Great Books: Chasing the Flame
Posted by
Rich Harwood
Jul 15, 2008
What
flame are you chasing, and through the years
what have
you learned about yourself and what you need to
do to make a difference?
Maybe this is too simple a question to
pose, but
more and more I find people wrestling to figure
out the right answer. This
question is at the heart of the new book,
Chasing
the Flame: Sergio de Vieira De Mello and the
Fight to Save the World, by
Samantha Power, which I highly recommend to
you.
You may be wondering why I am
suggesting a book on the United
Nations and one of its star officials; what can
this story teach us? Bottom
line: Sergio Vieira De Mello came face-to-face
with many issues that those of
us involved in change must ultimately
address.
Vieira De Mello led critical UN
missions at major
flashpoints in recent history, including in
Iraq, Bosnia, Lebanon, Cambodia,
Rwanda, Kosovo, and East Timor -- each with its
own thorny set of issues involving
peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, and human
rights. He was tragically killed in
Baghdad in 2003, at age 55.
A Brazilian who earned a doctorate in
philosophy from the
Sorbonne, he was an idealist of sorts, like
many of us. Over the years, his
views on human nature and idealism came into
clearer focus. Power reflects on
Vieira De Mello's journey throughout the book.
Here are four points I want to
highlight, hopefully as a way for you to think
about your own journey.
1.
Over
time, Vieira De Mello became an outspoken
advocate for human rights (relative
to humanitarian aid). He began to think much
more about the "human being," the individual
as opposed to people en mass. This change
resulted in him being concerned with
the daily lives of people, rather than being
focused simply on policy issues
and programs.
How often do you
view your own efforts
in terms of the unwashed "community" or
"public" or "clients?" Do you see
individuals, people who lead their own lives
and are trying to improve their
condition?
2.
Vieira
De Mello came to believe that the dignity of
individuals, communities, even whole
nations sat at the crux of any effort to engage
and work with people. Outsiders, he believed,
must realize they can
bring money, expertise and ideas to a place,
but that their most important role
was to support local leaders
and
processes to build local capacity. Local people
owned their communities.
How do you actively respect the
dignity of people? In what ways do you place
building people's own capacities
and tapping their own aspirations at the center
of what you do (and how often do
your words and deeds match up)?
3. Power
writes that Vieira De Mello believed people
must "probe deeply into the
societies they were working in." But, he argued
that leaders too often relied
on their professional staff, outside reports,
and similar means to tell them
about a country. Instead, one must actively
learn about people's culture,
norms, language, traditions to understand them
and know what matters.
How do you understand the communities
where you work -- people's webs of concerns,
their aspirations, the norms and
language people use, etc? To what extent do you
truly "know" those communities
(or only think you do)?
4. In
the book's intro, Power says of Vieira De
Mello: "He had long ago stopped
believing that he brought the solutions to a
place's woes, but he had grown
masterful at asking the questions that helped
reveal constructive ideas."
What specific
questions do you ask to help reveal people's
constructive ideas about their
situations, and how often does your own impulse
to provide answers crowd out
people's knowledge and voice?
Chasing the Flame offers insights into
the life and thoughts of someone who faced up
to difficult challenges, and seldom
had the luxury to stand on the sidelines. He
came to these fights with certain
principles, and he had to examine their actual
meaning as they were repeatedly
tested in daily life, and then determine what
was most valuable to him.
In
many respects, this is the path for change each
of us is on.
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