So you can kill by injuring someone's body, and you can also hur a man in a different way, what is it? Yes, with Character Assassination.
People in the past used the sword, the pitchfork, the bullet, the torch, the cannon, the bottle of poison, and recently a missile or a backpack with explosives—all to damage, destroy, and kill. To guard themselves from such attacks, people build shields, armor, trenches, and fortresses. They invent government institutions in charge of security. They create military doctrines and security procedures and launch counterattacks. In particular, there is a destructive power of a different and less physical kind, namely, to words and images used to harm, devastate, and destroy other people’s reputations, Eric B. Shiraev, Jennifer Keohane, Martijn Icks and Sergei A. Samoilenko, tell us this when they are discussing about Character Assassination.
Character Assassination or Character Attacks occur in politics, business, education, religious circles, science, sports, entertainment, and other professional and social areas. And do not think that the act of attacking someone’s reputation is a new phenomenon.
While character assassination certainly has been helped by the advent of social media and other communication technologies that allow people to send messages immediately and anonymously, character attacks are a timeless phenomenon. They actually date back to the advent of human civilization. As long as humans have been living in groups, they have been finding ways to smear each other to gain power and advantage. There is strong evidence of character assassination, dating back to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, over 2000 years ago.
Why do we say that someone's character is assassinated, is it differ from related terms like slander, smear, defamation, and libel?
Before we can answer ths question, we need to discuss what is meant by 'character.' The word has roots in ancient Greek, where kharakter originally referred to a mark impressed on a coin. In Classical Greece, each city minted its own coins with its own marks, so that kharakter came to mean distinctive feature, something that is characteristic for something or someone. Since ancient times, character was often referring to something identifiable in the individual, something referring to behavioral standards. In modern-day English, character can have several and evolving meanings, which tend to be imprecise. In American social sciences and especially in psychology of the early 20th century, for example, professionals used the terms character, personality, and temperament almost interchangeably. Gradually, temperament became commonly associated in professional literature with biological factors. Personality stands for the totality of relatively stable features of an individual, such as their mental faculties, behavioral traits, and emotional makeup. These features are assumed to represent a person’s unchanging essence. Character came to mean something similar to personality, but with an added moral dimension. Where personality describes the traits someone possesses in somewhat neutral terms, character describes them in terms of 'good' and 'bad' traits.
This reflected in colloquial speech as well. Sometimes, 'character' is used to describe people who stand out for their eccentric behavior: 'Uncle Brad is such a character!' Sometimes we refer to character describing a movie or a theatrical play: 'She played that character well!' But more often, the word signifies a moral judgment. When we say that a man or woman shows character, it means that they possess admirable traits such as honesty, integrity, courage, and trustworthiness. Someone who lacks character is supposed to be unreliable, cowardly, or otherwise falling short of moral standards. To avoid confusion with other definitions, some use the term moral character.
When emphasizing the importance of character in leadership, Dr. Myles Munroe says that he most valuable component of leadership is not power, position, influence, notoriety, fame, talent, gifting, dynamic oratory, persuasiveness, intellectual superiority, academic achievement, or management skills. It is character. Character is the cradle of credibility for the leader. Without the element of strong, noble, honorable character, leadership and all its potential achievements are in danger of cancellation. Every leader is only as safe and secure as his character.
Character is the most powerful force a leader can cultivate because it protects leadership. It will enable you to be a success, personally and professionally, as you carry out your purpose, vision, and goals in life.
In the dynamic drama of contemporary leadership playing on the world stage today, there are many 'characters' who lack character. Moreover, the trail of history is littered with many would-be great men and women who harnessed the reins of power in various fields—political, social, economic, corporate, athletic, spiritual, and more. They wielded great influence and/or control over the lives of others; many felt the weight of material wealth and fame—only to have it all disintegrate and blow away like dust in the wind because of their tragic deficiencies of character.
The leaders who have emerged today seem to believe that the primary qualities needed to address our troubled, demanding times are the following: great vision; academic and intellectual superiority; dynamic oratory and other communications skills that have the power to persuade; management expertise; and the ability to control others. However, time and again, history has shown that the most important quality a true leader should and must possess is the moral force of a noble and stable character.
