Stephan Polomski is director human resources, coach and trainer

Our world is changing:

Hierarchical structures become dysfunctional in many contexts: the evolution of the internet is the best example that these old sociological laws are very slowly breaking up. Open forums like The Care Guys had been unthinkable 20 years ago unless using a newspaper column and convincing an editor who admits it.

Individuals take more and more responsibility, individuals raise more and more their voice and question dependencies and crept over leadership structures and approaches, building networks on the basis of a mutual consensus – a working basis which respects identities and takes care of the necessities of the whole group.

In politics – in Germany at least – morale is changing, tolerance is growing: a woman is chancellor, a homosexual is foreign minister, an Asian orphan health minister and an intellectual environment minister, a disabled person in a wheel chair is finance minister. This is something Germany – inventor of Nazism – should be proud of because it is outcome of a changed mind set not only in this country but in Europe and the Western the world.

Dictatorship: less people of the world are accepting heteronomy and fight back, and multinational organizations like Greenpeace or Amnesty International are present worldwide with their voice and impact.

These are positive signs.

But still, most of us suffer under a dominating, all pervading economy. – The being is determines the consciousness, Marx said. – Humans cannot escape the necessity to do business in order to secure their existence and to survive. And it may appear absurd, but it seems, that in the realm of economy – the professional reality of most of us – there apply other rules and other values as in our private lives. In the realm of economy different measures justify actions and decisions, which might be unthinkable in relationships from individual to individual. Being a terminator in business and at the same time a loving father or mother is less the exception than the norm, I am afraid.

A psychiatrist might diagnose this with schizophrenia. He would probably consider the system – that means the individual, the group, the organization or the state reacting like that – as ill. He even would advise confinement if the patient is a danger for the rest of the social system.

You ask to where I am leading?

As business is calm the next days, some of you might want to take a closer look to what religions which offer redemption do suggest as measures.

For the interested German speaking reader I highly recommend the publication of Dr. Gerhard Schwarz, Austrian scholar born in 1937 and expert for conflict management who expressed the following ideas in his book “What Jesus really said. How to animate the dead? A provocation.” This book is available only in German.

All such religions of redemption like Taoism, Buddhism or Christianity (New Testament) stand for the self-determination of the human being. Self-determination means, that all decisions are completely assigned into the responsibility of the individual. And to decide means to give an answer to the question what is good and right and what is evil and false. This is the way humans create purpose in between the span of birth and death – called life. And life means: this world, here and now. The autonomous decision has no effect in the afterlife. It is not God or gods, angels or demons, who are responsible for the order of the world but the humans themselves – with all consequences: as you make create paradise or hell on earth.

Taking self-responsible decisions means freeing oneself from heteronomy and mere dependency. This is – in the words of Jesus from Nazareth – called “redemption”: who is oppressing others externally or internally might be considered as a “devil” to be driven out. The “possessed one” is freed or redeemed and thus autonomous again, that is, enabled to take his own decisions in self-responsibility.

Jesus of Nazareth calls the state of not being able to be myself, of not being able to be in command of myself, of not being able to do and think what I really want – “sin”.

“Self-responsibility or “conscience” – staying in contact with myself – and at the same time taking care of my interactions with others finding a consensus through “love”, these two approaches are the basic teachings of Jesus from Nazareth.”

Self-responsibility or “conscience” – staying in contact with myself – and at the same time taking care of my interactions with others finding a consensus through “love”, these two approaches are the basic teachings of Jesus from Nazareth.

Arguing with the Pharisees he claimed science, democracy and human rights.

Science as the possibility that everybody may examine and decide by himself what is true and what is wrong.

Democracy as the possibility that everybody may raise his voice and take part in decision-making.

And human rights as the possibility that every person is at the same time divine and human.

In this sense, “resurrection” does not refer to the bones but to the unity of God and human being which rises in this world by living self-responsibility and love. And this is the true meaning of transcendency, which does not lie in the afterworld but inside the human being himself.

So far the thoughts and exegesis of Dr. Gerhard Schwarz.

And now back to our discourse and the odds of our economic system, its practical pharisee-like constraints, these thousands of years old unchangeable rules, which possess us as managers and leaders, as terminators and loving fathers and mothers. Back to our inner state of schizophrenia, back to our devils, back to our sins.

Caring leadership is about self-responsibility. And caring leadership is about aware consensus-making through love and respect.

It is you, who is deciding.

You alone make the difference.

Herewith, I wish you all – and also on behalf of Heinz Landau – a thoughtful Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a promising start into a new decade.

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