Please allow me to change your mind. I am not the type who likes obedience either.
Well that is interesting and unexpected.
Argument 1:
This seems to be more of a matter of notification strategies—one where you have to check a “calendar” and one where the “calendar” comes to you. I am pattern-matching the concept “reminder” here. It seems to me that reminders, although important and possibly completely necessary for running a functional group, would be more along the lines of a behavioral detail as opposed to a fundamental leadership quality. I don’t know why you’re likening this to obedience.
Even if I had infinite capacity for thinking for myself
We do not have infinite capacity for critical thinking. True. I don’t call trusting other people’s opinions obedience. I call it trust. That is rare for me. Very rare for anything important. Next door to trust is what I do when I’m short on time or don’t have the energy: I half-ass it. I grab someone’s opinion, go “Meh, 70% chance they’re right?” and slap it in.
I don’t call that obedience, either.
I call it being overwhelmingly busy.
Thinking for myself doesn’t let me coordinate with other people, or fit into larger projects, or affect how LW works, or many other things. If I instead listen to some central coordinator, those things become easy.
Organizing trivial details is something I call organizing. I don’t call it obedience.
When I think of obedience I think of that damned nuisance demand that punishes me for being right. This is not because I am constantly right—I’m wrong often enough. I have observed, though, that some people are more interested in power than in wielding it meaningfully. They don’t listen and use power as a way to avoid updating (leading them to be wrong frequently). They demand this thing “obedience” and that seems to be a warning that they are about act as if might makes right.
My idea of leadership looks like this:
If you want something new to happen, do it first. When everyone else sees that you haven’t been reduced to a pile of human rubble by the new experience, they’ll decide the “guinea pig” has tested it well enough that they’re willing to try it, too.
If you really want something to get done, do it your damn self. Don’t wait around for someone else to do it, nag others, etc.
If you want others to behave, behave well first. After you have shown a good intent toward them, invite them to behave well, too. Respect them and they will usually respect you.
If there’s a difficulty, figure out how to solve it.
Give people something they want repeatedly and they come back for it.
If people are grateful for your work, they reciprocate by volunteering to help or donating to keep it going.
To me, that’s the correct way of going about it. Using force (which I associate with obedience) or expecting people not to have thoughts of their own is not only completely unnecessary but pales in comparison effectiveness-wise.
Maybe my ideas about obedience are completely orthogonal to yours. If you still think obedience has some value I am unaware of, I’m curious about it.
if you want to continue...
Thank you for your interest. It feels good.
I have a romantic interest right now who, although we have not officially deemed our status a “relationship” are considering one another as potential seriously partners.
This came to both of us as a surprise. I had burned out on dating and deleted my dating profile. I was like:
insane amount of dating alienation * ice cube’s chance of finding compatible partner > benefits of romance
(Narratives by LW Women thread if you want more)
And so now we’re like … wow this amount of compatibility is special. We should not waste the momentum by getting distracted by other people. So we decided that in order to let the opportunity unfold naturally, we would avoid pursuing other serious romantic interests for now.
So although I am technically available, my expected behavior, considering how busy I am, would probably be best classified as “dance card full”.
We seem to have different connotations on “obedience”, and might be talking about slightly different concepts. You’re observations about how most people use power, and the bad kind of obedience, are spot-on.
The topic came up because of the “I’d kneel to anyone who declared themselves king” thing. I don’t think such a behaviour pattern has to go to bad power abusing obedience and submission. I think it’s just a really strategically useful thing to support someone who is going to act as the group-agency. You seem to agree on the important stuff and we’re just using different words. case closed?
romantic.
lol what? Either you or me has utterly misunderstood something because I’m utterly confused. I made a mock-sleazy joke about the goddam troll toll, and suggested that we wouldn’t have to pay it but we could still discuss if we PMed instead. And then suddenly this romantic thing. OhgodwhathaveIdone.
You seem to agree on the important stuff and we’re just using different words. case closed?
