Mangroves are these amazing thickets of trees, sort of forests, if you think of them, that grow in salt water in coastal regions, and interfacing between ocean and land.
Mangroves do these amazing four functions in nature. First, they filter toxins and pollutants through their very complex root system. Second, they buffer against sea storms, tsunamis, hurricanes. Third, they provide a shelter and habitat for young fish to grow up because their tangled roots keep predators out. And lastly, they literally hold the shore in place.
The more I thought about those mangroves, the more I realized that one of the saddest things that’s happened is that in my lifetime, we’ve lost our mangroves, but not just in nature.
You see, shame was a mangrove. It used to be that if you were running for president of the United States and you were found to have had unprotected sex with a porn star after your wife had just given birth to a son, you’d be out of politics. In fact, you’d be hiding under your bed. Shame used to be a mangrove, but it’s gone now.
Elite responsibility used to be a mangrove. It used to be that if you had the incredible responsibility and opportunity to be a Supreme Court justice, you wouldn’t be OK with your wife flying an American flag upside down in apparent solidarity with those who took over the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Small town newspapers used to be a mangrove. They stood as a filter between national media like Fox or MSNBC. And because small towns people had to get along in order to basically support the schools, clean the streets, build the sewers, small town newspapers tended not to go to the edges. They tended to really cohere around the middle and try to build healthy interdependencies.
I interviewed Dov Seidman, the founder of LRN, which offers ethics and compliance training, and the Howe Institute for Society, which seeks to build moral leadership. I asked, have we lost our mangroves, and why did that happen and what does it mean if we have?
Dov Seidman: Your choice of mangroves as a metaphor of what’s at stake in our lives today is incredibly profound and powerful.
If you take what we cherish most, dynamic capitalism, vibrant democracy, healthy and strong communities, trusted institutions, leaders who inspire us, all of that depends on individuals and especially leaders behaving in normative ways. Norms specify what we ought to do, what we should do. Rules tend to tell us what we can and can’t do. Now, we live in a normative age.
What’s not new is individuals in high places creating scandal through their misconduct or crisis. That’s not new. What’s new is when people in high places misbehave with impunity and they do it in a manner where they’re almost suggesting to you, my words were perfect. You’ve got a problem with that? I’d do it again. And in doing so, they not only create the harm that follows their misconduct, they erode the norm.
Tom Friedman: We’ve talked about the two pillars of democracy, truth and trust. Without truth, we don’t know which way to go as a society. Without trust, we can’t go there together. And everything we need to do today is big and hard, and big and hard things can only be done together. To what degree have we lost truth and trust? What is the role of leaders in getting it back?
Dov Seidman: Leadership matters and it’s consequential. The legacy of the pandemic is leadership in more dimensions, spheres and levels of society. A school principal has never been so important. A high school football coach. Not just presidents and governors and mayors. Leadership is realm based. And we live in the age of disruption.
The single greatest leadership challenge of our lives is, how do we find more leaders who scale norms? Because norms come from shared values and shared truths, and animating principles that are noble and moral. In the age of disruption, leadership itself and authority has been disrupted.
The challenge of our age is, how do we nurture a culture of more leaders who lead with moral authority? And how do we ensure that these are the leaders who have the gears and the levers of power and formal authority in their hands, in all dimensions and spheres of society? What nature does naturally with mangroves, it’s going to take leaders to do intentionally and deliberately.
Dov Seidman: To restore our mangroves, we need to pause to reflect on the world, the situation we’re in, our relationships. We reconnect with our deepest values and truths and convictions, and our own conscience and voice. We rethink some of our assumptions. Then and only then, can we reimagine a better path, a better solution and a better future.
Thomas Friedman is foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times.
