History of Leadership

Leadership, unsurprisingly, has changed over time, just as the rest of the world has.  Also unsurprising is that leadership seems to have changed alongside of history, corresponding directly with certain events and time eras. This makes sense, since leadership often involves people that are at the heads of society, and when a changing society forces those who run it to change, then physical leadership will probably change too.  This is present throughout history-I think a major shift in power such as the American Revolution is a particularly good example since it is usually the result of a changing society in general.  In this case, the movement within society away from absolute rule and towards representative rule resulted in an obvious change in leadership, since absolute leaders were no longer accepted in society.  Leadership now meant more fairness and equality, and leaders were forced to change their tactics.  In addition, it could also be argued that this change relates directly to the timeline of history-gradually emerging shifts in leadership since the revolution has shaped the world today, in which leadership is definitely characterized differently than it generally would have been a few centuries ago.  Thus, I think it makes sense to see the relation between leadership developing alongside of history.

There's a saying that change is always progressive and for the better; however, I don't subscribe to this theory.  In fact, I think the opposite is particularly visible as far as leadership is concerned.  Certainly, as society has progressed, so has leadership, but that doesn't necessarily mean that what we have now is good/better than before.  To me this is very evident in politics.  I think it's better to discard what society has to say about the subject and examine it with one's own eyes, but even ignoring all of the stereotypes spewed out by the mainstream media and society's current cultural disgust with politics in general, it's easy to find shortcomings.  My single greatest issue is what I view as a shift from doing into debating.  I see that over a period of a few centuries, society has developed from one in which few hold power, to one in which many hold power.  Granted this is debatable, but I think it makes sense-in the current setting of democracy and extensive civil rights, the average citizen holds more power than most wield.  There are so many more people involved with the decision-making process, so many things have to be considered, and even more people get involved along the way.  No one person (or even a small group of people, for that matter) is able to wield extensive power above anyone else, and when people occasionally try to, an immediate uproar follows (any scandal involving police, a politician, etc abusing their power is a great example).  What I see as the result is a society in which it takes forever to get things done-essentially, less doing, and more talking.  Of course, the opposite can be argued as well, and I am certainly not advocating for absolute power such as monarchies.  I only wish to point out that as society has grown and involved more of its citizens, so has leadership.  I don't think leadership is the strong, central power concept anymore, and now features many more people than was probably ever conceived maybe five hundred years ago.  What I view as the unfortunate side effect is the current state of American politics.