Glenn's blog

I'm about halfway through Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership by Joseph Jaworski.

flickr photo by Joelk75

I've written about his former partner Adam Kahane before.

The book is an unusual sort of business/leadership book in that it's organized like an autobiography and is about leadership as an inner path - a path of service rather than one of power and control.

Peter Senge writes in the introduction:

He suggests that the fundamental choice that enables true leadership in all situations (including, but not limited to, hierarchical leadership) is the choice to serve life. He suggests that in a deep sense, my capacity as a leader comes from my choice to allow life to unfold through me. This choice results in a type of leadership that we've known very rarely, or that we associate exclusively with extraordinary individuals like Gandhi or King. In fact, this domain of leadership is available to us all, and may indeed be crucial for our future.

Did you catch that? "This domain of leadership is available to us all."

...We search for special individuals with leadership potential, rather than developing the leadership potential in everyone. We are easily distracted by what this or that leader is doing, by the melodrama of people in power trying to maintain their power and others trying to wrest it from them. When things are going poorly, we blame the situation on incompetent leaders, thereby avoiding any personal responsibility. When things become desperate, we can easily find ourselves waiting for a great leader to rescue us. Through all of this, we totally miss the bigger question: "What are we, collectively, able to create?"

Do we really need a leader to come along to lead us? What if we accept ourselves as leaders and let life unfold through us? What if we each embrace our own higher purpose instead of running from it or throwing up obstacles?

On a related note, I recently finished Poke the Box by Seth Godin – a manifesto about starting, where he writes:

As soon as we willingly and blindly accept what’s given, we lose all power. Only by poking, testing, modifying, and understanding can we truly own anything, truly exert our influence.

And here's the best advice he could possibly have given:

Imagine that the world had no middlemen, no publishers, no bosses, no HR folks, no one telling you what you couldn’t do.

If you lived in that world, what would you do?

Go. Do that.

Amen to that.

I'm on my way back to Vancouver from Texas, waiting for my flight to board. Reading through my rss reader I saw a new post from Seth Godin that caught my eye.

This post is titled "Sabotage!" but has nothing to do with the Beastie Boys song. What it is about is how we often undercut our own potential by doing what's safe and comfortable.

This paragraph in particular:

Or consider the way we resist opportunities to lead, to connect, to do work that matters. We don't resist because we're not capable of it... we resist because if our marketing fails, if we don't get the job or earn the trust, then we're off the hook. No promises made, which means no promises to keep.

I see this happen in animal rights activism a lot. I've seen people come up with an idea but immediately start thinking about ways that it won't work, reasons why they shouldn't even start working on it.

I've listened to conversations about how people would do more if only they could quit their job, if only they could work for an animal rights organization, if only they could win the lottery. What they're doing is creating fake constraints that prevent them from working hard and taking risks and possibly failing.

It's all self-sabotage.

I've done more than my share of this sort of thing over the years. It's hard not too. It seems like it's a part of our very nature.

But that still doesn't excuse me from taking those risks, from working on projects even if I don't feel like I have enough experience, from doing things that are uncomfortable and a lot of work.

This post reminded me of an activist here in Vancouver who recently decided to start tabling at events, even though she had never done it before. She's really taking this to heart – when something needs to be done, we can't wait around for someone else to do it, we have to get in there and make things happen ourselves. We're the only ones we can count on. And by we I mean each and every one of us.

What great projects and ideas are you sabotaging?

Over the recent years more and more information has been coming out about how harmful the production of animal products is to the environment. But by and large the environmental movement has worked really hard to sidestep this whole issue. When they do talk about it they end up advocating for "local" or "grass-fed" animal products, which also have marginally less environmental impact.

Why is this?

Environmentalists provide a continual sense of betrayal to animal rights advocates. We are so aligned on so many issues – and veganism is a step we all have to take if we hope to deal with the problem of feeding the world without a whole new planet – but they are constantly showing little to no concern for the animals involved in their "environment."

Here's my hypothesis. Environmentalists will hardly ever agree with animal rights activists because they are starting from a position of use. The world and the environment are ours to use, and animals are simply a part of that environment.

That's one of the reasons why some of the largest conservation groups were originally "sportsmen's" groups (hunters, fishermen, and other forms of animal killers).

