Poetry helps leaders articulate people's dreams: Professor

Poetry helps leaders articulate people's dreams: Professor

Dewi Santoso, Jakarta

Poetry does not necessarily belong to artists, but leaders too,
as their keen interest in poetry will help them ascertain and
understand people's needs and dreams, a newly installed professor
says.

Aloisius Agus Nugroho said in his inauguration as Atma Jaya
Catholic University professor of philosophy on Wednesday that
leaders with no appreciation of literature, music or poetry would
not have the ability to sense people's aspirations.

"Therefore, they should just step down as they will face
difficulty in understanding and living up to people's dreams," he
said.

Aloisius is the first professor in Atma Jaya's school of
administrative science.

"If leaders develop an interest in poetry, they will develop
their human side, an adherence to democracy instead of
authoritarianism, and thus turn 'chaos' into cosmos'," said
Aloisius, referring to Shakespeare's work, The taming of chaos,
which inspired him to connect poetry and power.

Poetry-illiterate leaders, according to Aloisius, would fail
to govern their people as they would have lost the "poetic
imagination" of unity, forcing them to resort to violence and
cruelty.

"Leaders who easily turn to violence can be perceived as those
who do not understand the important role poetry can play in their
use of power," he said.

He insisted that in the postmodern era it was power that ruled
bureaucrats, and not the other way around.

He suggested that the current leaders avoid dependence on the
paradigm of control, order and predict to rule and push, but on
poetic attraction, which pulls.