If we want things to stay the same, a lot of things are going to have to change.
~From ‘The Leopard’ by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
In Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s celebrated novel, set in Sicily during the Risorgimento, the hero, Don Fabrizio, receives this paradoxical insight from his nephew, Tancredi. The long struggle for the liberation and unification of Italy provides a panoramic metaphor for the turbulent lives of the various characters in the novel and a profound reflection on the human condition. It poses the perennial question for leadership, so relevant in our world today, riven with contradictions that we lack the will to eradicate.
John Henry Newman told us, “Growth is the only evidence of life.” And growth involves change. What does that mean for humanity? For most, it means extending control over nature and other human beings in order to secure power, possessions, and prestige. But what it should mean is a resolute determination, using all our creative and technological abilities, to extend justice, peace, and prosperity to all people in our ailing world.
What is it that we want to stay the same? And what are the things that will have to change for that to happen?
The answers to these questions are simpler than many people think. We want the things we consider to be good for us to stay the same, and we must seek to change the things that threaten to undermine the things we want to stay the same.
Our biggest problem today is deciding exactly what things are good for us. There’s this rather odd idea going around that there’s no such thing as the good of all human beings, only the good of each of us as individuals. We are told that we all choose our own goods, and we all have different values. But let’s see how that argument holds up under rational scrutiny.
Is slavery good for people? Is meaninglessness, injustice, violence, poverty, unemployment, loneliness, ignorance, or despair good for people? Is selfishness good for people? Of course, no one thinks any of those things are good for them or anyone else, because all of those things degrade humanity. Their opposites are the goods that provide human fulfilment.
Freedom, meaning and purpose, justice, peace, prosperity, meaningful work, family, friends, and community, education, hope, and self-control are all goods we need to fulfil our potential. But here’s the crunch – unless we are prepared to strive so that all people may enjoy these goods, we will never really possess them fully ourselves. If I close my eyes to slavery, violence, and injustice suffered by other people, then my own freedom, peace, and just treatment remain at risk and incomplete.
The reality is that we are social animals who only find fulfilment in relationships and community. It doesn’t matter how intelligent or talented you might be; you will achieve nothing without good relationships. Those relationships can only be built on trust, and trust depends entirely on truth.
That is why honesty is so important to us. We are dependent, rational animals who develop self-knowledge through relationships. Dishonesty, and self-deception inevitably result in broken relationships and all sorts of mental health problems. Of course, the lie is at the heart of all human misery, and is inextricably bound up with the violence endemic in society. The lie is the most fundamental violation of justice.
So while we have to accept that constant change is part and parcel of the geophysical and biological reality we inhabit, and that it also imposes itself on our lives as individual and social animals, its greatest impact is on us as rational animals with questioning and creative minds. So the real question is: how should rational, relational beings not just manage change, but drive change?
If you are a successful business person or professional, or someone vested with a measure of authority in the community or nation, you are in a position of privilege, not unlike that of Don Fabrizio. And the paradox applies to you. Of course, there is nothing wrong with privilege per se; hierarchy is a reality of the human condition, as has been proven by every revolution in history that claimed to be fighting for equality.
So you must ask, if I want the privileges I enjoy to stay the same, what are the things that will have to change? The way the privilege is used will have to change, for privilege carries responsibility. What for? For the promotion of the truth about what it means to be human, for justice and mercy, for vision, virtue, and vigilance, for compassion and service; in a word, for leadership. Leadership means service, not status.
Unjust societies are typically defined by the flourishing of only the chosen few, and in naturally imperfect human communities, all are guilty of injustice to some degree or other. So justice, tempered by mercy, is the ideal for which we as rational beings must strive if we are indeed leaders – in the home, school, workplace, community, or nation. That is where you will find the things that have to change if you want things to stay the same.
