Maria Arpa
This week
Free Hot Bleach
Plus…
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
and
the Wednesday Whisper
The long lost topic of Lunatic Leadership…
For those of you that have followed the blog for a while, you will remember that a big theme was Lunatic Leadership. These were actions that I came across in which ‘officials’ misused their authority to show people who’s boss with little regard for our common humanity. I highlighted these news snippets in the blog as a reminder of how easy it is to lose sight of what’s important. And now, like a returning circus master of grotesque exhibits I present this latest act of lunacy…
In Kansas City a group of people called ‘Free Hot Soup’ invite friends in need who may be hungry or homeless to a weekly picnic in the park where they share food and items like blankets without having to jump through legislative hoops. What a lovely idea and great way of keeping bureaucratic ‘health and safety’ at bay. You would have thought that officials would be delighted at the idea of people having a perfectly legal picnic while doing good and avoiding having to take up officialdom’s time on pointless bureaucracy. Not so. Kansas City officials decided that the prevention of sharing food would be top of their agenda and they showed up at the park and poured bleach all over the food. Yes. You read that correctly. They poured bleach all over the food. Did they bring better food or provide alternatives? No. Did they leave the mess for hungry people to scavenge through? Yes.
Outrage from all around the world poured in, opposing the health department’s actions. And though Kansas City has announced it will no longer destroy food with bleach on-site, the city has still insisted they have the right to infringe on rights of assembly, association, speech and expression.
I do not believe that the people who carried out the act are the people who ordered it to be done.
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
In the Dialogue Road Map I talk about understanding and honouring our personal limits because if we are ordered to do something that we know is inhuman and we do it because we are ‘only following orders’, we become part of the problem.
The Wednesday Whisper
Have you ever carried out an order even though part of you wondered if it was truly OK?
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