Haribol. I’m a little bit flummoxed by your logic here. This is not an intended ’smackdown’ nor was that last smackdown about Rumsfield from me. I generally at least put my name on my attempted smackdowns and don’t leave it anonymously to try to be fair to the smacked-down enough to at least let them know who’s doing the smacking and give them the opportunity to smack back with at least some identified smackable target.

“You are a leader if people choose to follow you. You are not a leader because of a title or a position.”

Certainly there is an immediate truth here. This definition would also seem to include those individuals who are not genuine leaders in a proper sense but have managed to manipulate some manipulatable people to follow them for some reason or the other. As identified by Prahlada Maharaja, and as Srila Prabhupada often quoted, ‘cheaters and the cheated’ when referring to people of this ilk who attempt to mislead others all the while teaching some mad conception that either they are God or their followers are God. It sure seems like a leadership paradigm but those who know better know that there is no genuine leadership taking place - only a mirage that will pass in time.

The so-called leaders will be shown up eventually for what they really are and the followers will be embarrased or disillusioned in due time because there is no permanency to their investment. (Did you know that Sai Baba was slammed for child molestation? such-a-sly-bugger!) Also read The Blue Jackal if you really want an excellent reference and repeatable analogy.

“If you don’t like something, then become the change you wish to see in the world.”

It always seems to come back to this when the conceptual moves from theory into application doesn’t it? Better than this though is a healthy human community where the formable individuals can learn by hearing from proper authority. This is a very difficult situation to come across these days as lack of trust and so many things impede such cultural exchanges. A lack of genuine spiritual authority in the world must obviously contribute to the degredation as well. You rightly mentioned that such things cannot be forced, yet to be able to determine what is and what is not proper authority is difficult to learn if there is not a transparent model available.

The system of parampara does provide this but it requires topmost chastity to the siddhanta otherwise very quickly adjustments and compromise creeps in. Even if one person who has assumed the position of leader, either by popularity or by determination, makes some well-intentioned adjustments to seemingly make a compassionate accomodation for any type of unauthorized thinking, it sets the standard for others to follow suit and make their own adjustments according to their limited reasoning propensity.

In such a situation the genuine spiritual potency by which sambandha is established via transparent connection to absolute authority - seems attempted to be replaced by a fervor to make so many adjustments to the techniques and mechanisms by which one hopes to establish their leadership.

Anyway … you just inpired my thinking about this subject with your post and i hope its not misread as I think you’d most likely agree with what i’ve written.

I think that why some individuals lament for even decades about ‘the leadership’ is that they might have been sold on some sort of utopian ideal wherein everyone works cooperatively and in harmony with their particular conceptions. I feel that the solution is that everyone - so-called leaders and so-called followers - shift their conceptions from ‘how I think it should be done’ to ‘how has Krishna said it should be done’ or ‘ how has Krishna’s representative said it should be done’. And then with communal obedience we can move forward. Otherwise its the wild wild west with everyone jockeying for influence.