Entry 2183, on 2021-01-28 at 17:47:00 (Rating 4, Politics)
Why are our "leaders" so bad? That is a loaded question, so let me make a couple of points of clarification before I try to answer it.
First, the word "leaders" is in quotes. Why? A leader should be someone who leads and others willingly follow. While presidents, prime ministers, and others in power around the world are leaders in some sense, I generally find the willingness to follow from the population in general is somewhat less than what we would expect a true leader to have.
Second, when I say leaders are bad, what evidence do I have for that? Well, badness is a subjective attribute, to a large extent, so it is really just my opinion, but have a look at approval ratings, protests, the fact that most leaders don't last more than one or two elections, and the general state of public opinion, and I think the perception that leaders are bad is true, even if you might try to make a case to say that objectively they are doing a good job (which I don't believe at all).
The latest climate conference, COP26, has been a classic example of this phenomenon, and one where the inadequacies of leaders has become very apparent. I don't want to go into a lot of detail on this here, because I plan to do a post on it in future, but let's just quickly look at some facts...
These "leaders" flew there in 400 private jets, each of which created more carbon for that one trip than the average family generates in a year. Even if you can make a case to say that these are busy people and the extra carbon generated by their travel is worth it when looking at the big picture, it is still a bad look, and not the way a good leader would act.
Prince Charles made some very serious statements about how bad things are, but he also said over 10 years ago that we only had 8 years to fix this. What's happened since? Well, he has travelled hundreds of thousands of kilometers by air for no good reason, and that 8 year period ended 2 years ago. The man is total buffoon and what sort of leader could he possibly make, including for Commonwealth countries like New Zealand where the British monarch is theoretically head of state?
Greta Thunberg is at it again, apparently more incoherent than ever. I guess you could say she might be a leader based on her strong emotional appeal, but equally many people find her obnoxious, irrational, and hysterical. So I would suggest that she is not really leadership material.
What about that highly esteemed leader, revered by so many around the world, our own great Jacinda Ardern (often also know as Saint Cindy)? Well, you can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time (this famous quote is usually attributed to Lincoln), and it seems that less and less people are being fooled by her as time goes by.
Ardern has leadership skills, for sure, but they are based on propaganda and tight control of information. And now we have nationwide protests over her actions, and not just related to COVID restrictions, but equally about her failure to honestly communicate, and her political agenda which many see as verging on communism. This is not genuine leadership.
US president, Joe Biden, was moderately popular when he replaced Donald Trump, who did not enjoy a very high approval rating, but now Biden is heading in the same direction, and might possibly be even less approved of than his predecessor. He's no leader, and Trump was too controversial to be an effective leader as well. So the most powerful country on Earth has ineffective leadership (to put it in the most generous terms). Where does it go from here?
And so it goes on: very few leaders enjoy wide support for very long, with a few possible exceptions like Angela Merkel in Germany, but even she left that role before she was forced to. The public's opinion of politicians has always been bad, but it seems worse now than in the past. And business leaders are also often not held in high esteem. Incredibly successful people like Jeff Bezos are often ridiculed and pilloried by the public, and even business people who I consider quite brilliant, like Elon Musk, are often condemned.
Unfortunately, many people feel that they do need to be lead, and when people in traditional areas are rejected, that leadership has to come from elsewhere. Unfortunately, it seems to come from what is arguably an even worse place than politics or business: entertainers (mainly actors) and internet influencers!
I mean, I agree the politicians are problematic, but its hard to think of a worse class of people to take notice of than actors. Their whole lives revolve around fantasy and isolation from the real world. If anything I would say listen to their ideas, and do the opposite!
Of course, all of my criticisms above apply in general to the group I am discussing, and there are undoubtedly rare individual cases where the criticism doesn't apply. So if you can think of a few politicians, business people, actors, or influencers who do provide genuinely good leadership that is fine, but it doesn't disprove my main point about the majority.
So enough of this negativity. No doubt you will be waiting for my solution to this problem! Where do we get good leadership from?
Well, my preferred solution is from nowhere. I object to the idea of leaders. I don't want to be lead, I am perfectly capable of deciding how to live myself. But there are people who do feel lost without some form of leadership, so what about them?
Well, I have mentioned this in the past, but I will repeat it here: a famous study showed that choosing leaders at random was more effective than our current systems. The current system seems to encourage the exact people who shouldn't lead. These people are arrogant enough to think they can do the job, and ignorant enough to not realise they can't! More thoughtful people see the task of leadership in a more realistic light, and understand their own deficiencies, so probably wouldn't want the job. But it is exactly those people: with humility and a deeper understanding of the challenges, who should be leaders!
And even then, we won't necessarily get good leaders. The old saying that "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely" (attributed to 19th century British politician Lord Acton) undoubtedly has some merit. I would say our own good prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is certainly a victim of this. She has gradually become less transparent and less fair as time goes by, and that seems a common issue for other leaders as well.
