Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
GENERALS, LEADERS & COMMANDERS
Generals, Leaders & Commanders
Misdirected energy dissipates easily.
Such energy, being misdirected, is perforce misspent, having neither randomly, purposely, nor accidentally, achieved any desired, remedial end.
Misspent energy, more ominously, has been known to recoil upon, or to boomerang on those who misspend it. Such a boomerang infamously, historically occurred in Carthage at Zama in 202 BC, when large, Roman mirrors' reflected sunlight blinded Hannibal's big war elephants' eyes causing them to panic out of control and to trample hundreds of the great Carthaginian General's own troops.http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zama
Energy's expenditure further assumes that a common, articulable end is known, shared, and thereby sought.
Energy must be harnessed, tempered and directed in order to expedite or facilitate any foreordained reality, any articulable --ergo achievable--desired end shared in common by any group.
Nothing good happens on its own.
Causation, or predicated order, must precede all effects, without which its energy merely suspends in possibility. Until a pattern, system or paradigm is imposed upon energy's innate, inert, unrealized possibility nothing occurs.
That is where generalship, leadership or command and control come in.
They direct the disposition of energy. Such direction may be personal or it may be simply algorithmic: following prescribed steps, in prescribed order, at prescribed times, in prescribed conditions, without any exception.
These thoughts come to my mind as I reflect upon the recurring white police killings of black men and boys across the country and the reactive protests and demonstrations recurring in their sanguinary wake. Both cry out for personal or algorithmic leadership of both: white police and all protesters.
The police must be repurposed and retrained. This requires reordering political will and public expenditures, a daunting task to say the very least!
The protesters need retooling to bold new purposes and training to: refocus the expenditure of misdirected energy in both arenas, at once--police reform & resistance, & public policy reform.
Both offense and defense are ever concomitantly required of all good leaders, generals, & commanders, whatever the venue, theater, or task.
In a work of this magnitude and order involving the soul and salvation of the United States of America, all able hands, minds, feet, powers, media & purses must be openly accessed, engaged, maintained, continuously; until this racist blight, bane, scourge is ruthlessly extirpated, dug up, soil plowed and salt sowed in its furrows, to prevent its recrudescence, as the Romans prudently did in Carthage!