Digging Your Own Well: Part Twenty Seven

Daring to Not Be at the Front of the World

 

One of the things that institutes of higher education usually describe as “part of their mandate” is to teach young people something called “leadership”. I've often wondered why they do that. Why not teach “citizenship” instead? Actually, I suspect that most of us are a little wary of people who just assume that they should be the “leader”. Why them? Why shouldn't they be “followers”? Indeed, do we really need to have “leaders” and “followers” at all? Why not have a system of equality where everyone co-operates? Even if we accept that it is necessary to divide the human population into “leaders” and “followers”, then how do we decide which is which?

 

But if we accept that there are difficulties with “leadership”, that doesn't explain why it is that a Daoist should “dare not to be at the front of the world”. To understand this, look at what the DDJ says is wrong with it. “Daring not to be at the world's front, One can grow to a full vessel”, and, “To discard staying behind, yet to be at the front, One dies!”.

 

In some situations it can be a very bad thing to be visible. In the West there is something called “the tall poppy syndrome”. According to Wikipedia, it comes from a passage in Herodotus' The Histories where a ruler asks for advice about how to govern a city. The advice is given by a person who walks through a wheat field and breaks off all the heads that have grown higher than the average. The implication is that anyone in the city who shows exceptional ability---and is therefore a potential leader of any future opposition---should be killed. The Japanese have an aphorism that says much the same thing, "A stake that sticks out will be hammered". Which is to say, anyone who makes themselves visible by being better than the herd will end up being beaten down to conformity.

 

China has never been a liberal democracy, which means that pretty much from the time when the DDJ was first created until present days, “standing out in the crowd” has been a dangerous thing to do. In fact, I can remember having a conversation about this with a roomie from Shanghai who said that the best strategy in life is to be “useful” without being “threatening”. People get executed or assassinated in purges when they support one side and the other wins. Or, even if they just “get in the way” of another person's personal ambitions. Keeping your head down and being invisible can be life-saving advice.

 

Even if you aren't living in a piranha tank, it can pay to avoid putting yourself in front. There are a lot of very competitive places of work where anyone who aspires to upper management is putting themselves in for a big risk. Where I work, for example, managers have none of the official job security that the unionized employees have.

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Beyond this very obvious issue of “life or death”, there is another way of looking at this issue. Being able to “grow to a full vessel” has a double meaning that is missed by modern people. In ancient China minor infractions of the law involved amputation. If you made a mistake you would have a piece of your “vessel” cut off. (Just like Japanese Mafia members who have fingers cut off for minor mistakes.) But once we recognize this literal meaning, a metaphor becomes obvious---there is a psychological “vessel” too.

 

Being “in front” is a social role that requires a certain type of psychological make-up to sustain. For example, “humility” is usually considered a virtue, yet it is a vice for leaders. Leaders have to constantly blow their own horn in order to get ahead. A leader who quietly works behind the scenes will never get noticed, and therefore will never get promoted. Similarly, any leader that admits her mistakes or always tries to give credit where it is due will be seen as “weak”. In addition, leaders have to be enormously disciplined with both their attention and time in order pursue their goals---this stifles creativity and keeps them from learning unexpected information.

 

The problem with deciding to blow your own horn and never admit errors, of course, is that pretense eventual turns into belief. Play the role of the infallible leader long enough, and you will start to believe your own propaganda. And, if a person stops admitting to himself that he makes mistakes, he loses the opportunity to learn from that particular experience. Moreover, once a leader stops believing in the possibility of making mistakes, she eventually surrounds herself with “yes men” who remove the possibility of even learning about---yet alone from---mistakes. This is why so many leaders seem to constantly make the same mistakes over and over again in their careers.

 

In the same way, if someone never gives credit to others for her successes, she will soon find herself surrounded by second-rate people. Partially this is because no one wants to have the value of their work ignored. But more importantly, if you don't publicly acknowledge a person's worth, eventually you won't do so privately either. And once this happens, the leader will only be interested in the advice of people who agree with him. This is why leaders often start out with great lieutenants and end up surrounded by nonentities.

 

I used to be appalled by the number of national leaders who set out at a very early age to become the President (eg Bill Clinton) or Prime minister (eg Brian Mulroney) and then devoted all their energies to that goal. I still find it sad, but now I expect it. The “collateral damage” must be appalling---how many people devote all their energies to a goal like this yet end up falling to the wayside for one reason or another? Even if a person does succeed, how many opportunities to learn and grow as a human being are sacrificed to the all-absorbing long term goal? 

 

This is why leaders often seem so tremendously isolated from the rest of society. Think about the people who led the US into the war in Iraq. When interviewed many of them opine that “hindsight is 20/20” and “who knew that we would get into so many problems?” Well, the head of the US army, Eric Shinseki, for one---who was forced into early retirement when he warned that far too few troops were being sent. As did the hundreds of thousands---if not millions---of people all over the world who protested against the invasion. How can people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld be so obtuse? A Daoist could ask “how could they not?”. The process that led to their gaining their positions of great influence and power mitigated against them ever being sensitive to the information that was immediately obvious to many other people.

 

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!