The fictional character Zebadiah Carter describes himself living in “an era when homicide kills more people than cancer and the favorite form of suicide is to take a rifle up some tower and keep shooting until the riot squad settles it.”

Novelist Robert Heinlein penned these words in 1980. Back then, they sounded like the science fiction they were. Now they echo like prophecy.

The tragedy of yet another horrific shooting in Lewiston, Maine, extends far beyond the victims and their families. In 1999, the attack on Columbine High School shattered our view of ourselves and of our world. Now, Columbine doesn’t even make the list of deadliest shootings. Even worse, the list of senseless mass violence keeps growing: Sandy Hook, Aurora, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, Robb Elementary, the First Baptist Church, Uvalde . . . the names are too many to recall.

And those don’t even include the Oklahoma City and Boston Marathon bombings. Why is this happening? And why is it getting worse?

Leaders, especially business leaders, may not be responsible for the chaos of our times. But that doesn’t exempt them from shouldering responsibility to seek solutions. How we got here might be out of our control. But taking control of how we move forward is the definition of leadership.

THE PERCEPTION OF CONTROL

Indeed, “control” appears to be the operative word here. In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, psychologist Peter Langman told LiveScience, “These kids often feel powerless. The one way they can feel like they’re somebody is to get a gun and kill people.”

“Out of control” seems the defining description of the world we live in. Yes, technology provides us with the power of information, opportunity, and access at a level unimaginable barely a decade ago. But even back then, our inability to manipulate so much power could leave us feeling both frustrated and inadequate.

Social media compounds the problem, foisting on us the illusion that everyone around us is living a happy, successful life while we battle helplessly against forces we can’t see or understand. The perceived triumphs of others make us feel like pawns in a game we can never win. With the world at our fingertips, success and happiness remain damnably elusive.

As leaders, we flail about with increasing desperation, constantly trying to push ourselves a little harder and work a little faster, never able to establish order amidst the culture of chaos reported relentlessly by online news channels. Our sense of anger and resentment builds toward a society that promises so much and delivers so little until we feel ready to explode.

In a world gone mad, what else can we do but lash out against the world?  It’s a question that frames the urgency of the latest entry to the Ethical Lexicon:

Meliorism (mel·io·rism/ meel-yuh-riz-uhm) noun

The belief that the world tends to become better through human effort.

But isn’t this a mere fantasy? After all, the world hasn’t made sense since the beginning of time. In King Solomon’s Book of Ecclesiastes, the wisest of all men sums up a lifetime spent searching for meaning, justice, and truth:

And I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, neither is there bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of knowledge; but time and fate will overcome them all.

Nothing has changed except our expectations. We have been taught to believe that anything we desire is within our grasp, that we are entitled to the love of poets, the wealth of kings, the pleasures and the power of the gods. Etched upon our collective consciousness is the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And then the fanciful promises of film studios such as DreamWorks and Pixar and social media and the coddling cocoon of college crash head-on into the unyielding realities of life. Add to that agents of terror committing atrocities in the name of freedom and justice, their malicious violence met by onlookers with celebrations of man’s inhumanity to man. Why should it surprise us when more and more of us choose violence as the final recourse to make the world take notice of our existence?

HOW WE CHOOSE TO SEE

Again, Solomon himself seems to warn us against optimism. The opening declaration of Ecclesiastes defies us to find meaning in our lives:

Futility of futilities—all is futile!

But actually, no. These introductory words offer but a conciliatory nod to the deceptive superficiality of our world. Rather, it is the advice Solomon offers closer to the end that directs us toward his enduring message, in razor-sharp contrast to all the bleak observations that come before:

Rejoice in life with the [one] you love all your fleeting days… For this is your portion in life and in your labor under the sun.

And what is love? The Hebrew word ahavah derives from the grammatical root hav, which means give. We find relief from the seeming pointlessness of human existence, quite simply, through human relationships, by investing our time, concern, and energy in others to forge the bonds that save us from slipping into the abyss of loneliness and despair.

There are three arenas in which we find this kind of connection: community, family, and work. But our communities are increasingly fractured and divided, and our families are too often dysfunctional. For all that, if we find connection in the workplace, we can summon the strength to not only soldier on but to rejoice in our lot.

This how leaders can give rise to an atmosphere of control, by fostering a work environment that holds chaos at bay. The greatest happiness is not something we pursue but the natural outcome of joining with others to live a life of authentic purpose. Businesses thrive by providing not just a product or a service but a sense that we are collaborating to build a better world.

Indeed, the most inspired workplaces are those where leaders treat employees as partners committed to a higher mission. By doing so, they create a cohesive community in which productivity and engagement are a natural outgrowth of a melioristic vision that transforms emptiness into fulfillment, futility into meaning, despair into joy.