Taking charge

Everyone who is able has a moral duty to take charge of a situation that is otherwise out of control. What happens when the out-of-control factor is someone in authority over you? The same rule applies. If, in the opinion of the senior NCO, the officer's handling presents unnecessary risks, he has a duty to take command. Having officially taken command, the other ranks have a duty to acknowledge that authority unless it is, in their opinion, an illegal assumption of command, as in mutiny.

The biggest problem with anarchy is the name. It conjures images of angry people and riots. But it simply means the absence of a ruler. Do we need rulers? We need administrators and coordinators. We need organisers... but do they need to rule? Isn't that putting them in a rather dangerously powerful position? They need to have recognised authority to make certain demands and they need to be able to exert this authority over every member of the group. However, the combined authority of the group always outranks the authority of the leader. This is the natural insurance against exploitation and dictatorships. To rule must be by the consent of those over whom one rules.

However, the responsibility of ensuring our rulers rule effectively and fairly is ours, not theirs. We tend to want to leave all that to the rulers because we are all focused on our particular role. Doing the work the job requires and bringing home the pay, tending the house, tending the kids and, when we can, having fun. Our leaders need to coordinate all the functions that keep society ticking along and we need to be able to trust them to do that for the balanced good of the group. So what do we do? We select our leaders from the legal and business communities and put them into secretive, opaque duties where accountability is minimal and opportunities for corruption are limited only by imagination.

I made a reference on an earlier post to the chicken farmer who trains a fox to watch over the henhouse. How many repetitions of abject failure is it going to take before we conclude that maybe we ought to change some of the things that we're doing here. Giving our leaders power and the right to secrecy and the authority to take sole charge of any investigation into their actions that may be demanded is about as dumbass as training a fox to watch the chickens.

We did this. We handed over the authority to control our lives without even thinking to just check that they were actually sane. We let them get away with it. We let them rip us off because it's easier to just muddle along. So we wiggle along until we wiggle ourselves into a hole we can't reverse out of. We are entrapped into a slavery of debt. Our house gets forclosed because we assumed that the leaders had our best interests at heart. The company that employs you goes bust because you thought that banks were there to look after your money. It is ridiculously naive to hand such powers to questionable individuals in the way that we do.

If you had cockroaches, would you ask them to police themselves and ensure that they do not invade your kitchen or would you just get rid of them? I think there's a good chance that the cockroaches might have their own agenda. And so it is with politics. Every individual in politics has their own agenda and their career is the pursuit of the power to put their agenda into action. This isn't because they are evil. It's because they are individuals with dreams and hopes and fears just like the rest of us. But they are placed in a position that can so easily be exploited and abused and supported by the very powers that make the laws... what the fuck do you think they're gonna do?

Now the chicken farmer could rightly hold the fox responsible but the fox was doing what a fox is supposed to do. The chicken farmer's expectations were unreasonable. The chicken farmer is responsible for the decision to use a guard-fox and, consequently, responsible for any damage that results. We are responsible for the damage resulting from our ill-considered approach to selecting leaders.

We have got to stop thinking in terms of power and think in terms of function. How do we want our leader to function? How does the leader want the group to function? The leader must have some authority but the group combined must have the authority to keep the leader in check. It's about creative manipulation. It's about relationships. It is not about power.

Imagine a business model in which the manual and administrative staff owned the business equally as a cooperative but the managerial personnel were employed. Here is the hierarchical dilemma: The 'boss' is in charge of the business and must be able to ensure that his or her decisions are carried out or revised accordingly. The boss tells you what to do and you do it. This is the arrangement. But, as a group, you own the company that employs your boss. You have to trust your boss to make the right decisions. You select your boss on track record and you want a boss that will run your company smoothly and profitably, not one that gives you an easy time. You want a boss who can handle income and expenditure efficiently for the business, not one who will hand-out generous bonuses the company can't afford. Your boss is part of the machinery of your company and you want the machine to run smoothly and efficiently. Here would be a perfect balance of power.

