The leadership of the rest of us

After March 2020 when we were brain-fried with overwhelming virology, genetics, and immunology controversies, in march 2022 should be easier for us to extract the essentials from war uncertainties, and refocus to # Stay physically fit and healthy # Stay professionally relevant for the socio-economic changes to come # Be grateful for our hard-acquired and debatable democracy # Be here for your loved ones, colleagues, friends, and whoever else is important to you # Be humble, see and accept the world as it is # Do what you can and what really is up to you # Learn to understand # Be an ordinary leader # Pray: ” May the Queen of Peace preserve the world from the madness of war” – Pope Francis

In the attempt to make peace in my mind with the war near my home country’s border, I’ve learned mainly about interests, dictatorships, war games, emotional strategy, and the ongoing long wars for the liberalism of each nation. As a regular citizen, I am trying to deeply understand what is understandable and eventually decide some actions, as preferred tools for managing stress.

I have to admit that I didn’t know before precisely what an oligarch is and almost forgot the fascinating expensive war science&technology that humankind currently possesses.

The oligarchs

seem to be a sort of mega-rich judoka-educated and militarised club of very efficient jerks, intimidating the majority of the world super-leaders, eventually well educated. It is about some mega-rich brilliant criminals that indirectly are killing or mentally harassing the rest of us, the average people.

I suddenly realized that the “brilliant jerks” club was here long before. They lived and acted and the millions of regular citizens tolerated them for decades. The world’s well-educated super-leaders knew them well and maybe some dealt with them some good businesses. The war was here long ago and made a few richer and richer, due to a smart mechanism in place.

Garry Kasparov, the famous Russian chess world champion, interviewed about Moscow’s geopolitical strategy, said in 2016 (1): Chess is not the right metaphor for the dictatorship of a single man, like that of Putin. He can’t afford to play long-term when his survival depends on the day-to-day answers and threats. He plays poker, bluffing and intimidating, counting on weak rivals that quit and ignore the fact that he is not playing by the rules.

Ian H. Robertson Ph.D. wrote in 2014 about Putin’s psychology (2): Absolute power for long periods makes you blind to risk, highly egocentric, narcissistic, and utterly devoid of self-awareness. They also make you see other people as objects and the emotional-cognitive consequence of all this is…contempt. Progressive isolation and contempt for anyone else’s opinion are classic signs of the “hubris syndrome”—that acquired personality disorder to which some world leaders are susceptible.

War science&technology

impresses me again as proof of the incredible capacity of the humans to augment their physical destruction force as well as to develop such a profitable business on that, based on the supply and demand rule and probably on smart marketing strategies of the producers. If the war is ingrained or not in human nature is both a scientific and a philosophical debate. Beyond that debate, the warfare industry marketing and business development departments are nurturing some warrior-type leaders augmenting the request for weapons and selling them, through business as usual partnerships. The industry is selling them the ultimate power of death by crime. The rest is history… and could be the future as well.

The leadership of the rest of us

The war crisis leadership of the educated ordinary people depends on each one’s capability and the collective capability to understand and accept the current reality as it is right now and to focus on what one can control.

What certainties do we have? We have our health and our mental and physical strength to be patient dealing with uncertainty. We have however to deal with the new certainties of inflation, economic recession, and energetic crisis. Preserving and adapting our professional relevance to these changes could be a good idea to focus on.

The questions are the same old questions, refreshed and reframed recently during the first months of the pandemic: To be or not to be? To be or not to be penniless? To run away or not? To fight or not to fight? The answers are difficult personal choices and any answer could be right as long as one takes the conscious responsibility to choose what is possible from reality, to select reliable data and information, and then make one’s inner peace to act calmly whatever scenario would come and when the time is right.

According to James Landale, BBC Diplomatic correspondent, there could be some possible scenarios or a mix of them:

Many years of war in Ukraine: Maybe Russia cannot provide enough troops to cover such a vast country. perhaps after many years, with maybe new leadership in Moscow, Russian forces eventually leave Ukraine, bowed and bloodied, just as their predecessors left Afghanistan in 1989 after a decade fighting Islamist insurgents.
European or nuclear war
Diplomatic solution: Ukraine, say, accepts Russian sovereignty over Crimea and parts of the Donbas. In turn, Putin accepts Ukrainian independence and its right to deepen ties with Europe. This may not seem likely. But it is not beyond the realms of plausibility that such a scenario could emerge from the wreckage of a bloody conflict.
Putin ousted – what if that outcome was him losing power? “It might seem unthinkable but it is not impossible.”

Our leadership as ordinary people consists in facing the anticipated economical recession with dignity and solidarity. Ordinary people from Ukraine are at war for a long time now and are currently making their fundamental choices. There is a lot to learn from them and their leaders.

The trump card in this poker game could be the leadership of the ordinary people from the Russian Federation, speaking up and fighting for liberalism instead of voting through silence for dictatorship. It could be the most efficient heroism and sacrifice of all. Sting expressed it in his 1985- released song „Russians”, hoping that the Russians love their children too:

„There is no monopoly on common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology, regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too”

The peace leadership The leadership of the regular citizen in the no-war zones and times means not to ignore or react badly to the surrounding so-called jerks, eventually talented, successful, ambitious, with a sort of undiagnosed personality disorder or not, but toxic, bad for groups, organizations, or countries in the long run. In a study (3) prevalence rates of personality disorders in the general population were fairly high for any personality disorder (12.16%; -17.02%). On average, more than 1 in 10 people could suffer from some type of undiagnosed personality disorder. Some of them could be the so-called “brilliant jerks” or could be simply toxic people constantly generating bad things and bad emotions around them, exhausting the group. Despite their high performance or expertise in specific narrow areas, they contempt and lack empathy for others.

If we ignore, quit or react emotionally to toxic behavior, we are making their game. They will only get worse, more powerful, even richer. Every organization has its “jerks”, it is human nature.

Democracy gives anyone a voice, including bad and corrupt people or groups. Liberalism is very hard to be built, continuous dialogue, non-aggressivity, morality, and ethical decisions and actions are very hard lessons to be learned by arrogant greedy humans. But the danger of any form of dictatorship is here and is worse than any democratic tough lesson.

The oligarchs

War science&technology

The leadership of the rest of us

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