Proud Leaders

The word “pride” is a touchy, complicated one. In the positive sense, it can mean being thankful and affirmative about one’s own state of being. For example, this form is used when discussing national pride, or LGBT Pride. In the negative sense, pride is an egotistical, selfish state of mind that leads directly to arrogance, controlling behavior, and entitlement.

In the negative sense, pride leads to mistreating others, and believing that one deserves special privileges. Such pride is insidious and gradually creeps up in personality development. Pridefulness gets no kick out of merely having something; a prideful person gets pleasure out of having more of something than other people. It is the comparison that makes one proud. The pleasure that one feels of sanctimoniously believing one is “above” everyone else. This is a depersonalization of “lower rank” people in the social hierarchy. This can manifest materialistically and religiously.

Nowhere is the destructive form of pride more harmful than in the minds of leaders and people aspiring to leadership roles. There is a sense that fate has chosen them to lead the pack–the divine right of kings. That spirit of arrogance and thirst for power is addictive. It builds quickly in stages with the most extreme being hubris. That is the personality trait of excessive pride and dangerous overconfidence which leads to detachment from reality. Hubris usually unintentionally brings about the eventual downfall of the person who possesses it.

When leadership is sought without the aim of public service but only with the goal of personal fame and glory, the seeds of hubris have been planted. This flaunting of oneself and one’s set of personal assets and abilities coupled with ambition lead to impure actions and the downfall of the municipality or nation that person leads. This is especially true if the hubris has rubbed off from the leader onto the citizens who love him/her.

“The tyrant is a child of Pride, who drinks from his sickening cup recklessness and vanity, until from his high crest headlong he plummets to the dust of hope.”–Sophocles from ‘Oedipus Rex’

Pride blinds those who have it. The antidote is true humility. In the case of hubris, humility is not an option because pride has become malignant with the belief that humilty equals surrender of glory. This has been stated by philosophers through the ages. They note that pride is not the opposite quality of shame; shame is the source of pride. For an hubristic person to submit to humility would be to affirm his/her shameful character. That person’s pride will continue to eat away at his/her sanity and bring about utter defeat.

The cautionary lesson gleaned from history demonstrates that it is unwise to worship political and religious leaders. Hubristic leaders choose to die in their pride over living through humility.

Ciao

The Blue Jay of Happiness quotes the Ancient Roman philosopher Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. “Nothing is more scandalous than a man who is proud of his humility.”

Get Out Of Your Head

My old guru regularly spoke about thinking too much. He reminded his students that unbridled thinking brings our focus onto “me, me, me”. When we constantly think in such a manner, one result is worry and another result is egotism. Working the brain without discipline and restraint can bring about destructive thoughts and behavior. It is good practice to get out of your head and expose your senses to air, nature, and awareness of the world. This gets the focus onto the bigger picture and puts life in perspective.

His advice was correct. Running thoughts over and over leads to inefficient use of brain power. We get stuck in mental ruts that lead to stress with either no action or wrong action. We become obssessed with the past when imagining how we could have done or said something differently in a situation that caused us embarrassment. We become obssessed with the future when we worry about an upcoming event. Regardless of our imagined failures and glories, we generally end up in the same place anyway.

This is not to say that prudent amounts of remorse over past wrongs or careful attention to future plans are bad things. It is good to pay attention to our behavior and thoughts. The problems begin when we overthink them. Getting stuck in our heads happens when we feel disconnected with our body, breath, mind, and the essence of our being. Getting out of our heads reconnects us with the totality of our existence.

When there are no ethical or practical pitfalls that affect a choice, we are wise to consider immediate action. Getting locked into a dithering mindset will lead to frustration, missed opportunities, and dissatisfaction. If the pitfalls of the choices are mindfully considered, we can proceed with confidence and increase self-respect. Even if the action becomes an error, at least we did something and lessons were learned. Inaction brings regrets about our inaction and more overthinking about the past. We realize that while we took so much time to think about situations, time already moved on without us.

The above discussion is the opposite of what was mentioned in yesterday’s bluejayblog post regarding impulsiveness and fast-thinking. The extremes of either way show the thoughtful person that moderation is usually the wisest approach to living. There are exceptions to this guideline with discernment being an important, decisive tool to help us better understand.

Like many people, I’ve often been plagued by spending too much time in my head. It takes extra effort to quiet the monkey mind and refocus onto careful, helpful analysis. There are certain significant instances when extended thought are appropriate. Determining whether the experience and its ramifications will matter in a year or longer will help manage the thinking process. Will going ahead help or hinder everyone concerned?

