LEADING FROM THE SADDLE | 2005-11-29
The old kings used to rule, not from the throne, but from the saddle. They were personally riding out to confront the enemy at the farthest reaches of their realms.
We find "Charlemagne" in Rome, at war with the Saxons, on guard against the Islamic threat of invation from Spain, which his ancestor had turned back when it reached Belgium, having already conquered France.
This is very puzzling to someone who has the stereotypical picture of kingship, a guy sitting on a throne surrounded by courtiers wearing silk pants.
Historians like the latter picture of leadership. They like the idea that someone sitting and writing orders is in control.
In a museum there is the elaborate office in which General Stonewall Jackson wrote his last orders.
It is a tree stump.
General Jackson was killed precisely because his own men did not know where he was all the time. He was shot by mistake by our own men.
Lee always looks in the pictures like a mellow Southern Gentleman. Actually his officers regularly had to hold him back from charging right into the battle. Once the troops were yelling, "General Lee to the rear! General Lee to the rear!" Lee, the man they counted on for their lives, had charged right into the battle, bullets flying around him.
Lee shouted, "I will withdraw, but will you beat these people?" The troops shouted they would, and would General Lee PLEASE get the hell out of there and let THEM take the risks?
Now let us come down, with a loud thump, from Generals Lee and Jackson to Bob Whitaker.
This is important:
When I write, I am not writing from a Seat of Wisdom. I am thinking out loud. I am riding around the field of ideas. If you think I have a Formula for Success, you are not only looking at the wrong person, you are looking at the wrong RACE.
Einstein, a good Jew, wanted a fixed universe based on the fixed speed of light. Heisenberg, an Aryan, was comfortable with the Principle of Uncertainty. Einstein died fighting that: "God does not play dice witht he universe."
The Aryan and the Jewish- Chinese points of view are not only worlds apart, they are UNIVERSES apart.
MANY universes.
Einstein wanted one universe ruled by One Jehovah and One Book. None of this even OCCURRED to Heissenberg. Being an Aryan, he was interested in what truth WAS, not in imposing his Truth upon the universe.
So my intellectual life is not giving you a final truth which comes from where I am sitting.
This is a practical matter. Once people decide that I have a lot to say, they begin to ask me what we have been taught to ask of Great Philosophers:
"OK, Bob, you have given me PART of the truth, not give me the WHOLE truth."
I am giving you what I think I have figured out. I am not even wedded to that.
You show me it is not true and I'll go with YOU. So how can anyone think that I have some kind of rock-solid Final Truth, the one everybody else claims?
I do not try to rule, but I try to LEAD.
And I lead from the saddle.