Lederes metaforer om godt og ondt

Mateen Leo Ram, elev ved Inter­na­tion­al School of Sta­vanger, vant tred­jepremien i Ung­dom­skonkur­ransen Fritt Ord 2009 med bidraget “The path we choose to take in life…”. Prisen er på 7000 kro­ner og vin­nerne vil i til­legg få reise og opphold i Stras­bourg høsten 2009 eller våren 2010 for å besøke Men­neskerettighets­dom­stolen og Europa­parla­mentet. Vox Pub­li­ca pre­sen­ter­er her utdrag av Rams arbeid, hen­tet fra den avs­lut­tende analy­sen og kon­klusjo­nen. Du kan også laste ned bidraget i sin hel­het (pdf, 0,1 MB). 

Shoghi Effen­di, Mar­tin Luther King and Nel­son Man­dela are three amaz­ing lead­ers with dif­fer­ent back­grounds and upbring­ing who con­front the prob­lems of the world dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry and try to address them. They share many sim­i­lar­i­ties; they try to do some­thing with the oppos­ing forces in the world they live in. And even though they con­front dif­fer­ent parts of ´evil ´- they are pas­sion­ate about the same solu­tion. Shoghi Effen­di is con­cerned about good ver­sus evil in soci­ety and employs the metaphors of light ver­sus dark­ness and suc­cess­ful­ly explains how one can only­over­come dark­ness with more light. Mar­tin Luther King accen­tu­ates more on theemo­tions of love and hate, but also employs the metaphors of light and dark­ness andthat the solu­tion can only be achieved by love erad­i­cat­ing hate. Last­ly, Nel­son­Man­dela stress­es the oppos­ing forces of free­dom ver­sus apartheid and like the two pre­vi­ous lead­ers, uses light and dark­ness as metaphors, point­ing out that one can only over­come apartheid with freedom.

All three lead­ers are refer­ring to the oppos­ing forces of good and evil and what human­i­ty must do to exchange evil for good. It seems that part of their mis­sion is to estab­lish the real­i­ty of ´evil´ in order to be able to cre­ate a change. And in their speech­es and their writ­ings they are able to inspire peo­ple to believe in warmth and light and good­ness and free­dom. They con­vince one that light too exists, and then fol­low and explore its beau­ty. This is what good lead­ers do. Or is it? What exact­ly is a good leader? Pla­to, the Greek philoso­pher, in Alle­go­ry of the Cave, con­tem­plates upon life and what we per­ceive to be true light and dark­ness. One of his main inter­pre­ta­tions is that we can­not under­stand the real­i­ty or the truth until we have expe­ri­enced it and put it through prac­tice. In Alle­go­ry of the Cave Pla­to describes what it is like for man being inside a cave filled with dark­ness and only exposed to light from the fire. All his real­i­ty is inside that cave, and he can­not under­stand any­thing beyond it. Pla­to goes on to describe that if man is exposed to the world with “true” light from the sun, some peo­ple will be fright­ened and run back into their fan­ta­sy, how­ev­er oth­ers will want to explore fur­ther. Those who show inter­est and are will­ing to accept the new real­i­ty are the ones who are lead­ers. Shoghi Effen­di, Mar­tin Luther King and Nel­son Man­dela can all be said to have not only accept­ed this real­i­ty – but tru­ly under­stood it and been able to con­vince oth­ers of its exis­tence. In a sense, one can imag­ine that “the sun of truth” has shone its light upon them, and they have reflect­ed this light upon the peo­ple of the earth as pure, pol­ished mir­rors – dis­play­ing the suns beau­ty, warmth and rays of light.

Conclusion:

I have under­tak­en the task of look­ing at three diverse lead­ers in the 20th cen­tu­ry who had nev­er met each oth­er and whom have very dif­fer­ent back­grounds. Dur­ing my research I have come to dis­cov­er that they are close­ly relat­ed through their speech­es and writ­ings. They have addressed many of the same issues, had the same good inten­tions, and used sev­er­al of the same metaphors to describe the prob­lems and their solu­tions. Their pur­pose has been the bet­ter­ment of the world — to cre­ate uni­ty in diver­si­ty — and their appeals as to how this must be accom­plished also cor­re­lates. They have enlight­ened the world in empha­sis­ing that although good­ness can­not exist with­out evil, nor can love or free­dom exist with­out hate and apartheid – it is the bal­ance between them that matters.

Today, even though tech­nol­o­gy has devel­oped exceed­ing­ly well, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion has evolved beyond the bor­ders of coun­tries, mankind’s knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of how to imple­ment the good force in our aspects of life is lim­it­ed and on a glob­al scale the expres­sions of hate and igno­rance still flour­ish. The bal­ance has still not been achieved on a glob­al lev­el, and these neg­a­tive forces still live on. How­ev­er, we have learned from these three great men that we can only heal some­thing with its oppo­site. For exam­ple, if a feel­ing of hate should enter the heart, we can only sur­mount it with a stronger feel­ing of love. Should a thought of war come to mind, we must con­quer it with a stronger thought of peace. These oppos­ing forces are part of our lives, and one can­not live with­out the oth­er. Like the stars – they con­stant­ly shine, but are only vis­i­ble to us when they are sur­round­ed by dark­ness. Humanity’s job is to strength­en the light and become like a bril­liant star that under­mines the dark­ness in the uni­verse. Today it is our job as indi­vid­u­als to shine the light of free­dom, love and uni­ty to each oth­er – and to fol­low the exam­ple and advice of these lead­ers that all lived what they preached. We must try to live and emu­late the light of truth that Nel­son Man­dela, Mar­tin Luther King and Shoghi effen­di reflect­ed to us and try to act upon it.