Transcription by Otter.ai. Please forgive any typos!
Sara Causey discusses her book Simply Dag, about Dag Hammarskjold, on the Decoding the Unicorn podcast. She highlights the book's release on Hammarskjold's 121st birthday and the audiobook's availability exclusively on her shop. Causey emphasizes five reasons why Hammarskjold remains relevant: his quiet, ethical leadership, his humanity, his radical diplomacy, his focus on character over competence, and his definition of success as living by principles. She urges listeners to engage actively with history, beyond mere social media interactions, to keep Hammarskjold's legacy alive.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Decoding the Unicorn, Simply Dag, Dag Hammarskjold, leadership, diplomacy, public figures, moral courage, character matters, success principles, historical memory, podcast episode, Amazon books, audiobook, social media, participation.
Welcome to the Decoding the Unicorn Podcast. Here's your host, Sara Causey.
Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. Welcome to episode 48 of Decoding the Unicorn, the podcast. I'm glad you could join me, and I appreciate you being here. Simply Dag is out in the world. I am proud, thrilled, jubilant, excited, and exhausted. Launch week definitely takes a lot out of us authors, but I'm here. I'm I'm alive and kicking, and that's what matters. You can find the book simply DAG the private man in a public and dangerous office anywhere that Amazon books are sold. It's available there in both Kindle ebook and print formats, so paperback and hardback. Now, if you're interested in the audio book, or if you live in a country that is not, for whatever reason, serviced by Amazon, or you don't have an Amazon account and you don't want one, fear not. I have made the decision to make the audiobook exclusively available on my shop front, so you don't have to go through Amazon or Audible or any of that. You just get access to the files. You can do that at SaraCausey.shop. So that's s a r a c a u s e y dot shop, s h o p, yay! So today I want to talk about five reasons why DAG is still important. This is bittersweet in a way for me because the book was released on July 29th, which would have been Dag's 121st birthday, in September we will be at the 65th anniversary of Dag's death. And whenever somebody is the victim of a violent crime like that, it tends to overshadow everything else about their life. And when you see a headline or a story about them, it's typically not about here's what this person did when they were alive, or here's why their legacy still matters to current and future generations. It tends to be about here's the salacious details of their murder. It's almost like a game of Clue or something. Colonel Mustard found the bloody knife in the study, and then we don't look any further at the person, at the human, and that's one of the things that has been so important to me with simply Dag is to say there was a human being here. Let's set aside the plane crash for a moment, and even let's not think of him solely as being the second Secretary General of the UN. Let's remember that this is a person, and so I want to talk about five reasons why Dag is still important. Why why we can't allow ourselves to say he was born a long time ago, he died a long time ago. It's all water under the bridge. Somebody from back then can't still teach us anything because that's just patently false. Number one, and these are not in any particular order, but number one is leadership does not have to be loud. My goodness me, we are surrounded by people in modernity who mistake volume for authority, machismo, braggadocio, bloviating, making threats, sending out mean tweets, but yet Dag demonstrated the opposite of all of that. He rarely sought attention. He wasn't the kind of person that just wanted to be center stage, wanted the limelight. Like, look at me, here I am. I'm so important. He wasn't trying to be a celebrity, but yet he became one of the most influential diplomats in history because people trusted his judgment. And I would add to that that one of the things that made Dag's judgment so trustworthy was not only his personal code of ethics, but the delivery mechanism. Not long ago, I was reading some newspaper articles the the whole time that I was researching and writing simply Dag. I was buried in old newspaper articles. Just a shout out. I'm not being paid to do this, but just a shout out to an archive service like Newspapers.com. They've digitized so many great periodicals, and I thank God for them truly. One of the newspapers had said that you never see Dag lose his cool. He doesn't stomp. He doesn't shout, even if he's not pleased about a development or a situation, you never see him fly off the handle. Dag's leadership was rooted in preparation, reflection, competence, moral courage. He didn't worry about I've got to be flashy, I've got to be brash, I've got. Got to be loud. I've got to have riz. I've got to have charisma for its own sake, and it really shows us that the quieter person in the room could actually be the one to steer history and to do it in a great way. Number two, he reminds us that public figures are human beings. History has a way of flattening people into statues, and this can even happen in academia. You know, we sort of imagine the old-fashioned academics in their tweed jackets with the leather elbow patches smoking their pipes. Oh, oh, I say. Let us talk today about the great dog Hammer-Huid. What do you think? the The vast majority of humans on the planet are not going to sit and listen to some roundtable of academics trying to impress each other. We also see this, for example, with someone like JFK on my nighttime broadcast, the conspiracy theories. JFK is a frequent topic of conversation. He gets flattened into a number of stereotypes: privileged white boy, rich kid, relentless womanizer, someone who really did have that sense of charisma and preppy style sense. Oh, he