This brings us full circle–back to the old guru’s remedy for getting out of one’s head: When one notices that the mind is stuck inside the head, then it is time to take three deep breaths while concentrating on the physical process. This triggers a conscious micro-meditation that refreshes the mind. This removes our thoughts from problems that don’t even exist in the first place.

Ciao

The Blue Jay of Happiness ponders an idea from designer, social critic, and writer, Mokokoma Mokhonoana. “Only about two percent of one percent of our thoughts deserve to be taken seriously.”

Impulsive

Generally speaking, we require several years of making mistakes on our way to gaining life experience and maturity. In the search for freedom and independence, it’s normal to make rash errors due to youthful impatient, reckless behavior and lack of mindfulness. For the most part, we make it through that part of the life journey no worse for the wear.

Although we may have internalized some valuable lessons, we get caught up in the hamster wheel of overwork, too many obligations, and otherwise stretching ourselves thin. We want to be involved in everything but succeed at only a few things due to our roving attention. Hence, we feel chronically stretched and tired. Even if we’ve managed to budget our time and are practicing techniques to efficiently work alone, there is the matter of the “monkey mind” that distracts us. We feel compelled to frequently check our phones or other tech for social media updates. We might click a link to an interesting video. Before long, we’ve wasted an entire hour being unproductive.

Some of us have little personal direction control and make impulsive, rash decisions that pull us towards conflicting interests. Without focus, we frequently change our minds. This shiny object behavior is confusing and frustrating for everyone involved, and keeps us from effective living and work.

One may be at a stage of life when we are overflowing with ambition and mental energy but have not yet learned how to effectively channel and utilize it. Outside forces hold us back–bad timing, lack of resources, an adversary standing in the way, or we’re just not ready to meet the challenge. Yet we feel compelled to do something–anything to release the overflowing mental energy. We soon throw caution to the wind and impulsively do something.

Action-oriented, ambitious, highly driven people are motivated to succeed at all costs. They have cultivated the determination and focus required to move forward with their plans. Challenges, difficulties, and obstacles along the way don’t faze such people because they have practiced discipline. They are unfazed by the trivial mental “knick-knacks” that come at us every hour. They may have sharpened their mental prowess through practicing concentration techniques like mindfulness meditation, sports, or games of strategy.

Those people whose personality is fast-paced and intense learn to curb their immediate impulse to dive in right away. They discover the immportance of outlining a basic plan or overview. They consolidate their speed with a focused goal and forge through to completion. They have taken what normally might be too fast, without much forethought, into a disciplined plan of action. They learn to think things through without dithering. Aligned purpose, planning and preparation propel them.

Such people are assertive without being aggressive and anti-social. They do not linger or hang back and passively wait for something to happen. They have harnessed their energies, and proactively take the first steps towards the goal. They are constructively progressive, and forward-thinking. Importantly, they are considerate of others they meet along the way. They strive towards mutually beneficial personal and career relationships.

Along with focused action, comes an inner drive to understand the world and society from the intellectual point of view. By research and study, we develop communication and social skills so as to expand our mental horizons and discard fearful close-mindedness. We see the world beyond our own limited consciousness. We understand that life is more than ambition and consumption. We investigate different philosophies and social cultures. We try some parts of them on for size. We are open to shifting our point of view. These investigations further aid us in harnessing our impulsivity and fast-thinking. We learn that meaning in life is not sheer happiness nor impulsive pleasures; it is through responsibility in thought and action that we discover meaning.

Ciao

The Blue Jay of Happiness quotes the historical Suquamish and Duwamish leader and sage, Chief Seattle. “Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been.”

Could’ve, Should’ve, Would’ve

Anyone who has studied or read about historical events has probably pondered the “what ifs” regarding the major players. There were people who could have done something to alter the outcome. Those people should have done something to change the outcome. There were also the outliers who would have done something had they decided to do so. Most of the time, those individuals were powerful enough to follow through, but procrastinated or did nothing at all.

The could’ve, should’ve, would’ve conundrum isn’t limited to major, earth-shattering events. This problem happens to all of us. We fail to understand or choose to deny what unfolds before our very eyes. Our inaction helps to silence the voice of justice when it most matters. Too often, this silence is inauspicious. Certainly there are risks to doing something important; however they are fewer than the insidious problems that become chronic through our lack of action.

In any country, there is the natural tendency to blame bureaucracy, the government, the political party we don’t like, our adversaries, and scapegoats as excuses for our own unwillingness to get involved. It’s easy to blame society for the world going to Hell in a handbasket. There are many things to blame for why we could have, should have, or would have done something, but failed to do so.

Because there are real-world limits to what we can, should, and will do, we cannot act in every situation that pops up. We do need to prioritize or else we’ll burn out. That said, we can trust our intuition as to the urgency and relevance of the problems at hand. Even if we decide to do nothing, inaction often ends up being the biggest action. We do something when we decide to do nothing.

“Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.”–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Too often we forget that what we could, should, and would have done, affect people we might never meet and know in our communities and around the world. Our action and inaction affects others due to the interconnectedness of life on Earth. The influence could manifest immediately or sometime in the future. At best, one suffers a guilty conscience; at worst, some catastrophe occurs. How do we defend inaction during a crisis? How can people honestly defend such inaction?

We can turn the could, should, would around as the scenario happens. Can we do something helpful? Should we get involved or should we refrain from action? Finally, will we get involved? We can use past experiences to aid in our decision. Our prior failures and successes reveal our weaknesses and strengths so we can more effectively act.

There are other aspects to consider. One’s inaction only emboldens our adversaries. Time and again, the default results of inaction are disatisfaction and mediocrity. Sometimes the results are dire.

One can sit around, dither, and worry over scenarios and possible failure–with could’ve, should’ve, would’ve as the result. The inaction bringing about more doubts and fears. On the other hand, can, should, will conquers fears and cultivates confidence and courage. Is the situation something we can do something about; should do something about; and will do something about? Then the time is right to get down to brass tacks and do what we are able to do?

Ciao

The Blue Jay of Happiness quotes Leonardo da Vinci. “Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation… even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.”

Swung And Bent …Floral Friday

Today’s projects utilize three skillfully crafted artisanal bowl-vases. They were created by skilled glassblowers who deftly maneuvered molten glass into one-off vessels. For each vase, the glass was first blown into the general shape of a long vase. While the glass remained molten, the artisan carefully swung the soft glass to stretch the vase to the desired length and shape. The narrow stem of the glass was then manipulated and bent to form either a handle or a footed stem. I am in awe of the skill and talent of the glassblowing artisans.

The first item utilizes various blue tints and turquoise that was shaped into the form of a basket. I filled the bowl with a variety of cheery, summer colors to contrast with the dark colored glass container.

The artisan utilized various colors of slag glass to form this eye-catching trumpet vase. Salmon colored flowers coordinate with the light orange highlights of the vase.

Layers of opaque blue glass with one layer of transparent glass were used to create a basket that plays with the vision. I couldn’t resist the temptation to use blue flowers. The monochromatic project emits a cool, refreshing vibe.

Ciao
The Blue Jay of Happiness quotes glassblowing artist, William Morris. “Glassblowing is an animal unto itself. It requires skill, knowledge, physical strength, and respect.”

Free Press

We learn in civics or social studies classes about the vital parts of a federal democratic republic. They include the official executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Unofficially, it is important to have an active artistic community, and a free press. When any one of these is suppressed, the republic is at dire risk.

Whether the democratic republic is new or is well established, the nation is always susceptible to the tactics of demagogues and populists. Their aims are generally to weaken one or more of the nation’s governing institutions in some manner. This is especially dangerous when freedom of the press is censored or suppressed. That is why the press is often referred to as “the fourth pillar of democracy”. That is also why it is wise to beware of politicians and other outspoken commentators who denigrate the media.

I cringe whenever I hear or read of someone condemning the “mainstream media” thereby promoting biased sources. I remember learning about sensationalist, slanted news sources in high school in our socio-economics class. In the 1800s journalists coined the term, yellow journalism as a way to belittle the tabloid newspapers of the day. The tabloids marketed their papers with bold, sensational headlines. The yellow journalists were highly biased and embellished their accounts of events. Such papers presented themselves as alternate sources who tried to convince their readers that their shocking stories were objective truth.

Although yellow journalism can be entertaining in a backhanded sort of way, we need to be aware of its dangers. The main hazard being yellow or tabloid journalism’s ability to exploit their consumers’ fears so as to influence public opinion. This differs from mainstream media because tabloid journalists do not aim to be objective in their reporting. Tabloid media attract and keep readers and viewers by giving their audiences what they want to hear, regardless of the stories’ inaccuracy. This echo chamber further amplifies the audiences’ confirmation bias. The viewers quickly tune out when objective reporting is presented.

When a sizeable share of the demographic is influenced by slanted news reporting, the integrity of the voting public becomes compromised. This manufactured gullibility allows tabloid media owners and publishers great power over their consumers’ mindsets and opinions. These factors are most important regarding elections. This is a factor because most citizens do not vote according to facts; our votes are mostly influenced by our emotional attachment to partisan views.

