I've said it before, but a comedian recently reiterated, there's not a lot of good leaders. He was talking in the context of working on TV shows and with different directors. I talk about it in pretty much every work context. I remember a broad discussion on the concept of leadership with a friend back in high school. Him, religious, wanted to be a leader in his faith and in service to his church. I, briefly aspiring to "find God" back then, but still deeply skeptical, questioned the efficacy of pedophile leaders who can't be bothered to answer basic questions raised or reiterated by the "new atheists" at the time.
I would take the idea of a lack of leadership further and say we're in crisis. In order to lead, you have to have a strong idea of where to go. In an oft alluded to "fractured" world, no one has any idea where they're going, why, or who would want them pointed in one direction over another. In the wake up re-edifying negligence, greed, rape, insurrection, and other darkest impulses of our nature, the disorientation can only compound when you're unable to take control of and lead the narrative of your individual existence in spite of it all.
I still listen to my political podcasts all attempting to "reason" the loss, or win, depending on which side I'm listening to. I listen to my "above it all" intellectuals who discuss psychological forces, macro-economics, and pretend not to rehash competing cliches that manage to capture the attention cycle. If I hear "price of eggs" one more time...
Me? I like to frame. I like to see how my world operates at the smallest and largest scales and track what appears true across them. If I'm struggling with a crisis of leadership from my government, am I acting locally and noticing the same pattern if I do what I'm otherwise not seeing? Pretty quickly, "the world" looks different. My ongoing chronicle of entering my latest work environment attests to it. My site struggled with a lack of leadership, accountability, planning, managing of emotions, failures of communication, and ultimately flat lies that tried to foment a vicious cycle.
What did I do? I bought a wall calendar, asked Chatgpt to give me a year's worth of plans, set times for check-in, snack, story-time, the daily activity, and asked the school how quickly and on what days we could get into the gym. I started to write the kids up who were hitting, spitting, or breaking things. I communicated my plans, how to measure their success or failure, and my larger goals to my supervisor, my employees, and my school principal. I set an expectation for cleaning, respectful communication, and earning rewards. In short, I lead.
I can't fix fascism. I can address the symptoms of fascist thinking and behavior. I can be accountable to my own hateful and spiteful thoughts and make choices to contribute what I can, where I can. I have a strong suspicion that the wholesale abandonment of that relatively straight-forward notion is why we got here. Taking the time to account for your corner of the world isn't preached, rewarded, or as gratifying as the dopamine chase of endless indulgence and distraction, or celebration of hate and depravity.
I can talk about my work environments in the same kind of hyperbolic ways that we do our broader politics. How lazy and stupid do you have to be to not follow a schedule!? How much do you hate yourself or the kids you're professing to "help" or "teach" to not bother with a remote lesson plan? Who let's their personal life and insecurities lean so far into their professional life they're willing to spend more time gossiping than anything else? All these hateful, ugly, fat cunts and their toxicity is why the next generation is going to be full of barely functioning retards screaming "skibidy sigma!" and turning into cannon fodder in the water wars. Fair and helpful, right?
I've never considered myself particularly good at "forgiveness." I need to understand. I need to figure out the pattern. I don't feel compelled to let you off the hook, anymore than I wish to live my life through a series of excuses for all I couldn't do. I understand the desire to be lazy. I understand the reasonable, or otherwise, criticism about how much we're paid, the poor leadership or direction endemic to life, and literally every conceivable grievance you will find from here until we're dead. I am solidly in the camp that can bitch, do so indefinitely, and damn the whole endeavor to hell.
I'm considerably more interested in, "Okay, now what?" All that being true, does that mean I roll up in a tearful ball and wait to die? Does that mean I'm any less obligated to do a job in a decent or accountable way? Does it mean to even try is futile, naive, or ridiculous? The alternative is on full display, compounding every day. If the world is missing leaders, are you one? What's stopping you from being one? I'm exceedingly confident I am one not because I merely assert it, but because I practice what it is to lead every day.
