Take me to your leader

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Once too often people have referred to "my" leaders. Of course, I do not have any leaders, nor do I belong to any organization that has leaders. But it seems to be an assumption that one who has opinions must have leaders and belong to organizations.

So, amichs de mi, I have my curiosity roused and I ask - any and all of course, butr particularly Aesomely Glorious, leejosepho, visagrunt, Inuyasha, Master Pedant, teaearlgreyhot, pandabear, HerrGrimm, and if you are not on the list it means no more than that my fingers get tired -

Who are your leaders?

Of have you none?

Not whom do you respect / admire / like - whom do you follow?

That is a question that requires some context.

There are a number of people from whom I take orders--I work in government, which is a hierarchical institution, after all. So most assuredly the Queen, the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, the Minister, the Deputy Minister, my ADM, my DG and my Director are all, within that context, my leaders. But that leadership is confined to my employment.

Professionally I am a member of two professional bodies whose rules I am obliged to follow in order to maintain my professional standing. So the Board of the CPSBC and the Benchers of the LSBC are my leaders in that sense.

My personal pursuits often involve leadership--voluntary service within organizations of people coming together for a common purpose. Sometimes I take on leadership roles within these organizations, other times I am a follower.

But if we take this up to a higher level, the context changes again.

If the question is, "who leads my thinking?" then the question is much more diffuse. The simple answer, "no one, I think for myself," is both superficially true, and profoundly false. My thinking is, indeed, my own, but I would be foolish to pretend that my thinking had not been influenced by my family, my friends, my teachers, and the people whose work I admire.

The list of these people is astoundingly long. I think it's too trite to dismiss, "those whom I respect, admire or like." The fact that I respect, admire or like a person is very likely to mean that the person will have had an effect on the way that I view the world and the way that I think about things. So in that sense, I am their follower--and in the same sense, I may well be their leader.

Leaders? Leaders? While i may be dictated to by my government and operate within the accepted modes of my society for the most part I accept no leader. I do however accept the authority of some people over their feilds of expertise, eg the plumber, I accept his/her expertise and cede authority in deciding how to repair my plumbing but that does not make them my leader.

It might be somewhat 'cranky' but I think free thought and self discipline are just fine, learning to salivate or crack a boner at the abropriate slogans or gestures, is to my way of living the actions of a muppet who has abdicated both freedom and responsibility two things I hold dear to my heart.

peace j

I do not really follow a particular person in that I will listen to them blindly (kind of mixing my metaphors there). But those people I respect have helped to shape my thinking on many issues (as visagrunt said). So some examples include:

Elizabeth May: leader of the Canadian Green Party. Very well spoken lady, who has done an excellent job on selling the benefits of Green ideology to me (not personally, of course).

Wikipedia Articles: much of my thinking comes from reading Wikipedia articles on various ideologies and schools of thoughts, then taking what I agree with and discarding what I disagree with, and mixing them all together into the AstroGeekist philosophy that I follow.

Obscure Science Popularisers: some of the books I`ve read and podcasts I`ve listened to have helped make me the skeptic that I am.

Terry Pratchett: an satirist and author who's books present a sort of outlook on the human condition with I largely agree with.

There are others, but those would be some of the major ones.

An interestingly various start. Visagrunt, I had started an acknowledgement of your contrib but web problems blew it away. Yours of the three accounts is closest to me - I too have a host of people and books and events that have contributed a datum here, suggested a correction there, or proposed a hypothesis.

Astrogeek, you seem closer to Herself's modus operandi - in range and style, not of course in specific sources.

Looking foward to more.

Herself?

As they used to say on the radio, this is a true story, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Principal Dramatis Personae:

Philologos - early retired academic working as consultant to keep a crust of bread on the table

Herself - wife and meet helpmate to Philologos, artistically inclined and usefully complementarty to Philologos in many areas

Number 1 Son - not that I was ever a fan of Charlie Chan [they could have hired an actual oriental to play him - a Filipino would have been better than a Swede] - the musically inclined offspring of Philologos and Herself, in personality intriguingly mixing the two natures, recently passed from young punkhood to a reasonably mature young adulthood.

Those who lead ... and I do not presently know any such person/s other than within the dynamic of accountability among the brethren/sistren.

I am supposed to be led by my MP and PM - now I consider nature as my leader. We can't beat it!

I suspect we are all led by a lot of people and experiences of which we may be only dimly aware. Things we dismiss or soon forget on a conscious level sometimes work their way lower and remain, like dirt in a rug.

There is no person whose ideas I consciously follow, though there are certainly people whose ideas seem better to me than others. I like the Taoist philosophy, though I wouldn't consider myself an adherent even to that.

I don't know. I am a type of guy who is NOT a natural leader and likes to be ordered what to do. I also don't like someone who force himself onto me like when he decides I am his pet or something. Leader is a word used in the ancient world. We live in a modern society, not a tribe.

Yet I have seen - and heard - an experienced and far from stupid senior academic and department head say [to a fellow student of mine] "There is only one genius in this field" in a tone of intense reverence. There are even in this modern society [I will not get into the "tribe" discussion, though a lot of people are perturbed by the ethnocentric implications of that usage] leaders and followers; if you look you will sooner or later spot them.

In a theoretical or moral capacity: Ghandi. <3 He is my absolute hero of all time. I would love to be as good to people, as compassionate he was.

Ghandi walk the paths of India barefoot and developed very heavy callouses on his feet. His health was quite frail and his frequent fasting caused him to have very bad breath. You might say he was a super calloused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis, a super calloused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis....;.

ruveyn

Did that one already, but repetition - including recycling one's bons mots for each nears new class - is not illegitimate.

aCCCH! A senior moment. My memory is not what it used to be.

ruveyn