[438] Crisis of Leadership

The word “leader” takes on many forms to me.

Broadly speaking, I consider everyone a leader. That is to say, you are an ambassador for your point of view and decision making. It’s why it matters if you’re an incidental or deliberate person. When I come into contact with something you do or say, I need to know if you actually put thought into it and consider yourself correct. Frequently, I find precisely the opposite case, which provokes me to find out who or what it is that has led you by the nose.

In my experience, people don’t consider themselves leaders. The only time you can complain about “the mass media” and have it make sense is because the ones watching it for their opinions aren’t digging up the facts for hours at a time independently. People think that fitting in with racial or regional ties is inherently dignified because the background has already been set. You’re not going to be quietly contemplating our country’s relationship to war this 4th of July. You’re going to emulate explosions and get drunk. At least, that’s my plan. It’s celebrating in service to the party, not in the name of responsible feelings for the country.

It’s interesting to hear statistics about website usage. You see how much content is driven to popularity by a relative handful of overly-enthusiastic people with pick-your-particular slant. Or think about poll numbers. With a very presumed “science” people tend to ignore that we’re getting answers from people predisposed to answering poll questions, perhaps not the brightest or most reliable bunch, and those numbers are reflecting a moment of feeling or memory.

The problem is that we use these metrics to try and better inform ourselves while leaving out the details. If you tell me a certain article is trending, you’re not telling me whether what it’s talking about is worthwhile. You don’t get to ask questions about what is or isn’t worthwhile because the content is flatly and superficially engaged with. When you cite a poll saying a certain percentage of people are familiar with Bernie Sanders, you’re not telling me what he advocates for. You’re not explaining why he’s not more mainstream. The dialogue swirls around “hopes and prayers” and “momentum” instead of substance.

If you read about politics, often big moves forward or back come from whether or not you had the leaders in place to barrel their agenda through. This is something in the “everyone has an opinion” era we’ve all but forsaken. How do you have debates about abortion, climate change, marriage equality, guns, or private prisons and schools in the modern era? The people who were leading the way, crafting the legislation, being unwilling to shake their hard fought convictions wrought from struggle and knowledge, are dying off or rendered impotent by money and dirty politics. We’re not told the story of 1 person finding 2 friends who called hundreds of organizations that finally built into the machine Elizabeth Warren is running to fight back against Wall Street. At least, not regularly told.

I remember as a kid first learning about astrology and reading about what it meant to be a leo. Around the same time I learned my name apparently means “victory of the people.” I found this compelling. Whether it was banding together the loner kids on the playground into a tag group, cobbling together the conditions for my party house, or what I’m blazing one matchstick at a time into the future in business, I lodged something in my brain about being in charge and setting an example. This is not my endorsement of astrology nor advocacy for reading too far into what your name allegedly means, but from the most innocuous places you can find yourself adopting ideas with longstanding consequences.

I like to think I’m a person of consequence. I like to think that whether I get zero recognition or likes that I’ve embedded myself in people’s heads. Another reason I like to get you drunk, because then you get all heartfelt and tell me you read these things and had something stick. It bugs me to no end to see problems and not even put a voice to them. If I complain about communication, I’m bound by a form of morality or honor to attempt to communicate better. If I see the consequences of terrible lies, to yourself or otherwise, I need to find a way to relate the message in a way that feels more truthful. I don’t tell you what I believe, I act like it.

And it’s at this point I see people not empathizing and giving enough credit to their fellow man. People act like it. When you feel compelled to defend a racist flag, you’re leading something of a pro-racist charge. Your words “I’m not a racist, but” is the moment where we need to unpack and dig out where your view really came from. This is what normalized or institutionalized blindness to someone else’s problems is and where horrible behavior comes from. The idea had leaders, and it virally infected because not enough people took up the charge to shit on the idea by leading with something smarter.

That is, you can’t be lazy. You can’t say things like “set in their ways,” “it’s just one person,” “most people aren’t this or that.” If most people aren’t racist, why does it feel like they are? What better conversations could we be having about race after we accept our evolutionarily conditioned “in group out group” fear? Let the blowhard ideologue stare at your simple questions about where their feelings are coming from so onlookers reduce their words to the level of stark ignorance they deserve.

This is also why I speak against religion. Every extra layer you add to “be a good person” is one that confuses and obscures the reasons for being a good person. You know, for example, that I don’t believe in heaven, hell, or magic. When I do something nice for you, I get no eternal reward. That’s important to me. When I stick up for the oppressed, Jesus didn’t tell me to. It’s because they’re people, like I’m people, and if I take ten seconds to pretend like I’m in their shoes, I can understand what they may be feeling. I don’t have to do that exercise when I’m deferring my opinion and rationale to, often arbitrary and ignorant, institutionalized ethics.

Changing pace just a little bit. Consider vegetarianism. Health claims aside, I think the first vegetarians are the super feelers. The ones who cried the first time they stepped on an ant perhaps. There are moral claims that make some of these people way more compelling by virtue of them leading with their feelings than any claims about industrialized farming or the environment. If one were to lead me away from meat consumption, it’s stories of chickens with best friends or cows being lovey and friendly that’ll do it. If I had lab grown equal alternatives next to the animals I enjoy on the shelf, I’d switch tomorrow.

It’s at the same time that I don’t want to be overtly complicit in undue suffering and pollution that I’m also aware we’re all gonna die, and I’m not crying about my cheeseburger. The important distinction and line is about that preparedness to change. It’s knowing why I’m a meat eater after considering the feelings, considering the consequences, complicity, etc. and developing a position I feel worthy of defending. A bill pops up about conditions on a farm, I want the animals treated better. A new product to replicate meat appears, I’m not wasting time discussing the “morals” of science advancing enough to reduce suffering and destruction. I feel there is a depth and weight to my position that you can’t adopt by merely claiming “it’s my culture!”

I’ve spoken to the idea of even when I’m doing nothing, I want to be the “best” at it. I want to own it. I don’t want to feel stuck because “well, ya know, millennials are suffering.” I added a hashtag #yearofbeingboring so you know what I qualify and stand for when I refer to boring. I attempt to distinguish myself from spinning my wheels or being a modern psuedo-survivalist-entrepreneur-fanboy by distancing myself from having my identity wrapped too far up in cliches and the superficial. Yes, I’ve read hundreds of comics, watched 550 days worth of tv and movies, play several instruments, and have read plenty of books on history or religion. The lazy thing is to just absolve yourself of the larger picture and throw yourself under a “nerd” title. Do you really love music and have something to say? Are you fashioning yourself as an expert on what can be achieved in a democracy? Or are you just another lazy “libertarian” or “youtube cover musician?” Can you deconstruct a religious argument and deftly describe the influence on culture and psychology religions have? Or are you just another boring “atheist,” happy with your own brand of “enlightened” cliches to write off the whole endeavor?

But this isn’t a diatribe berating the utility of colloquialisms. It’s a call to identify and distinguish leaders. If you can’t, learn that you are one. Learn to be clear if you can’t be consistent. Actually pick the battle in service to a larger war. Just because it’s normal for a small “specially select” group of people to be responsible for change doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. And you’ll never see it change until you encourage in yourself the kinds of things you want to see in others. And besides, it’s not like I’m asking you to lead the revolution, just to speak up in favor of it.