Decentralized Leadership

I've done a few collaborations with some of the amazing women we have here on steemit and I started using the tag "equalworkforequalcake" (which I'll totally credit to @crimsonclad who is a partner with @followbtcnews for witness). I didn't tell this one what I was doing, but today I asked @kubbyelizabeth for a philosophy topic to write about. It turns out she gave me a great one and this post may get a little long, but I felt the need to explain what the tag is about and hopefully encourage more people to start using it. It's not so much about promoting a gender specifically as it is about acknowledging the contributions of others, but I tend to collaborate with women when I write poetry and I think it's a great way to promote equality while promoting other users. So without further ado, here is me asking Kubby for a topic to discuss and she will receive the liquid rewards from this post, thus equal work for equal cake (or STEEM in this case).

I found the last question she threw out to be the most interesting and it really resonates with me, so today I'll discuss my thoughts on decentralized leadership. Some of you may know I consider myself an anarchist and I've written in the past that I view anarchy, freedom, and liberty as things that exist in the mind. They are intangible and I prefer to think of them as states of being. So with that being said, what is my perspective on the idea of leadership in a decentralized environment?

Steemit is a great case study in anarchy and human behavior in my personal opinion. It's rather fascinating to see how we all approach the platform and make it work without any real "official" leadership. Leadership, while intangible, is something that other people can feel and be drawn to emulate or follow. In a way leadership appears to be almost tangible in the sense that you can see a person leading, either by force or example, and you can gauge it's effectiveness by how successfully they compel others to follow.

In a decentralized or anarchistic environment we can see those that lead by example and those that lead by force both present and sometimes they clash over ideologies and direction. The question, in my mind, then becomes one of "which is better?" The truth as I see it is that both styles are necessary and have their uses. In a centralized setting there is usually a sole source of leadership from the top down that dictates and controls the flow of everything and everyone underneath it, which we can usually find in most governments. I personally don't agree with or abide by that type of leadership any more than I have to, but I can recognize it's value.

On steemit for example we have the more brute force leadership roles of the whales with the most power being able to flag posts or accounts into oblivion and we have the more community minded and philosophical leaders. Obviously both are necessary from my perspective, because we are all responsible for creating and developing the "world" or in this case platform as we see fit. I don't always agree with the brute force approach, but it's useful to remove harmful materials from the platform and to stop reward pool abuse. Do I always agree with their targets and choices? Not so much, but that isn't really the point, the system is designed for us to keep each other in check and if they feel that they can or should use their power to remove things or redistribute over valued content it needs to be a possibility, because sometimes we generally do agree on this approach.

Most of us would probably agree that things like abusive images and spam posts should be discouraged and that can only be done via education or brute force. While I choose to work with MSP and people that I feel resonate more with my leadership style to empower other users through building them up and education, there are going to be times where that's not an option. There is also the chance that some people refuse to conform to what almost all of us see as acceptable behavior. While my default mindset is live and let live, there are inherent dangers that will arise with that mindset that I can not control or stop. In that case it's where you need people like berniesanders and transisto to take a more brute force approach to stopping the problem.

My point in all of this is that I believe we all ultimately sum up leadership in a decentralized environment. We are all equally responsible for policing ourselves and instead of feeling targeted or victimized by the people that may look like a bully at first glance, maybe if we shift our perspectives and try to understand their intentions and relate to these individuals then we can see that even when we disagree, it doesn't mean that what they are doing is inherently wrong or meant to hurt a specific person. We are all doing what we feel is the best course of action and while we may not agree on everything or the methods, the system is working as intended to let us all shape and lead the platform as we collectively see fit. Namaste.

Image source.