Yeah I think the main difference may be that I am very wary of power abuse, so I avoid using terms like “obedience” and “kneeling” and “king” and choose other terms that imply a situation where power is balanced.
lol what? Either you or me has utterly misunderstood something
Sorry, I think I must have misread that. I’ve been having problems sleeping lately. If you want to talk in PM to avoid the troll toll go ahead.
Well that is interesting and unexpected.
This seems to be more of a matter of notification strategies—one where you have to check a “calendar” and one where the “calendar” comes to you. I am pattern-matching the concept “reminder” here. It seems to me that reminders, although important and possibly completely necessary for running a functional group, would be more along the lines of a behavioral detail as opposed to a fundamental leadership quality. I don’t know why you’re likening this to obedience.
We do not have infinite capacity for critical thinking. True. I don’t call trusting other people’s opinions obedience. I call it trust. That is rare for me. Very rare for anything important. Next door to trust is what I do when I’m short on time or don’t have the energy: I half-ass it. I grab someone’s opinion, go “Meh, 70% chance they’re right?” and slap it in.
I don’t call that obedience, either.
I call it being overwhelmingly busy.
Organizing trivial details is something I call organizing. I don’t call it obedience.
When I think of obedience I think of that damned nuisance demand that punishes me for being right. This is not because I am constantly right—I’m wrong often enough. I have observed, though, that some people are more interested in power than in wielding it meaningfully. They don’t listen and use power as a way to avoid updating (leading them to be wrong frequently). They demand this thing “obedience” and that seems to be a warning that they are about act as if might makes right.
My idea of leadership looks like this:
If you want something new to happen, do it first. When everyone else sees that you haven’t been reduced to a pile of human rubble by the new experience, they’ll decide the “guinea pig” has tested it well enough that they’re willing to try it, too.
If you really want something to get done, do it your damn self. Don’t wait around for someone else to do it, nag others, etc.
If you want others to behave, behave well first. After you have shown a good intent toward them, invite them to behave well, too. Respect them and they will usually respect you.
If there’s a difficulty, figure out how to solve it.
Give people something they want repeatedly and they come back for it.
If people are grateful for your work, they reciprocate by volunteering to help or donating to keep it going.
To me, that’s the correct way of going about it. Using force (which I associate with obedience) or expecting people not to have thoughts of their own is not only completely unnecessary but pales in comparison effectiveness-wise.
Maybe my ideas about obedience are completely orthogonal to yours. If you still think obedience has some value I am unaware of, I’m curious about it.
Thank you for your interest. It feels good.
I have a romantic interest right now who, although we have not officially deemed our status a “relationship” are considering one another as potential seriously partners.
This came to both of us as a surprise. I had burned out on dating and deleted my dating profile. I was like:
insane amount of dating alienation * ice cube’s chance of finding compatible partner > benefits of romance
(Narratives by LW Women thread if you want more)
And so now we’re like … wow this amount of compatibility is special. We should not waste the momentum by getting distracted by other people. So we decided that in order to let the opportunity unfold naturally, we would avoid pursuing other serious romantic interests for now.
So although I am technically available, my expected behavior, considering how busy I am, would probably be best classified as “dance card full”.
We seem to have different connotations on “obedience”, and might be talking about slightly different concepts. You’re observations about how most people use power, and the bad kind of obedience, are spot-on.
The topic came up because of the “I’d kneel to anyone who declared themselves king” thing. I don’t think such a behaviour pattern has to go to bad power abusing obedience and submission. I think it’s just a really strategically useful thing to support someone who is going to act as the group-agency. You seem to agree on the important stuff and we’re just using different words. case closed?
lol what? Either you or me has utterly misunderstood something because I’m utterly confused. I made a mock-sleazy joke about the goddam troll toll, and suggested that we wouldn’t have to pay it but we could still discuss if we PMed instead. And then suddenly this romantic thing. OhgodwhathaveIdone.
That’s good. :)
Yeah I think the main difference may be that I am very wary of power abuse, so I avoid using terms like “obedience” and “kneeling” and “king” and choose other terms that imply a situation where power is balanced.
Sorry, I think I must have misread that. I’ve been having problems sleeping lately. If you want to talk in PM to avoid the troll toll go ahead.
Well not anymore. laughs at self