You also have a sense that the days of top-down leadership are numbered?
Homage to a rare political inspirer from the 90s
A shorter version of this text has formerly featured as a vlog post on my podcast Mind the Shift.
This essay is about what kind of leader we are going to need and increasingly seek, and it is also a homage to one of the few awake political leaders we have had in this world. But first, let’s look at the stage where we and our leaders are acting.
I sometimes speak about the need to break free from the matrix. I have even said this to friends who don’t seem to be on a spiritual path, and it has them a bit bewildered. I am aware that this term slash film reference is overused, but to me it is really very much to the point.
So, what does it mean? I suppose every answer is a personal interpretation. You won’t find a satisfactory definition in Encyclopedia Britannica (although you will find a couple of technical ones). Mine goes something like this: The set of structures that keep our egos busy and our spiritual essences in check, meaning nations, governments, citizenships, international organizations, educational institutions, scientific institutions, judicial institutions, financial institutions, mass media, corporations, unions, congregations.
One of the most important components of this system is the network of leaders. Whether they are in political, financial, scientific or religious positions does not matter much. In principle they have the same function. But for the sake of simplicity, I will focus on the political ones.
Hardly anybody questions the need for leaders, regardless of societal context. There is a widespread idea that without leaders and formal rules, greed would take over and chaos would ensue. According to this idea, civilization is merely a thin veneer that needs to be shielded at all times.
This idea is merely a theory, a narrative, it is not a fact. The narrative is often backed up by anecdotal evidence; episodes that are said to prove that humans display their worst sides when not checked by laws and societal structures. In his book Humankind, Dutch historian Rutger Bregman efficiently debunks a number of those stories and compellingly draws the conclusion that the opposite is true: human beings are inherently kind, and the bulk of human violence actually began with the construction of hierarchies and borders (you can read more about Bregman’s book in this essay).
If fear of a lurking chaos can be upheld within the public, it makes it easier for traditional leaders to justify their positions and roles, of course. The veneer theory is in their best interest. There is nothing conspiratorial behind that statement. It doesn’t have to be a conscious insight. Most leaders probably believe in the theory themselves and are convinced they are merely safeguarding a necessary structure. I obviously think they are wrong about the necessity.
People are more and more uncomfortable with the top-down order
How to correct this fault? Well, the evolution of humankind is not something that happens over a weekend, and I can’t claim to know how to wake those matrix-ingrained leaders up. But I see signs that people are more and more uncomfortable with the top-down order. I think we will increasingly see a movement towards other, more horizontal kinds of governance. As always when paradigms shift, though, the process will be turbulent, because some will feel threatened by the new thinking. It’s the cha-cha of evolution: two steps forward, one step back.
Do I mean that our society should eventually become an amorphous collection of individuals without any inherent organization? No. That sounds more like a description of the baseline reality beyond this dimension. As long as we speak about physical humans in this three dimensional world, we will always need two kinds of people to organize ourselves: inspirers and good administrators.
I don’t know much about Switzerland. I’m sure that that particular collection of humans has its flaws, like all. But I like the fact that it is a collectively governed semi-direct democracy. Referendums are held approximately four times a year. Federal, regional and local issues are polled at the same time. Decisions are made locally and regionally by default, and only when necessary, power is lifted up to the national level. The federal council is a collegial body whose decisions are made by consensus. Why has nobody ever known the name of the Swiss head of state? Because there isn’t any. There is a position called President of the Swiss confederation, but the person who has that position is elected for one year of office by the united federal assembly for ceremonial purposes and is not head of state but ”primus inter pares”, a first among equals.
One of the main reasons I have liked — and to some extent still like — the European Union is that it is a hybrid structure not based on strong leaders and hierarchical systems. It is an anonymous rule-of-law entity with the purpose of keeping cocky nation states (or the cocky leaders of nation states, rather) in check. What I have begun to dislike about the EU lately is that it is starting to behave like a nation state: strong council, strong commission, prominent leaders. And, on top of that, since the onset of the so-called refugee crisis and recently the pandemic, the member states have begun to rewind the most beautiful of the EU’s achievements, the removal of internal borders (this is not Brussels’ fault, but the institutions should have scolded the member states for it).
To the extent that we need large societal structures, we need wise and sensitive individuals to be in charge of those, people to whom unconditional love for life itself is not a philosophical concept you can read about in books but a self-evident tenet. But there is an unfortunate catch. Those who are wise and evolved and have genuine love and deep respect for others don’t really want to boss, because to them it feels intuitively wrong, unworthy, to decide over other people’s fate.
History has not been completely void of leaders who have understood the inhumanity of the hierarchical system. Mahatma Gandhi did, I believe, and Nelson Mandela in his later years. In my mind, one man stands out; a writer and dissident who became the elected leader of the country he lived in, a task he probably was not entirely comfortable with: the last Czechoslovakian and first Czech president Vaclav Havel.
The following are excerpts from a speech Havel held in Philadelphia in 1994 on the occasion of receiving the Liberty medal. To learn that words like these have been uttered by a top politician in modern times is as surprising as it is inspiring. Havel realized the necessity for humanity to leave its societal matrix behind, the necessity to transcend, in order to survive.
This is some of what he said:
I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended.
The world of our experiences seems chaotic, disconnected, confusing. There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the post-modem world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.
The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet I think it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far.
… we are not at all just an accidental anomaly, the microscopic caprice of a tiny particle whirling in the endless depths of the universe. Instead we are mysteriously connected to the entire universe; we are mirrored in it, just as the entire evolution of the universe is mirrored in us. Until recently it might have seemed that we were an unhappy bit of mildew on a heavenly body whirling in space among many that have no mildew on them at all. This was something that classical science could explain. Yet the moment it begins to appear that we are deeply connected to the entire universe, science reaches the outer limits of its powers.
… what we have long projected into our forgotten myths and what perhaps has always lain dormant within us as archetypes … is, the awareness of our being anchored in the Earth and the universe, the awareness that we are not here alone nor for ourselves alone, but that we are an integral part of higher, mysterious entities against whom it is not advisable to blaspheme.
Yes, the only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the Earth and, at the same time, the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respect for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values the right to be part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value himself and his neighbors, and thus honor their rights as well.
It logically follows that, in today’s multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies or sympathies: it must be rooted in self-transcendence.
Do we hear these kinds of deep messages from Boris Johnson, Joe Biden, Pedro Sánchez, Narendra Modi or Ursula von der Leyen? No, we don’t. Because they are leaders of structures, representatives of a form.
I don’t want to denigrate anyone, but I am certain that in many cases our structurally based leaders are less wise than you or me, sometimes less intelligent than you or me and even less knowledgeable than you or me. Like I said earlier: wise people know that they have no right to decide over other people’s lives. But the people who constitute the powers that be are very good at one thing: conforming. They are brilliant at playing the power game that has been taken for granted for so many centuries. To some extent this is because of certain personality traits. But mainly, I would say, it is because these people feature an unusually thick veil between their programmed egos and their higher selves.
People like Havel can inspire us to be the best versions of ourselves
Leaders who communicate the sort of insights Vaclav Havel did are not leaders in the traditional sense, they are inspirers.
People like Havel can inspire us to be the best versions of ourselves, to try to find our soul’s purpose — in brief, to follow our heart, our passion. By doing that we transcend. That means we go beyond our ego and feel the joy in joining forces with others, because we know that you are me and I am you. Such a transformation will open for limitless human creation. But we will need some people who are good at organizing, and who love doing that.
Welcome to the new world; experienced by free, co-creating and interconnected individuals, energized by inspirers and held together by designated administrators.
Thank you, Vaclav, for your inspirational wisdom.
