The tendency of authority to grow without concomitant responsibility is one of the most important issues of our time. Look no further than the current US government, or the AI billionaires who fear monger about the technology taking everyone’s jobs but then act as if they’re powerless to do anything about it. The truth is, they don’t care what happens, because they won’t be held responsible.
As a lawyer, it’s depressingly common to see partners who have no clue what’s happening on a deal and act essentially as dead weight but who get all credit and make way more than everyone else. Of course, they’re more than happy to lay the blame on someone else if anything goes wrong. I think that if you’re going to get the rewards of leadership, it’s incumbent on you to do the hard job of actually leading and taking responsibility.
I’m really glad to have your response here, I was hoping for that. I couldn’t agree more. Especially on leadership.
The overwhelmingly massive majority of people get absolutely no real say in the people who make the leadership decisions that affect their everyday lives. People deserve true servant leaders, and we need to start making them.
I think the old adage of “the type of person who would be the best suited for leadership is the last person who would want to do it” has unfortunately been entirely accurate for a long time. It’s a strange thing to consider incentivizing selflessness, and our society runs on personal incentive. We need to educate and grow servant leadership and ethics, while also addressing the authority/responsibility divide from the top down.
A mighty tall order, but that’s what we’ve been handed.
I like the scope and completeness of the approaches taken in this essay: we can look at it from different perspectives, but they all impact us on a moral level (which is to say, they echo the feelings that have been building up in anyone paying attention to modern society.) You even mention collective trauma, something that I don't think is being researched much yet. I've been wrestling with most of these thoughts and ideas for awhile, but am unable to put them elegantly and coherently essay as you've done here.
We like to blame CEOs, but sometimes even leaders are too constrained to act morally. Government leaders perhaps have it a bit easier since they can implement sensible policy that no one notices (!) while maintaining political favor with regard to popular issues (Republicans passing a housing bill is the latest example.)
Until recently, CEOs have been limited by stockholders, competition, and even ensuring the survival of the corporation. However, now we're seeing autocratically tyrannical CEOs: is this a new thing under the sun due to the fact that technology, markets, and political ideologies are global rather than limited by national borders?
A long time ago I was influenced towards a kind of talk-me-out-of-it pessimism by John Gall's book "Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail". A lot of work has been done since then, of course, in systems science and in pretty much every field that is based on some kind of system.
Thanks for posting this on Reddit. You can recognize me on reddit and here one by time and gist, but please don't out me on reddit ;-) (Here, I'm my real self.)
Thank you so much for your kind words. Im glad to have been able to help put to words what others are already feeling, I think people are really ready for a change in how we deal with these kinds of things.
That book sounds interesting, I am definitely interested in systems and the sort. I came to a lot of my ideas through Hegel, and also through some of the modern Process Philosophy (whitehead, etc).
And no worries on the last part! Appreciate you commenting!
The tendency of authority to grow without concomitant responsibility is one of the most important issues of our time. Look no further than the current US government, or the AI billionaires who fear monger about the technology taking everyone’s jobs but then act as if they’re powerless to do anything about it. The truth is, they don’t care what happens, because they won’t be held responsible.
As a lawyer, it’s depressingly common to see partners who have no clue what’s happening on a deal and act essentially as dead weight but who get all credit and make way more than everyone else. Of course, they’re more than happy to lay the blame on someone else if anything goes wrong. I think that if you’re going to get the rewards of leadership, it’s incumbent on you to do the hard job of actually leading and taking responsibility.
I’m really glad to have your response here, I was hoping for that. I couldn’t agree more. Especially on leadership.
The overwhelmingly massive majority of people get absolutely no real say in the people who make the leadership decisions that affect their everyday lives. People deserve true servant leaders, and we need to start making them.
I think the old adage of “the type of person who would be the best suited for leadership is the last person who would want to do it” has unfortunately been entirely accurate for a long time. It’s a strange thing to consider incentivizing selflessness, and our society runs on personal incentive. We need to educate and grow servant leadership and ethics, while also addressing the authority/responsibility divide from the top down.
A mighty tall order, but that’s what we’ve been handed.
I like the scope and completeness of the approaches taken in this essay: we can look at it from different perspectives, but they all impact us on a moral level (which is to say, they echo the feelings that have been building up in anyone paying attention to modern society.) You even mention collective trauma, something that I don't think is being researched much yet. I've been wrestling with most of these thoughts and ideas for awhile, but am unable to put them elegantly and coherently essay as you've done here.
We like to blame CEOs, but sometimes even leaders are too constrained to act morally. Government leaders perhaps have it a bit easier since they can implement sensible policy that no one notices (!) while maintaining political favor with regard to popular issues (Republicans passing a housing bill is the latest example.)
Until recently, CEOs have been limited by stockholders, competition, and even ensuring the survival of the corporation. However, now we're seeing autocratically tyrannical CEOs: is this a new thing under the sun due to the fact that technology, markets, and political ideologies are global rather than limited by national borders?
A long time ago I was influenced towards a kind of talk-me-out-of-it pessimism by John Gall's book "Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail". A lot of work has been done since then, of course, in systems science and in pretty much every field that is based on some kind of system.
Thanks for posting this on Reddit. You can recognize me on reddit and here one by time and gist, but please don't out me on reddit ;-) (Here, I'm my real self.)
Thank you so much for your kind words. Im glad to have been able to help put to words what others are already feeling, I think people are really ready for a change in how we deal with these kinds of things.
That book sounds interesting, I am definitely interested in systems and the sort. I came to a lot of my ideas through Hegel, and also through some of the modern Process Philosophy (whitehead, etc).
And no worries on the last part! Appreciate you commenting!