“The press doesn’t stop publishing, by the way, in a fascist escalation; it simply watches what it says. That too can be an incremental process, and the pace at which the free press polices itself depends on how journalists are targeted.”–Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf describes the self-censorship that is common when journalists fear arousing the public’s ire. Thoughtful, investigative journalism is at risk during times of public panic. This was demonstrated vividly during the mid 20th century’s “Red Scare”. Public figures, including journalists, were targeted by bombastic politicians and commentators. Celebrities and the media were wrongly accused of being communists or communist-sympathizers. The media self-censored themselves so as to minimize being targeted by demagoguery. The result was an ill-informed public and weakened democratic process.

Free press issues include media consolidation. When only a few large, powerful corporations own practically all of the media outlets, the news content is more likely to be slanted towards the interests of the parent companies. This makes it difficult to conduct fully objective investigative journalism. Stories that appear threatening to the interests of the parent company are discouraged or totally censored. This is one of the big problems with America’s mass media situation. Our cultural and political information is now highly influenced by corporate and special interests via their manufactured demagoguery.

All things considered, the ideal scenario is to promote the culture where the citizens are free to express themselves openly and freely. In such a scenario, freedom of the press with accountable, responsible media is a good thing. The robust health and viability of the fourth pillar of democracy are essential.

Ciao

The Blue Jay of Happiness quotes author, dramatist, journalist, and philosopher, Albert Camus. “A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.”

Correcting Errors

Most mornings after awakening, I silently affirm my gratitude about the gift of a brand new day. I hope that I will experience happiness and perhaps at least a moment of joy. I also allow for the better than even chance that some negativity will appear uninvited and that pain might intrude, too. I also understand that it’s more than possible I might screw up something. Hopefully I can admit my mistake and find the lesson it presents. With these thoughts I affirm my membership in the human race. After all, life runs the gamut from error to joy. As a human, it is acceptable to embrace life fully–warts and all.

“If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person. It’s how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit.”–former U.S. President, William J. Clinton

I love to skim through my books of quotations. There are the usual uplifting, cheerleading quotes that validate one’s life experiences. Then there are the quotations from people who have erred greatly and became publicly controversial because of those mistakes. That’s why I chose the snippet from Bill Clinton. He made some serious errors, but in the end, he has been man enough to admit his faults.

Paraphrasing My paternal grandfather: he often reminded his grandsons that a man must be big enough to admit when he’s wrong and apologize whenever he has wronged someone either knowingly or mistakenly. When you admit you made a mistake you show honesty and intelligence. When you understand the fact of the mistake, you can look at it to see where you can do better in the future. Grandpa J stressed that a real man admits when he’s wrong and sincerely apologizes to anyone he has wronged.

Grandpa J had a framed, autographed photograph of President Truman seated at his Oval Office desk. There was a little sign displayed on the desk that said, “The Buck Stops Here”. My grandfather sometimes pointed to that photograph when he talked about taking responsibility for our own lives. He reminded us that a President is responsible for the well-being of the whole country and must take the blame for whatever goes wrong whether or not it is actually his fault. That was the meaning of the little sign on President Truman’s desk.

Who on Earth has no faults or never made mistakes? Ever since the first humans walked on the planet millenia ago, the people who were able to correct their own mistakes have been lauded as wise. Instead of trying to pretend that they are faultless and perfect, admitting mistakes and making honest efforts to correct them has been seen as virtuous and a character strength. Such has always been the story of mythical heroes.

By simply going about our daily routines and business affairs, we take the chance that we might screw something up. Despite our good faith efforts to do our best, errors happen to the foolish and the wise in more or less equal measure. Foolish people attempt to cover-up their errors and transgressions with untruths and blame-shifting. Wise people take ownership of their missteps and do whatever possible to make amends.

Time and again, history has shown that the cover-ups are often worse than the original violations. Cover-ups are conscious efforts to add further lies and concealment–bad stuff buried under more bad stuff. Such evil manifests as ever increasingly added deceit the longer the cover-up takes place. When a person does good to make up for errors in judgment, she or he gains respect from others and renews self-respect. When a person makes honest efforts to correct errors, she or he shows the characteristics of an ideal person.

The leader who refuses to admit and correct errors is seen as haughty and full of hubris. The haughty, hubristic person is worshipped by foolish followers who staunchly refuse to admit their own mistaken worship of the hubristic leader. The leader who takes responsibility for errors displays humility and wisdom. That leader may lose some followers, but those who remain wisely see the value of the leader’s humility.

Likewise, the ability to heed one’s own conscience and do what is rightfully correct is sometimes difficult. However, overcoming that mental block and following through to correct the fault is the right thing to do. To actually go about correcting the error is esteemed by wise people. At the very least, correcting an error at the first opportunity enables more peace of mind along with self-respect.

Ciao

The Blue Jay of Happiness quotes Ancient Greek biographer, essayist, philosopher, and priest, Plutarch. “To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.”