have a complex! I also really appreciated that the author said an effective follower and a leader share many of the same qualities, as they should. Yet they do mention that leaders get paid more, they’re celebrated more, it’s viewed as better. Could that possibly change? Would people still want to lead if the pay was the same? Maybe then only people who WANTED to lead would.

The Silence of Others is an award-winning documentary that was released in 2018. This documentary, directed by Almudena Carracedo & Robert Bahar, is about the movement to repeal Spain’s 1977 Amnesty Law AKA the “Argentine Lawsuit”. The film follows this lawsuit over the course of 6 years and tells the stories of many who were abused and mistreated under Franco’s 40 years of dictatorship. It isn’t an easy documentary to watch (I cried three times), but it is impactful and I sincerely hope it only adds fuel to the fire and that Spain concedes and finally acknowledges the war crimes of the Franco era and brings those responsible (those who can still be brought) to justice.

As the title of the film suggests, this lid over Spain’s violent history applies not only to Spain, but to other countries as well. There are pictures of Franco with various US Presidents (one being Nixon), French Presidents, and other leaders of countries. And just like Spain doesn’t teach their children about it in school, I never learned about Franco in any of my World History classes. The forced omission of this period for Spain is contagious. One of the people in the film said “justice has no boundaries”. And it’s that thinking that brought on the Argentine Lawsuit. These traumatized people had to seek justice from a country that isn’t their own.

To tie this to leadership, I could talk about Franco who very much led like Hitler and incited fear to control his groups. I could make an argument that he is a toxic charismatic based on the footage that they showed and the intense following he had in life and–unfortunately–continues to have in death. However, this film isn’t about Franco. It’s about the families and it’s about the horror and the tragedy. Franco enforced–and the loyalists carried out– permanent inequality. What started as something based on the “Eugenics of Spanishness” grew and spun into a cruel regime that abused anyone who wasn’t in the dominant group. People were taken as prisoners, tortured, and executed for the most minor forms of dissent, or even for nothing at all (wrong place, wrong time). A group of women in the film banded together to get justice for their babies who were stolen from them in hospitals (“We want out children back, dead or alive.”). Permanent inequality breeds a mindset that sees the outgroup as inhuman–that’s the only possible explanation that all the loyalists could behave this way, it’s the only mindset that would make anything about this situation easier to swallow.

(I watched this documentary at the 10/24, 7:30 showing in Jepson 118)

These two articles were really interesting to read together. While Miller discussed in vague terms what the dominant/subordinate relationship can look like in various social aspects (in two specific forms), Cheney & Lair got into the nitty-gritty of American politics among various administrations and assigned “dissent” to certain movements before getting into our “culture of fear.” While there is a lot to unpack among the two of these articles, there is one connection that popped out to me. “It is not surprising then that a subordinate group resorts to disguised and indirect ways of acting and reacting,” Miller wrote this on page 228. And on page 203, in the epilogue of Cheney and Lair’s article, they discuss the relationship between the constant fear surrounding the US’s borders and position in the world with the day-to-day lives of citizens: “Taken together, these fears hinder the full expression of democracy itself, inasmuch as dissenting opinions are suppressed or are not even considered.” I couldn’t help but think about social media when I put these two things together. All the memes about nuclear war, global warming, school shootings, police brutality–they’re really funny, and they’re funny because they’re real and on people’s minds. These are jokes made out of genuine concerns–laughter is the best medicine, after all. There’s a lot of violence in the world and there’s a lot of violence in the States that people don’t want to acknowledge, but the prevalence of these popular, dark-humor kind of jokes shows that the Dominant group (whatever group may be, depending on the issue) is not ignorant of the underlying issue. This kind of humor communicates the issue, but also creates a sort of mental distance between the reader/watcher and the actual situation.

Bernard E. Bass discusses the benefits and superiority of transformational leadership in his research article “Two Decades of Research and Development in Transformational Leadership”. I didn’t doubt anything Bass was saying, it all sounded logical and likely to me. However, I found that the way he constantly brought up potential holes in mentioned studies, or lack of research in certain areas, made me want to doubt the accuracy. I was confused because a lot of what he said, we have pretty much confirmed in this class or my LDST 102 class. Then I looked at the date of publishing, 1999, and things made much more sense after that. It’s truly amazing how far the study of leadership has come in the last two decades. Transformational leadership has become even more of a staple in leadership studies and in workplaces (as we have read before). Bass also hinted at Trait Theory in his post-paper-proposal for further research. It’s really interesting how much leadership study has to combat with things like McNamora’s Fallacy. To us, it just makes sense that some people would be better at being transformational leaders than others. But all that has to be proven for it to bear any weight. And it is almost impossible to isolate a leader-follower relationship study. There will always be external factors, as Bass has shown.

