Rules of engagement and good manners are traditions that have lasted for centuries. But I see a need to examine some and create new "rules". However I am one of those people who does not have a "position" where I am expected to live by the rules. But I do have some of my own that have helped me.
1. Be concerned about injustice you hear about or witness. Injustice anywhere, said Martin Luther King Jr., is a threat to justice everywhere. We (humanity) lost him too early just as we have lost Alexai Navalny. This is a loss for all now and in the future. Now none of us can sit back and hope the brave will be saving us.
2. Leadership is not about scaring everyone who knows your position. It's about sustaining places where humanity can learn who or what is ruling it and this earth. If we are not comfortable with authoritarian leaders we should not sit back and assume someone is taking care of this. Leadership is not about killing people unless we worship cruelty for its ability to shut everybody up.
Wherever we see cruelty we must name it. I say must because it is the first stage of dysfunction. Punishment is not for those who have the power to use it. There are clear reasons for using punishment to discourage harmful behaviour in the home and the commons.
3. Weapons are designed to hurt and kill. A good leader knows not to use punishment too soon. Even spanking and humiliating others registers as violence to the sensitive mind. Thankfully most of us have lost the appetite to watch someone being whipped or shamed in public. Watching someone being beaten up by a gang you don't know is not entertainment. It's a sign that something in our minds and hearts has gone wrong.
4. Corporal punishment is only okay if we don't know the people involved. Adults who divide the world into good guys and bad guys have used TV dramas as their civic education. Punishment hurts those who are punished and those in denial of the trauma that hardened their feelings into denial.
5. A society that believes punishment makes men strong is one that keeps most of its people in a state of ignorance where its "shameful" to express ones thoughts and feelings, where you'll be criticized for "thinking too much".
6. An organization that doesn't encourage its members to think, is one where all the power rests with the "leader". It might pay the CEO "246 times the average worker's pay in Canada, up from 241 times in 2021, when the average was $14.3 million". https://globalnews.ca/news/10191926/top-ceo-pay-canada-2024 Such organizations do not want their staff to think too much. Mainstream media does not want more information here so shut your mouth and mind and do as you're told.
7. The future is not likely to be kind to humans if this is the goal. In fact it will celebrate humiliation for those at the bottom and vanity for those at the top. Wherever there is privilege there is anger, disappointment and cruelty regardless of whether we admit it or not. White supremacy knows this. It fears being treated the way it had treated people of colour, the poor, the homeless and women.
8. Because humans have minds and language we are the biggest threat to the egos who simply want to control others. Because rising to the top is an obsession to those who fear being vulnerable some powerful people feel they must be protected from the masses.
9. An obsession becomes harmful to everyone, relationships become fragile and dysfunctional, and all who are related suffer in some way. Worst of all humans shut down the best part of their intelligence. Kindness, sensitivity, creativity and courage are seen as opposite. Kindness becomes weakness, sensitivity becomes weakness, creativity becomes idleness, and weakness becomes ignorance. Competing for the most of what each of us wants breaks down social strengths, makes society mad. Displays of power over use childish skills and shut down communication.
10. to identify with our position in this world is to deny our humanity and human instincts.
11. Violence becomes the means to destroy life by any other name.
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