The Quintessential Leader

The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Although I find the author, at times, aggressively and assertively pushing the same extremist edges that this book exposes and denounces in American society today, in general, I agree with the basic premise and areas in which she exposes how Americans, in general, are consciously proud of abandoning intellect (both in educating themselves with facts and knowledge) and critical thinking (proving or disproving everything they see, hear, read, and encounter in life).

As a society, Americans in general have embraced dumbing down in every aspect of our lives. Because we choose to remain ignorant (educationally and otherwise), we have become slaves to our emotions, which makes us fair game for the ignorance that abounds in the society around us. We don’t know how to tell truth from untruth. We don’t know the difference between facts and opinions. We are so deficient in basic knowledge and the ability to think deeply about anything that we fall easily and compliantly for “junk” in everything that comes our way (we are also more biased and prejudiced against knowledge and intellect, in general, so we reject anything that sounds too intelligent because it’s just confusing us with the facts).

We don’t read, for the most part, preferring images (sound bites, videos, anything that can stimulate us visually), and because we don’t read, we don’t know anything (visual – and I would suggest that just audio falls in this category too – is quick in and quick out – I avoid video or listening to just audio anything because I need to see words in print to understand them, to process them, to think about them, to have a record to go back to when the words or images change – which they inevitably do every single time, but it’s easier to hide with video and audio than it is with print – to compare and contrast).

Therefore, when all this junk comes at us, we’re fair game because it’s couched in an “aw shucks, we’re just one of you folks” lure that engages the emotions, the biases, the prejudices, and, quite frankly, the deceitfulness of our own hearts and pulls us right into the unreason the pervades every part of American society, including all of our “sacred cows.”

The interesting thing is that even some of us who realize this refuse to admit it, because admitting it means admitting we’re wrong and we need to change. And change is the hardest thing for any of us to really do. Oh, we talk about it a lot, but the fruit of actually doing it is rare to non-existent.

And yet change we must.

Unreason exists because we allow it to exist.

We need to read – even authors like this with whom I found some of the same characteristics that she is exposing and with whom I disagree wholeheartedly on some things – and we need to know and understand with our own two eyes and our own brains fully engaged what is real and what isn’t, what is true and what isn’t, what is fact and what isn’t, and we need to be able, in our own words (not parroting someone else’s words), to explain what is real, what is true, and what is fact with depth and thought that shows we have actually done the mentally-challenging work ourselves and not abandoned out brains to the plethora of junk that’s out there ready – and, in many cases, has already to a great degree – to move in and fill up the increasing empty space we leave upon our abandonment.

There are no voids in the universe, so if we don’t use our brains, there is plenty of garbage out there that is more than happy to rent the space, at the highest cost imaginable.

For quintessential leaders, this supreme cost not only negatively affects us, but it also negatively affects our teams and our organizations.

When we stop reading, we stop learning. When we stop learning, we stop critically thinking. When we stop critically thinking, we stop understanding. When we stop understanding, we stop discerning.

When we stop discerning, we lose the ability to distinguish between truth and lies, facts and opinions, and reality and fiction.

Quintessential leaders can’t afford – nor can their teams and organizations – to allow this to happen.

How are we doing?

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