Two items in the news in the last couple of days confirm my earlier opinions expressed in this blog.
1. The new book about Warren Buffett, The Snowball: Warren Buffett on the Business of Life, is being advertised with the heading "What would Warren Buffet do?" That reminded me of my blog of November 16, 2007, when I recommended a dream ticket for president (sadly my recommendation has been ignored until now) of two Buffetts--Warren for president and Jimmy for vice president. Think of the Alan Jackson country song "It's Five O'clock Somewhere" which includes the line, "What would Jimmy Buffett do?" The song is about skipping responsibility, but I maintain that even Jimmy Buffett would do a better job at governing than the yahoos who've been in power the past eight years. But we really should have been listening to Warren.
2. Watching the presidential debate and realizing that both candidates have gone back on their vows to avoid mudslinging in this campaign, I thought about my blog post from March 11, 2008, on the concept of "teleopathy"--which means "goal sickness." Obviously the goal of winning has overcome the deeper values of integrity and honesty in the presidential campaign, and the American people are the worse for it because it diminishes our respect and trust in whoever wins the election!
The Lifelong Learning Office of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary publishes this blog to create and nurture a community of lifelong learners for leadership that transforms the church and the world, to invite members of that community to participate in the Lifelong Learning Programs sponsored by LPTS, to encourage formation of smaller learning communities and study groups, and to alert members to learning experiences available at other venues.
Showing posts with label teleopathology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teleopathology. Show all posts
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Watching Clinton and Obama turning on each other in a kind of pit-bull fight to the end reminded me of Dr. Ken Goodpaster, Professor of Business Ethics at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul MN, with whom I worked doing ethics training for high school students, and who coined the term "teleopathy." The theologically trained might catch the roots of the words--it means "goal sickness." It is described in his new book Conscience and Corporate Culture, just out from Blackwell. (See a review at: A leader afflicted with teleopathy gets so fixated on a goal, such as winning a presidential nomination, that ethics and values are lost in the battle. He says this fixation or addiction is accompanied by distancing from one's humanity, and a rationalization that loses touch with reality. What makes this pathology so insidious is that one can easily slip over the cliff from a healthy and effective striving for excellence, with its virtues of courage, determination and perseverance. When the goal becomes more important than the people and the systems with which we are working, we're in danger.
Church leaders need to be inoculated against the disease of teleopathy because we drink the water of divine vocation and work in stained-glass environments. When you're doing God's work, it's easy to get so zealous that being right and achieving our goals are more important than the Holy One whom we are supposed to be serving. The inoculations take different forms, but my favorite is a veil of humility that holds my own limitations in front of me, and a good dose of relativity to cast doubt that I've got the final and best take on the situation.
Holy Spirit, give me courage, determination and perseverance, without pathological fixation.
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