Dr. Schweitzer I Presume: Rediscovering A Healer Idealist

[keirsey]

Dr Livingstone, I Presume.

Presumely, this is what Henry Stanley said to Dr. David Livingstone, a missionary who had gone into the "wilds of Africa," and Stanley was paid to find him which took about six months, a difficult and tortuous expedition.

So it was this morning when I said essentially the same thing, mentally of course.

Dr Schweitzer, I Presume.

So it was with Dr. Albert Schweitzer and I, although my Viking journey was less physically strenuous, but probably more mentally hard, because I am an devout Atheist and he is faded celebrity and a Christian to boot. I was vaguely familiar with him, even though we had decided to use him as our Compassionate Leader, one of sixteen Leaders as primary illustrations in our forthcoming book, Please Understand Me for Different Leaders.

I had difficulty before in reading his biography. Frankly, at the time it was boring as I began to read it. Being busy with many other things, I didn't finish much of that biography, and return the book to the library. All this mushy Idealism, and Christian stuff that I can't relate to: it makes me sleepy. I had other leaders I could work on. I let my colleague take Albert Schweitzer as his assignment -- since he is a Christian and could write, and be interested in all that stuff.

But just the other day I had gone to the 30th anniversary of Saddleback Church, Saturday's -- Easter service in Anaheim Stadium (with probably 10,000-20,000 people, Sunday apparently another 40,000 would be attending), with my co-author and his family to watch Rick Warren, our Fieldmarshal Rational, leader example for our leadership book. Rick Warren has written the most popular modern book in the world today. His book is even more popular than my father's book. 50 Million copies sold, Purpose Driven Life. I listened to his sermon (rather long -- it was Easter and "special") and observed the spectacle. Being really the second sermon in my life I actually had to sit through and listened to, I had a better feeling for the jargon that Christian's (and my Great Grandfathers) used.

We are trying to finish up the last few Leaders in our book, Albert Schweitzer being one of the last, not done. So we reassigned Schweitzer to me to start the process of finding lessons of leadership. So armed with my Kindle and physical copy of a biography of Albert Schweitzer, I finally was able to explore, without my veil of boredom and non-understanding, and actually find Dr. Schweitzer as I met him at the Sorbornne in Paris -- a place and time so foreign to me, but conceptually very familiar to me, the University of the Mind.

[shytiger]

The commencement speaker at my doctoral graduation, a well-known commentator on CNN, spoke about Schweitzer, suggesting that we model our lives after his and find our own Lambarene, a place or a cause that we could believe in. I took this advice to heart for a while, wondering how I was going to better humanity and find something to believe in, before I realized that moral causes were not my thing and that my Lambarene was not a moral crusade but an intellectual one. I have been happy with that lot since. We can't all be Idealists.

[keirsey]

I might add that I discovered that Rachel Carson, who wrote the Silent Spring, dedicated her book to Albert Schweitzer. Of small note, I read The Sea Around Us, as one of my first books, besides the Time-Life book (which I still have) The World We Live In, which apparently she helped either edit or promote.

[stellarrenegade]

Being really the second sermon in my life I actually had to sit through and listened to, I had a better feeling for the jargon that Christian's (and my Great Grandfathers) used. So armed with my Kindle and physical copy of a biography of Albert Schweitzer, I finally was able to explore, without my veil of boredom and non-understanding...

Ahhh... reconciling yourself to the Dark Side, I see.

Christianese isn't really that difficult (at least a good portion of it) when you understand the social context, and sometimes the material motivations, behind it. There are a lot of people who have gone about the process of deconstructing it (or "unpacking" it as an atheist friend would say), but some of it is culturally interpreted (from within the Christian culture).

But just the other day I had gone to the 30th anniversary of Saddleback Church, Saturday's -- Easter service in Anaheim Stadium (with probably 10,000-20,000 people, Sunday apparently another 40,000 would be attending), with my co-author and his family to watch Rick Warren, our Fieldmarshal Rational, leader example for our leadership book. Rick Warren has written the most popular modern book in the world today. His book is even more popular than my father's book. 50 Million copies sold, Purpose Driven Life. I listened to his sermon (rather long -- it was Easter and "special") and observed the spectacle.

HAH! That's hilarious to me, that such a religious figure (and sometimes controversial one, to boot) would be used. That's cool. I don't have that much fondness for Rick Warren, I never did like his book that much because it was way too simple, although I did like that he used a quote or two from Madame Guyon - but I have a huge distaste for megachurches and that entire culture in general.

