work, leaders - a few thoughts...

Most of us carry on with our boring meaningless jobs. And yet motivational media continues to talk about pursuing meaningful careers, doing what one wants and all that shit. Perhaps it's an illusion which if adopted, can motivate us to carry on with hope and optimism. Like God, it has the power to make us do stupid things in hope that something better will come out of the stupidity.

 

Belief in God is a fundamental necessity for most humans. For some of the rest, the belief simply does not make sense. And for the remaining individuals, like me, even the concept of 'sense', as we know it, does not apply to these things and therefore, choosing to believe or not believe is simply not feasible based on any rational explanation. I've written about it many times, so will not flaunt my agnosticism again. But brought this up to draw parallels with one's trying to find meaningful work or meaning in work or building meaningful careers.

 

I am not sure exactly when I wrote the above two paragraphs... may be some time last month. However I totally don't have any memory of writing these. I just found this now in my drafts. Happens with me often, when I look back at my old blog posts, I often cannot recollect having thought and written down all that shit past 10 years! But I do think I did a good job making sure they survived this long and will last forever if internet and the content on it can be trusted for its longevity.

 

Going back to where this post started, it seems to me now, that as humans evolved, and so did leaders among humans, the part where the leaders motivate other humans to work became the most critical aspect of leadership. Deep down, the purpose of leadership is to make sure the show goes on. And the biggest show on earth is our human civilization. The illusion of building something meaningful and in turn achieving something meaningful out of it is necessary to keep leaders motivated. However most followers are motivated by lesser incentives, like staying alive. These respective motivations are probably instinctual for both leaders and followers. Their respective concepts of rationality are built on top of basic framework defined by what drives them by design.

 

I am wondering whether the above line of argument leads to the conclusion that leaders are born, but cannot be made. I am not sure. Depends on whether some of these instincts are natural or can be built through nurture when the mind and personality are taking shape. I don't have sufficient information to derive a logical conclusion here. And also, to classify all humans into 2 groups - 'leaders' and 'followers' - doesn't seem very right... There must be many more types, and it might just be the limitation of our language that we can't identify shades of gray, and shades of all the other colors possible.