photographed so well. And then there's the Camelot myth, and there's Jack and Jackie, and weren't they like the King and Queen of America? And all of this just fluff that doesn't even mean anything. But Dag was so many other things in addition to being an important part of the Swedish government, an important part of the Swedish Academy, and later the UN Secretary General, he was a photographer, a poet, a mountain climber, a hiker and naturalist, a devoted son and brother, a devoted uncle, a godfather, a very loyal and loving friend, and an introvert who loved his solitude. You know, these are not just like trivia sound bites. It's a way for us to help understand Dag's decisions, because people lead as whole human beings and not job titles. Think about how much better the work world would be if people were viewed instead of being-you're basically a drone. You're you're just a worker bot sitting here. Imagine if your colleagues and your boss took into account that you are, as a matter of fact, a human being with a life and hopes and dreams and a family and friends and not just you sit here in this cubicle and you do this and this and that. Number three, his style of diplomacy feels basically radical today. Modern politics often rewards outrage, certainty, and performance. Years ago, I'm gonna say it's probably been more than 20 years ago now. I saw an interview with Salman Rushdie, and he was talking about how we live in an age of outrage for its own sake. It's like people actively enjoy getting mad and enraged about something, anything, somewhere, anywhere, and that quote has aged remarkably well because it's even truer today with the advent of social media and clickbait and rage bait. It's even truer now than it was when he said it years ago. But yet, Dag practiced something that is almost unfashionable. Things like listening before you speak, thinking things through before you take action, speaking carefully, keeping negotiations private when necessary, refusing to turn every disagreement into some sort of public spectacle. Diplomacy is not weakness, and Dag knew that it was, and often still can be difficult, patient work. The goal really should be to prevent wars before anybody is even aware that a war almost happened. Whether somebody agrees or disagrees with every decision that Dag made, his philosophy is still remarkably relevant. Number four, he believed that character matters as much as competence. Dag was not perfect. No human being is. He was not a secular saint. He was not a grand intellectual trapped in a block of ice that no one could ever know or get close to, oh, he never laughed. He never told a joke. He never gave any hugs to anybody. Oh, he was just untouchable. That's a myth. Dag worked on himself. We see this throughout the book markings, as well as just observing his life in general. You. See a man asking some really difficult questions of himself: Am I acting out of ego? Am I serving something larger than myself? Am I telling myself convenient stories, or am I getting to the heart of what's actually happening? And these are incredibly modern psychological endeavors. We spend an enormous amount of time now asking, is this leader tough?
Does he or she have what it takes? Can they stand up to the enemy? Dag really forces us to ask, are they emotionally mature? Number five, Dag also challenges our modern idea of success. Think about it this way: a lot of biographies and biographers celebrate things like power, money, fame, status, and I think Dag's story points us to a different kind of question. What if success is living in accordance with your principles, even when it costs you. Dag wasn't some modern-day influencer. Oh look at me! I'm driving a Lambo. Oh look at me! I run with OnlyFans girls. Look at me! Do you know how much these sunglasses cost? Do you know how much this suit was? He just wasn't into that flash and brash kind of attitude, yet his influence still shapes the UN and international diplomacy decades after his death, and his life invites us to measure success by contribution rather than by flash and sass and applause. Dag is not solely important because he was the secretary general, he accomplished a great many things in that role, to be sure. But that's not the sum total of Dag. Plenty of people have held important offices and faded into obscurity. And in modernity, when we think about the influencers and the YouTubers, same thing. People can be here today, gone tomorrow, and nobody even notices because there's somebody new teed up to take their place. Dag's important because he demonstrates another way of moving through the world, a way that values quiet strength over noise, reflection over reaction, and integrity over image. In an age that often rewards performance, Dag reminds us that substance still matters. And speaking of social media, much to my chagrin, social media makes it easy to feel connected to history with the tap of a button. But history isn't kept alive by algorithms. It's kept alive by people who read the books, visit the exhibits, listen to podcasts, and support the work of those who continue telling the stories. We often say that we don't want important people to be forgotten, but remembering is not a passive activity, and I don't mean to be overly forceful when I say this, but it requires participation. It requires going beyond. Well, I hit the like button. Isn't that enough? Unfortunately, it's not. If Dag Hammerschold's life still matters, then we have to be willing to give it something: our time, our curiosity, our conversations, and yes, occasionally our financial support. We vote every day with our attention, and sometimes yes, we vote with our wallets. If we believe a story deserves to survive for the next generation, then those votes matter. Stay safe. Take very good care of yourself, and I will see you in the next episode.
Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast and share it with others. We'll see you next time.
