There is an alliance between the pastor and the mayor: if you keep them stupid, I’ll keep them poor.
Wilhelmina Verbeet 1893-1982
The quote above is from my grandmother and it has always stuck with me. Now it seems that her message is playing out on a global scale. The names have changed but the principles are still alive.
The past months I have been studying various conspiracies and I found that many of them are not just mere theories. I learned about the central banking system, ancient bloodlines, big pharma, global politics, just to name a few.
If you study these subjects and take enough distance you can see a pattern emerge. A pattern of deception, control and concentration of wealth, very much in line with a set of goals I wrote about before:
If you think about the goals of Power, Control and Profit it becomes clear that these goals cannot be pursued by all. These goals are just for “the happy few”. What about the rest?
Pairing Goals
There is also this other set of goals: Truth, Freedom and Health. I started pairing these goals with Power, Control and Profit which led to some interesting questions:
Can you have Freedom when someone else is in Control?
I think the answer to this question is quite self evident…
Can there be Health in the pursuit of Profit?
Might be a hard nut to crack…
About Power and Truth
I found that pairing Power and Truth leads to the most interesting set of questions:
What is the relation between Power and Truth?
What do we need to believe to accept Power?
Is what we believe the Truth?
How much Power can you have when everybody knows the Truth?
The use of Power and Truth in Lean
I think that Lean is teaching people to think for themselves, to experiment, to find facts, to learn, to understand. To understand what is real, to understand what is the truth.
What about the use of power? There is this famous quote from Toyota:
Lead as if you have no power.
Han Higashi, NUMMI President
I think this is such an important lesson. The best way to accept the truth as the truth is to discover it by yourself. If someone in power gives you “a truth” believing starts to replace discovery. Or suspicion kicks in…
The best way to use power may be to keep people on the path of discovery. By asking about the facts. By helping to clarify the thinking. By encouraging to experiment and reflect. In this way you help people to grow.
First we build People.
Fujio Cho, Chairman of the Board and Representative Director of Toyota Motor Corporation from June 2006 to June 2013.
Then we build Cars.
No wonder
If you have a leader who pursues Truth, Freedom and Health, I expect Lean will have no difficulty to take root.
What I learned in the past months though, is that the top of the top of the top leaders in the world, unfortunately, pursue a different set of goals and they have been doing so for centuries. They have been working hard to keep the people stupid and poor.
No wonder it has been so hard for Lean to take root.