[Goodrum]

Yes, I am drawn to him, and reading about him I identify with so much..

One year after their arrival at Lambarene, World War I broke out. Because of their German citizenship, the Schweitzers were enemy aliens in the French colony. From the first prisoner of war camp in the Pyrenees, they were taken to a camp in St. Remy. Here, Schweitzer had odd feelings of deja vu, feeling as though "he knew the room from some past experience. He could not lay his finger upon his strange sense of acquaintance and intimacy with the room, and began to wonder if he was losing his mind... Then awoke one night, the mystery solved: a Van Gogh picture glowed in his mind's eye... he remembered the Van Gogh drawing of which he had vaguely been thinking and recalled that the tortured artist had once been confined for a mental breakdown in the south of France. Upon inquiry in the morning, he learned that the building had previously served as a mental institution and was indeed the very same building where Van Gogh had spent four miserable, hopeless months before his suicide."

This happens. You initially think everyone has this happen, but then you find out very quickly...no...it does not..

Dr. Schweitzer was frequently known to say that "everyone must find his own Lambarene."

Follow your bliss.

"He reported... that once he was traveling on a train in America when two girls came up to him and asked: 'Dr. Einstein, will you give us your autograph?' 'I did not want to disappoint them,' he said, 'so I signed their autograph book: Albert Einstein, by his friend Albert Schweitzer.'"

In the words of his friend Albert Einstein, Schweitzer "did not preach and did not warn and did not dream that his example would be an ideal and comfort to innumerable people.

He simply acted out of inner necessity."

He simply acted out of inner necessity.

I can't wait for the leadership book!!! I'll bet the other leaders are equally as interesting. Well, I wonder if the architect is other Albert? Or is that a surprise...

[shytiger]

I'm also wondering about the Mastermind exemplar. There are several to choose from.

This is an interesting topic because it reminds us that we can't always copy the people we admire. We just don't see the world the same way and we inevitably have to lead with our natural flow or people will refuse to follow us.

I have had little experience with true leadership. I have finally gotten my first opportunity to be a PI (principal investigator). I find that my leadership style is to ask questions that conceptualize the goals and outline the requirements of the project. I tend to rely on the expertise of my team members and use their knowledge to form the vision of what the project will be. I don't have the Architect/Inventor's knack and tendency to "see where we end up" (something I sometimes envy, but in my case, without a well-defined goal, the "where" is typically "nowhere"). I also don't have the Inspector tendency to plan and budget every milestone since my focus is on achieving the vision in a move-by-move basis. In sum I treat it like a chess game, move-countermove, with the other player being whatever opposing forces there are, whether they be nature, other people, equipment, or other obstacles. There is a strategy, a set of rules, abstract principles by which I make decisions as the project goes along, what-ifs are envisioned, contingencies mapped out, but there is only a loose schedule. Besides that there is a drive to achieve the vision, a sense of flowing toward it, like a salmon returning to spawn, and an understanding of what is unlikely to be achieved and what must be achieved.

[Goodrum]

It's a real bonus (for me) to actually "see" the person, it's like xmas, so far this year I found some film footage of Albert Einstein and now I've also seen Albert Schweitzer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lgtbVJE8GY

It's a series of 8 youtube's.

In this long lost ACADEMY AWARD winning documentary covering the life and times of the legendary humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winner, the camera follows the good doctor around his hospital in French Equatorial Africa, where his efforts had helped the villagers build and improve their way of life

It's almost a film documentary, for his childhood his grandson plays him, the resemblence between grandson and photo of Albert as a boy are incredible.

You get to hear his voice, see him move around, play music, push the cat off his piano (in Africa), that is eating his biscuit... He liked Goethe. I'm not sure of Goethe's temperament, he sounds at a quick glance idealist too.

So he leads and teaches by example, as opposed to that of which Shytiger describes for a mastermind..this is really interesting.

[shytiger]

So he leads and teaches by example, as opposed to that of which Shytiger describes for a mastermind..this is really interesting.

Fascinating. I watched the Schweitzer video and the Einstein video. It gives an interesting perspective on the difference between the Healer and the Architect, both abstract Responders. I was thinking about how one leads by example. It seems passive and yet it requires an effort not to impose your way of doing things on other people and also that when people ask you what to do that you encourage them to puzzle things out for themselves rather than telling them what to do. This is something I still need to learn from.