“Cogito, ergo sum”
René Descartes
The Role of State Leaders in
Value Orientation and Motivation of People’s Behaviour
I would be truly
honoured if the analytical opinion presented here forms the basis for further
fruitful discussion and constructive dialogue.
Each of us can become and will become the ARCHITECT of his or her
own FORTUNE if he or she is aware of his or her Human essence and is
able to mobilise willpower to eliminate the conditions that hinder the implementation
of the creative potential (talents, skills, gifts) of his or her personality.
This can be achieved by admissibly adapting, but at the same time not
reconciling and purposefully trying to change conditions that are not always
favourable for the development of one’s personality. Constantly evaluating and analysing
one’s behaviour: both by searching (first of all, in oneself!) and
identifying substantial reasons that cause conflict situations in life, and by
researching conditions that contribute to successful achievements or failures.
As a
result of such introspection, all rational people sooner or later come to the
conclusion that the motives of their activities and the orientation of life
values are primarily determined by the environment in which the individual
grew up, received education and achieved personhood.
And this
is the family, and the singularity of the genes inherited from parents, as well
as relationships with other people, but above all this is the influence of the prevailing
order in a particular country. Of the system that has developed
historically and which the political elite in power continues to improve and support
at its discretion in every possible way. That is, these are politicians authorised
by the citizens of the country. Who in reality – oftentimes as a result of
various political spin manipulations – turn out to be representatives and henchmen
of arrogant oligarchs & militarists foisted on people and fobbed off on them.
Once they
find themselves at the levers of power, party leaders, groups of political
mercenaries and power-wielding agencies start to use all the resources of power
and available means of agitation, propaganda and repression to retain power at
any cost.
Having
gained the privileges of power, infected with the syndrome of omnipotence, overconfidence
& haughtiness, political leaders (dictators, tyrants, autocrats, junta
leaders and similar monsters) begin:
₼
to arbitrarily monopolise national resources;
₼
to create an army of loyal officials & functionaries and build the power
vertical in accordance with the principles of oligarchy and clannishness;
₼
to identify themselves as the leader of the whole people, establishing the cult
of personality, creating in society models of their behaviour, character,
ambitions and way of life which are (not) worthy of emulation;
₼
to make decisions which are important for the state and life-changing for the whole
people, individually or in the course of secret backroom consultations;
₼
to try to eliminate, as much as possible potential, threats to the regime of
power by organising total supervision over the behaviour of residents of the
state and monitoring social and political activity;
₼
to purposefully strengthen the loyalty of citizens, evaluating (for example,
using the instruments of “social credit”) their life activities through the
prism of the interests of the authorities, supporting or punishing them
according to the ratings assigned to them;
₼ to
interpret human rights, manifestations of extremism and interference in state
affairs from their point of view;
₼ to
stigmatise opponents and competitors, as well as politically undesirable
organisations and persons as public enemies or foreign agents at their own
discretion;
₼
to proclaim the canons of their worldview and a set of subjective values,
priorities and projects as the interests of the state;
₼ to
call the political goals & programmes of the ruling regime national,
demonstrating them under the slogans of the progress of the nation and
patriotism;
₼ to restrict the freedoms of citizens in accordance
with their ideas and notions, – providing appropriate legislative guidance for
regime-dependent parliamentarians;
₼ to swap good and evil, the truth and the lie in
accordance with their subjective (immoral) perception of life or emotions &
sympathies;
₼ to determine, in accordance with the individual value
orientation, what justice is and what should be recognised as the truth and
common sense;
₼ to measure the welfare & honour of the state according
to their individual measuring stick and, based on it, to encode in the people
the semantic content of civic obligations, self-sacrificing attitude and
courage;
₼ to individually interpret the meaning of service
& merits for the good of the people – at the same time stimulating all this
with state awards, prizes and recognition and thereby subjectively changing the
characteristics of the adequacy & objectivity of the people’s gratitude;
₼ to politicise the judicial system so that the law
cannot restrict the arbitrariness of the authorities, so that the fairness of legal rights meets the
requirements of the political elite;
₼ to censor information, to bribe & subjugate the
media in order to effectively create an ideologically correct public opinion consistent
with the vision of the state leaders, while deliberately manipulating facts,
opinions, stories, offering shows praising political leaders, vulgar
discussions, cut-and-dried propaganda mantras & destructive prohibitions;
₼ to identify the sovereignty of the state with their
political credo, which was formed from the experience acquired during life, from
their own scale of values, from upbringing and the lessons of history;
₼ to justify their reckless policies and any aggressive
activity by the protection of national interests, but at the same time to
