True Leaders

are hardly known to their followers.
Next after them are the leaders
the people know and admire;
after them, those they fear;
after them, those they despise.

To give no trust
is to get no trust.

When the work’s done right,
with no fuss or boasting,
ordinary people say,
Oh, we did it.

Most of the Tao Te Ching requires no commentary; it’s probably better if you think about it and decode it yourself.

I’ve had some experience with leadership and I don’t know if I have done it well or poorly, but one of the things I have always tried to do is lead only when I must, otherwise I feel that my best role is to synthesize and summarize other people’s ideas and help them crystallize a collective decision. To me, the ideal anarchy looks like an ideal democracy; everyone is so completely behind an idea, that it happens with a sort of sense of inevitability.

This is why I try to cross-wire or redirect discussion of “atheist movement” when I encounter it. My feeling is that, if there’s enough of a ground-swell going in the right direction, then there is a movement. If there is enough of a movement, then it’s not worth talking about as a movement per se. If there is not enough of a movement, that it needs definition and direction, then it’s not enough to be worth talking about.

Lao Tze’s observations are so meta (and often meta-meta-) that they seem to apply to organizations and politics: he could be talking about American politics in 2017, or he could be talking about a bowling league. The Tao Te Ching is like a mirror: you see yourself reflected in it, and reflect on your reflection.