June 23, 2016 will go down in history as Brexit, the day the British voted to leave the European Union.
I have been fascinated with Brexit as the voting has happened. Glued to my laptop’s delivery of online news which reported and analyzed the results throughout yesterday evening, I was unable to contain myself, and more vocal on Twitter than normal…
Precisely. Demagogues is the perfect word, they are NOT the leaders we need. https://t.co/ok7Pjg5v75
— Rosa Say (@rosasay) June 24, 2016
I eagerly tuned in again this morning for more. I’m someone whose favorite college courses turned out to be American History, and then European History; my actual bachelor’s degree was for Travel Industry Management — practical, and suited to my internships in business, but honestly not as interesting then!
However, you can be someone who hated history altogether, and still be as fascinated as I am with what is occurring globally as I write this.
Those who bother to, are witnessing history in the making.
Sadly, it’s history which is somewhat like watching a train wreck. The global economy is going bonkers in the financial markets, and there’s generational mud-slinging and blame. Many Britons woke up this morning with a horrible case of “What in the world have we done?”
1. In the Washington Post:
The British are frantically Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
2. From Slate:
Why young Britons embraced the EU — and their parents resented it
3. Timothy Garton Ash for The Guardian:
As a lifelong English European, this is the biggest defeat of my political life
It is so thoroughly instructive. Brexit does matter, and it does affect us —just as Elections2016 in the USA matters, and just as we are affected by the painful machinations of our Congress (I don’t know about you, but the recent gun-vote sit-in ridiculousness infuriated me).
This is not just about politics and global affairs.
It is about how humanity operates, and how we live with it.
My morning is filled w/reading #Brexit analysis. Hope Americans are taking notes and rethinking their assumptions and loyalties. Be smart.
— Rosa Say (@rosasay) June 24, 2016
As managers and leaders ourselves, I don’t think we should miss out on our opportunity to be globally informed, while learning lessons we can apply in what we do.
There is so much we can be better aware of in regard to society, governance, and economics. In particular, are the live-action case studies we are witnessing on what Alaka‘i leadership is, is not, and can be.
David Cameron was a historic and disastrous failure, writes @alexmassie https://t.co/MKdiEPhaCu
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) June 24, 2016
…especially if “The referendum is not legally binding.” as @JHWeissmann writes: https://t.co/eiOxJtpcoR
— Rosa Say (@rosasay) June 24, 2016
The greatest danger to our future, is apathy.
“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil,
but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
— Albert Einstein
via www.notable-quotes.com
In times like these, we have a tendency to be watchers, and then turn off our attentions with a sad finality of “Well, what in the world could I do about it? I’m not a world leader with a large circle of influence.”
That’s another kind of resignation, and an equally damaging one. Stoic forbearance slips down into sad acquiescence, compliance, and passivity. Yuck.
We need more courage than that.
Don’t give away the power and influence you DO have. Own it.
Here is where we have defined Circle of Influence in the mana‘o of our Language of Intention: Hana ‘eleau: Working in the Dark.
One of my favorite things about Managing with Aloha, with Ha‘aha‘a, the value of humility to keep me in check about it, is that it has given me a platform, and a voice-in-context I am comfortable with, and quite proud of.
I can watch what happens in governance and the global news, and I can apply it to all I have learned about values, and values-driven behaviors. I can put what I see, hear, and learn about to good use in healthy workplace culture building, where I consider my own circle of influence to reside.
I can expect my learning, and my applications of what I learn to be effective. I can even change my mind.
Very well written. I’ve never liked our partisan politics in the USA, yet Rauch gets me to challenge my own thinking https://t.co/2nXZAq336A
— Rosa Say (@rosasay) June 23, 2016
I can Ho‘o in different ways, and make things happen as I can, and where I can. I can contribute to better, and to the common good.
So can you.
Hō, Ho‘o, and Hō‘imi:
Palena ‘ole Positivity is Hō‘imi— look for it
This post is going to be a work-in-progress for me today, even if for my own learning curation: I will add links to articles I find interesting down in the comment section.
Let’s be global citizens. It’s our Kuleana.
Related post in the archives: Issues, Actions, Opinion, and Self-Managing with Aloha: Snippet ~
Human nature is both reactive by impulse, and proactive by choice. To be human, is to be emotionally reactive, and it is sometimes very difficult to turn that off. However, we can turn it off. We can channel our impulses and reactions: To be human is also to have the ability to think before acting, to choose right from wrong, and to solve our ills rather than stopping at justifying one wrong with another one.
Sneak peek at Barry Blitt’s “Silly Walk Off a Cliff” for the New Yorker
“I feel a sense of grief which is entirely new to me. This is not a personal tragedy. It’s a constitutional melting, out of which something different will eventually be fashioned. But I can usually put political events into a box marked: “it’s fine no one died”. Tragically, that bromide quite doesn’t hold this time. Even so, I didn’t expect to find myself, as I wandered through the streets of Manhattan yesterday evening – glued to my phone, overshooting my destination by several blocks – shaking with tension.”
“…desperate to express myself, I tweeted a bit too much. I railed and ranted in disbelief, and wrote “If this is really happening I have to fundamentally rethink how I relate to the world in terms of citizenship, fellowship, my ‘nationality’”. Melodramatic, huh? But as I look at it now, in the air-conditioned morning, it seems about right. Citizenship, fellowship, nationality – these are all inventions, things in the mind. But we’ve brought them into being again and again through history because we have a yearning for a sense of home that goes beyond the concrete. A sense not so much of where you belong – but of who you belong with.”
“Those of us who believed in human rights and collective endeavour thanked god for the European Union – it was the political saving grace of the United Kingdom, as far as we were concerned.
Now, it’s gone.
And I thought I was going to be covering a topsy-turvy time in American politics.”
— David Shariatmadari: The Britain I knew is gone: what Brexit feels like from abroad
“I’d wager that the E.U. will defy the wishes of Farage and somehow survive. Indeed, without Britain protesting further encroachment from Brussels at every opportunity, it’s conceivable that the six original members—France, Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries—could come even closer together, creating a two-tiered structure, with a tightly integrated core at its center and a less integrated periphery.
It is even possible that the U.K. could break up before the E.U. does. On Thursday, Scotland, which rejected the option of independence from the U.K., in 2014, voted firmly in favor of staying in the E.U.: the result was Remain earning sixty-two per cent of the vote and Leave getting thirty-eight per cent. Rather than acceding to the wishes of the English, who voted decisively in favor of Leave, it seems perfectly possible that the Scots will now (or soon) demand another independence referendum, and the result of this one could be different. “The people of Scotland see their future as part of the European Union,” Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister and the leader of the Scottish National Party, said as the Brexit results came in. She went on, “Scotland has spoken—and spoken decisively.”
What an irony it would be if the Leave vote led the U.K. to break up before the E.U. does. But after a remarkable night and morning, that didn’t seem beyond the bounds of possibility. Very little did.”
— John Cassidy for The New Yorker: Brexit Vote Throws Britain and Europe Into Turmoil