declare critics as detractors & phobomaniacs of the whole people (and
not directly of the ruling regime), emphasising in the usual vulgar manner
that the critics themselves are not at all better;
₼ to interpret one-sidedly or ignore the norms of
international law, based on their vision of the world order;
₼ to propose their beliefs and political positions as
the only correct ones, regardless of the consequences of their decisions,
such as incitement to tension, provocative actions and an atmosphere of
mistrust and misinformation, and to call international sanctions for such
political actions illegal and harmful, shamelessly shifting the burden of all
sanctions onto the shoulders of the people;
₼ not to admit political failures, not to apologise for
erroneous decisions and to cynically deny any provocative & immoral
actions, being unshakably convinced of the correctness of their actions, not
seeing & ignoring their own evil;
₼ to dictate their own rules of the political game always and everywhere: by imposing
patronage, and instructing and teaching partners & colleagues how to behave
and live correctly;
₼ to systemically organise elections which are strictly
controlled by the state-run bodies and are, in fact, rigged (bogus);
₼ to mythologise history, regulating the content of
patriotism according to their own scale of values, trying to sacralise the
regime of power;
₼ to strictly limit changes in the established system
of the state power by dismantling social elevators and preventing any major
reforms and democratisation of the vertical of power.
Through
such techniques, most people are geared towards enduring undeserved hardships
in the name of imperial ideals and a happy & great future imagined
by politicians. Towards reconciliation with numerous oppressions against the
backdrop of an enemy threat which is illusory or provoked by the regime.
How Dominant Leaders Go Wrong
- By Hemant
Kakkar, Niro
Sivanathan on May 30, 2022
“Competitive,” “decisive,” “action-oriented,”
even “intimidating”: many people invoke these words to describe good leaders.
Indeed, several studies suggest extraverted, dominant
individuals are perceived as competent, influential leaders in industry and politics.
Think of the late former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos or Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Many people find these leaders appealing and
inspiring.
But such individuals
have shortcomings as well. Dominant leaders sometimes seek to influence
co-workers by fiat or force—insisting on their own way or
intimidating others—rather than taking steps to discuss, debate or consult with
colleagues. And that has serious downsides for the companies, organizations and
nations that they lead.
In our recent
research, we examined some of the unintentional negative
consequences of a dominant leadership style. Across eight studies,
we explored how such leaders can inadvertently reduce cooperation among their
employees by fostering a competitive climate. Past research shows that
societies and organizations flourish when members help one another, share
information and engage in collective problem-solving. Dominant leadership can
stifle those activities, however. We argue that’s because a leader’s
hyperindividualist approach can foster a widespread zero-sum mindset, in which people believe they can
only progress at the expense of others.
In our first foray
into this investigation, we looked at political leadership, specifically
comparing democracies and dictatorships. Though some democratic leaders are
aggressive and competitive, dictators exhibit extremely dominant behavior. They
subjugate others to serve their own best interests. Given our hypothesis that dominance
may foster a highly competitive culture, we wondered whether citizens in
dictatorships engage in more zero-sum thinking than those in democracies. To
test that idea, we examined data from 70 countries surveyed between 1981 and
2014 through the World Values Survey, which seeks to understand peoples’
social, political and cultural beliefs. We specifically attended to how much
residents reported their agreement with such statements as “people can only get
rich at the expense of others.” We also looked at their inclination toward
helping behaviors, including how highly they rated the importance of caring for
their neighbors. We found that citizens of countries governed by dictators
reported greater zero-sum mindsets and were less likely to help others when
compared with residents of democracies.
For our second study,
we designed an experiment to directly test whether dominance influences how
people think about cooperation and competition in a work context. We recruited
male and female professional actors and then filmed them in a series of videos.
The performers introduced themselves at the start of each video and described
their leadership approach to newly onboarded workplace subordinates. One of
these approaches was dominance: in it, the leader described their tendency to
be authoritative and decide what is best for the team. The other approach was
what we call the prestige style. In it, the leader emphasized how much they
valued others’ input and an egalitarian approach.
We then recruited
about 600 participants who watched one of these videos (either a male or female
leader in the dominance or prestige condition). Afterward, they rated how much
they agreed with statements related to zero-sum thinking and how likely they
would be to engage in helping behaviors—such as listening to a co-worker’s
problems—if they worked for the boss whose video they had just seen. We found
that participants who had watched a dominant leader were more prone to express
a zero-sum mindset and less likely to help others, compared with participants
who had just watched a prestige leader.
