Huainanzi - Entry 26

Trey Smith

Those who gain the benefit of power have very little in the way of holdings and very much in the way of responsibility. What they maintain is very restricted, what they control is very broad.
~ a passage from The Book of Leadership and Strategy by Thomas Cleary ~

Obviously, one could argue this is the way things SHOULD be; it certainly isn't the way things are!!

When leaders have a lot of wealth (holdings), they focus a lot of their attention on maintaining and increasing it. As we have seen in the US and other nations, our leaders make decisions based almost solely on how it impacts them and they seem blind or uncaring as to how such decisions impact anyone else and/or the natural environment.

In the US, this explains why neither the Obama administration nor Congress has spent much time at all in trying to devise a viable plan to get Americans back to work. They are employed and their portfolios are doing quite fine, thank you. The misery being suffered by many of the 99 percent throughout the nation simply doesn't touch them.

To read the introduction to this ongoing series, go here.