As animal rights activists, we need to see that the environmental movement is founded on an ethic of "use" rather than "care" or even "justice." In other words, the environmental movement is still largely an anthropocentric movement. The world and its inhabitants have value only insofar as they have value to humans. In this sense they are exactly the same as any mining corporation or hunting group. The difference comes in terms of how far into the future they look to determine value and what strategies they employ to conserve resources.

Does this mean that I would suggest we abandon our efforts to reach out to environmentalists? No, but I think we should be more cautious with our belief that environmentalists are our natural allies. To them, abstaining from animal products is just a strategy for conserving other important resources for humans, and they are highly unlikely to ever advocate an end to the exploitation of animals.

I think that we neglect potential alliances with social change movements that are based on rights and an end to exploitation. I think animal rights shares a lot of common foundation with other rights movements. I don't mean to say that we are entirely neglecting these issues, but rather that it does not get the focus and attention it deserves.

I see multiple articles each week discussing the environmental impacts of meat and other efforts to reach an environmental audience, but I hardly ever see articles drawing out the possible connections between social justice issues and animal rights. There are a few, of course, and one great example of some really good content on this topic is the Animal Rights & Anti-Oppression blog. There's also the Food Empowerment Project.

One of the local events in Vancouver that we (Liberation BC) table at is Justice Rocks, a music and social change event. We've been the only animal rights (and the only animal-focused group) there. But the audience is amazingly receptive to the message of animal rights – the fundamental message of non-exploitation, that animals have a right to lead their own lives, just as we do.

I think there are some really strong alliances that could be formed if we support other social justice causes – with or without promoting animal rights to them. Let everyone see that our ethic of non-exploitation really applies across the board. Find and support workers' rights, women's rights, fair trade, and so on. As it becomes more and more apparent that systems of oppression are linked, any work anyone can do to weaken those systems will benefit us all.

At least, that's what I think...

Photo by NevynNoir

Today I took part for a while in a march to try to being some attention to the tragedy that is the Canadian Seal Slaughter. When the march turned into a vandalism spree by kids in masks, we rolled up our banners and went home.

I don't see much point in destructive protests. They don't really convince anyone of anything, except that you're willing to break things to be heard.

But what I'm interested in is why people become destructive as a means of protest.

There are probably quite a few reasons why marches like this turn violent. One quite obvious one would be that it's fun. The rush of adrenaline is exciting. It's the same as doing anything physical and dangerous, like playing hockey or football.

Quite probably many of the people who knocked over newspaper boxes and smashed windows today did it because it was exciting. They may have felt like they were doing something and standing up against a greater power. Many of us have respect for the underdog who takes on the mighty, against all odds. It's what most action movies are based on, not to mention sports movies and even a whole lot of our favorite history stories.

It's important to note here that I am not trying to justify anyone's actions or excuse them. I feel strongly that we are all personally responsible for the choices we make. I have had trouble trying to discuss this issue because people appear to feel that I am justifying the protesters' actions, but I'm not.

Calling their actions "infantile" is counter-productive, I think, because it simply continues what I see as a real root cause of the violence: not being heard.

There is a huge difference between being allowed to speak and being listened to. We have a great deal of freedom to speak our mind here in Canada, but what we don't have as ordinary citizens is much of a way to ensure that we are heard.

From the local level to the federal level, politics dismisses a great range of perspectives and voices. We are allowed to send our petition to the government, we are allowed to speak at city council meetings, but we are not made to feel that what are saying is truly heard or considered.

It would be strange for protesters to risk arrest for such large amounts of property damage, so I would assume they are acting out of personal conviction (unless they were planted by the police or VANOC to instigate confrontation, which is somewhat doubtful, although possible).

They may have been trying to intimidate people into agreeing with them, but considering the scale of the Olympics I would more readily think that they were trying to get their message out, and chose tactics that would send a message to the Olympic sponsors and organizers that would be heard. If you want to reach the heads of corporations, what is more effective than a message that costs money?

Again, I don't agree with the tactics, and I have nothing to say about the goals or objectives of the protesters. What I am interested in here is seeing some real discussion of the reasons for such actions. How are we all complicit in the vandalism and threats of violence? How are we complicit in systems which let people speak but don't give them a real voice to be heard?

Here are some links to coverage of today's madness:

• Miss604: Vancouver 2010 Protests on Day Two
• Straight: 2010 Heart Attack disrupts Vancouver on day two of Winter Olympics
• NowPublic: Vancouver Olympic Protest February 13 2010 Turns Violent
• Vancouver Sun: Seven people arrested in police protests