Leadership Lessons From The Great Books – Shorts #86

Behold, I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide.

There has been a shift in the cultural zeitgeist lately, and, while we are not a cultural podcast in and of itself, we are a podcast that focuses on the nature of leadership and how that nature intersects with the reality of living in the Western world.

At the end of the month of Pride, a month muted in some respects and loud in others, two Supreme Court decisions were released that revealed a startling turn of events: one on the legality of the use of affirmative action and race-based quotas in admissions to higher education institutions, and another on the nature of free association and free speech.

You can go and read both decisions yourself, and we will have links to them in the show notes below this shorts episode. Beyond the legal considerations in these decisions, the larger cultural ramifications are startling for leaders.

They reveal that the moment of another founding in the West is upon us: one not based on abrogating the Divine Right of kings, or one based on the ascension of the individual to a state of equality with the monarch.

Instead, this third founding (or fourth turning if you’re thinking more globally than regionally) is beginning to develop based on a foundation of individual leadership leading not to collective action, but instead to something else.

Something more theological and psychological than scientific and material.

Leaders need to keep their finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, or the Spirit of the Age, as it was sometimes referred to in the past.

For when the tide turns, leaders want to be ahead of the turn, not in the slack water. And they for sure don’t want to be caught in the ebb of the tide.