Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
In the past generation, citizens, organizations, and nations increasingly used leverage -- bargaining leverage, resource leverage, and financial leverage -- to get things done. The financial crisis of 2008-09, which centered around housing and manipulative subprime mortgages, was in fact a financial leverage crisis. In addition, information technology, the driving force in our economy in recent decades, is at its core about resource leveraging. A single email or tweet can reach tens of millions of people.
Leverage is a very old concept and is associated with the ancient Greek mathematician and scientist, Archimedes, who described leverage in terms of physical objects. A small force can cause a large force if a fulcrum is used. Archimedes said he could move the entire earth if he had a fulcrum, a place to stand, and a pole that was long enough. Leverage today is associated more with negotiations, relationships, computers, and money. Physical leverage is used all the time. Yet in a largely service economy animated by financial transactions and information, resource, financial and bargaining leverage play a much greater role.
The increasingly important role of leveraging in human relations is particularly evident in international relations, where the end of the Cold War led to less hierarchical relations with clear top-down bargaining leverage and more resource leverage used to motivate others to join in a collective effort. Both President Biden and President Zelensky have leveraged relationships, which are a kind of resource, in order to create coalitions to either provide military resources or request them. Mr. Biden needed to unite NATO countries to provide Ukraine with weapons and impose financial sanctions on Russia. Mr. Zelensky has also needed to leverage his relationships with leaders of these same countries to motivate them to contribute.
Democratic governance requires extensive use of leveraging -- bargaining leveraging but now especially resource leveraging -- because there is a limit on what you can tell other people to do. In 2023, democratic leaders need to leverage resources creatively and not just efficiently as well as consciously avoid the extremes of leveraging too much or leveraging too little. Over-leveraged workers or mothers get burned out, while under-leveraged information technology in a community leads to citizens who lack job, health care and volunteer opportunities.
The national quest to transcend our culture and politics of polarization also has a lot to do with leveraging in the middle. Indeed, leveraging is the main social tool that can be used to address our polarization crisis. It is because leveraging is being used pervasively throughout our society and global politics, but it has yet to be targeted on our chief political problem. Polarization itself is about how the political parties push each other to extreme positions on the left and the right and fail to find the kind of middle ground that is needed to pass major legislation. If there is a mechanism that would facilitate finding that middle ground, then it needs to be employed.
Overcoming polarization, narrow mindedness and siloed thinking in American politics can be found, to a significant extent, by finding the mean between extremes of leveraging. This would be the Leverage Mean. The philosopher Aristotle, another ancient Greek thinker, argued that virtue was the mean between extremes of deficiency and excess. Courage, for example, was the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. He called this The Golden Mean. Finding the mean between extremes has a long heritage.
Politicians may need to leverage the internet and social media less so that they are less likely to distort the truth about their opponents. Likewise, the media may need to leverage television as well as Facebook and twitter less frequently in order to present a less oversimplified view of the conflict over policy questions. Indeed, they should give more attention to those politicians and citizens who are not at the polar extremes of the two major parties.
If leveraging is the dominant tool countries, organizations and citizens use to get things done, and if polarization is the dominant problem in US politics, then finding and pursuing the Leverage Mean is critical to the way forward.
Old engraved illustration of Ulysses defying the Cyclops.
Odysseus Reimagined: Nolan’s Epic Explores What Makes a True Hero
Who is a hero? More importantly: what is a hero? What attributes are universally admired, inspiring glorious stories, ballads and songs, memorials and movies, all chronicling the hero’s bold adventures?
The Odyssey, a new release written and directed by Christopher Nolan, attempts to answer that question. Based on the ancient tales The Iliad and The Odyssey, written by Homer around 800 BC, the film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, his loyal wife.
Historians have puzzled over the “Homeric question,” that is, who was Homer? We know very little about him, not even when or where he was born; seven Greek cities lay claim to him as their native son. Yet, he is considered the “godfather” of national Greek culture, and his stories are among the earliest masterpieces of literature.
Homer is sometimes romanticized as a blind poet who wandered from town to town reciting his stories. But he, who could express so poignantly the tribulations of Odysseus, was not blind to human nature. He keenly wrote of the attributes as well as the paltriness in his characters and the flaws of his great hero, Odysseus.
The Iliad is the story of the final years of the Trojan War, sparked when Helen, the beautiful wife of Sparta’s King Menelaus, was kidnapped by Paris of Troy. Because the kings had initiated a pact to defend one another, Odysseus was drawn into the fray.
After spending ten years fighting the Trojan War and finally achieving victory, The Odyssey tells of Odysseus’s struggle to return to his kingdom, Ithaca. On his way home, he encounters many dangers and delays. He is pursued by the sea-god Poseidon, must surmount Circe’s spell, and overcome the seductive charms of the enchantress Calypso, and his journey takes him another ten years.
Odysseus’s desires and struggles are universal: his longing for home, yearning for an end to his troubles, for rest after a long and difficult journey. His difficulties reflect the immemorial questions of what it means to be loyal, to belong, what it means “to be” at all. Despite his hubris, which manifests in his propensity to court catastrophe without regard for consequences, Odysseus is an authentic hero, noble and admirable, brave and dedicated.
According to the Greek ideal, a true hero must possess physical excellence and moral virtue. He must, as well, embrace his civic duty. Achieving such status requires “paideia,” a good education; “sophrosyne,” moderation in maintaining physical and emotional balance; and “arete,” an allegiance to the state.
Fictional or real, heroes’ deeds resonate through the centuries and shine a light on what is best in humanity, what matters, what will live on despite our mortality.
Is our digital age really so different from Homer’s Bronze Age? Physical beauty is still adulated, as it was then with Helen of Troy, “the face that launched a thousand ships.” (Marlowe) Power is still king, and wealth is still power.
The years of the Trojan War were harsh and violent. But were they more brutal than the times we live in? Although millenniums have passed and we now have different battlefields, Palestine, Ukraine, Iran, etc., the ravages and the wages of war remain the same: death and suffering. Humanity’s currency is the same, and so, too, is our quest for heroes.
Social scientists claim that after three generations most people are forgotten by even their direct progeny, and after four, remembered only by historical records. So, what then does last? What makes a difference? What is truly beautiful and worthwhile in life?
The universal themes embodied and emboldened by our heroes throughout the ages, the faithfulness of their hearts and the courage of their deeds, these last.
The essential qualities of a hero are manifested in Homer’s Odysseus. Steadfast integrity: “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” His deep compassion: “Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for others’ good, and to melt at others’ woes.” (Both quotes from The Odyssey.)
Nolan’s movie may have created a more virtuous hero than Homer’s works, but the core of the nearly 3,000-year-old-story is intact and as crucially relevant today as it was then. It is the stuff of life: trauma, survival, relationships with others, finding oneself, deciding what is right, choosing a path forward, sometimes, ultimately leading to the honing of a hero.
Just as Odysseus braved storms, temptations, and trials in search of home, we too face a modern sea of civic turbulence, polarization, mistrust, and the fraying of our shared story.
As we live, we too will write our defining stories. How then might we become modern heroes?
By instigating the third Greek ideal of “arete”; embracing our civic duty. By becoming citizens who are open to reflection and debate, who are willing to act with purpose for the betterment of our nation.
In this journey, the work of renewing our democracy can be its own Odyssey, a voyage calling for integrity, courage, and steadfast commitment. Not to return home as Odysseus so desired, but to preserve our home, for the grand and worthwhile purpose of working toward an ever-better future for our country.
With others, we can shape the next chapter of our nation’s collective story.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."