[lit-ideas] Re: The American Civil War, why and how it was fought
- From: John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2012 14:53:45 -0500
Donal McEvoy wrote:
. . . .Of particular interest is the theme of failures of leadership,
and what seems to support an old Billy Connolly argument that the
first way to reform politics is to find out who wants to be politician
and then ban them for life from politics (of course, we know they
would dissemble to get round any such ban; and some good candidates
would be banned): in the Civil War you almost seem to suggest a like
ban in terms of military leadership might have ensured victory for the
side that adopted it:-
Of course we could go even further back and ask what would have happened
if we never had the Revolutionary War either. (Canada seems to have done
OK even though they didn't have to have a war with England.) So if we
had a queen now, at least we would have someone who was "destined" to
lead rather than someone who wanted a good job. England at least has
some people in government who didn't want to be there. Although I
haven't studied the topic as much as Laurence has, I'd begin such study
with the hypothesis that one of the reasons we "won" the revolutionary
war is that England was a fairly benign colonial power, as colonial
powers go, and that they weren't particularly interested in keeping a
colony when it was so bent on being independent.
Heaven protect us from BOTH politicians who want to be politicians, AND
from those who are so committed to a course of action that they aren't
willing to allow for being wrong or allow for things not turning out as
they want them to.
But among the distinct issues these failings of leadership raise:- one
is how such leaders, especially the narcissistic type, may be most
blind to their own failings (which therefore go uncorrected), and this
is a failing that cannot easily be laid at the door of the public,
even one assumed to respond better to 'success-talk' than
'failure-talk'. One might think education would produce properly
self-critical individuals - but we must all have striking experience
of highly educated people who see facing their failings as an affront
to their highly educated status: that is, that a pernicious kind of
intellectual dishonesty and dogmatism can go hand-in-hand a high level
of intellect and education. A root problem is surely than the desire
for a leadership role is often linked with a desire for status, and a
desire for status is often antithetical to a properly self-critical
approach to life and its problems.
"Educatied" used to mean something quite specific. Now it's used to
describe anybody who learned something complicated. But a genuine
"education" WOULD hopefully produce leaders who are more self-aware and
willing to take risks when reasonable and refrain from risks when
reasonable.
To me, the basic problem is that both leaders and voters are
increasingly mis-educated or uneducated, and are unaware of their lack
of self-awareness. So voters vote for people who claim super-human
leadership roles and only those who want to be such leaders would even
consider running for office, leaving the more reasonable potential
candidates sitting watching the whole process because they don't see
much chance of running against such overly-ambitious candidates.
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