However, there are also incredibly effective leaders who have been able to inspire masses of people to do bad things, horrible things... things we wouldn't do if it were not for their misguided leadership. Such leaders would be people like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, and Osama Bin Laden. While we may look at some leaders like this with fear and hatred, we cannot deny that they somehow captured the imaginations of people who would follow them and their vision.
In this journal blog, reflect on why we, as human beings, need to have a leader. And also consider how a leader can inspire us to even do unethical and horrible things that we would not think to do before. Does our ability to do good or bad depend on those leaders that are available to us? I wonder what draws us to certain kinds of models that may put us on the right or the wrong path.
Include your Section # and ID # in your post. Aj. M
ID:5680855, Section 6
ReplyDeleteAccording to Thomas Hobbes, a well-known philosopher in the period we called “The Enlightenment”, humans are born cruel, selfish and greedy. With freedom, our endless desires will only lead us to a corrupted society. In order to live a peaceful life, a community needs rules and regulations. Leaders are therefore necessary in an organized society to be in charge of these restrictions protecting people’s rights.
Once a person is considered a leader in your eyes, a part of you have already accepted them, believing psychologically that they will do the right thing. Bias has now been created in your mind. With more persuasion or brain wash speeches, you would be just ready to carry out whatever tasks that leader expected you to do. This is in fact a dangerous stage. Facts are what can free you from this stage, then can you let your own judgments separate right for wrong.
“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” said Joseph Goebbels. Never believe anything just because someone said so. Believes have to always originate from reliable informations or else you could end up in the wrong path.
This is a very thoughtful comment, and it seems that you have been wondering about this question already. Hobbes comes in handy here.
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ReplyDeleteWe need leaders not to go to the wrong, bad ways. If people couldn't have any leaders in their life, it would be difficult to go to the good way. For example, parents are also leader for their children. Parents should be good models for their children, and should let their children go the right way.
However, there are also bad leaders in this world. They control people's mind well and lead people to their ways. In this case, I think that our ability doesn't matter, because bad leaders can control our minds with their clever ways. For people who are not enough strong to defeat bad leaders, they believe in the words of bad leaders, and people follow bad leaders' way.
On the other hands, good leaders inspire people's heart and can give followes motivation to go to the right path.
A common point for both bad leaders and good leaders is to make followers believe themselves. If they couldn't make people believe themselves, followers wouldn't follow them. but, bad leaders could lead follwers with their clever skills to the wrong path and good leaders could inspire people's motivation and lead them to the right path.
I wonder what the "clever skills" are that can make people follow. It seems it is something we are at risk of. We can be persuaded easily.
DeleteID: 5681044 Section: 6
ReplyDeleteI think everyone need leaders not because they are unable to lead themselves but because they are skilfully in different positions. Therefore, they need some one to lead them in the right way and right position.
Generally, there are two kinds of leader, one is a person who leads his followers in the right and ethical ways such as Mahatma Gandhi and George Washington. Another is a person who inspires his followers to do the terrible things ;for example, Mao Ze Dong and Haji Muhammad Suharto.
Leaders inspire their followers either to be better or worse things by leading and instilling them. For better leaders, they will never teach their followers to be selfish but instead will push them to sacrifice for others. Moreover, good leaders will instill others to not use any violence but use compromise to solve the issues. However, leading and instilling of leaders are not be able to influence every people to do good or bad things because it depends on how followers take those actions from their leaders.
Compromise is a key word. We can see in our situation in Bangkok right now, it is an uncompromising situation.
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ReplyDeleteOne of the important roles of leaders is to control people to have a specific objective. Not all people can create proper objectives toward their final purpose by themselves, and then, those people often cannot work efficiently. Furthermore, to have a common sense of purpose supports an organization to build powerful unity and smooth teamwork. Without a leader, the organization loses the unity, and individual work will be inconsistent with others’ work.
It is sure that people judge things based on the information which they obtained from surroundings. In other words, if a leader acquires the power of information control, he/she possibly can lead people’s decision to be what suits to his/her plan or vision. For example, China put a much effort on information control on the Internet to oppress the criticism of the government. It is difficult to notice that something is wrong without the information that shows the demerits or unethical results of it, and people will consider wrong things as right things. Some people may have a question for the leader’s action, although, most of them follow the leader as others because most of people are afraid to be a heretic. Therefore, in my opinion, our ability to do good or bad depends on the leaders who regulate or limit the information to us.
Those who control information control everything. This is a good observation. It is interesting to watch the media these days and to see what they're telling us and what they are not telling us.
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ReplyDeleteEvery people have his or her own leaders. Since I was born, there are some people who always look after me, listen to me and teach me almost everything which are my parents, and I consider them as the first leader in my life. People need leaders to manage the followers and make sure that everyone goes into the same way or everyone having the same goals.
