Member-only story

Looking For Leaders in the Covid battle

Steven Barnes
4 min readNov 13, 2020

--

Covid is life and death, and we have a chance for a new beginning. Because my family’s existence is at stake, I’m not tolerating nonsense around this. What will be required is:

  1. Clarity on the behaviors, strategies and beliefs/values that have been more successful around the world.
  2. Clarifying a reasonable time frame for expecting positive results, assuming that we can implement these.
  3. One of those beliefs will be confidence that all animals seek to move away from pain toward pleasure. That means that, given understanding and leadership, our citizens can and will do what is necessary to succeed. Here’s a hint: if you don’t know how to manage your own emotions, you are not capable of understanding how to motivate others.
  4. Deliberate misinformation or “clowning” will kill people. Anyone who insists on this is a snake at BEST.
  5. Sleepers can be awakened. If you have so much hatred and contempt for your political opponents or fellow citizens that you cannot believe they can act in alignment with their own interests, YOU are ignorant of basic principles of animal behavior. If you believe those interests cannot be communicated, you are assuming your own limits are the limits of possibility. You are asleep, dreaming that you are awake. WAKE UP. Saying “it is hard” or “attitudes have hardened” would be in alignment with observable reality. Saying “they’ll never change” assumes that people are the same from day to day or even moment to moment. I would…

--

--

Steven Barnes
Steven Barnes

Written by Steven Barnes

Steven Barnes is a NY Times bestselling author, ecstatic husband and father, and holder of black belts in three martial arts. www.lifewritingpodcast.com.

No responses yet