Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Essays

Need for Cultural Leadership Along the Silk Road

At this special time of cultural leadership and human progress in a world at war,  the initial question any cultural leader should ask on the great silk road of art, commerce and information is “Who am I?”. The post modern 21^st century is a time when technology has made unparalleled breakthroughs, advances in scientific knowledge, discoveries concerning outer space as well as the earth’s innermost core, the human body and its psyche. Human relations are quite different. We have the widest gap between rich and poor in history, the slaughter of humans by humans over the last century is shocking and there has been an alarming growth in population. In less than 150 years, we have gone from a global population of 1 billion to about 6 billion and more than ¾ of the people live in developing countries. We have more information in the midst of less understanding. Therefore in this sea of contradictions between technological advances and human progress derailment, one must ask “Who am I?”.

I am numbers on plastic cards. I am Pre-Modern- a believer, Modern- a searcher for truth, and Post-Modern- a pragmatic visionary. I am “and” and “or”.  America is an “or” culture. Republican or Democrat.  Citizen or soldier. Many places along the silk road can be “and”: conservative and liberal and independent and for and against a war at the same time.

A cultural leader gives us experience, knowledge, intuition, visions and a unique look at history. Americans have the audacity to think we can find the answer. That is an American strength and our weakness: strength because as a people we believe before any venture that we will prevail and weakness when that belief becomes arrogance instead of humility.

A leader must live with new nature. As Harriet Mayor Fulbright observes, “Now for the first time in human history, one half of the world’s population lives in cities. That means that we are no longer surrounded by nature: we surround it”. And in the middle of our Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed a bill that began the great conservation movement of the 19^th century, establishing Yosemite and Yellowstone. It was believed our “manifest destiny” was to own the land while preserving it. America had an unequal distribution of the world’s resources- human, natural, educational, technological, and financial. Another term was coined in the mid 19^th century, “geographic determinism”. America was halfway between two great oceans and halfway between two poles. It was not until Darwin’s 1859 Origin of the Species that this concept of determinism or manifest destiny was undermined in academic circles, yet even today fundamentalists use “manifest destiny” to justify all actions. Cultural leaders are sometimes blinded by not asking the right question. “What is it?” was used to think about 19^th century American national parks. Now, in contemplating contemporary problems, three other questions must be asked: “What forms does reality take?” (science and cubist question); “What forces are at play in the works creation?” (1930s question) and finally “What systems are involved in the work?” (late 20^th century question). It may take many nations and their cultural leaders to work together to develop a “system” to conserve the ecological, historical and artistic “systems” of the new “Silk Road”.

Cultural leadership embraces  situational leadership: that is, if you know nothing, you are told; if you know a little, you are shown; if you know as much as your mentor, you work in collaboration; and if you know more than your mentor, the mentor gets out of the way but finds you the resources to get the job done. What this takes is not academic learning but cultural learning and patience. I agree with Harriet Mayor Fulbright, “There is a growing realization that those in charge of governments and businesses have a profound impact on history, and recent research on effective leadership for the future has been extensive. It was found that only 10% of those skills (needed for leadership) were intellectual, or IQ, whereas 70% were based on what is called emotional quotient (EQ). What is EQ? Its components are: self awareness, or the ability to see oneself accurately; management of one’s own emotions, to control surges of anger or anxiety; motivation of others- empathy and understanding of other, or the ability to see situations and feelings through another’s eyes; and the ability to make and maintain human connections through reaching out and careful listening.”

Men and women must begin thinking as mothers in new cultural leadership positions. We are now members of a global family. Along this path of thought, last year I worked with leaders in the Caucasus on a new Bauhaus for creative ideas, called Art Villa Garikula. My guideposts have been simple: a set of eleven rules backed by experience and training. The first rule was given by my father. He said, "I have never been there so you are on your own but remember when you get there, learn to meet people and situations and everything else will fall into place," therefore: Rule One: When breaking new ground, listen to everyone but follow no one.  This leads to Rule Two: When in doubt, circle the wagons, and naturally moves into Rule Three: Luck comes to those who are prepared. After teaching for 40 years in universities and museums, I was glad that I read outside my field because the major questions at the end of all my lectures in 2001-2002 were: "What is an American? What does American freedom mean?"

