A finer citizenship of control freaks
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I’m back from being out of town, midweek. As part of a conference organising team, yours truly has spent the past month or so paying attention to a plethora of details. Plus the big picture of the event. There were literally millions of things to stay on top of. And virtually thousands of other things getting in the way. In the end, it was all about concept and control, of managing and modelling. A leader needs to know the way, show the way, and go the way.
It’s a tough job – but someone’s got to do it. Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon your world. The best among your colleagues suddenly begin to lack all conviction about the work at hand. The worst shirkers are full of passionate intensity about how and why this won’t work, or that won’t. But through it all, the person who is determined to see the matter through stands firm. And having done all, and withstood all, remains standing. Often it takes an iron hand in a velvet glove. Even when people get hurt. Especially when.
Which reminds me of an article I read recently, in which the writer argues that being a control freak usually brings grief to self and others. When leaders try to micromanage everything around and below them, while still staying on top, the project most likely will end in tears. For example, he reminisced about an erstwhile national leader of ours whose penchant was to have a finger in every part of the national pie and stir the pot at the same time (if you will forgive the mixed metaphor) while having a hand on the tiller as well as in the cookie jar. The man’s modus operandi was to be in control of everyone and everything; show he was in charge; and be known to be a hard if malleable person. Well, we all know how that road show ended!
In comparison, the writer pleads a case for a present national leader who evidently isn’t in control of everything and everyone. Apparently, he considers it a good thing for democracy – and doesn’t seem to mind who knows it. Under his care, the country has settled down to a new regime (no pun intended) and a new regimen of republican activity. However, his watch and word don’t extend to every nook and corner of the nation-state as it did under a tyranny past…
For this relief, many thanks! And the writer of the article I referred to considers the moral and the morale of the ensuing national mindset a good thing to be applied to both macro environments such as island as well as a micro enterprises such as interpersonal relationships. But those who favour the “suaviter in modo, fortiter in re” approach may be forgiven for wondering whether there isn’t something to be said for tighter controls, after all…
Consider.
Traffic
Need I explain? Not if you drive! Or even use our highways and byways and expressways… In any capacity – motorist, passenger, pedestrian.
Might I suggest some areas in which we would all want to see tighter controls? For one, stricter enforcement of roadworthiness tests. If I had a buck for every bus and lorry that banged and smoked its way past inspection points while police hassled owners of brand new vehicles over lapsed emission certificates, I’d be a billionaire by now. For another, more stringent penalties for those who violate lane discipline with impunity. By far the worst offenders are trishaw drivers and errant motorcyclists, and even coppers on highway patrol bikes are not exempt from the temptation to cross the double white line to get ahead of the congestion… (see also below.).
Might I also suggest others in which we obviously need fewer controls, or a loosening of strictures? My limited IQ prevents me from understanding why half a dozen traffic officers are required to police an intersection where the lights are working perfectly well… This tandem operation causes more chaos and consternation than at junctions where there are neither beacons nor sunglass-bespectacled policemen to minister to traffic that would have otherwise flowed smoothly past… Save the minor hiccough when an apostate politico still barges past on the wrong side of the road, flanked by (admittedly fewer) outriders.
Queues
You don’t this one explained! Unless you’re an unrepentant queue-jumper yourself, dear? We’ve all experienced it – waiting patiently, being prodded and pressed from behind, sweating away while watching the clock and cursing the people ahead and the world’s slowest counter-clerks upfront only to have a manners-dumb, mindlessly numb-to-common courtesy ‘athlete’ sail or swim past or cut in – with neither “Please?” nor “Excuse me!” – and (to add insult or injury) be served before all the good, law-abiding citizens in the queue.
Some blame our culture. Other more charitable types attribute it to human nature. A few see the streak of adventure in Sri Lankans that places our, eh, civilisation in a league of its own. Well, dears, whether it’s nature or nurture, DNA or dashed poor upbringing, it’s time, high time, and time way past, to end this ugly thing. “Ecrasez l’infame!” as Voltaire exclaimed angrily, pointing to his watch and brandishing his token, while probably standing impatiently in an island-republic queue where ‘lane disciple’ or the should-be inviolate principle of ‘first come, first served’ had been violated for the umpteenth time…
We all need to take a hand and take a stance in ensuring that no Sri Lankan queue is ever broken again. Even if the process of protecting a principle spoils our day, or mood, even lunch (which is where I most often encounter our q.-jumping athletic pole-vaulters…).
Media
The less said about it the better (as some politicos are no doubt hoping several of our wild asses would do in respect – or disrespect – of their flops, flubs, fears, failures, and fiascos). But no good control freak in the corridors of power could ever pre-empt the Fourth Estate from doing what it does best… choosing to exercise self-control. True, some scribes whose bark is worse than their bite wouldn’t recognise self-censorship if it strolled over and took a snap out of their, er, behind-deadline, um, bottom-lines! Others would, and do. Which is why I will stop just short of telling you what I feel about control freaks among the powers that be who preach abstinence to the poor while fattening their own golden calves for slaughter; refuse to sacrifice their sacred cows to satisfy the demands of justice; and hunt with the hound while running with the hare. This is – like Wilde’s fox-hunting – the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.
Control freaks or freak controls? Either way, we agree with that writer!