What Doth A Leader Make?

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Sam Vaknin's Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs Web Sites How come a leader becomes a leader? In this article, we are not interested in the historical process but in the answer to the twin questions: what qualifies one to be a leader and why do people elect someone specific to be a leader. The immediately evident response would be that the leader addresses or is judged by his voters to be capable of addressing their needs. These could be economic needs, psychological needs, or moral needs. In all these cases, the needs are judged to be serious enough as to threaten acceptable existence (emphasis on the word “acceptable”). Mere survival is rarely at risk (famine, war, plague). On the contrary, people are mostly willing to sacrifice their genetic and biological survival on the altar of acceptable existence. To be acceptable, life must be honourable. To be honourable, certain conditions (commonly known as “rights”) must be fulfilled and upheld. No life can be honourable without food and shelter (property rights), personal autonomy (as safeguarded by freedoms), security, respect (as expressed through human rights) and influence upon the future (civil rights). In the absence of even one of these elements, people tend to gradually become convinced that their lives are not worth living. They become mutinous and try to restore the “honourable equilibrium”. They seek food and shelter by inventing new technologies and by implementing them in a bid to control nature and other, human, factors. They rebel against any massive breach of their freedoms : free speech has provoked more bloodshed than it has ever prevented. The seek security : they legislate and create law enforcement agencies and form an army. Above all, people are concerned with being respected and with influencing their terms of existence, present and future. The two may be linked : the more able a person is to influence his environment, to mould it – the more respected he is by others. Leaders are perceived to be possessed of qualities conducive to the success of such battles of restoration. Some signal that the leader emits keeps telling his followers : I can increase your chances to win the war that you are waging in order to find food and shelter / respect / personal autonomy / security / an enhanced ability to influence your future. But WHAT is this signal? What information does it carry with it?

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