Woah! Received an email from a brother earlier today asking me a question based on something I wrote years ago that he was re-examining. Attached with the email was a separate email I had sent out to a host of folk on my list back in May of 2012,...the following is that message ________ Subject: Effective Incompetent Leadership: The Placebo Effect May 8, 2012 As salaam alaikum, How can incompetent leadership be effective? How is incompetence determined and defined? Incompetence is defined as lack of physical or intellectual ability or qualifications, inadequate for or unsuited to a particular purpose or application. The Supreme Wisdom states that we must qualify ourselves for positions awaiting us, and said positions are not confined to Minister, Captain, and Secretary. But, with regard to those defined leadership positions, in the military there is a saying that goes The troops have a right to good leadership, and leadership has the responsibility to lead right. The Hon. Louis Farrakhan addressed something similar to this at the end of his message to the Laborers at the Believers meeting Tuesday, May 1st. So, what is the placebo effect and how in the world can this be related to leadership and what does this all have to do with our current condition? Im so glad you asked...a placebo in the medical sense, which the term was first recorded in 1785, means a medicine given more to please than to benefit the patient. The placebo effect is basically the effect a useless treatment, pill, or what have you, has on a patient/person based on the physicians BELIEF in said treatment, or pill, etc., and the patients FAITH in the physician administering the placebo. There has even been findings from research over several decades that placebo effects can also arise from subconscious associations as opposed to overt beliefs, meaning that any stimuli a patient links with feeling better or improvement, physically, mentally, etc., may induce physiological reactions even if a patient has no explicit faith in the treatment being given. For example, a patient may see a doctors stethoscope and subconsciously associate the doctor wearing the stethoscope with feeling better as the doctor uses the instrument to check his heartbeat and breathing, or seeing the doctors white labcoat or the smells asociated with a hospital room. For the Believers this could equate to seeing someone in the position of Student Minister or Student Captain and equating their position with the thought that circumstances will change for the better simply because that person says they are such regardless if they demonstrate it or not or do something that may cause cognitive dissonance with the Believer. This calls to mind the Supreme Wisdom English Lesson C1, wherein it states that he, the uncle of W. D. Fard, likes the Devil because he gives him nothing. I mentioned in my book On Military Science... that this could also be described as cognitive dissonance. But the placebo effect more accurately describes this English Lesson and should help us better understand why we, as Believers, continue on with the same way of doing things following the same people in leadership (inside and outside of the NOI) who have not proven themselves qualified to lead us down any other road than the cyclic path weve been on for decades. The administers of this leadership placebo believe that what they are doing is pleasing to Allah, His Messenger, and the Hon. Louis Farrakhan, and we follow because we want to believe and we want to have faith that those in leadership will do the right things and lead us on a right course, even if they have given us nothing. And so, from the English Lesson C1, we like the Devil because he give us nothing, and this is so due to the hope and faith we have that somehow, some way, some day, they would give us what is not in their nature to give us, and that is Freedom, Justice, and Equality. And sadly, even if it was in their nature to give it to us they would not because it is not in their interest to do such (think over Student Min. Avas message Sunday May 6th). As the lyrics of a song by Earth, Wind, & Fire say, You cant give what you never had. And we tend to like those in leadership who give us nothing as well for the same reason, the placebo effect. And so for those Believers who find themselves continually frustrated with leadership on all levels, and for those in leadership who feel the frustration of the Believers directed at them, this is due to this placebo effect. The Believers are receiving something that seems pleasing but is and has been of no long-term benefit, and leadership has been administering such placebos and the only reason they have been effective and have experienced any minuscule measure of success in any little field they direct the Believers towards is by the grace of Allah and the Faith of the Believers that the Hon. Louis Farrakhan and the Messengers teachings are being represented. It may be argued by those in leadership that the Hon. Louis Farrakhan is pleased with all they do and so justifies their continuance of doing such, even when they are ineffective. But is the Minister really pleased? You can only open so many businesses and fail then blame the Believers for said failures before all support is lost and then try to invoke the Hon. Louis Farrakhans name to relaunch other endeavors to the degree this invocation proves ineffective as well. The Hon. Louis Farrakhan has been touring and speaking to the youth promoting the book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews Vol. II and I hardly hear any other laborers espousing the same, nor do I hear the dialogue of Believers speaking on it as well and if I were a gambling man I would bet that most have not read or completed reading said book. But more importantly, even if the Minister were pleased with things as is, I am curious to know how effective leadership thinks it will be once the Hon. Louis Farrakhan departs. I asked the question in my thesis, Nation or Donation: Advancing the Nation of Islam Beyond a Religious Organization, and I ask it again...do those in leadership think that they have earned the respect and love of the Believers that we will sacrifice for them as we sacrifice for the Hon. Louis Farrakhan once he departs? His departure will most certainly change the dynamic of the faith and confidence of the Believers in those who claim to represent him and this change in faith will diminish the effects of the Laborer placebos. And the sad part about any placebo which makes it a nocebo effect is that it only has a desired effect for a limited period of time as long as the recepient believes in it. The more convincing the placebo the longer the effect will last based on the patients belief in it (i.e., giving an injection vs. a plain looking pill). So, those who have been striving to fake it til you make it, whether you are in leadership or not you will not make it as anyone that is revealed to fake anything or be a fake loses the confidence of others as what is fake is not, nor can ever be, the real or actual thing. Which leads me to question the relationship between belief and Actual Facts. Actual Facts deal with what is real, not what is believed to be real. It may be common belief amongst a majority of people that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, and one could argue this by simply pointing at the sun in the morning and observing it in the evening to validate this belief which would be accepted as fact. But, the Actual Fact is that the sun neither rises or sets, but the Earth rotates around the sun in an easternly direction causing the alternation between night and day. Once this Actual Fact is realized it awakens in the Believer a new belief which modifies or discards the old belief they held when they were asleep to the knowledge or realization of this actual fact. And so, the Supreme Wisdom states that Big Fields are awaiting the wide-awake man to work out in. This is not confined to physical fields. Look up the word field as it pertains to mathematics. The biggest field I know of is THOUGHT, as it has no boundaries or limitations other than what each man puts on himself. And belief and faith are influenced by what is perceived to be real or what is discovered to be actual fact. What will be the thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs of everyone once the Hon. Louis Farrakhan departs? Master Fard Muhammad did not give us placebos, he gave us Actual Facts and questions and answers which caused a paradigm shift in our thoughts. This paradigm shift changed the dynamic of what we believed about ourselves, our open enemy, and the rest of the universe, through the guidance and teachings of his master student and Messenger, the Most Hon. Elijah Muhammad. And an even further change occured as a result of the Messengers master student in our midst, the Hon. Louis Farrakhan. Once a person realizes a placebo is a placebo, or a sugar pill is simply a sugar pill, they have no more faith in the placebo/sugar pill and it ceases to cause any physiological change. The same goes for incompetence in leadership, it happens in the military and organizations all of the time, once the followers come to the conclusion that their leaders may be or are incompetent, the leaders lose the trust of the Believers. I wrote on this before, and it stands true, that Trust Is The Foundation of Effective Leadership. May Allah bless you with hindsight, insight, and forsight to guide you aright in the path of light. Your brother, Not accepting the placebo and Harder on the Devil than a thousand ignorant worshipers, Mikaeel D. S. Muhammad You cannot teach someone to do successfully what you are not successfully doing. - Shihan Mikaeel Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 03:59:33 +0000
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