Hierarchy
Anyone who knows me knows that I write a lot. Anyone who has been following me might recognize that I have not written in quite some time. The fact is that enough people have become vocal since the last election that I felt that my voice was drowned out in the crowd. That shit storm is calming down now, and I feel the need to speak what I've been chewing on since November.
And the name of the game is Hierarchy.
Our species has always lived in groups, tribes, communities. As children we have families with adults telling us what to do. We naturally look to someone bigger, more experienced, more enlightened than we are, to tell us what to do. We have always, in our history, acted as if we could not make decisions unless someone made them for us. I believe that behavior is becoming obsolete: We also used to shit in holes in the ground, but we quit that game too.
So what happens when one becomes a leader? Does that attitude of "show me what to do" actually change? Or does the leader look for a bigger leader when crises hit? What happens when we climb to the top of the leader ladder? If you're religious, you think that God is up there, telling the leading leader how to lead. But, if you are a scientifically leaning individual who does not believe in a big advisor in the sky, you must, at some point, think ...what's at the top of the leader tree? What if it's....Nothing???
But before we fuck with that paradigm, let's flip this around: Why the hell do we need leaders in the first place? What happens to people who don't have leaders? Do they always need to create them? "Lord of the Flies" was fiction, you know, but we also know that even chickens have a pecking order. But here's the backward paradigm question: is there any problem that we now face that wasn't caused by a group of us following some leader into the mess? Wars are not caused by individuals, they are caused by so-called "leaders." Destruction of natural resources is directed by a CEO of a company. New products are pushed on us by "leading" personalities.
We do not need leaders. Let me repeat that: We, as adult human beings, do not need leaders. One more time in all caps: WE DO NOT NEED LEADERS. We need to grow the fuck up, be adults, and make decisions that are based in the good of all people. We need to stop looking for some leader to fix our problems instead of tackling them ourselves. We need to stop making some humans more important than others, stroking their ego, giving them power. Leaders only have as much power as they can enforce, and their enforcement team is made up of non-leaders who aspire one day to lead. What could possibly go wrong with that scenario???
The alternative is Teamwork. Teamwork requires no leaders,although some may argue that someone will declare themself leader. But teamwork only requires a working knowledge of the big picture, and a detailed knowledge of your part in it. It requires talking and listening with respect to your peers, and valuing them as much as you wish to be valued. Humanity reaps greater benefits with respectful teamwork than we get with bossy leaders who are motivated by the wrong desires, because we don't have to suffer from the mistakes of mis-directed ego-based disrespectful leaders.
Just think of how this world would look without leaders...just imagine. Imagine is actually all you can do; it's all we got. Because we have never seen a leaderless society manifest in real life in any meaningful way. Because the leaders have never allowed that.
The funny thing about obsolescence; it doesn't give a fuck what leaders think.
And the name of the game is Hierarchy.
Our species has always lived in groups, tribes, communities. As children we have families with adults telling us what to do. We naturally look to someone bigger, more experienced, more enlightened than we are, to tell us what to do. We have always, in our history, acted as if we could not make decisions unless someone made them for us. I believe that behavior is becoming obsolete: We also used to shit in holes in the ground, but we quit that game too.
So what happens when one becomes a leader? Does that attitude of "show me what to do" actually change? Or does the leader look for a bigger leader when crises hit? What happens when we climb to the top of the leader ladder? If you're religious, you think that God is up there, telling the leading leader how to lead. But, if you are a scientifically leaning individual who does not believe in a big advisor in the sky, you must, at some point, think ...what's at the top of the leader tree? What if it's....Nothing???
But before we fuck with that paradigm, let's flip this around: Why the hell do we need leaders in the first place? What happens to people who don't have leaders? Do they always need to create them? "Lord of the Flies" was fiction, you know, but we also know that even chickens have a pecking order. But here's the backward paradigm question: is there any problem that we now face that wasn't caused by a group of us following some leader into the mess? Wars are not caused by individuals, they are caused by so-called "leaders." Destruction of natural resources is directed by a CEO of a company. New products are pushed on us by "leading" personalities.
We do not need leaders. Let me repeat that: We, as adult human beings, do not need leaders. One more time in all caps: WE DO NOT NEED LEADERS. We need to grow the fuck up, be adults, and make decisions that are based in the good of all people. We need to stop looking for some leader to fix our problems instead of tackling them ourselves. We need to stop making some humans more important than others, stroking their ego, giving them power. Leaders only have as much power as they can enforce, and their enforcement team is made up of non-leaders who aspire one day to lead. What could possibly go wrong with that scenario???
The alternative is Teamwork. Teamwork requires no leaders,although some may argue that someone will declare themself leader. But teamwork only requires a working knowledge of the big picture, and a detailed knowledge of your part in it. It requires talking and listening with respect to your peers, and valuing them as much as you wish to be valued. Humanity reaps greater benefits with respectful teamwork than we get with bossy leaders who are motivated by the wrong desires, because we don't have to suffer from the mistakes of mis-directed ego-based disrespectful leaders.
Just think of how this world would look without leaders...just imagine. Imagine is actually all you can do; it's all we got. Because we have never seen a leaderless society manifest in real life in any meaningful way. Because the leaders have never allowed that.
The funny thing about obsolescence; it doesn't give a fuck what leaders think.