Divide and Conquer

“Divide et impera” is an age old concept in both the political scene and on the battlegrounds. You also will be hard pressed to find any true moral standards nor will you likely discover any actual virtuous behavior in these arenas especially in politics. Obviously, I mention these statements due to the current state of our society. I would venture to say that our country has not been this divided since the civil war in the 1860's. One thing I find very interesting is that preceding these two periods of great division in our country there can also be found revolutionary jumps in the ways that people communicate and the speed at which information travels. In the mid 1800's you had the telegraph and the railroads and in our generation we of course have the internet and social media. Anyway, as interesting or not as this may all be, this is not the actual direction I am looking to head with this blog.

There are two types of leaders in the sense that there are those who divide and those who unite. As a father, coach and now council member in my church my ambition in these leadership roles is to be inspired and to inspire others to be a part of something that is much larger and greater than ourselves. A dream to carry on missions that lead to the greater good by continuing or creating traditions and leaving a great legacy behind. To me winning is the reward for doing what is right all the time. To most, I believe the view of winning would involve a competition between opposing entities or forces but from my point of view it is rather a cooperation of competitors to attain greater goals than any individual event can present. In this sense enemies can become rivals, rivals can become friends, and friends can become family. And at the end of each day despite any differences in opinion family members may have they should and must always find a way through love to remain a family.

Now those who cause division most often look to the art of deception to achieve this goal. And deception most often is at best a short term tactic as in the long run people will eventually separate reality from fiction one way or the other. Hence, we come full circle back to some points I made in the intro of this blog that when information is given at a rate that people are not accustomed or adjusted to then we run a greater risk of existing in a fictional reality. Those with evil intent are able to take opportunity in this type of existence to cultivate a culture of us versus them which imbues or thrives on anger and violence. And once group mentality takes over the individual tends to lose self awareness and self control and collective behavior tends to take over individual judgement. Those with this amount of evil intent really do not care about the future only their own selfish ambitions.

In conclusion, I feel it is very important for us as individuals to step back, take a deep breath, reevaluate ourselves, look deep within to rediscover the purpose to which we were created and then unite with others with similar goals and collectively move in the direction of what is truly good. How do we know what is truly good?

"No one is good but One, that is God."