Leadership Dilemmas, Copernicus and Liberation Square
When Copernicus made a bold statement that the earth is not the center of the universe it sent shock waves through the world. Today, we are not sure how many factors were bubbling up to cause the 5000 year old society of Egypt to erupt and send shock waves around the world.
Was the cultural shift of the Copernican revolution just a simple change of mind? Was the information about the heavens merely facts that had to be distributed to the general population of the times?
Is the societal change we see taking place in Egypt and the surrounding areas of Yemen, Jordan and Saudi Arabia a flash in the pan or a societal change of a larger magnitude? Only time will tell.
What is fascinating about what is happening today is the rapidity of the nature of change. The process in the Copernican revolution and what we are watching now is similar; both are disorderly processes, involving vast numbers of people and subgroups freeing themselves from old mindsets and struggling to come to new awareness.
The changes we are involved with at the present moment are fluid, confusing, complex and requesting us to seek short term answers. There is a tendency to ignore or deny underlying truths and look for the simple reasons we do what we do. We want everyone to behave, play nicely and shake hands.
In Egypt right now there are the forces for and the forces against, and they are fighting with each other. That scenario is so familiar. We are habituated to brief news items and to look at the drama, and we are choosing based on our predisposition one side we hope will win over the other.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati