This is an issue that I fail with, because of bafflement. We constantly make up what is of value. Why can't we make up something better, more reasonable? I did ask that question once, out loud. Silly me. When someone did propose such a thing and carry it out, bitcoin, crypto, they made up a system of mining non-tangible money so ridiculous it makes even less sense. And is terribly unstable. My Utopian dream is that the value of currency should be determined by the amount of work and the level of skill brought to that work by anyone. Within healthy limits. Cost of living determined by healthy limits. But I am naive. What makes humans compete for who has most, I don't know. But I do know that by the end of life, most is way too much a burden.
Leadership. It’s myth. Will it wane? Fade? It is possible that no-one here will really get this. It is strange to all of us. Why am I writing? Why are you reading? I am not leading or teaching. I am just mouthing off.
We have been convinced by leaders that they are important. It’s not a conspiracy. Only someone angling for a title of leadership will tell you that it’s a conspiracy, “I am not engaging in a conspiracy with you by telling you it is a conspiracy.” Hmmm. They draw you in with a theory they cannot prove, because you want to be drawn in, that depends on your capacity, your trust of other human beings or not. “Trust me” they say. “Not them.” And again, it is not about them, it is about you, and your need. And you have been very well fed on “whose fault it is really” since Eden. Your leader will always turn out to be the one who articulates your grievance and says whose fault it is, and it is never ever your fault.
As the Palestinian journalist said yesterday: the media lies to you. It conspires to lie to you, from journalist to editor, they sit at a table once in a while and decide we will lie. This is not exactly untrue but as Palestine demonstrates exactly: we will buy the truth teller who tells us what we already know, or feel, inside. The facts will in fact fit many truths.
Our leaders are susceptible to the same myth we adhere to that makes us followers. This should be the definition of religion. Myths we believe in are great except when they assign leaders or guardians of the myth. These we call monotheism.
The scholarship and analysis over thousands of years has been that we are the victims of the wrong leaders, we need better ones, and we venerate our democracy because, we have decided, it is the fairest way to choose them and has built in mechanisms to stop them from abusing our trust. It doesn’t at all cast any doubt on our need of them. From priest to President we have made them inevitable. Or….
I can’t very well describe an alternative to our ancient agreements because we will not hear them really. An alternative, not the alternative, there is no such thing as The alternative, an alternative, will look exhausting. There was a moment I think when the ancient Greeks realized this, it might have been their finest hour, I really don’t know, but they spun so quickly between monarch and sortition that it leads to suspicion. Sortition is a system by which officers or representatives are selected by lot. Every body of the body politic is selectable. Your sherd is pulled from the pot and for the next year you will be an assembly person. You will meet with your “people” village, hood, neighborhood, subdivision, at intervals and discuss with them whatever needs discussing and bring the conclusions drawn, demands made and questions asked to the greater state assembly and from here make policy. You are not a leader, you are an articulator and maybe a persuader. After a year the lots are drawn again. And the articulators changed. It is very Greek and probably very everywhere else at that time when “Leadership” was not thought of or confused with the divine. The argument between Agamemnon and Achilles that starts the Iliad is an argument at an assembly. Everybody is there.
It does look exhausting but has it’s rewards. Huge. I think that he greatest part of democracy is not about what decisions are made, what laws passed, but how, and how that process of argument, persuasion and discussion edifies us. Makes adults of us. While the mechanisms of leadership keep us children. Which we, on the evidence, prefer. Until.
This can either seem libertarian or authoritarian but it’s neither. It may look a bit like compulsory military service but it doesn’t involve any war. Unless the big assembly decides war is a good idea. It also is the root of the only good idea in western democracy, term limits. In a sense it is nearer Jury duty.
A really juicy corruption of the present “way” of doing things is that people who want to be or who imagine themselves to be good leadership material are enabled by another maybe bigger demographic who choose to be led. Haha. The very heart of the myth isn’t it? Not everyone is leadership material but lots of us, most of us are led material. Said every King ever. How many? 99%. A familiar looking number.
It might be possible to imagine that the break of Protestantism in the early 16th century, the demand of the lowly, to talk to god without intermediaries followed the stirrings among the eternally “led” peasants of the late 14th century demanding what part of the bible creates a “gentleman” above an everyman. It’s a testament, scuse the pun, to the power of the rulers that this history was buried and muddied till today and even now the “rulers” have concluded that social media is the cause, the conspiracy, that is destroying the fabric of…. The status quo that keeps them in charge. And the accident of education that is massively producing graduates who are qualified to manage, who have been trained to know, with no-one to manage or to teach: no-one to lead.