True leadership has always been built on strong character. Many leaders today are attempting, unsuccessfully, to separate the ethics of their personal lives from the responsibilities of their public lives. That approach might seem legitimate on face value. Leadership is not just a role one plays; it is a life one leads. Character is like preventive medicine—it keeps you morally healthy so that you won’t develop maladies as a result of ethical flaws. One of the most serious of these disorders is untrustworthiness. Once you lose the trust of your family, your friends, or your colleagues, it is very difficult to win it back.
We can easily understand why leaders who have ethical defects lose the trust of their followers, because we have all experienced some type of betrayal, as well as the pain and anger it generates.
Character is the most powerful force a leader can possess because it protects his life, his leadership, and his legacy—it manifests who he is and shapes who he will become. Without character, every other aspect of leadership is at risk.
Character establishes a leader’s integrity and enables his growth as a person of ethics and values. Leadership training and development must start with the inner life of the leader before it can move on to the principles and process of leadership.
Having character will not prevent you from experiencing various struggles and setbacks in life—all leaders have those. But for long-term personal and professional success—and for the ultimate summation of your life—maintaining character is indispensable.
Leadership is a privilege given by the followers. When a leader violates moral standards, he forfeits the privilege to use his gift in the service of the followers who gave it. Leaders don’t have a 'right' to be followed. The privilege of leadership is one that leaders must protect through their character and the trust it evokes. Only the power of genuine character can restore the faith in leadership and authority that many people lack today.
Many highly gifted leaders who have manifested a character failure act as if they had done nothing wrong. Believing they could cruise along on their gifts alone, they didn’t understand that they had forfeited the opportunity to continue serving their talents and abilities to the world—at least until they had effectively addressed their character defects. Leaders who have fallen need to stop and correct their ethical issues first. Then, they can begin to earn others’ trust again, and, hopefully, move forward in genuine leadership.
We should make an important distinction between character and reputation. While character is about personal traits we actually possess, reputation can be defined as a complex social evaluation of an individual’s character and behavior. Briefly put, reputation is concerned with how other people perceive and judge us. Most people in a society have to ostensibly adhere to general moral and behavioral standards and expectations. If they occupy important positions, such as holding political or religious office, it is important for them to maintain a good reputation in the eyes of the general public, or at least those parts of it that are relevant to them. For instance, a member of the aristocracy in 18th century France had to uphold certain standards to maintain the respect of their fellow aristocrats, such as refined manners, eloquent speech, bravery on the battlefield, and devotion to military glory.
People of 'good character' are likely to have a good reputation, which means that their character is first perceived and then generally approved by others. However, character can also be questioned, doubted, probed, or criticized. Character attack is a communicative act containing critical information about an individual’s character. Such attacks can take many forms, from a spoken remark in a TV debate to a cartoon printed in a newspaper to a meme making the rounds on the Internet. Often, character attacks are focused on specific things that the person under attack actually or allegedly said or did, but the implications are much broader. There is always the suggestion that the questionable acts and utterances do not stand by themselves, but reflect the man or woman’s general character, the supposedly unchanging essence that makes them who they are.
Although many personal attacks are aimed at an individual’s moral features, other individual traits can also become the focus of attack. For instance, a person could be attacked for appearing ugly, stupid, incompetent, or mentally unbalanced. While some of these traits could possibly be perceived as personal flaws, they are definitely not moral shortcomings. Strictly speaking, then, they do not relate to character, as character is concerned with the moral dimension of an individual’s personality. However, that does not take away from the brutal fact that a person’s intelligence, skills, mental instability, or emotional vulnerabilities may prompt negative and harmful value judgments in others. In practice, it does not matter whether someone is charged with stupidity or cowardice: although only the latter counts as a moral flaw, the results can be just as damaging in either case.
In the next session, we will dig deeper about Character Assassination or Character Attacks, bi'idhnillah."
And then Wulandari sang Freddie Mercury's song,
Caviar and cigarettes, well versed in etiquette, extraordinarily nice!
She's a Killer Queen
Gunpowder, gelatine, dynamite with a laser beam
Guaranteed to blow your mind, anytime
Recommended at the price, insatiable an appetite, wanna try? *)
