Re-energize the World with the Light of Truth and Soul of Compassion

CEOs lead the world? Yeah right.

Those in the world with the capacity to change the world are out of touch. The child’s fable of the Emperor Has No Clothes keeps coming up over and over again on the Internet to describe all the inept, corrupt, uncompassionate, uncaring spreadsheet systems of control, non-leadership, and incompetence in place in the world today in business, government and religion.

Two-thirds of the hungry of the world are women.

Two-thirds of the illiterate of the world are women.

Two-thirds of the poor of the world are women.

That can't be an accident; that has to be a policy.

Where are the leaders who will change these things?

Speech given to the 2012 graduates of Stanford University by Sister Joan Chittister  ... 

But how do we know what it means to really be a leader and how do we know who should do it?

  

There are some clues to those answers in folk literature, I think. The first story is about two boats that meet head on in a shipping channel at night.

As boats are wont to do in the dark, boat number 1 flashed boat number 2: "We are on a collision course. Turn your boat 10 degrees north."

Boat 2 signaled back: "Yes, we are on a collision course. Turn your boat 10 degrees south."

Boat 1 signaled again: "I am an admiral in her majesty's navy; I am telling you to turn your boat 10 degrees north."

Boat 2 flashed back immediately: "And I am a seaman 2nd class. And I am telling you to turn your boat 10 degrees south."

By this time, the admiral was furious. He flashed back: "I repeat! I am an admiral in her majesty's navy and I am commanding you to turn your boat 10 degrees north. I am in a battleship!"

And the second boat returned a signal that said: "And I am commanding you to turn your boat 10 degrees south. I am in a lighthouse."

Point: Rank, titles and positions are no substitute for leadership....

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