Leadership and Civilization, or Why We’re Paralyzed at Humanity’s Most Crucial Juncture

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Do you? Can you? I can’t. I open the papers, scan the headlines, sort of shake my head, and don’t even bother. Is that bad of me? Am I being lazy, foolish, indolent, or is this…a sentiment you also share? Can’t read the news. Just feels totally disconnected from me. For me. So then what?

I’m bored.

Maybe you are too.

Of the way we think. Act. Feel. Are.

And I think that’s why I’ve stopped reading the news. Not because I’m sort of tired of doom and gloom. But because it’s just…anodyne. It feels pointless. Detached from reality.

If I open the news, I don’t see much in the way of how I think or feel. There’s no real sense of urgency. Yes, we all know Trump’s a fascist, thanks for finally saying it a decade late, I guess, here’s a pat on the back. Climate change? Mega-inequality? Predatory capitalism? Etcetera.

So. There I am. Sort of clicking around, looking for something that mirrors how I feel about the world, and I have to confess to you, I am bored.

But I don’t mean that as a complaint.

I mean it in the sense of…

Is It Just Me, Or is Our Civilization Paralyzed?

Why am I so bored?

This is a crucial juncture for our civilization.

But.

Our civilization is paralyzed.

This is it. You know what’s coming, I imagine, I say it often. This decade is the moment that we address our existential challenges, or we don’t.

And yet here we are, just paralyzed.

There’s the sense that things are barely staying functional, if that. If you like, that they’re dysfunctional, and just kind of holding on at the edge of collapse with their fingernails.

By things, what do I mean? There’s our politics. Enthused about the choice between Kamala’s neoliberalism lite and Trump’s…whatever it even is? I’m not, and I’d bet, unless you’re sort of a die-hard believer in the cult of personality of either one, you’re not either.

There’s our economy, which is always “booming”, if you ask elites, but never delivers for the average person. There’s always a bailout, subsidy, bonus, etcetera, for the powerful, but our economies stopped caring about the powerless long ago, it seems, and the idea that they could care, deliver, do much to raise living standards…that’s considered something of a joke by most, at this point, because we all know “the economy” is really only there to make the rich richer at this point.

There’s our societies, or lack thereof. Social contracts? What are those, even, anymore? I understand the enthusiasm around Kamala, and I guess, to a kind of forlorn extent, I share it, but let’s be real, she’s not exactly suggesting a new social contract. She’s stopped well short, because we all know that you can’t do that. It’s just not possible, a step too far, a giant leap in an age where even baby steps require all the might that’s left in the feeble, broken heart of our civilization.

I think discussing all that sheds a little light on why I’m so goddamned bored.

We’ve hit the limits of the possible.

The Limits of the Possible

And what’s left is now impossible.

Let me explain what I mean by using the example of climate change. It took us all the effort we could muster as a civilization. Decades of treaties, leadership, teeth-grinding efforts to build coalitions, get nations on board, and so on. It’s not that that was bad, that was good. But it only got us here, which is a place where carbon emissions are still rising.

They’re rising more slowly, and again, that’s good, in a lesser evil kind of way, but it’s not exactly enough.

And yet any further movement is now essentially impossible. It’s just not going to happen. Sure, you can buy into the pipe dreams of the various industries who want to claim that magically we’re going to reach a fossil-free future, but that’s just hype. There’s no real indication anymore that carbon emissions are going to slow, or even reverse, especially fast enough for us not to keep on warming the planet right past all its tipping points.

So. Do you see what I see in that example? Let me illuminate it.

We did what we could, as a civilization.

We reached the limits of the possible. Our limits of our possible.

And what’s left is now impossible.

But what’s impossible is what’s necessary, because we barely even scratched the surface of addressing our Grand Challenges and Existential Threats.

The Dent in History We Didn’t Make

Let me now put that to you more formally.

• Inequality is still rising
• Democracy is still in sharp decline
• Incomes are still stagnant or falling
• Emissions are still rising
• Politics is more dysfunctional than ever in contemporary times
• Society is divided, unsure, and pessimistic

These are the limits of our possible.

