Shorts #205 - Why Smart Leaders Read Voltaire Instead of HBR

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[JESAN’s COMMENTARY] 5:00
Introduction to the Age of Enlightenment.

In the West, we collectively are historically, philosophically, intellectually, and even morally, past the apotheosis of the Enlightenment project. The Enlightenment, which encompassed a series of changes in the mindsets and attitudes of people born and raised in Western Europe, and then those who migrated to the nations those people colonialized, began with the German Reformation led by Martin Luther, and ended with the nuclear holocaust at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That covers about 400 years in one sentence, and it has too, because the scope of the Enlightenment project—driven by the idea that human reason could understand the nature of God, and finally that human reason could dethrone God Himself—is still being felt today. From technology and science to social engineering via government, the ideas leaders are based in and do not think about. The assumptions that undergird those ideas come from a position, based on the idea from the Ancient Greek Protagoras, ruthlessly taken to its logical conclusion, that “Man is the measure of all things.”
In the midst of the Enlightenment project, about two hundred and fifty years after Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church and started a ball rolling downhill in Europe, some people—writers, scientists, thinkers, philosophers, and others—began questioning the idea that “This is the best of all possible worlds.” They looked around at the religious strife, sectarian violence, natural upheavals, and results of colonial exploration, and began to postulate that maybe the people in the world were making it broken and needed a swifter change than one that could be provided by the mere application of mere human reason.
And, since Gutenberg, that other progenitor of the Enlightenment project, created the technology of the printing press, anyone could publish their words to the world; almost any educated person has ever since felt an obligation to do so. But with that publishing comes a commitment to free inquiry, free speech, freedom to worship, as well as a commitment to all the consequences and repercussions—individual and corporate—that come from exercising such a privilege.
And thus, we get to the author of our book this week

[JESAN’s COMMENTARY] 5:00
The Literary Life of François-Marie Arouet, aka Voltaire.

• François-Marie Arouet (French: [21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher (philosophe), satirist, and historian.
• Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity (especially of the Catholic Church) and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
• Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and even scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets.
• Educated by the French Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand (1704–1711) he was taught Latin, theology, and rhetoric. All of which would come back to bite those same Jesuits in the tuchus later.
• His best-known work and magnum opus, Candide, is a novella that comments on, criticizes, and ridicules many events, thinkers, and philosophies of his time, most notably Gottfried Leibniz and his belief that our world is of necessity the "best of all possible worlds.”
Much has been written and talked about Voltaire, during his raucous life, through his death, and way past; from misappropriating quotes from his works out of context all the way to mangled malapropisms in the mass popular culture of the 20th century, his influence seems to have, just now, begun to fade in the popular conscience.
Voltaire was one of those rare, world-bending, historical talents, much like Shakespeare, the Apostle Paul, Socrates, or even the Founding Fathers, whose writing was so massive and influential beyond his lifetime, that I think even he would be shocked and surprised
[JESAN’s COMMENTARY] 5:00
Why Smart Leaders Read Voltaire instead of HBR

In the West, leaders are leading in a world deeply embedded in the ember of cynicism and irony. We lead because it is an obligation many times, not because we are inspired to. And yes, inspiration fades, but often when it does, we revert as leaders to the cultural easy road of obligation, responsibility, and we keep the irony. Hardening into a shield to protect us from really saying what we really mean and really meaning what we say.
This should come as no surprise. After all, we are way past the close of the Enlightenment project and many of us who are leaders now were raised deep in the heart of the post-modern, post-Enlightenment project, where everything was deconstructed, meaning was suspect, and the guardrails of tradition and security—positional, familial, or even communitarian—had long been pulled up and thrown into a massive bonfire in a field of social media posts, videos, and memes.
The massive question of “What do we do now?,” cannot be sufficiently answered by the marketing research-driven articles published by the Harvard Business Review. Or even by the self-help books that crowd the business section of Barnes and Noble. What we do now is we go back to the past, in order to rediscover the traditions, rhythms, patterns, and ways of being that were torn down by the Enlightenment project itself.
Do we reject the fruits of modernity and post-modernity? Maybe we have to as leaders. After all, we have gotten as far as ironic detachment and cell phone technology can take us after all. Maybe mere human reason, now suspect, must be reassembled in some fashion. Not as another idolatrous golem, but as a partner on the long trek back to restoring what has been long lost in the path we have forged as leaders into this cul-de-sac of “the future.”
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And well…

…that’s it for me.