If for no other reason, this is why leadership is redundant, and a real democracy is on the verge. And the moment really needs celebrating and many a habit, changing.
I remember, constantly, in High School in the early 70s in the US North East, being asked what do you think and who are you. A tiny window of time and place, or maybe it is the question I chose to remember. Not once did I hear “who do you think you are?” as a rebuke. And the question was just put out there. There was no-one I had to answer to.
The big crumbling of the West and it’s “leadership” could be evidence of this verge. The thrashing around and narcissism many of us see as superior civilization is human and understandable but always had a short homicidal shelf life. Its probably going to be a bumpy road shaking off it’s druggy simplicities, and it is fighting back, through proxies, courage was never a characteristic of it’s ethic, but crumbling still.
I don't have enough of a grip of property and it's grip on so many people to comment on what should or should not be except that it is shoddy compensation. I have always had enough. Nobody I knew would have looked at my finances and said phew you have enough in those days. But I did. Why is that? As I sat fat in enough every night at Manuels Tavern where waitresses charged us as little as possible, did someone imagine that having more money than I would place them where I was in my flight?
I was reminiscing about Macbeth of 94 recently with Fleet and again with a friend who was not there. I was 37 when we did that play. I was in a Dionysian stasis. It was not unfamiliar territory but it was finally fully realized and my spirit was flying. And I remembered Hudson Adams as Lennox, telling me about the "rough night." I was totally mesmerized by this young man. Did it matter to me if he was paid what I was? He probably wasn't. I wish he was. I have to imagine that property people are saving up for my 94 Macbeth or are disappointed it never happened, or never will happen and want money in compensation.
So yes. Utopian dream? Why would I care about amount of work and level of skill, immeasurables anyway only the jealous care about anyway. I only see Hudsons shining eyes. Should I pay him for his bliss? His great gift to everybody that he gave so freely, that couldn't be valued enough? That everybody gave in that piece and sooooo many others.
This is an issue that I fail with, because of bafflement. We constantly make up what is of value. Why can't we make up something better, more reasonable? I did ask that question once, out loud. Silly me. When someone did propose such a thing and carry it out, bitcoin, crypto, they made up a system of mining non-tangible money so ridiculous it makes even less sense. And is terribly unstable. My Utopian dream is that the value of currency should be determined by the amount of work and the level of skill brought to that work by anyone. Within healthy limits. Cost of living determined by healthy limits. But I am naive. What makes humans compete for who has most, I don't know. But I do know that by the end of life, most is way too much a burden.
Leadership. It’s myth. Will it wane? Fade? It is possible that no-one here will really get this. It is strange to all of us. Why am I writing? Why are you reading? I am not leading or teaching. I am just mouthing off.
We have been convinced by leaders that they are important. It’s not a conspiracy. Only someone angling for a title of leadership will tell you that it’s a conspiracy, “I am not engaging in a conspiracy with you by telling you it is a conspiracy.” Hmmm. They draw you in with a theory they cannot prove, because you want to be drawn in, that depends on your capacity, your trust of other human beings or not. “Trust me” they say. “Not them.” And again, it is not about them, it is about you, and your need. And you have been very well fed on “whose fault it is really” since Eden. Your leader will always turn out to be the one who articulates your grievance and says whose fault it is, and it is never ever your fault.
As the Palestinian journalist said yesterday: the media lies to you. It conspires to lie to you, from journalist to editor, they sit at a table once in a while and decide we will lie. This is not exactly untrue but as Palestine demonstrates exactly: we will buy the truth teller who tells us what we already know, or feel, inside. The facts will in fact fit many truths.
Our leaders are susceptible to the same myth we adhere to that makes us followers. This should be the definition of religion. Myths we believe in are great except when they assign leaders or guardians of the myth. These we call monotheism.
The scholarship and analysis over thousands of years has been that we are the victims of the wrong leaders, we need better ones, and we venerate our democracy because, we have decided, it is the fairest way to choose them and has built in mechanisms to stop them from abusing our trust. It doesn’t at all cast any doubt on our need of them. From priest to President we have made them inevitable. Or….
