Are World Leaders Failing Us?
There’s a heavy cry for a more conscious world that is less divisive and more humane. Are world leaders heeding the call or quelling it?
For the past five years, I have been researching the role of conscious leadership with particular emphasis on how inherited collective traumas like genocide and war can play a critical role in shaping leaders, be it corporate or political.
Since September 27, my research for my doctoral thesis came to a halt, and not only because ethnic Armenians have been ravaged by war and genocide, but because the very foundation of world leadership has been shaken to its core before my eyes.
As a Canadian Armenian living in Armenia for the past 16 years, a country of just 3 million (about the size of Chicago’s population alone), I have spent day and night trying to make sense of my research in light of recent developments while coming to terms with a barrage of daily eyewitness and first-hand accounts recounting barbaric acts and humanitarian crimes, as world leaders do little to nothing to stop them, aside from calls for ceasefire.
At the time of writing this, we enter the 5th week of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. We watch how young adults aged 18–26 are being slaughtered as they defend the only home they have known; the very land they have inherited from their ancestors and which is populated for this very reason, of over 95% Armenians.
We now find ourselves in an era where the wealthy and powerful assault the underprivileged without consequence — a paradox that leaves me feeling disheartened and impotent.
As war crimes continue to unfold, as human rights continue to be violated, and as thousands of families are displaced without, in the eyes of their enemies, the right to live and to even exist, I can’t help but question the role that governments and international organizations play, and why they even exist. Why do they turn a blind eye to the very values and policies they claim to advocate? Why are power and wealth still valued above human life, even in a post-COVID world claiming to be more awakened, conscious and evolved?
Why do world governments turn a blind eye to the very values and policies they claim to advocate?
Or could it be that we are presented, for the first time in human history, with an opportunity to make the shift that can change our world as we know it?
From deep political divides, to worldwide pandemics, from global warming to catastrophic nuclear accidents, international terrorism and cold-blooded acts of genocide, we are witnessing the biggest leadership crisis in human history — but also the greatest opportunity.
We are witnessing the biggest leadership crisis in human history — but also the greatest opportunity
Despite the gifts with which we have been presented as humans thanks to the most advanced technologies — to question, to be informed and to make choices — many nations today are more polarized than ever before with even greater cynicism about the future. Whether we realize it or now, the lack of conscious leadership is leading us towards an extinction of humanity.
For all the scholarly research, books and articles published on effective leadership, not to mention the infinite number of executive and leadership training programs available to us, leadership continues to fail in its most core purpose.
The lack of conscious leadership is leading us towards an extinction of humanity…The only way to change our world, is to change our consciousness, and leaders should be held accountable to lay the groundwork for this important shift.
This year has made it painfully evident that we, as humans, are at an enormous crossroads. Our world today reflects an opportunity to not only advocate for equitable, righteous, compassionate and democratic values, but to demand for a shared humanity devoid of mass hatred, indifference, injustice and violence. The only way to change our world, is to change our consciousness, and leaders should be held accountable to lay the groundwork for this important shift.
For all the rhetoric around the prioritization of peace, human rights and global security, the international community along with governments, corporations, and even the mass media, continue to succumb to state pressures prioritizing wealth and power, while turning a blind eye to the gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.
For all the rhetoric around the prioritization of peace, human rights and global security, the international community continues to turn a blind eye to the gross violations of internationally recognized human rights
If we cannot hold these institutions accountable, then it is up to world citizens to stand up, to speak truth to power, to become consciously engaged, and to no longer tolerate dysfunctional systems. Many organizations have developed complicities towards unethical behaviours by holding back their potential for effective leadership through a defeatist cynical attitude of “What more can we possibly do?”
There’s a heavy cry for a more conscious world, but until we break free from our unassuming way of thinking, and until we are not unified in our demand for a more vindicated decree of democracy, we will never be able to overcome perverse powers, or immoral leaders and institutions.
We all deserve a better future, not for one category of people, but for all human life. Everyone deserves to have their basic rights and needs met, respectfully and humbly, in a firmly safeguarded commonwealth.
