Padriag
Posts: 2633
Joined: 3/30/2005
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Its been really hectic here lately so I haven't had time to post much lately. Getting ready to move and also working on a writing project for publication that needs to be finished up in June. Its all keeping me very busy.
There is so much that can be said on this topic, and I think needs to be said. I think with a better understanding of leadership, what it is and what it means, it would change they way many dominants and submissives look at their roles in this lifestyle.
Fear of Retribution is the classic means of domineering behavior. Dominance through force. Its probably the most common means of exerting control over others in the world, the simplest and easiest to employ, and the most direct means. Nothing subtle about it, nothing sophisticated about it. There are times when it is appropriate and useful, even in this lifestyle. There are times when a dominant needs to exert physical control. But it does not have to take the form of brutality and I don't believe its healthy to build a relationship around this means of dominance alone.
Blind Hope is born out of fear, not of retribution, but a complete lack of faith in self. A lack of faith that the individual can themselves deal with lifes problems successfully, so they look to the leadership of someone who seems more capable. How fragile the faith is has less to do with how capable the leader is an more to do with how incapable the follower is. You see it in relationships where one partner constantly forgives the other no matter how many times they cheat, lie, etc.; the follower has no faith in themselves to find anything better so they cling to what they have.
Faith in a Leader is fairly common in this lifestyle. Many submissives look up to the dominants and expect them to be almost superhuman. It puts a great deal of pressure on dominants to be successful in life, business, as well as top notch dominants. Sometimes that pressure is helpful, but at other times it becomes too much and the dominant goes to unhealthy extremes trying to maintain that image. This kind of followership is best when its realistic, when the leader is admired for who they are and those things they are good at, without the expectation that they have super human ability to be good at everything.
Intellectual Agreement is something I've found to be rare, and perhaps the weakest form of leadership, but is an especially weak form of dominance. The reason being is that it invited the questioning of authority. A leader is only a leader as long, and so far, as they are capable of articulating and defending their ideas. If a leader can't make the idea sound good, even if its a good idea, then their leadership falls into question and may be short lived. That's fine in a democracy where the questioning of authority is part of the process, but in a dominant / submissive relationship it weakens the dynamic.
Buying the Vision falls somewhere between faith in a leader and intellectual agreement. It doesn't invite questioning because it presents the idea as being that of the leader... this is what they are going to do, are you in or out? If you're in, that means accepting and following the leader and the leader's vision. For a dominant within this lifestyle that means being clear about the lifestyle you are trying to achieve, what you are offering, what you will expect, etc. If the submissive buys into that, then they buy into your leadership and you go from there. If they don't buy into it, they're out.
I'll try to post some more later, wrote this while having breakfast this morning.
Oh, and K8, you might find this article Slavery in Ancient Greece interesting. Though they practiced slavery, their treatment of their slaves was generally nothing like the image most people have. To them, being human and being property weren't contradictions. Slaves were often treated as family members, and on the whole treated very well; especially when you compare their treatment to later forms of slavery, most notably blacks in Europe, the Americas and Carribean during the 1600s - early 1800s
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Padriag
A stern discipline pervades all nature, which is a little cruel so that it may be very kind - Edmund Spencer
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RE: Followership (or the corporate version of the submi... - 
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