By Paul Farol: A good but incompetent leader

Dec. 22 2009 - 05:30 pm View comments (2)

	0		good, but, incompetent, leader

A reader posted a comment that I think is worth taking up as a full-blown entry.

Eric wrote:

Paul,

Under our present circumstance, if there is only one choice, who would you prefer, a President who has the:

A) Intellectual competence to do good things. or B) Moral will to do the right things.

To do good things and see them bear fruit to be enjoyed by the majority, one has to start doing the right things.

Otherwise, what is good will crumble under the weight of human selfishness, arrogance and greed.

It takes time and strength of character to establish a strong foundation where the institutions for good governance can blossom and responsible business for commerce can flourish, but once that is in place, doing good things--even great things--come easy.

Heck, you too Paul can become president under such conditions.

Here is my response:

Me, President? If you actually knew how I'd want to solve our country's problems, the very thought of me becoming President of the Philippines would terrify you.

As to the choices you were asking me to pick from, I think that INTELLECTUAL COMPETENCE and MORAL WILL are not mutually exclusive or opposed.  They are both necessary elements in manifesting good.

To clarify my point, we have to go into a discussion of the nature of goodness.

Where does goodness reside?  Is it in the intent (MORAL WILL) or is it in the outward manifestation (PRODUCT OF COMPETENT EFFORT)? 

Can an outwardly good be manifested with evil intent?  Can good intent lead to the manifestation of something that is outwardly evil?

Something a theology professor and a philosophy teacher taught me is that in order to do good, both the intent (MORAL WILL) and outward manifestation (COMPETENCE) must be good.

It is clear to me that one must have good intent and the competence to carry out that good intent in order to manifest something which is truly good.

Good intent alone, without the competence to carry out that intent, may actually lead to harmful consequences.

Take the case of the good leader who wants to solve poverty but doesn't have an understanding of why people are poor and doesn't know anything about the nature of poor people.

If the good leader but incompetent leader may simply equate poverty to a lack of resources (money or capital), the leader's solution may be to provide the poor with resources (money or capital). 

The poor, being poorly equipped to handle the sudden influx of resources soon finds it dissipated and they are poor again.  The leader may opt to provide the poor with resources again, but with the poor still poorly equipped to handle the resources, the same thing happens.  If the cycle is repeated, what is created  eventually is a culture of mendicancy and this is an evil consequence of what is basically an act carried out with good intent.

Of course, a good act can also be carried out with evil intent as in the case of those who intentionally create a culture of mendicancy.  This may be done so that the people, all being mendicants, are made helpless and subject to the whims and caprices of the leader.

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