Pillars Of Society

I was sitting there thinking to myself as I often do when I found myself starring at this fence. It's a structure made of wood held together by a metal wire. It consists of multiple slats of wood, with stronger wooden pegs at various intervals to hold the structure up.

Together, they work to perform their intended function, which I suppose is to demarcate a portion of the land and keep out certain animals like dogs and foxes.

I thought to myself, without the stronger pegs serving as pillars of sorts, the structure wouldn't stand. They are required. Not all the wood must be strong pegs, but there must be strong pegs at given intervals or the whole structure would fail. Likewise, without the weaker, smaller slats, the structure would not be fit for purpose.

A metaphor for society

In my previous post, I mentioned putting my hand up to step into a position of leadership in my community. What I was doing is changing mode from being a wooden slat, to a peg.

What I think has happened around me is that we have lost some really good pegs that once held us together, and either nobody has stepped up to fill in the space, or weak, rotten wooden pegs had been installed. This has led to a weak structure.

Carrying on the analogy, when the structure is being installed, only the pegs get hit on the head with a sledge hammer. It's part of their job. Likewise in the analogy, a true community leader has to be ready to take some hits for the community.

One of the dangers of speaking out is becoming marked as a target by the opposition. When the time comes to scapegoat someone, or make someone pay, the visible person usually takes the brunt of it. This is a position that the community leader needs to be aware of, and be ready to accept.

Being a community leader, a pillar of society, is also often a thankless job. The other slats in the fence are not necessarily aware of the fact the pegs are the ones holding them up. They may become a bit self congratulating out of blissful ignorance.

We often complain about the things that are going wrong around us and seek to penalise the person in charge. Conversely we hardly celebrate what is going well and show gratitude to the responsible party. This is a well known human behaviour. You can see it on online reviews of restaurants or on social media pages of businesses. This is why I take Google reviews with the required pinch of salt.

Pegs. We need more pegs in my neighbourhood for sure. I'm stepping up to be one of them. I hope to find some others too. I have my first meeting coming up next month where I will be presenting some of my ideas about how I think we can change some things for the better.

That's the other thing, sometimes the pegs are those with the ideas.

Thank you for your time.
Truly,
DT.