Thought Exercise #12: Due 11/26/13

“Let them see that you trust them & let them solve their own problems, make their own decisions.Do that & they will commit their lives to you. Bully the, control them out of fear or malice or just for your own convenience, & after a while you'll have to spend all your time thinking for them, controlling them, & stifling their resentment.” 
― Octavia E. Butler, Fledgling

I think of the Golden Rule: Treat Others the Way You Want to Be Treated. There is the saying that "What goes around comes around," which also applies to the concept of karma, in which all your actions and treatment of others will in one way or another come back to you. When a one is shown kindness, trust, and support, a relationship of mutual understanding, trust, and commitment to bringing out the best in one another can truly blossom and be mutually beneficial. But when one is bullied and mistreated in any way, karma will turn things against the original perpetrator.

The quote from "Fledgling" also made me think of the quote from Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince":  “It is best to be both feared and loved; however, if one cannot be both it is better to be feared than loved....It is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.” After all, to run a government, or to be a leader, one has to be feared to a certain degree in order to be respected, but it is a tricky balance to be a great leader who treats others well and is loved, while being recognized as a powerful, trustworthy, dependable leader at the same time.