Leadership in The Form of Fear

24, May 1999
'...we have Carlos John, the executive assistant at Clico, insisting that the hangings will bring for us kudos from around the world. What buffoonery!'

Years ago a young man from Barataria who then lived in Brooklyn stole some cocaine from the chieftains of the New York underworld and fled back to TT with the proceeds he gained from the sale of the drugs. He stayed in TT for well over three years before he decided to make his way back to Brooklyn on the erroneous assumption that all would be forgotten and forgiven.

There is a code of ethics and a system of laws identified with the perpetrators of murder and mayhem that is indeed quite logical in the pursuance of their bloody business. Two days after his arrival back in Brooklyn, that Barataria young man was found dead, stuffed to fit perfectly in a garbage bin.

The logic of the underworld indicates that "it is only business", nothing personal is to be attributed to the young man's demise. If anyone, so the logic goes, is ever allowed to get away in open, flagrant contravention of the "laws" of the underworld, then the chieftains will never be able to discipline working membership, accumulate vast riches and keep their "ship of state" afloat. It is about instilling fear as a deterrent to recalcitrant and unacceptable behaviour. Their morality, their sense of values are maintained through the breeding of fear.

When the chieftain of Piparo, in response to the question: "Boss, the children too?", said to his henchmen: "Kill everybody!", it was about maintaining morality through the breeding of fear. It was only business. It was the "law"! Aren't the concepts and the very words familiar? Are we not getting the very same postulations from our exemplars in society?

And furthermore if you indicate by your lifestyle and your actions that the true purpose of life is merely the accumulation and hoarding of wealth and wielding of power for its own sake, and that any "means" towards such ends are quite justifiable and morally appropriate, then what are we saying to those who follow?

If the end, if the only "ideal" is to own expensive cars and yachts and accumulate materially and gain social power at the expense of a broader definition of life and living, then who is to judge the youth who terminates his/her schooling to sell drugs, ie seeks a short-cut to accumulating the very said "ideals"? With speed and in shorter time he/she achieves the same end-result as the one who goes to university and acquires a profession and social legitimacy to come out and in time accumulate the said material things at the expense of a social conscience.

Here is the rub: there is absolutely no difference between the two personalities described above except for the level of patience acquired by the latter.

So we can have today an honourable Prime Minister and Attorney General who can say "hang all nine" because "it's the law", "we are neither for nor against", so it is nothing personal. And now we have Carlos John, the executive assistant at Clico, insisting that the hangings will bring for us kudos from around the world.

What buffoonery! Are they exemplifying what inspired, enlightened leadership is about? Certainly not, only vulgar leaders pander to mass hysteria generated by the pure emotionalism arising from the hurt and horror of crimes committed.

In every age, in every epoch, there comes to exist a progressive tendency that is at first only latent within the old framework, a kernel of the new and the advanced that has to be nurtured, like a child, and which embodies the morality of the new that is yet to be given birth. Enlightened leadership is leadership that pays homage to the new progressive content within the old form and seeks to nurture it until its time has come to flourish.

Every single leader in today's world, whether male or female, must embrace the demands of the women's movement in all aspects of existence or that leader is no leader. That certainly was not the case 30 years ago. So too corporal punishment and capital punishment are today relics of past existence as is women inequality.

All enlightened and intelligent leadership would seek to do the utmost to bury those concepts. It never happens all at once but it is the historic mission of leaders to do their bit and keep plugging away.

Developed leadership is not to be judged by the quantum of materials that it manages to manufacture, accumulate and distribute. It is to be judged by the enlightenment that it generates, the level of human relations that it achieves and the sense of morality that it embraces. On that basis all things become possible.

The same holds true for nations that see themselves as leaders in the world, the criteria are the same. In this sense, for example, the USA is not a leading light in the world, far from it. In our view the USA is still plagued by its frontier town mentality and "powerful-stupidness" wherein the maxim holds that "God didn't make all men equal, Samuel Colt did", by simply inventing the "six-shooter".

e-mail: brenco@tstt.net.tt