September 14th 2009
Two powerful comments – one specific to Scotland and its debate about self-government and self-determination – but which has wider impact on the relationship of formal power to cultural change; the other a wider truism.
Here is Naomi Mitchison, writer, campaigner, radical writing in 1953 about the debate on Scotland’s constitutional status:
It seems to me that you are bound to assume that a self-governing Scotland is going to be immediately morally better, and I don’t see it unless there has also been a revolution. I cant see how the people who are likely to govern Scotland under any democratic system are going to be any different from the undoubted Scots who are in positions of local power.
And long before the birth of Christ here is the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu musing on leaders and leadership:
As for the best leaders, the people hardly notice their existence. The next best they hate and the next best they fear. But when the best leaders work is done, the people will say ‘we did it ourselves’.
