My Take on the Collapse of Leadership
This is the first part of my short work COLLAPSE $2.99 KU Prime http://tinyurl.com/j83xvwe It was written before the Trump event. Its pertinence is hard to fault.
ONE
Thoughtlessness
Collapsed leadership is first of all thoughtless. It does not consider the results of whatever uses of power a leader possesses. A good example is the Koch Brothers who rank among the top polluters on the planet. They are poster children for the collapse of leadership.
Selfishness
The entire celebrity culture and class system of the world is predicated on selfishness as a sort of virtue, modified sometimes by a patina of social concern. But a critical view of the reality of this culture marks it as another nail in the coffin of leadership. Selfishness is the gateway to a culture of harm.
Judging
The media are poster children for the puerile judgment that passes for leadership. The alleged impartiality of a paper like the New York Times is dissected and it is shown that the paper is involved in a fundamental way with the collapse of leadership in our time.
Gangs
Nations are bad enough. But today we live in a culture of gangs whose leaders are often anonymous. Claiming everything from moral to religious sanctions they exist to kill, divide and devalue life itself by their embrace of nihilism and their tawdry performance.
Exclusion
The activity of exclusion is the signature of a certain form of leadership which we devoutly hope will collapse in our time. This is a global assault on human rights whose evidence lies in activities whose signature is the lethal denial of human rights, whether in honor killings, the bombing of abortion clinics or the widespread efforts to legislate all manner of exclusions. The leaders of such efforts are among the best examples of the collapse of leadership in out time.
Binary Games
The advertising industry might serve as the poster children for this section of a wide scale indictment of contemporary leadership efforts. But the net must be cast more widely. Whenever a we-they, either-or mentality prevails, whether in the academy or on the street, we risk the evils of division and conflict. The antidote is a triadic way of thought that does not jump to conclusions.
Rights
There is a curious reality in the world. Knowing better, we still condone war. Even Human Rights organizations appear to believe that we should be content if we merely follow the laws or rules of war. In this chapter we shall see how leadership is doing in the precincts where doing the right thing is celebrated. We examine the eleemosynary wing.
Harm
This section is a flat-out plea for big data to take harm seriously. We need a basis for evaluating injury that takes the huge fund of knowledge we possess and processes it to determine as accurately as possible the actual results of the things we collectively do.
Injury
Injury like harm needs to be understood in terms of its ethical status.
Murder
Killing is the nadir of human value choices. To the extent that it is accepted as standard behavior it represents the ultimate collapse of leadership.
TWO
Thoughtlessness
Thoughtlessness requires definition because it is not merely the beginning of evil but a human decision. One is not merely thoughtless by default. One has made up one’s mind to act and speak without thinking. This means without a thought.
What is a thought? A thought is a conscious consideration based on positive values. Let me lay it out for you.
Here is a truthful representation of reality as we know it.
The thing about this universal hierarchy is that when you get to the bottom ten you have vacated the realm of conscious decision.
For every act that one takes based on the values from thoughtlessness to killing, consciousness has not been applied. What has happened is that one has either acted without thinking at all or rationalized on the basis of false and ugly premises.
Reality proceeds on the basis of good premises and when evil is done it registers as the very opposite of truth and beauty, ranging from the effects of thoughtlessness to the effects that rise from the intent to cause injury or to kill.
This is an ontological statement. Its truth is lodged in being itself. It is the acknowledgement of a universal ethic working within the fallible precincts of our reality.
You may see this as an indication that there is a moral arc to the cosmos. But you may also see this, accurately, as a reflection of documentable experience.
We literally do act on the scale noted in the chart. Those who regard this as naive or the production of a fifth grader fail to understand the sage remarks of Jesus regarding hypocrisy and goodness, and, in particular, his veneration of children. This is the only way to truth and beauty. Those with eyes to see know it is so.
Leadership becomes tarnished. It collapses under the weight of thoughtlessness. It is the task of leadership to operate within the scope of the positive values, beginning with self respect and critical thinking.
