{"id":36050,"date":"2024-02-21T20:54:21","date_gmt":"2024-02-22T04:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36050"},"modified":"2024-02-21T20:54:21","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T04:54:21","slug":"and-the-young-shall-lead-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/and-the-young-shall-lead-them\/","title":{"rendered":"And the young shall lead them"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a hard time getting started on this blog. It is not that I didn\u2019t read or like Failure of Nerve<\/em> by Edwin Freidman. On the contrary, it was one of the most thought provoking and compelling books that I have read in a long time. My problem was winnowing everything into what were some of the most important nuggets.<\/p>\n

We are blessed with two daughters who love the Lord, their spouses, us, and each other. When our youngest moved back to our area, my husband asked her if she would play in the church handbell choir he directed. Our thought was this would be fun for us and help round out the choir. As a professional musician, she would be terrific. She declined. At first, we thought, really? It\u2019s dad that is asking! She says yes to so many things why no to this? Eventually we realized that what she was doing was healthy. She was taking care of herself after teaching all day. She also knew that our love for her is solid, and she could say no. Her self-differentiation has made our relationship richer in other ways, too. All of us have the freedom to agree or disagree, participate or not, without worrying about how others will feel about a decision. She taught us about being the parents of adult children.<\/p>\n

Friedman defines a well-differentiated leader as \u201csomeone who has clarity about his or her own life goals and, therefore, someone who is less likely to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about.\u201d[1]<\/a> \u00a0It is one of the characteristics when absent can lead to disfunction of leadership in an organization or family and contributes to the following characteristics which include:<\/p>\n

Reactivity:<\/strong> a strong reaction to something that happens or someone.<\/p>\n

Herding:<\/strong> the characteristic that values togetherness more than individuality.<\/p>\n

Blame displacement:<\/strong> rather than taking responsibility for one\u2019s own actions, the focus is on being the victim.<\/p>\n

A Quick Fix Mentality:<\/strong> rather than actually working to fix the root of a problem, to whatever is needed to alleviate the symptoms of pain, fear, or sadness.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

His ideas on the courage of the early explorers whose bravery to set sail and break physical barriers, even with their failures, highlighted that their courage was costly, at times dangerous and expensive. Yet, the men who sailed broke barriers that people did not even know existed at the time. If nothing else, they opened doors and gave others the courage to say they could try also. They paved the way for the Renaissance era.<\/p>\n

As I was reading this week, I thought about an experiment that Tim Harford wrote in his book. Scientist Solomon Asch was looking at conformity. The subjects were asked to pick which line matched a sample one from a group of three. The interesting part of the experiment was the fake participants that would also be voting. Sometime the subjects would get confused and ultimately side with the rest of the group, especially if all the fake participants voted for the same answer. His findings were that people leaned toward conformity. [3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Friedman held that whenever there were problems with relationships, it was more a result of an often unseen third person, relationship, or issue between them, called an emotional triangle. Among other things, these triangles are formed out of some discomfort, function to preserve themselves, and make it difficult for people to modify their thinking and behavior. [4]<\/a> Emotional triangles can be between people but also take the form of external entities. Through self-differentiation, emotional triangles can be broken but it means someone within the triangle needs to do the work to make that happen.<\/p>\n

So let me circle back to my hesitancy in writing, I realized that what I really wanted to write about was something that I have avoided doing, an area where I needed to be a leader of my own life and healthy participant in a right and responsibility of every American citizen. This week I went to the county voter registration office to change my political party. American politics seems to be at a fever pitch where people are pigeonholed for one reason or another. For example, I have been told by neighbors that I must be a republican because I fly an American flag. In truth, the flag belongs to all Americans and my husband is a Navy veteran. We like it so we fly it. I have also been told that I must be a democrat because I drive a hybrid vehicle. I hadn\u2019t thought of that but if it means I am trying to care for the earth, then so be it. Scripture asserts that, \u201cThe earth is the Lord\u2019s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it\u201d (Psalm24:1, NRSV). My faith prompts me to be careful with earth\u2019s resources. I stand firm that ideologically, \u00a0I am neither a republican nor a democrat. In truth, there are things that both parties promote or tolerate that cause me to cringe. Some of these include things that Friedman \u00a0mentioned such as demonization, blame shifting, and herding that happens in both parties. Consequently, because the State of Florida has a closed primary which allows voters to only vote for candidates in the party to which they register, I changed my party to vote in the primary election where I think my vote will have the most impact. I think the American political system is on the verge of crossing the threshold where reason and honesty have been left behind. I don\u2019t care if friends or neighbors like what I do. America has a lot to lose if thoughtful people don\u2019t take a stand and vote, not based on wealth or ideology but on the leadership qualities of the person holding the office.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure Of Nerve (New York: Church Publishing, 2017), 15.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Friedman, 60.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Tim Harford, How to Make the World Add Up<\/em> (Great Britain: Bridge Street Press, 2021), 145-148.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Friedman, 218-219.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a hard time getting started on this blog. It is not that I didn\u2019t read or like Failure of Nerve by Edwin Freidman. On the contrary, it was one of the most thought provoking and compelling books that I have read in a long time. My problem was winnowing everything into what were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-36050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-friedman","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36051,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36050\/revisions\/36051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}