Anyway, onto my thoughts about the TOPIC of this (Bass’s) article. With transformational leadership, responsibility is shifted downward Instead of a singular leader controlling everything and doling out the responsibilities. When everyone is actively working toward the same goal because their personal interests align with that goal, there is less focus on subordinate-superior relationships and everyone can, ideally, feel like equal contributors intellectually. That feeling, I can imagine, is very important in the workplace (especially when one is working at a desk all day. Stagnant minds can really kill overall creativity and workflow). I did have one question about what was said about Maslow’s Hierarchy: If you’re aligning your personal interests with that of the group’s, how is that surpassing “self-actualization”? To be successful under a transformational leader, I don’t think you need to reach “idealization.” Maybe only the leader does, if at all.

I want to start out by saying the last line of this paper was really intense (“We are testing whether our democracy can survive a leader without humility.”)  This reading was almost dramatic (NOT saying it was overdramatic), and I believe that was intentional because it really is trying to bring attention to the fact that we are in unchartered waters right now. It’s a little exciting.

So, humility. Honestly, I was a little thrown off by Ruscio’s definition of humility. It didn’t seem solid and he kept using “a bent in one’s disposition” which is too archaic to keep repeating without follow-up, I think. I also didn’t really buy reticence as being the opposite of arrogance, but whatever. Weird, obsolete definition aside, I was incredibly interested in how Ruscio framed humility as not only a key trait in successful democratic leaders, but as a necessity. Ruscio does this by breaking down American democracy into its base values of equality, liberty, and tolerance. And when viewed like this, it only makes sense of a leader to have a sense of humility or at least have an inclination to be humble.

Ruscio’s first example of humility is, of course, George Washington. He claims that our first founding father was “the extraordinary man who made it possible for ordinary people to govern.” While that line in itself probably deserves a whole blog post, I honestly don’t know enough about Washington to do it. Sorry. But from what I do know in addition to what is here, that rings very true. Washington is also a prime example of Pruning Theory that was mentioned. I’d never heard of Pruning Theory, but it’s exactly what we discussed in class. American values seem to groom its citizens to really like reluctant leaders. Sometimes “power grows by cutting it back.” Sometimes, however, it doesn’t. The reading mentions that we have these preconceived notions of what values we thought everyone felt the same about. Pruning Theory is one of those notions. This last election really changed how American citizens view their country and themselves.

The Allegory of the Cave video reminded me of something we touched on in class. I can’t remember exactly what we were talking about, but we said something about leaders with foresight typically don’t last long. It sounds cruel out of context, sorry about that. But this video makes that point ring even truer. Like we have established, humans are bad with long-term planning. We’re bad at thinking ahead. Therefore, when the occasional human who is good at thinking ahead appears… we typically aren’t going to like what they have to say. This is why, in the video, the unchained prisoners kill their releaser. They didn’t like the change, they liked what they had before, the outside world was confusing and overwhelming and they couldn’t understand why they were there. So they kill their releaser. People are not usually receptive to change, and that’s what the first article talked about.

In Leaders and Followers, the author states that the relationship between leaders and followers is not as black-and-white as people think. The followers aren’t just mindless drones, but rather are active participants. “[A leader] can be given subordinates, but they cannot be given a following. A following must be earned” (186). And part of that earning process has to do with the state of the country/group/whatever. People are not usually receptive to change, but when they are, that’s the time that loyal followings are made (this is pretty similar to the “situational theory” mentioned in the second article, but I’m not trying to lean entirely in that direction). Yes, a good charismatic leader is helpful to the process, as is a proper cause, but… honestly, it’s about what the followers want. They have to feel that the leader can help them. And that’s where the releaser in the Cave Allegory fails. He broke the chains of the other prisoners, he brought them outside, but how could they be expected to be grateful when they didn’t ask for the freedom to begin with? They didn’t even know they weren’t free. The releaser could be considered a citizen leader of sorts, he was chained once too, then freed, then he returns with knowledge… but he forgot the values of the people he meant to rescue. Simply because he had seen “the great beyond” doesn’t make it effective to discredit their little… cave society. As we’ve read for today, it really does boil down to the followers.

