Suffer the Children

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The Lady at the front door holds a light and sign that reads:

 

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Give me your tired, your poor, 

Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free, 

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, 

Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

 

The sign out back reads: 

 

No Tresspassing! 

 

At the same residence, on Sunday we proclaim, "Suffer the little children... "

Monday through Saturday, we yell, "Let the little children suffer" -in there own homes of course.

We are a nation of immigrants who were searching for a better life.  A nation that now denies the most vulnerable of those who search for the same. 

This is the land of the free and home of the brave that turns coward and turns away the most brave of children who face violence, the elements, and slavery for a better home.

We resist them because of our "lack of resources," their threat of disease, and their impact on our way of life.  Is this because we did the same to those who welcomed us?  Will they grab our land, exploit our resources, bring us gifts of disease, decimate our numbers, relagate us to small portions of land, force us to speak their language, and name places, teams, and trivial things in our memory?

We sure did it.   Why wouldn't they?  Past is prologue.

 Sow What?

 

 

Follow the Leader!

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You probably have heard someone espouse the idea that success and failure rest primarily on leadership.  You might even subscribe to such a notion.  However, have you ever considered just how important "followership" is to success?  If a leader cannot inspire people to follow, is he truly a leader?  And, if followers refuse to execute a leader's vision, are they actually followers?  The truth is that the two are interdependent -inextricably linked.  One cannot exist without the other.  Each helps to define the other.  I submit that the two concepts, leadership and followership are of equal importance. 

Clear to see who is the leader. But, who's following.

An application of this concept that I am intimately familiar with is the doctor patient relationship.  A physician can use published research, years of study and training as well as the latest diagnostic tools to suggest treatment and lifestyle changes that should be beneficial to her patient.  The patient can adhere closely to these recommendations and reap significant health benefits in the form wellness and longevity.  Diabetes education and smoking cessation serve as good examples.  This is an example of success from good leadership as well as followership. Another scenario would be the patient who refuses to follow the doctor's advice and ultimately suffers from poor health.  Regardless of the potentially beneficial leadership provided, an unwilling follower negates any potential good to be reaped. Truthfully, this can be played out in a wide variety of scenarios. 

  • The physician fails to inform patient of potential health risks and the patient fails to educate himself relying solely on the physician's expertise (poor leadership and poor followership)
  • The physician out of fatigue gives bad advice. But, the patient educates herself, seeks a second opinion,  and ultimately rejects the bad advice .  The patient then goes a step further to educate the physician of her discovery in order to help other patients (poor leadership and good followership ultimately transforming into good leadership).

In all of these examples, both, the leader and the follower, can be held accountable to some degree for the outcome.   

Clear to see those following.  But, who's leading?

We have seen this concept interplay at its best and its worst throughout history.  The masses are often eager to follow a leader as long as they can see where she intends to take them.  However, when her vision becomes distant, she soon loses her flock.  The flock becomes disillusioned and rebellious.  Yet history also shows us that our greatest leaders lead from so far ahead that it may take years for the masses to catch up and ultimately follow suit.  And even still, there are those followers who were early adopters, loyal, brave, and farsighted.  These faithful few are committed to the vision in such a way that they at various times seek to hold their leaders accountable.  In fact, these "followers" will evolve into leaders themselves thus continuing the cycle.

I must add that the concept of leadership and followership is independent of morality and dependent upon arbitrary definitions of success.  This of course ties into the "Sow What?" concept.  Leaders can inspire great acts of humanitarianism or mass destruction that is up to the followers to carry out.   -think Jesus and Mother Teresa versus Hitler and the Third Reich.

Sow What? -A Universal Law

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Ancient Tower - a seed

Be not deceived, God is not mocked for whatever a man sows that will he also reap -Galatians 6:7.  This has been said many ways throughout human history and maybe beyond.  It has been called:

  • The Golden Rule
  • The Law of Reciprocity

  • The Law of Gravity (What goes up...)

  • Cause and Effect
  • Input = Output
  • Newton's Third Law (For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction)
  • The Ripple Effect
  • Karma

The list goes on.  Nonetheless, this is a timeless concept that applies to individual persons as well as it does inanimate objects.  While there are exceptions to these rules, should we behave as if the exceptions are in fact the rule?  More to come...

Modern Tower - an idea