On the Nature of Humans

I believe it would be false to say humans are either entirely good or evil. If we leaned clearly in one direction or the other, there would not be a debate at all. We would all understand the nature of who we are. Clearly this is not the case.

Menxi makes an interesting point while defending Confucianism against Mo. He, however, states that humans are fundamentally good and go wrong because of poverty, competition, materialism, laziness, and lack of cultivation; i.e. the stresses and strains of daily life. He claims that Confucianism teaches people to cultivate the good and sacred things in life, keeping them on track in times of trouble.

While instead of believing that humans are fundamentally good and choosing to say that they exist in a fundamentally neutral state, I agree with the idea that Menxi presents. Humans are born as a clean slate. Our personality, though determined in part by genetics, it is also determined by our environment and interactions as we grow and develop. We are influenced by our surroundings and pulled to act in a positive or negative manner. The way that we develop and act then affects the way that we perceive people, leading us to think humans are either good or evil, contrary to our actual state of affected neutrality.

A good leader must have the ability to remove himself from an assumption of good or evil nature. He must be able to view each involved follower, the situation and context, and the possible consequences of his decisions before he acts. Only then will the leader be able to treat each human in a just fashion.

When a leader fails to act with this form of objectivity he makes assumptions not only about a person’s fundamental nature, but also of his motivations and possible actions. A leader expecting all humans to be fundamentally evil and therefore act in a negative fashion will close himself off from his followers, provide strict rules, and limit his followers. This will create a very cold leader-follower relationship. A leader expecting humans to be fundamentally good and act in a positive fashion may risk extensive openness with his followers. Though good hearted, he will be pushed over and abused, blind to the misdeeds of which humans are capable.

Instead, by viewing humanity through a lens of neutrality and removing assumptions, a leader remains open to all possibilities of human function. He is able to connect with and relate to each follower and truly understand actions, decisions, and consequences before acting on behalf of the group. It is with this form of clear, level thinking and interacting that the strongest leaders are realized. 

Thoughts on Drive

I’ve been thinking a lot about drive and dedication; passion and the desire for perfection; success and sacrifice. These are all things that I qualities that I think leaders need to embrace. However, I also think that they can also hinder a leader if not balanced by perspective. It is the line between the two – the one weight that keeps the scale from tipping – that I have a hard time defining.

I’ve been questioning this more and more as I continue to work in the theatre department to an excessive extent. I am driven to take on every possible opportunity because I want the experience. I want to learn the elements of theatre so that I can make myself more saleable and successful. But sometimes I am too driven and I take on too much. I take on so much that I can’t possibly put enough time in to each task to make it the best it can be, so my drive for success, in a way, cancels itself out.

But also, the intensity of my commitments and my resulting schedule is my choice. I chose to take on the opportunities; therefore it is my responsibility to do well no matter what it takes. I will come in early and stay late and I won’t ever let my team down. I make sacrifices so that my team can succeed and the projects get finished. It’s not always fun, and the end product isn’t always perfect, but it’s enough. In the end, I’m not sure whether my actions are good or bad. Although I am not necessarily completing my best work, I am learning and growing with each responsibility that I take on.

However, I also believe I take the idea of drive for leaders to an extreme. You don’t have to do everything to be driven; you don’t have to do nothing to be lazy. I started recognizing this as we struggled to reschedule class after so many people tried to skip the Friday heading in to spring break.

My first irritation with the situation was that it was necessary at all. We were all informed very clearly at the beginning of the year that Roberts Fellows is to be our top priority. We all know that we have class on Fridays. And yet…people scheduled over top of class and simply thought they would be excused. Some situations I understood – for other educational programs like Clinicals or Student Teaching Seminars that are mandatory and can’t be made up, exceptions have to be made. But in other cases, I think skipping class was an inconsiderate choice on the part of the other students. But that wasn’t what really irked me.

After realizing that we were never going to find a time that we could all meet, a suggestion was made that we should consider sacrificing something in order to make time. All well and good. But the only students agreeing to make sacrifices were the same students who had actually planned to be in class on today. The dedicated students inconvenienced by the cancellation that was out of their control were being further inconvenienced as the original students seemed to be refusing to budge. Talk about a lack of drive or sense of responsibility towards the group.

What frustrated me was that the Roberts Fellows was to be the group for which I didn’t have to sacrifice in order to pick up slack; the group of similarly driven and dedicated students that would put in equal effort in order to achieve to a level that met the expectations of the University—and this was not seeming to be the case.

But I suppose, when you think about it, we are all so involved on campus and in the workforce that we may not be able to make sacrifices. There are some things that simply require your attention and you have no choice. So perhaps the other students were experiencing a situation similar to my work in the theatre – a situation in which they commit and commit and commit to the point where something needs to be sacrificed, and yet, you can’t sacrifice anything without inconveniencing your teams.

So where is the line? I’m still uncertain.