I think the question of whether Charles I deserved to be executed is an interesting one. I can’t think of many leaders in which the answer is ambivalent. However, Charles I’s execution is a gray area because he became a martyr, a figurehead for The Time Parliament Went Too Far (probably a saga) and paved the way for his son Charles II who successfully ruled England, Scotland, and Ireland. However, his father was beheaded and, even in the 1600s, I think that’s excessive. Of course, according to the Jacobian Theory of Kingship, Parliament was defying God, so from that point of view, it’s clearly wrong. Jacobian Theory states that even a tyrant cannot be removed/invalidated by Parliament or the people; the king can only be removed by God. And while that concept is ridiculous and, like Carroll said is “virtually a synonym for ‘tyranny.” I kind of see the reason for such an approach after somewhat removing myself from my democratic ideals.

Yes, Charles I went behind his country’s back to recruit the Scottish so he could get his throne back, but killing a king without public support? Isn’t that just worsening the instability? When dealing with a figurehead that was not elected, nor is susceptible to election, shouldn’t the law be taken with a grain of salt? I mean, we are talking bloodlines and divine right here. If you just start killing leaders when they screw up, that system will come into question (and, as we know, it has). I really don’t like to think any leader is above the law, but I am American and a King is not synonymous with President. Cromwell or no Cromwell, I don’t think Ragtag Rump Parliament had the right to do what they did, and it seems like the country felt the same way.

Despite never knowing the proper name for it, nor completely comprehending all the philosophical discourse surrounding it, I never considered tyrannicide a good idea. And despite reading nearly thirty pages on how tyrannicide is different from political assassination (another thing I’d never thought about before)… I still don’t think it’s a good nor logical course of action.

Article 1 was all about convincing its audience that tyrannicide needs to be talked about more. However, Andrade is unable to dispute the fact that most tyrannicides put their countries in an even worse place than before. And the reason why lines up perfectly with Carson’s (author of one of last week’s articles) argument about MLK. One person, in contemporary times at least, is not going to drastically change a country. It may look that way, but what about all of their subordinates? All the people who make sure they stay in power despite the public wishing otherwise? One of them can step up easily, then what? Kill them too? What about the corruption that bred this “tyrant.” It’s not as simple as the Trolley Problem. If it were, I guarantee people wouldn’t have stopped talking about it.

Article 2 discusses various angles to compare and contrast political assassination and tyrannicide. Often, it really is difficult to differentiate the two. I’d say the most successful/convincing angle was the behavioral lens, yet even that was ambiguous. I actually found myself agreeing with the quote that the author put in as a counter-argument: “Tyranny belongs to an age of heroes, or to situations where the safety and character of the state depends on the personality of one man.” George argues this because this quote makes it sound like a true tyrant can’t exist because the state of a nation can’t depend on one man’s personality… And that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make. There is no ONE person you can kill (ahem, assassinate) to make a nation be the way you think it should be–whether you’re from that nation or otherwise.

Both George and Andrade made really good points in bringing up how western culture kind of idolizes Tyrant killers in film, in literature, in myth, and in ancient history; however, reality isn’t so simple. Both articles talk about the possibility of true tyranny in modern times, but I don’t think true tyranny, the kind that tyrannicide could completely negate, can actually exist in modern times.

(p.s. sorry for spelling errors, it’s 1am)

What stuck out the most to me in this weekend’s reading was the connection between charisma and magic/mysticism that Riggio highlighted. While I would have never thought to do so, he described Buddha and Jesus as charismatic figures in religion. That really got me thinking about what I thought charisma was. I realized that I previously used the word charisma as a synonym with tons of words like persuasive, convincing, engaging, outgoing, encouraging, etc. And, like Riggio with the 7 characteristics of charisma, I understood that charisma is a combination of many things and a big part of that combination how a charismatic person is recieved.

Riggio then includes an excerpt tsav and how the tsav on/in someone’s heart is the physical (?) (I’m still confused on that part) manifestation of their ability to overcome/sway situations, or to be good at something. Despite being innate, tsav is still something that must be trained to be of use. I found that to be a really interesting fact to include. And it fits perfectly with what Riggio was saying about one of charisma’s 7 characteristics. It isn’t enough to only be visionary, you have to have the means to achieve that vision by controlling how you and your vision are received. This makes charisma more of a skill or talent than a stand-alone personality trait. And in that light, it does seem like something that can be learned… However, not everyone can read people well, and I don’t think that is something you can teach. It’s like how Zalezink stated that transformational leaders are closer to artists than managers. Sure, you can teach someone to draw, but you can’t teach them how to know what to draw, or how to look at the world around them. I guess I’m trying to say that reading people is an art, too. Riggio mentioned that politicians get charisma training and I’m honestly really curious what those sessions are like. Either way, that furthers the idea that charisma is a skill, but just like tsav, it has to be developed.