“However vast the darkness, we must apply our own light.” Stanley Kubrick
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” Albert Camus
When I was a soldier in Vietnam, I started reading Kierkegaard. Gosh, what a surprise! Søren Kierkegaard, a key figure in existentialist philosophy, explored themes of individual existence, faith, and the human condition. Several quotes encapsulate his perspective: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards,” This quote highlights the retrospective nature of understanding while emphasizing the forward-moving experience of life. Another quote, “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” connects the experience of freedom with the unsettling feeling of responsibility that comes with choice. Finally, his quote, “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself,” underscores the risks inherent in pursuing one’s authentic self. All of those quotes felt particularly relevant to my experience in Vietnam as a soldier in 1968—I was definitely anxious and lived in fear of losing myself. They all seem particularly relevant now.
Freedom. Authenticity. Choice. Responsibility. Big topics. I’ve always enjoyed reading the existentialists’ philosophies on these subjects, and, about five years ago, I wrote a post on existential moments to summarize my own thoughts. In that post, I explored how our assumptions and narratives about the world, as well as our identities, shape our existential views.
We are now facing an existential moment as a country and, by necessity, as organizations and individuals. At a recent Elissa Slotkin event I attended, she emphasized that this is not a “wait and see” moment but an existential crisis for our country. AND, as a result, we all have existential choices we need to make individually and organizationally.
The question is, what choices can we make that speak to our need to assume more control in our individual lives and in the lives of the organizations to which we belong? To me, it’s a choice between abdicating control to POTUS (the President of the United States) or asserting control through LOTUS (Local Organizing Teams Under our Sovereignty). In this post, I’m going to frame our choices on 3 five-point scales that enable us to assess our own levels of assertiveness and/or abdication in the choices we make. Perhaps I should have titled this post POTUS vs. LOTUS.
Here are the scales.
Communication Style: From ignore and inform TO involve, invest and inspire
5.0: Inspire: Creating a vision of possibilities that makes people want to join and contribute.
4.0: Invest: Providing opportunities to take responsibility and to own the work.
3.0: Involve: Engaging people in meaningful conversations and efforts to achieve goals.
2.0: Inform: Sharing updates and letting people know what’s going on.
1.0: Ignore/Abuse: Paying little or no attention to people and exploiting them to achieve personal objectives.
We are so rich in possibility and so poor in imagination and implementation. We not only need to create an inspiring vision that will mobilize and motivate people to join, but we also need to provide opportunities for people to take ownership in the change process and to engage them in meaningful conversations. Currently, people are not only uninformed but are also bombarded with disinformation. We need to up our game from dumping information on people to involving them in dialogue, investing them in the future, and inspiring them to a higher purpose. It’s easy to understand how angry and disillusioned people have become by a system that feels like it is indifferent to their lives. In the absence of an inspiring vision, opportunities to take responsibility, and an experience of authentic conversation, people tend to drift to the right instead of shift to the left.
Relating Style: From competitive and independent TO collaborative and interdependent
5.0: Interdependent: Actively seeking ways to help others succeed.
4.0: Collaborative: Giving what you can and openly sharing what you have.
3.0: Independent: Getting what you need.
2.0: Competitive: Taking what you want.
1.0: Dependent: Requiring assistance from others.
People throughout the world are dependent on some form of assistance for food, housing, and health care. Americans are not exempt. 40% of Americans have personal incomes less than 30K per year; 70% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings; 63% of Americans don’t have a four-year college degree. A very small percentage of those people want to remain dependent. They simply don’t have the support, or never had the support they needed, to become independent. In this fiercely competitive culture, it’s very easy to get sucked into win-lose mindsets. Everything becomes a zero-sum game in which each person fights mightily to get what they think they need to declare themselves a “winner.” We need to elevate our relationships to more collaborative and interdependent partnerships in which the entire focus is not on winners and losers but on “growers” and “builders.”
Leadership Style: From detractors and observers TO participants, contributors, and leaders.
5.0: Leader: Stepping up to make things happen and aligning resources behind the values and mission.
4.0: Contributor: Generating creative and fresh ideas to deal with changing conditions.
3.0: Participant: Responding responsibly and joining with others to make a difference.
2.0: Observer: Waiting to see what will happen and watching from the sidelines.
1.0: Detractor: Getting in the way of the mission, distracting from the goals, and violating the values.
In the first six months of Trump’s second term, we have seen distraction taken to a whole new level. We are greeted every day with headlines that leave our heads spinning, our hearts hurting, and our souls sinking. What has stunned me in this whole flood of bad news is how many people are taking a “wait and see” attitude. To me, this feels like an existential crisis, but Republicans continue to be obsequious, and Democrats don’t seem that willing to fight. We not only need to respond responsibly but also generate creative and focused ideas that appeal to a majority of voters.
Assessing Trump on all three styles paints an ugly picture: He ignores experts and “informs” the world with his baseless opinions and lies. He is competitive and independent (unilateral) in a world that desperately needs collaborative and interdependent leaders. He distracts us with egregious orders that we passively observe. He is a 2-2-1 in a world that needs a 5-5-5. Leadership is about vision and values—not vanity, veneer (a thin layer of superficial reason and/or a deceptive appearance that masks the truth) or vintage (old, outmoded, or old-fashioned thinking and relating).
When people within government attempt to push back or call out these behaviors, they get punished. In a recent NYT interview, a whistleblower in the Department of Justice, who had served with integrity for over 15 years, was recently fired for refusing to lie about a case involving an immigrant who was wrongly deported to El Salvador. I highly recommend this story if you are willing to let go of any sense of comfort you still may be clinging to. It’s jarring, chilling, and frightening. While we have always been attracted to false sources of comfort, in this case, comfort could kill us.
Fortunately, on a local level, we have lots of 5-5-5 leaders who might guide us out of this morass. I feel so grateful to be working with people like Glen Chown, CEO of the Grand Traverse Land Conservancy, who is leading efforts to conserve our natural wonders; Sakura Takano, CEO of Rotary Charities, and Dave Mengebier, CEO of the Community Foundation, who are catalyzing local organizations to collaborate more effectively; and many others who are doing great work with their Local Organizational Teams, who are still operating Under some level of Sovereignty. These LOTUS organizations are doing what they can to preserve and protect our environment, our nonprofit organizations, and the vulnerable people in our communities.
On a state level, we have several governors who are operating at much higher levels on the three scales than people in the current administration: Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, JB Pritzer of Illinois, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Laura Kelly of Kansas, Wes Moore of Maryland, Gavin Newsom of California, and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. While they might not all be 5-5-5 leaders, they clearly operate above the 2-2-1 authoritarian bully currently in the White House. Hopefully, one of them (or a still unknown 5-5-5 somewhere out there) will help us rise from the ashes in 2028.
Each moment represents an existential choice: we can choose to be detractors or aspire to be leaders in every situation; we can choose to act competitively or collaboratively in every interaction; we can choose to inform or aspire to inspire with every conversation.
I’m hoping that no matter how vast the darkness, we apply our own light to lead the way out. I’m hoping that in an increasingly unfree world, we demonstrate our existence with acts of rebellion. I’m hoping our unsettled feelings of responsibility lead to choices that move us up the scales. I’m hoping we dare to lose our footing and our comfort in order to avoid losing ourselves, our souls, and our sanity. Finally, I’m hoping we will see our current situation as the existential crisis that it is and shift our own behaviors to the pursuit of freedom. May it be so.
Amen Ricky! Thank you