It seems that the whole concept of leadership is problematic, not just the specific instances of it. The wrong people gain power in the first place, and then they become more and more out of touch as time goes by. It's a system almost guaranteed to fail.
So I think we need to find a way to supplant the need for leaders. We are told that representative democracies are a way for people to have their wishes carried out through the leaders they elect to do that job, but those wishes are rarely carried out. Maybe direct democracy is a better idea, where new ideas can be voted on easily through the use of technology. We might be able to run our lives without leaders. That would suit my anarcho-libertarian tendencies, but it might not suit many others.
Some people like to say things like "but you've got to respect her because she's your prime minister" or "give your leaders the appropriate level of respect." No thanks. People need to earn my respect, and none of them have. They are the most hypocritical, arrogant, self-serving, ignorant, and often evil people on the planet. They deserve no respect, and they might be my prime minister, mayor, or whatever, but they aren't my leaders!
Comment 1 by Derek Ramsey on 2022-01-28 at 22:28:10:
Neither bureaucrats nor political puppets are leaders. While there are opportunities for, say, the leader of the executive branch of government (e.g. Biden) to lead (e.g. drafting of legislation, convincing the population to accept some policy), most of the time they are just following orders (i.e. executing the law; cabinet positions, etc.). Then you have the legislative branch where proponents (e.g. AOC) are more concerned with virtue signalling (e.g. “Tax the rich” dress) than actually leading (e.g. Recent support for a bill that would be the largest tax cut on the rich in U.S. history).
OJB said: "These “leaders” flew there in 400 private jets, each of which created more carbon for that one trip than the average family generates in a year."
Knowing, correctly, that nothing one person alone does makes a difference, they assume therefore that they themselves don’t have to restrict themselves ever. They need only force enough people to do it to be supposedly effective. There will always be room to not worry about a percent or two of elites that don’t follow the rules. This is objectively correct. Of course it is flaming hypocrisy and is antithetical to leadership.
OJB said: "I object to the idea of leaders. I don’t want to be lead, I am perfectly capable of deciding how to live myself."
From the evolutionary perspective, humans have evolved alpha males to lead. These are those, typically high testosterone, individuals who fight to be the ones to make decisions. Many want to, but not all can, but that’s how it works. The remaining majority of the population (women and ‘beta’ men) are evolved to herd behavior, because herd behavior is protective.
We do not live in an alpha male society. Anyone who thinks we do is laughably ignorant. It isn’t that leaders are bad, it’s that modernity vilifies true leaders and sets up frauds as their replacements.
Comment 2 by OJB on 2022-01-28 at 22:28:46:
Well, yes, that was one of my major points: that the people often labelled as “leaders” are either following orders from elsewhere, or don’t have much of a following amongst the people (or both).
As I said, from a practical perspective, the private jets might have been the best solution, but from the perspective of the average person watching, it looks really bad. Another failure of leadership.
I am sure that many of our social structures have their origins in social evolution, but maybe it is time to admit that times have changed and we need to move on to something new.
Comment 3 by Anonymous on 2022-01-28 at 22:29:50:
I wonder whether this is just - at least in part - a semantic problem. Translated into German, leader is Fuhrer, a title inextricably linked with, or more of an epitaph, now for Adolf Hitler. The word has a bad, disreputable ring to it and very few politicians want to be called Fuhrer. It certainly is not a discussion point. It may justifiably apply now to people like Xi Jinping or Putin, Lukashenko or Min Aung Hlaing. So when reflecting in a non-English language medium the title leader does not readily come to mind.
I think democratically befitting would be the expression "leadership", in the sense of a function and not personality, which would indicate more appropriately being led by following ideas, values, ideological sentiments and political programmes. It would also indicate the spread of power over a wider circle of people as it should be in a democracy. So-called leaders are often just figureheads, the talking heads of politics, which should be seen to represent collectively held ideas and only to a minimal extent representing themselves.
Comment 4 by OJB on 2022-01-28 at 22:30:19:
Yes, it is very frustrating that discussing or debating these subjects is so dependent on the meaning of words, and how different people interpret the same words differently.
My interpretation of "leader" is someone who takes control of a group of people who voluntarily follow. My point is that very few world "leaders" have a lot of support from the people who they allegedly lead, which suggests they aren't really leaders in that sense, just a boss, master, overseer. Someone who tells you what to do, even when you disagree.
Comment 5 by Anonymous on 2022-01-28 at 22:30:57:
'My interpretation of "leader" is someone who takes control of a group of people who voluntarily follow.'. Well, maybe it's your interpretation that is at fault.
Comment 6 by OJB on 2022-01-28 at 22:31:25:
Well, sure, that is possible, as I said in comment 4. The definition from OED is: "the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country". I guess some leaders get there because they lead, and others because they command. I would say the more pure form is those who lead, although that definition is a tautology!
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