In the army, a warrant officer is the highest rank of NCO and the lowest rank that earns the right to be addressed as 'sir'. Regimental Sergeant Major Ron Britton of the Coldstream Guards was in charge of officer training at Sandhurst in the 50s. All trainee officers held a provisional rank of 1st. Leutennant, outranking the RSM. His introductory address to new officers always included the clarification: 'I will address you as sir and you will address me as sir... but you will mean it.'

Authority and command is as much about personal qualities as hierarchical position. Whether or not you want to listen to somebody depends on whether or not your views will be equally sought. It is an ability to get others to listen... by also getting them to talk. A manner that leads people to trust your integrity. Whether you have any official authority or not, people will listen and there would be a natural inclination to follow your directions. Only when you are countermanded by a recognisable authority that focus shifts from you. You instinctively draw focus to you.

However, people in positions of authority, are not necessarily natural born leaders. They are probably (a) constantly worried about their own position, (b) loners with limited social skills and (c) constantly suspicious of everyone. They are not best suited to the task... yet they are running local government. When we use the term 'shyster', there are many 'professions' that aptly apply but 'businessman' and 'lawyer' comes up with alarming frequency. Either generally regarded to be unethical, mercenary and self-interested. So which particular stereotype is the gene pool from which we select our leaders? Remind me again. Oh yeah. The Shysters. Good choice.

We did this. We put these people where they are. We gave them the power that they have and we turn a blind eye as they create and defend structures of governance that nurture corruption. Is it because we are stupid like the chicken farmer and the fox? No. It's worse than that. We don't care. Just run the show. Make sure everything works. There's the treasury, there's the judiciary and here's the keys. Yes, yes. I subject myself entirely to your will and all that... right. I can leave it with you then, can I? We don't care how they do it as long as it doesn't bother us too much. When everyone is contented, no one cares who is ripping off whom or what's going on in the background of our realities. Things go wrong and we start looking for flaws in the system when the main flaw is that we recruit personnel from the professions in which the main talent of those who gain success is an uncanny ability to shaft people for money.

Am I missing something here? Do you think these factors might be important? Maybe right up there with blue eyes and a white smile? Where do these candidates come from? They seem to just appear. Nobody's ever heard of them and now they hear of nothing but as the two or three names are imprinted into our psyche: good guys, served in the armed forces, seen action, won medals nice smile... everything you want, eh? What about business interests and family connections? Look at those interests and think how they could benefit from a friend in power. That would give you an outline of the manifesto regardless of what they may tell you.

Now, considering that we goofed and handed absolute power to people who, we now realise in retrospect happened to be those most likely to exploit the situation in an orgy of mindless greed and shaft us for every penny we have, whose responsibility do you think it should be? The crooks who are fleecing us or the politically disinterested victims who, rather stupidly, put them there in the first place? The beneficiaries of a corrupt system are not going to take steps to make it less corrupt. They are going to make it harder to investigate. Which is precisely what is occurring. What cue are we waiting for? The whole system desperately needs an overhaul and of course our leaders aren't going to like it. Are we waiting for the fox to actually say: "Look here. I'm a fox. I kill chickens. I'm probably the worst choice you could have made..." because I don't think that is going to happen.

The changes that need to be made will not be made by those who currently hold power. In fact, they will be resisted by those in power. That is because they are, quite naturally trying to hold onto something they understand and that serves them well. As would you or I or any of us. There are no enemies here but there are opponents whose main weapon is power. Our main weapon is not recognising that power. Obviously, the less time we spend squabbling, the sooner we can see where we want to take Humanity.

But it will be up to us to put our house in order. Surely we can produce a blueprint for a better society. Not some political promise of brighter futures and all that bilge but a true blueprint, restructuring the balance of power for the benefit of Humanity. We, then proceed to put it into action to see if it works. The only thing that can stop us is the lack of will to even pay enough attention to avoid electing self-interested criminals. That's the problem. The fact that we are being shafted is only a symptom.