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| Gary L. Gregg, PhD |
By Gary L. Gregg, PhD
Director of the McConnell Center
If you are going to be a leader in any society, circumstance or institution, it is crucial to understand the culture within which you and your followers will operate.
There are many aspects to culture which must be considered for effective leadership, but one the McConnell Scholars wrestled most closely with this spring semester was the division between those who believe in some kind of transcendent and objective moral order and those who do not. Whatever your position on this great divide, if you are going to provide effective leadership you must understand where your followers fall and what arguments might move them your way.
In our class this spring, we saw the position of moral relativism argued most strongly by Willie Stark, the Governor in Robert Penn Warren’s classic All the King’s Men. We saw the opposite position in the natural law arguments of Martin Luther King, Jr. and in C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man.
Where Governor Stark argues there is no good in the world but only bad and we make up something to call “good” as we go along, Lewis argues there is a transcendent moral order handed down through many civilizations and religions. He calls this “the Tao” (or “the way”) which he borrows, obviously, from eastern religion. Where you and your followers fall on this basic question will determine much of what is possible to accomplish (and how it can be accomplished). Leadership in the 21st century requires a thorough understanding of all sides of this basic divide.
On Tuesday of this week I had the chance to listen to the 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama while he was in Louisville, Kentucky. It was an amazing experience. He was funny, earnest, witty, engaging, and very smart. I could have listened to him all day.
As I listened, leaning forward in my chair and concentrating on every word he said in his heavily accented English, he brought me back time and again to our conversations this spring about leadership, morality and culture. He is clearly a man on the side of C.S. Lewis and the Tao. Much like Lewis in his 1944 classic, The Abolition of Man, the Dalai Lama celebrated the core moral values that unite almost all major religious traditions the world over. He argued for them all to be brought to the public square, for morals to again be taught in schools, and for the centrality of the family and person-to-person community building. Lewis argues that we all just have two choices: either we will live our lives within the Tao or we will be outside of it looking in, usually with hostility. The Dalai Lama has clearly decided to live and teach from within the Tao.
For non-light summer reading, I might recommend a very deep meditation on the core elements of both sides of the great moral divide of our times. Your future as a leader might well depend on your ability to understand and choose which side of the gulch to inhabit.
If you are interested in my full thoughts on the Dalai Lama’s appearance in Louisville and his teachings about morality, community, and culture, visit the Imaginative Conservative.