The quality of political leadership

So, there IS HOPE for the quality of political leadership!

http://news.trust.org/item/20191210134211-jlo58/

So many UK citizens carry on trusting their futures to decisions made by grey-suited elder males whose tastes in transport, education and health tend to be private, personal and privileged.

I ask myself what are the features of leadership in others which I am socially conditioned to admire, trust and respect?

In these times, in this society, where few people offer older citizens respect for old age, I ask myself what are the institutions, groups and individuals who instill in me recognition of admirable factors in people I meet?

I ask myself why do I respond like a programmed robot to superficially pleasing stimuli? Symmetrical, blemish-free features? Musical tone of voice? Staccato, stentorian, male voices of command and control?

Education from the earliest years onwards notably avoids equipping the population with ways to understand how to be Human, how to understand the huge extent to which our own humanity influences, drives, nourishes and sustains us.

As we pass through the mills of education, we can perfectly easily be refined and enriched by being alerted and sensitised to the needs of ourselves and our fellows in simple formal schoolroom scenarios.

It is a deplorably common experience for any shop assistant to suffer gratuitous rude, aggressive or dehumanising customer behaviour from the other side of the shop counter.

Early years education by role-play could give insights into the meaning of added-value to basic social interactions.

For an example in the retail world, we can learn how our understanding of our lack of awareness of the emotional and physical needs of the Other person in any given social interaction can be received as “damage” or as “gift”.

We can learn how those on whose services we rely continuously for our comfort and safety are deserving of our gratitude.

On the other side of this, we can learn to understand what happens when we indulge in violence of thought, words or actions.

We can learn how inappropriate, unconstructive and even damaging are our unfettered, uncomprehending, un-selfaware expressions of our gut reactions.

We can learn how to enhance our interpersonal skills with all service providers, and then in ever-widening circles of humanity, by substitution of frosty, impersonal, fear-based contact-avoidance with direct eye-contact, and the adoption of some of the very same positive customer-service skills taught, so late in their life-cycles, to adult recruits into the labour force.

What a world!

Office life, working life, political life transformed by ownership of self.
Our lives no longer characterised to the point of sickness of spirit by abrogation of self-respect in favour of those into whose hands we submit our fate grudgingly and with a stifled heart.