In people’s life, there are many kinds of leader, some of them are good and some are not. Not only a good leader can led the people, bad leaders also can led people, but into a worse way. If the leader is not good, the followers will be the same as the leader because people are seeing him or her as the example. Most of the leaders can inspire people and can make them trust in his or her self so the followers will do what the leader want them to. Some bad leaders take the followers’ trust and believe as their advantage to make them do bad things for his or her personal goals.
The leader is very important in people life, people will go to the right or wrong path is depended on the leader.
It seems that most of us are here, especially in a university, because we benefited from good leaders in our lives. Others less fortunate did not in many cases.
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ReplyDeleteEveryone need to have a leader in order to guide or to lead them to their aims. Its does not matter that good leader has to be great politicians or great athletes because I also have my own good leader since I was born which are my family. As my first leader, my family has taught me how to live a good live. For example they taught me how to be a good people for the society as well as how to be good as a son. Additionally, many people have their own leader which may be good leaders or bad leaders. Some leaders may be lead their followers with honest and goodness because they are good leaders. For instance, they may teach their followers not to be selfish as well as caring for others. On the other hand, the bad leaders can lead people in the bad ways as they want. The followers can be misguided because the bad leader also have an ability to control or lead people but in the wrong way. There were many times that people were misguided by the bad leader because they thought that their visions were right. To conclude, the leaders which are people who take their people to their targets, but the followers have to make their decision whether they want to follow the good or the bad.
Even in leaders lead us in bad ways, we many not be aware of it. This is the scary thing. How can we know if our leaders are misleading?
DeleteID: 5681094 section: 6
ReplyDeleteIn this world, leaders are taking a significant role in every society. Because people need someone to be a role model and lead them to a better lives. In my opinion, not everyone can be a powerful leader who can control so many people in his/her hand. I think how to be a great leader can’t be taught, however all those well-known people were born to be leader. Thus, leadership is a gift. Whether the leaders are either good or bad, they can inspire the people to walk on their own path and convince them to do whatever they want.
There are many kinds of leaders, but basically there can be separated into two groups, which are good or bad. The one that the world wants to inscribe and praise are the good ones, who do a lot of benefits to other people. For example, King Bhumibol (the king of Thailand), who has done a lot of royal duties is one of the best examples of how good leader should act. Most of Thai people are kind and gentle, they likes to help other people when they are needed because of the king’s personalities inspired people to do good things. Therefore, leader have an affect on the society in so many ways such as being a role model, clever, gain the trusts from the members and more.
Role models are important. The King certainly has been a positive one for Thailand. On the other hand, many people can be role models where they want to be or not. Celebrities for example can lead us, but they may not be the best people to follow even though we like them.
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ReplyDeleteI personally think that people need to have a leader in their lives in order to guide them to the right path. It doesn’t have to be politicians, famous people or athletes because I also consider my parents as a great leader. They are the one who leads me to the right position and being who I am today. Without them I probably won’t be here. However, leaders are not always fulfilled with goodness. There are some bad leaders who can lead us as well. Of course, bad leaders inspire us in the worst way. They might have something to attract us in order to make us follow and gain benefit from us, for example. All in all, leaders are important because our ability to do good or bad things really depends on them. We follow what they say and act just like them.
This is a big question. Do our actions depend on our leaders? Or do our actions depend on us?
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ReplyDeleteLeaderships mostly gained by wealth, out-standing characteristics or even they are in the certain positions which effect to us. According to the sense of beneath people that have to obey and follow the leaders.
Severally that some leaders do not force other people to trust them, however those people still follow those leaders anyway. That might be the reason which the objective of the group or their aims are the same. Being human we feel the need to be in a group, of course every group need a leader to get to the goals and we choose the leaders of us on our own. Sometimes, there is a thin line between adore and credulous, also some people just being naive, trust and follow everything about their leader no matter it is better or worse.
To sum up, when we talk about leaders we picturing to them in a good way. But sometimes we have to balanced our faith in them, because leader it is also only one person, they have their own thought and vision which maybe good or bad as well
It seems the role of the leader depends on the needs of the followers. If the followers are independent and reliable, the leader only needs to manage. If the followers are naive and unsure, the leader needs to be highly responsible and active. It is interesting to think of the times we live in now in this country to think of what kind of leader we need.
Delete5780253 section 5 Marcus
ReplyDeleteWhere does the inspiration come from ?
For me inspiration comes from within yourself. To elaborate, there must be a specific goal or an obstacle to motivate you to move forward. Motivation is also one of the reason that inspires people to conquer things faster.