Additional questions
and analysis allowed us to rule out other factors that could influence these
findings. Gender had no effect: dominant men and women in the videos both
reduced helpfulness and increased zero-sum thinking among participants. In a
follow-up study, we asked people questions to assess how much autonomy they
possessed and whether they considered assisting others to be an important part
of their work. After all, if people feel they lack control over their tasks or
that their job simply doesn’t involve cooperation, it’s no surprise they might
hesitate to help others, regardless of their leader’s style. But these factors,
our analyses revealed, had minimal effect on thinking and behavior in
comparison with leader dominance and zero-sum thinking.
We also assessed
actual helping behavior rather than relying solely on people’s reported
inclinations. We gave participants a written description of a leader. Then we
put them on teams for an online task and measured the degree to which they
volunteered to transcribe text for their fellow group members. Our hypothesis
held. People who had read descriptions of their leader’s dominant styles were
significantly less willing to help their team out during these exercises.
Finally, we tested
whether this finding could be replicated with actual working groups. We
surveyed 249 employees in 50 teams, along with their supervisors, at companies
in India. We began by asking employees about their leader’s tendency to
influence based on dominance and about their own zero-sum mindset. Six weeks
later, supervisors rated their employees’ helping behaviors. When we looked at
our combined data, we found a familiar pattern: Employees supervised by a
dominant leader reported greater zero-sum thinking. And as their supervisors
subsequently revealed, these employees displayed fewer helping behaviors.
Importantly, this effect remained robust even when employees had a positive
relationship with their supervisor and saw this leader as highly ethical, two
factors that might otherwise explain variation in their thinking and behavior.
Although a number
of leadership books and popular
coaching manuals celebrate the effectiveness of a confident,
decisive leader, our work underscores how this approach may
breed an “each to their own” culture. Managers need to be aware that an
assertive or forceful approach could reduce cohesiveness and collaboration.
Organizations, meanwhile, should be careful about whom they promote. If a
leader cannot rein in their dominant style, management should incentivize
helping others. Companies can, for example, stress that employees understand
how supporting one another’s career is part of their job.
And some academics have suggested that job crafting—in which organizations help employees
expand and define their role to build skills—should include activities that
involve helping others. Researchers have found that such structural
arrangements promote employee
cooperation.
Many real-world
examples bear out our conclusions. For instance, changes at Microsoft in the
past few years illustrate both the repercussions of dominance and the positive
power of changing leadership. Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, was known
for his domineering approach. Under his management, the company lost a lot of ground to its competitors and
suffered from a culture of fear and internal conflict. But company
culture changed in 2014 with the arrival of its current CEO Satya Nadella, a
leader known for his expertise and empathetic approach. His main focus has been
to channel employees’ attention away from zero-sum thinking to a growth and learning mindset, which encourages people
to accept both successes and failures as opportunities to gain insight that can
benefit all involved. Microsoft has since seen record revenues and stock share prices.
Highly assertive,
confident individuals may foster a selfish culture that hurts productivity: https://headtopics.com/us/how-dominant-leaders-go-wrong-26875080
Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century
by Sergei Guriev, Daniel Treisman
How a new breed of dictators holds power by
manipulating information and faking democracy
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in
recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning
authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally connected world. In place
of overt, mass repression, rulers such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
and Viktor Orbán control their citizens by distorting information and
simulating democratic procedures. Like spin doctors in democracies, they spin
the news to engineer support. Uncovering this new brand of authoritarianism,
Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman explain the rise of such "spin
dictators," describing how they emerge and operate, the new threats they
pose, and how democracies should respond.
Spin Dictators traces how leaders such as Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew
and Peru's Alberto Fujimori pioneered less violent, more covert, and more
effective methods of monopolizing power. They cultivated an image of
competence, concealed censorship, and used democratic institutions to undermine
democracy, all while increasing international engagement for financial and reputational
benefits. The book reveals why most of today's authoritarians are spin
dictators--and how they differ from the remaining "fear dictators"
such as Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, as well as from masters of high-tech
repression like Xi Jinping.
Offering incisive portraits of today's authoritarian leaders, Spin
Dictators explains some of the great political puzzles of our
time--from how dictators can survive in an age of growing modernity to the
disturbing convergence and mutual sympathy between dictators and populists like
Donald Trump.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58885955-spin-dictators
A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them Back
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B3FY5R3M/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
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