Good Leadership​—The Worldwide Challenge

The man was a writer and a poet. His heart was full of hope for the future. Some 90 years ago, he imagined a place “where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; where knowledge is free; where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; where words come out from the depth of truth; [and] where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection.”

THIS writer then expressed the hope that one day his country as well as the rest of the world would awaken to such a place. If this Nobel Prize-winning poet were alive today, he would indeed be greatly disappointed. Despite all its advances and breakthroughs, the world is more fragmented than ever. And the overall outlook for man’s future remains bleak.

When asked why violence suddenly erupted between certain factions in his country, a farmer pointed to what he considered to be one reason. “It is because of bad leaders,” he said. In his book Humanity​—A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, historian Jonathan Glover expresses a similar view, saying: “The genocide [in the same land] was not a spontaneous eruption of tribal hatred, it was planned by people wanting to keep power.”

 When war erupted between two republics of the former Yugoslavia in the early part of the 1990’s, a journalist wrote: “We lived happily together for many years and now it has come to killing each other’s babies. What is happening to us?”

Thousands of miles from Europe is the country of India, the birthplace of the poet mentioned at the outset. In a lecture entitled “Can India Survive as One Nation?,” author Pranay Gupte noted: ‘Some 70 percent of India’s large population is under the age of 30, yet there are no leaders to provide them a role model.’

In certain countries, leaders have had to resign from their position because of charges of corruption. For various reasons, then, the world is evidently experiencing a leadership crisis. Conditions testify to the truthfulness of the words of one prophet who lived some 2,600 years ago. He said: “To earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.”​—Jeremiah 10:23.

Is there a way out of current world distress? Who can lead mankind into a world where human society is neither strife-torn nor fear-laden, where true knowledge is free and abundant, and where mankind is moving toward perfection?

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Fatmir Boshnjaku