I learned long ago it is easier to say, "I'm sorry, I did not know" than to get permission for anything which was not illegal but outside the rules. This practice leads to Rule Four: If they give you lined paper, write but across the lines if they don't tell you differently and to Rule Five: Walking on new ground, tread softly at first and hold the hand of a friendly, experience partner. I was the first art professional chosen by the United States Department of State to journey and educate in Georgia since its independence in 1991. Of course, in any endeavor there are times when the mind and body should relax therefore Rule Six: Stop and watch the grass grow. You might learn something.  For the last ten years, I had been reading the poetry of Rumi, a 13th century Islamic poet who believed that all men could live together in peace, so we stopped in Cappadocia, Turkey and visited the nature-formed, man-carved “fairy castles”.

As an artist, teacher and writer, I could not function without Rule Seven: First you shoot the arrows and then you paint the targets. You cannot miss. Adjusting to the unknown on the second day, I was asked, "Do you wish to go to Kutaisi and represent America as our artist?"    It was already the end of August and I had been told that I would start in September at the university. "Sure, I will go to the International Workshop on Contemporary Art." We stayed in the governor's home on the outskirts of the town. His home housed five families in a structure where Americans would have one family. I would recommend staying with a local host to anyone who wants to know a nation’s family life, politics, religion, customs and social gatherings. We learned the difference between monochromatic systems of living (America‑ a linear system of thought that starts at one point and ends in another in the future) and polychromatic systems (Georgia and the Middle East where thought is a spiral around an idea which may or not end in a point which can be in the past as well as the future). This situation of the unknown leads to Rule Eight: When working in the unknown, any path will do. You can begin in the middle, work backwards or forwards. If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. Creativity is not a linear process.

New ideas were not tolerated in the Georgian society for centuries, except behind closed doors. I will tell you one short story of a cultural hero on the modern silk road. David Kakabadze went to Paris in 1920, worked as the equal of Picasso, Brague and Leger. Today, he has his work from that period of time in the Yale Art Collection beside these better‑known colleagues. He came back to Georgia in 1928, was told that he could not think or teach modem ideas by the Communists, and died in 1952, somewhat unknown and pushed into poverty by the Soviets.

What living in the unknown does is make you examine your process of dealing with information and therefore Rule Nine: For a creative human being, it is just as important to forget as to remember.

 I will forget the long lines of men waiting for work beside the roads each day;  that a college professor makes only $10 per month as pay and a pension for that same professor is $7 per month and that one million Georgians have left the country since 1989 so that one person in the family is sending home money. I will remember the Georgian love of the arts, the hospitality where you give all that you can to a stranger who is an honored guest and I will keep alive the warmth of friendships made and the respect for education shown.

And always remember Rule Ten: Leave the door open. The future is sometimes the past. Why did the Persians, Turks, Mongols and Soviets wish to control this small nation?  Georgia's geographical importance has been known for centuries as the crossroads of the commercial "silk road" between Asia and Europe. It is now the new silk road for oil and gas. It is the central stop on the information highway between Europe and the Middle East.  It is a key nation in the spread of democracy to this part of the world. It is important as a stop on the cultural silk road of the arts.

And what did I learn while in Georgia? When I was asked, "What is America’s freedom?" It is three things: 1) Jeffersonian America where we educate the brightest and the best to lead our nation, 2) mercantile America. where business supplies the money to run a free government, and 3) Thomas Paine's America where there is one vote for each American where a citizen can get rid of the brightest and best who do not serve the people. No nation can have a democracy without that balance. Georgia, a new democracy, has had only one element, the education of the brightest and best.

And lastly, as a cultural leader, we come to Rule Eleven: May the beauty we love be what we do.

The silk road was a traditional avenue for commerce, communication and information. It still is except the pathway now may be expanded to fill the whole electronic world. There is no section of the planet where information cannot penetrate. We now see with eyes from satellites (called “parallax vision” by Stephen Holl) as well as Renaissance perspective. One way of seeing does not stop when another paradigm appears on the scene. What is true is that the old vision is now an archaic form or historic artifact. We use glasses when our eyes are not good enough, then we use telescopes and microscopes when glasses fail us. Lastly, we use visionaries to see beyond what we know or have seen. Cultural leaders with a high EQ are needed. The arts are not the fuel of the mind. That is education. The arts are the spark that sets that fuel ablaze. It is the source for a future passion on the modern silk road that will light a new horizon.