Heaven Has No Leader

In third grade my parents gave me a Joe Palooka punching bag. Painted on its side was a full-length portrait of the great comic hero boxer, his gloves raised ready to take on anyone foolish enough to challenge him. Eight year olds know no fear, I bare knuckled him to the ground, but each time I smacked Joe, he was up before the count of ten, wobbly for sure, but upright and ready for my next beautifully placed left hook. The base, filled with sand ballast, rocked Joe back into action ready for whatever these skinny eight-year-old arms could dish out.

Physicists of even miner distinction can easily describe what laws of the universe enabled my punching bag to return to its original position. Isaac Newton (Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 1687) explained the operating principles of basic physics, the rules that enabled my boxing buddy to re-lift his gloves for yet another go at it. Eventually, though, even he wore out and deflated into disuse, an example then, not only of physics, but also of Charles Darwin’s survival of the fittest (On the Origin of Species, 1859 CE).

Both Newtonian physics and Darwinian biology explain processes whereby the world rights itself, and where one change leads to another. Knowing these real world “rules” allows greater understanding of how the universe and all its segments work together to form one balanced entity.

Beyond the world of things, to which even the human body is subject, lie other equally complex worlds of human behavior most with their own explainable patterns and duration. Men and women make decisions, they interact; they fight, make love, buy shoes, create parks, and develop nations. This world of human interactions, the relationships between people and groups of people, between nations and neighbors, is also governed by “rules” that have only begun to be articulated by social scientists.

Georg Hegel (circa 1800-1820 CE) lectured that every social event or movement (the thesis) contains its own contradiction (antithesis), which in turn combined to form a new social entity (the synthesis). The social metamorphic process spirals as its own chain of events, each synthesis is its own new thesis containing its own contradictory antithesis. Hegel constructed a theoretical model to explain the evolution of social change.

Thomas Carlyle (Sartor Resartus , 1832 CE), in looking at how and why heroes appear as they are needed, noted that heroes don’t just drop into hot spots on demand, but are, instead, the product of their times. Turmoil creates a need for action. Occasionally among the limited inventory of people with the essential skills to save the day, a leader steps forward.

Men and women with just the right skill sets tend to be in rather short at any given moment. Horatio may have saved Rome one day, but given the number of times Rome was sacked, the cupboard of warrior saviors was bare when the Goths came to visit. On other occasions that same display case may have shone with numerous would be heroes on display, except that the pitiful paucity of sackers that year left them with little to do. Had Grendel not threatened, Beowulf would be nothing but another blustering sword wielder. General Lee might have been just another Southern gentlemen soldier had there not been raging antagonisms between the North and the South. John Woolman would not have preached so admirably against slavery had there not been manacled Africans.

Modern scholars of leadership have investigated the role played by leaders, the qualities most commonly displayed by these leaders, and process paths of leadership action. Barbara Kellerman [Followership, 2008 CE], much like Carlyle, pointed out the shaping strength of followers. I would guess that leaders are defined also by their antagonists. The nature of a situation defines what will be needed for successful change, the skill set of the would be rescuer. Neither David of Goliath fame nor Beowulf gained their hero/leader status through their negotiating skills or by collaboration, large tools in the scabbard of modern day leaders.
I lack a truly good descriptive title for the whole process by which leaders and followers interact to accomplish some goal either at the atomistic level of a single leadership event or of the more massive systems engaging whole peoples. I suspect that such a system of checks and balances is far more intricate than mere identification of the major players. When I visit physic classes I am regularly struck by how similar their diagrams of the components of a single atom are to their diagrams of planetary systems. What makes a leader? What makes a threatener? What makes a need for change? Do leaders have generic leadership skills? Does the nature of the event, the threat, determine the skill set of each period’s white knight? Though the label eludes me for the formula within social interactions of A + B + C = X, the definition of X would include change focused episodes of variable duration where change happens as a result of the interaction between leaders and followers in answer to some need or void. Such a definition would exclude catastrophic climate changes (not human), ranting street corner wannabe leaders (no followers), or even the Black Plague that re-hinged entire social and economic systems (only need).

Such a system or leadership mechanism serves, like the ballast in my Joe Palooka punching bag, to readjust the human dynamic by means of human intervention. Just as Newtonian physics sets out to determine the hidden rules by which the planets stay on their courses, why apples fall toward the earth and not the sun, how water always runs down hill, and even why birds seem able to confound the great laws of gravity, so also congruent and interacting with the physical world, there exits a human world of social discourse and social interaction with its own mechanisms for change and readjustment. When something upsets the status quo, leaders and followers act to right the difficulty.
Such a process, the intervention of a need-solver-answer mechanism by tinkering with the yin and yang weights through micro and macro adjustments, preserves the delicate balance within the social universe.

Neither leadership nor followership could exist, either in Heaven or in Hell, at least as generally envisaged. Both are perfect worlds. In Heaven, perfect good reigns, no problems exist, nothing is off balance, no inhabitants take orders, and no one needs to step up to solve some heavenly dispute; no solvers are needed in a conundrum less world. Hell is Heaven turned upside down. Every thing is perfectly evil with no hope, no ambition, and no striving. In one world Joe never keels over; in the other he never gets back up. Both perfections achieve absolute equilibrium and never need change. The human condition, as Heraclitus (circa 550 BCE) observed, is a world of change, where no one can ever step twice into the same river, nor is he the same man who stepped into the river again.

The world of physical change maintains its balance through physical systems. The river flowing by may ever be different, but it also never changes. The cycle of evaporation and rain causes a steady flow of water unless that cycle is broken in some way; the Hudson is ever the same Hudson even while it is never the same. Science has discovered regular habits, rules, methods of balancing various forces that explain how the planets maintain their equilibrium and predictability, how rivers continue to flow, how the animals adapt over time to new situational needs.

Likewise systems exist in the world of human interaction. When a problem begs for an answer, humans seek a solution. Heroes arise only in response to some calamity. They are midwifed by those they will lead. Though great men arise only in time of great need, the inverse is not necessarily true. A casting call, advertising a need for a comic opera trained male, may not produce the lead singer on the first night of try outs; in fact the right diva may appear only after numerous call backs – if at all. When the need for a leader, like an empty cup, finds both the wine and steward to pour it, can leadership address that need. The Israelites stayed in bondage for many, many years before a Moses arose to lead them out of Egypt. It took one quirky royal princess plucking a Jewish baby out of the Nile and the boy’s hovering mother to teach him the ways of both peoples. The man, the skills, and cause needed to unite before Moses could bring the Jews to their promised land.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; each leap forward yearns for solid ground; and yet each crashing attempt to fly eventually produced the Wright Brothers. Just as combining many small turbines produces energy greater than the sum of the individual outputs, human intervention within a chain of events causes power well beyond a bag of random nudges. Unrest produces the need for ease, resulting in a readjusted social balance. An amalgam of leadership events, like the ballast in my Palooka punching bag, regenerates balance even while it tilts that balance toward another need for adjustment. A system of constant tinkering keeps our social worlds in balance, a system analogous to the planetary process of minor changes that helps keep each sphere on course while still allowing each pass around the sun to be unique and yet the same.

Leadership, a purely human phenomenon, perfects itself only in a world of human imperfections.

Heaven has no leaders, but neither does Hell.