The comedian spoke to that idea as well. I forget what actor told him to do something every day to remind him that he was, in fact, an actor. Send an email to a casting director. Read lines. Go to a class. There's a whole fuck ton of time in between sets, auditions, or whatever else you might be pursuing in entertainment. Those who "arrive" have been stepping into their roles and potential opportunities every single day.
I try to lead the conversation and practice of accountability in writing. I never, not once, deny the amount of anger and hatred I feel. I want to burn everything down too. I'm even more likely to do it, just not in an insurrection-y way. I'm poised to pop the fuck off pretty much any moment of any day when I reflect on the fundamental absurdity and injustice, not even inflicted most-often or most harshly on me.
I think about the latest woman to die unnecessarily because she couldn't get an abortion and the smug religious nut-jobs who would bankrupt social services and school lunches as they pretend to give a fuck about life. I think about the families about to be terrorized by xenophobic morons who pretend to engage topics as broad as "the economy" let alone crime statistics. I think about the greed and gluttony that have flooded our self-conceptions so deeply it's hard to even conceive of what made "sins" so bad in the first place. I think about how I'm going to have to write about it, stomach it, watch as those in power kill and burn the next things I care about, and figure out how or whether I'm going to respond to it at all.
Worse than all that though, I'm going to feel alone, because conversations like this still exhaust people. The idea of genuinely accounting and organizing still feels beyond our reach. Actual reform and consequences might as well exist on Mars, as its champion sieg heils. I know that were I to leave my site tomorrow, it would devolve right back into the chaos I observed the first few weeks. If 1,200 people read this, I'll be lucky to get 1 upvote on Reddit, 2 likes on Facebook, and avoid a condescending and despondent comment. Even the idea of "be a leader" won't get the laziest possible support.
It's not that simple, of course, but also, it's absolutely that simple. We're consumed by waterfalls of information and the democrats are, somewhat, realizing that you need to saturate the entire landscape with your various messages. Oh, but your message has to be marketed, catchy, entertaining, and viral well-independent of its truth. Fair enough, that's the landscape, but also, as a consumer of information, you can choose how and what you consume. You can reject considerably more than you adopt. If you drown in exceptionally biased media every waking minute, you can clock how that makes you feel or what it makes you unable to sound balanced about, or you can double down and unironically point the finger at all the double-downers.
What's your issue? Gaza? How many still cling to the idea they are experts on the middle east, war, religious ideology, and geopolitics because they identify with victims? Trans? Guns? Oil? Crime? If any of those words alone didn't flood your head with numbers, you probably don't know what you're talking about. You don't want to lead a coherent discussion, so you're not going to find nor identify a leader of one. When you end up with a "leader" who does nothing but lie about any given topic, personally gratifying or enriching himself, you couldn't ask for a better representation and manifestation of your behavior.
We'll just idle there until we all die. Or, all things being true about your terrible, hateful, spiteful little goblin life and disposition, what's next? What choice can be made once we're able to swallow that we've gotten precisely what we asked for? Gonna shit on this blog to make yourself feel better? Gonna find the next person or obscure idea to blame? I'm not asking you to get in some kind of absurdist guilt trap where you irrationally blame yourself for "everything." I'm saying I can reliably predict, and regularly observe, your average "normal" human reaction to self-reflection, personal responsibility, honest discussion, and the effort it takes to not wallow.
You going to figure out what you're missing? Is it my fault for reminding you, forcing you to read and antagonizing your insecurities? You're actively participating in the chaos and destruction. You're of greater consequence than you care to acknowledge. You'll be the death of us all. You'll neglect to balance with every step into the abyss, and you'll be absolutely certain it's Trump's fault, or Biden's, or "the system," or anyone with a perceived power or privilege you don't have.
I'm not going to offer the same condescending "good luck" I always get when I talk about my plans and tries. I'm going to continue to invite you into the conversation. I'm going to set reasonable measurable goals for how to deal with things I can deal with. What I can't, I denote as such, and make peace with. I know I'm still intimately connected to whatever that thing is, so no effort at any level is in vain. I think our egos confuse, in too often motivated and malicious ways, our perceptions and preferences with the truth. You're as a part of everything and full of potential as I am. Until you own that, it owns you.
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