This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Any authority figure must decide where to place himself in relation to an issue. In general, he has three strategic options: (1) circumvention, with the risk of backing into a potential crisis; (2) frontal challenge – getting out in front and becoming the ‘bearer of bad tidings’ by introducing the crisis; or (3) riding the wave – staying just in front of the crisis, anticipating the wave and trying to direct its power as it breaks.
I define authority as conferred power to perform a service. This definition will be useful to the practitioner of leadership as a reminder of two facts: First, authority is give and can be taken away. Second, authority is conferred as part of an exchange.
Exercising leadership is an expression of your aliveness... But when you cover yourself up, you risk losing something as well. In the struggle to save yourself, you can give up too many of those qualities that are the essence of being alive, like innocence, curiosity, and compassion.
Authority | Expectation | Means | Order | People | Position | Expectation | Leadership |
The term ‘holding environment’ originated in psychoanalysis to describe the relationship between the therapist and the patient. The therapist ‘holds’ the patient in a process of developmental learning in a way that has some similarities to the way a mother and father hold their newborn and maturing children. For a child, the holding environment serves as a containing vessel for the developmental steps, problems, crises, and stresses of growing up.
Dominant children serve other functions in addition to orientation. In a Munich study of four-year-old children, the child that commanded the most attention was also the one who most often initiated and organized games, interceded as a third party to break up disputes, and represented the group when interacting with another group. Children of lower rank tended to obey, imitate, smile, and offer presents to the high-ranking child. In a study of first-graders playing dodgeball, the child who appeared most skillful emerged in time as the dominant individual to whom the rest of the players look for organization. By first and second grade, most children agreed on the individuals with two dominant characteristics: Who is the smartest? Who is the toughest? Yet few agreed on the identity of the least smart and least tough among them. Attention, again, focused upward in the hierarchy.
The accumulation of evil never resides in one person at the top because no one gets to the top without representing the interests of the dominant factions in the system. The evil, if it is evil at all, lives in the routine ways in which people throughout the system collude in maintaining a dysfunctional status quo.
The loyalty and support of team members must be obtained before the leader attempts to implement his or her vision of the future….people can learn to become successful at inspiring and energizing others. The most important responsibility of a leader is to develop people. The ultimate leader is the one who is willing to develop individuals to the point that they eventually surpass him or her.
Yet when faced with an adaptive challenge, an authority might still choose a more autocratic mode as a result of other factors. First, the organization or community may have too little resilience to bear the stresses of adaptive work. Giving the work back to people may overwhelm them and run counter to prevailing norms.
A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society.
Authority | Government | Government |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
If all could be perceived in one act of perception, it would obviously give more delight than any of the individual parts.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.
Art | Authority | Evil | Law | Little | Man | Reality | Art |
Saint-John Perse, first Saint-Leger Leger, pseudonyms of Alexis Leger
Happy birds, ah, may they extend towards us, from one shore to the other of heaven's ocean, that huge arc of painted wings that will assist and encircle us! May they bear the full honor of it among us by strength of soul!
I had one brother almost of my own age, whom I loved best... We used to read the lives of the Saints together. And when I read of the martyrdoms which they suffered for the love of God, I used to think that they had bought their entry into God's presence very cheaply. Then I fervently longed to die like them, not out of any conscious love for Him, but in order to attain, as quickly as they had, those joys which, as I read, are laid up in Heaven. I used to discuss with my brother ways and means of becoming martyrs, and we agreed to go together to the land of the Moors, begging our way for the love of God, so that we might be beheaded there. I believe that our Lord had given us courage enough even at that tender age, if only we could have seen a way. But our parents seemed to us a very great hindrance.
Authority | Courage | God | Good | Lord | Strength | God | Afraid |
In time there is something indivisible - namely, the instant; and there is something else which endures - namely, time. But in eternity the indivisible now stands always still.
It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control ... The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them.
Applause | Authority | Individual | Loyalty | Loyalty | Mistake | Object | Success |
Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last resort.
Authority | Obligation | Rights | Child |
I beg to say in reply that if it be decided by both the colored and white workers of your city [Austin] that it would tend to the best interests of the movement to organize separate central bodies there is no reason why such a course should not be pursued.
Authority | Effort | Improvement | Law | Men | Opportunity | Guilty |