I note the eminent Koch brothers in my introduction. I imagine placing the affable billionaires on comfortable folding chairs on the banks of a river into which they are pouring toxic junk in the state of Florida.
Their company is among the globe’s top polluters. I imagine them in a mood of reflection, even of penitence. Asking perhaps: “What were we thinking?”
And the answer must be, “Nothing.”
The actions that proceed from the lower ten values on the chart are essentially nihilistic. They reflect loss of a human hold on reality, a hold made possible only by the operation of consciousness.
The Kochs may argue that they are paragons of consciousness because the good done by their companies far outweighs the evil that results from their poisoning of the environment.
Can we not accede to an ethic which sagaciously embraces the Benthamite belief that goodness serves the greatest number? The Koch’s point to their creation of jobs, the usefulness of their products.
But the greatest number, in this context, is hardly in tune with reality. It would be in tune only in terms of a conscious form of leadership that considered all that lies under its purview.
Do the Koch’s consider their pollution other than as a problem for them? All I can surmise is that, if they saw what they were doing close up and personal. they might act differently. They might think.
Thoughtlessness bears fruit. It is called neglect. Life a garden that needs to be watered evenly. When leadership practices neglect, it is willing to be thoughtless. The mechanisms are myriad. Rationalizations. Beliefs. A huge index of sophisticated mean of avoiding the simple verdict: You were thoughtless.
We are summoned by our index of values to sees that we are fallible. Our progress is slow. Consciousness of pollution in Florida, thought given to it, might convince the Koch’s to act and clean up the mess. To stanch the flow. In which case they could say: “We thought it over.”
Fallible perfectionism can extract this first nail in the coffin of leadership.
THREE
Selfishness
The purpose of this short, unsweet book is to deconstruct leadership. It does so by indicating the actual status of expressions and actions on a scale in which the gateway to evil is composed of two values — thoughtlessness and selfishness.
I wish to deconstruct leadership with reference to Senator Cruz who is, as I write, a candidate for the Presidency on the Republican side. I have posted a photo of Mr. Cruz which suggests that he has an obligation of $24 billion to the American people resulting from his almost single-handed achievement of a government shutdown. The shutdown cost the country that much in revenue and other losses. It is not known how many injuries or killings resulted.
Mr. Cruz could be faulted on other grounds. He has practiced sweeping condemnation of his academic mentors at Harvard, using the very language Joe McCarthy once employed to his profound discredit during the 1950s. I had occasion to see Joe McCarthy censured on the floor of the Senate in 1954.
It is a testimony to the sadness of the present time that it would be hard to imagine Cruz suffering censure though his acts deserve it.
We now have a media that is binary to the core. It does not evaluate good and evil, or even decency. It simply divides sides by two. Cruz is the leader of a side, not the perpetrator of a crime that exceeds by a long shot any robbery for which anyone in the world now serves prison time.
We do not have any recourse save the powers of expression. Our news channels are currently poisoned by FOX which tells lies as a matter of course. Established news outlets like the New York Times divide everything in two and call the result a debate, even when facts are undebatable. As with Iraq so with Cruz.
Selfishness is a gateway to evil. Nowhere is selfishness more celebrated than in the precincts of our celebrity culture. This involves an acceptance of luxury, an idolization of money and a distortion of what celebrity is. The complicity of the NYT in the perpetuation of this idolatry may help explain its binary posture, relieved only somewhat by the offerings of a columnist or an editorial writer.
Politics blends with celebrity culture. All operate on the idea that if a million or ten million or even fifty million resonate to someone’s acts or expressions, that someone is worth worth money and exposure.
But even a million or so sales or likes or other evidences of fame are a drop in the bucket of global perception. Only a handful at any time have global renown. The rest are local celebrities.
But we act as though they are the global standard. It is all a show. It cannot be taken seriously. And most know this.
Most should know that Ted Cruz on any fair measure of evaluation belongs in jail. Why? By our fruits we are known. Actions and expressions tell.
Selfishness is todays most telling evidence of the collapse of leadership. Its fruits are everywhere evident.
Leadership based on selfishness deserves to collapse.