I can’t very well describe an alternative to our ancient agreements because we will not hear them really. An alternative, not the alternative, there is no such thing as The alternative, an alternative, will look exhausting. There was a moment I think when the ancient Greeks realized this, it might have been their finest hour, I really don’t know, but they spun so quickly between monarch and sortition that it leads to suspicion. Sortition is a system by which officers or representatives are selected by lot. Every body of the body politic is selectable. Your sherd is pulled from the pot and for the next year you will be an assembly person. You will meet with your “people” village, hood, neighborhood, subdivision, at intervals and discuss with them whatever needs discussing and bring the conclusions drawn, demands made and questions asked to the greater state assembly and from here make policy. You are not a leader, you are an articulator and maybe a persuader. After a year the lots are drawn again. And the articulators changed. It is very Greek and probably very everywhere else at that time when “Leadership” was not thought of or confused with the divine. The argument between Agamemnon and Achilles that starts the Iliad is an argument at an assembly. Everybody is there.
It does look exhausting but has it’s rewards. Huge. I think that he greatest part of democracy is not about what decisions are made, what laws passed, but how, and how that process of argument, persuasion and discussion edifies us. Makes adults of us. While the mechanisms of leadership keep us children. Which we, on the evidence, prefer. Until.
This can either seem libertarian or authoritarian but it’s neither. It may look a bit like compulsory military service but it doesn’t involve any war. Unless the big assembly decides war is a good idea. It also is the root of the only good idea in western democracy, term limits. In a sense it is nearer Jury duty.
A really juicy corruption of the present “way” of doing things is that people who want to be or who imagine themselves to be good leadership material are enabled by another maybe bigger demographic who choose to be led. Haha. The very heart of the myth isn’t it? Not everyone is leadership material but lots of us, most of us are led material. Said every King ever. How many? 99%. A familiar looking number.
It might be possible to imagine that the break of Protestantism in the early 16th century, the demand of the lowly, to talk to god without intermediaries followed the stirrings among the eternally “led” peasants of the late 14th century demanding what part of the bible creates a “gentleman” above an everyman. It’s a testament, scuse the pun, to the power of the rulers that this history was buried and muddied till today and even now the “rulers” have concluded that social media is the cause, the conspiracy, that is destroying the fabric of…. The status quo that keeps them in charge. And the accident of education that is massively producing graduates who are qualified to manage, who have been trained to know, with no-one to manage or to teach: no-one to lead.
If for no other reason, this is why leadership is redundant, and a real democracy is on the verge. And the moment really needs celebrating and many a habit, changing.
I remember, constantly, in High School in the early 70s in the US North East, being asked what do you think and who are you. A tiny window of time and place, or maybe it is the question I chose to remember. Not once did I hear “who do you think you are?” as a rebuke. And the question was just put out there. There was no-one I had to answer to.
The big crumbling of the West and it’s “leadership” could be evidence of this verge. The thrashing around and narcissism many of us see as superior civilization is human and understandable but always had a short homicidal shelf life. Its probably going to be a bumpy road shaking off it’s druggy simplicities, and it is fighting back, through proxies, courage was never a characteristic of it’s ethic, but crumbling still.
I don't have enough of a grip of property and it's grip on so many people to comment on what should or should not be except that it is shoddy compensation. I have always had enough. Nobody I knew would have looked at my finances and said phew you have enough in those days. But I did. Why is that? As I sat fat in enough every night at Manuels Tavern where waitresses charged us as little as possible, did someone imagine that having more money than I would place them where I was in my flight?
I was reminiscing about Macbeth of 94 recently with Fleet and again with a friend who was not there. I was 37 when we did that play. I was in a Dionysian stasis. It was not unfamiliar territory but it was finally fully realized and my spirit was flying. And I remembered Hudson Adams as Lennox, telling me about the "rough night." I was totally mesmerized by this young man. Did it matter to me if he was paid what I was? He probably wasn't. I wish he was. I have to imagine that property people are saving up for my 94 Macbeth or are disappointed it never happened, or never will happen and want money in compensation.
So yes. Utopian dream? Why would I care about amount of work and level of skill, immeasurables anyway only the jealous care about anyway. I only see Hudsons shining eyes. Should I pay him for his bliss? His great gift to everybody that he gave so freely, that couldn't be valued enough? That everybody gave in that piece and sooooo many others.