It’s not enough to say, as American pundits do, staring these mega trends in the face, that we’re doing well, or well enough. The world’s brighter minds are profoundly alarmed at where we are, from economists to planetary scientists to political scientists to visionary leaders of older generations, for a very good reason.

That reason isn’t just that things aren’t going well.

Rather, it’s that they’re not going well despite us making our best efforts to do something about them.

Our best efforts made no dent in any of these Existential Threats.

Not one.

What Happens When Our Best Isn’t Good Enough?

I want you to pause and think about that for a second with me. Really reflect on it.

This time, let’s use the example of America’s economy.

We’ve been discussing a sort of mind-blowing statistic lately, which is that median incomes for men are lower today than they were in 1979. You can take that in a broader sense, because of course women’s incomes started from a very, very low base.

Now think of all that’s happened since 1979. Reagan. Bush. Clinton. Bush Junior. Obama. Trump. Etcetera. Think of all their grand promises, plans, paradigms. Think of all they tried, and the legions of advisors, flunkies, lobbyists, cabinet members, involved.

None of it worked.

Unless you’re the cynical sort who believes that the plan was to basically strangle the middle class to death, and hey, maybe, looking at data that dire, you have a point.

The point I want to make, though, is that we’ve made no dent in our Grand Challenges. Not a single dent in a single one. And that’s sort of…insane…baffling…horrendous…when you think about it.

America’s primary challenge is to raise people’s incomes. So they can have a decent standard of living again. And when I say “not a dent,” you can immediately see: half a century of broken promises didn’t do anything. So incomes are flat or lower today, using the most basic measure, than they were 50 years ago.

That’s what “not making a dent” means.

In the case of carbon emissions, it means: they’re still rising. Sure, more slowly, but the point was to bring them down, to reverse the upwards trajectory.

That same pattern is true for inequality, democracy, society, etcetera.

(Freeing) Leadership in the 21st Century

So what do we do when we reach the limits of the possible?

That’s when we need leaders.

In the proper sense of the word.

Not just power figures. And this is where things get tricky. Is Kamala a leader in this sense? Not yet. Will she be one? I doubt it, because she shows no real signs of interest in taking on, much less seeing, our problems, in this way.

So we have a final failure before us, which is leadership.

And here, I hold up my hands.

I was supposed to be one of the guys who helped develop the leaders of the future. For those of you who remember my writings and column at HBR, that’s the sort of institution that’s supposed to take on that challenge.

But they failed at that, and I suppose, so did I.

We are failing at developing leaders in this truest and deepest of senses, and to illuminate it, we can think of the cliched example of, let’s say, Steve Jobs. What was he better at than all his peers? Redrawing the boundaries of the possible. Nobody thought a phone could do that. Nobody cared enough to.

That’s sort of where this highest level of leadership begins.

Today, we are failing abysmally at this. And no, I don’t really think that figures like AOC pass the test, either. Sure, you can propose more social housing, but it’s been pretty disastrous in places like Britain and parts of Europe. Not a magic bullet or a cure all. Sure, we can say that we’re social democrats, but take a hard look, because social democracy is not doing well at the moment.

Leadership is about redrawing the boundaries of the possible.

Our civilization does not have leaders anymore, of this calibre.

We’ve hit the limits of our possible, and nobody knows what to do.

So here we are, paralyzed.

Now, I can offer you all kinds of suggestions, and if you’re an old friend, you know them. Redesign our societies around well-being, so that our economies deliver higher living standards, instead of this mess we have today. Ditto for corporations and private sector institutions. But that’s not really the point either, because of course, I can’t do that by myself.

We need leaders of this calibre.

Or else we are going to stay paralyzed, in this most crucial of moments.

And if we do that, of course, our trajectory will not be a very good one.

How are we to develop those leaders? I don’t know if that’s so much the question. As freeing people to be them. Our institutions are straitjackets now, unless you’re kind of a sociopath, ruthless, domineering, amoral, and narcissistic. Anyone else is ruthlessly selected out as not strong or “smart” enough.

So we are going to have to redesign our institutions so that they free people to take on these challenges.

If leaders of Kamala’s category do that much, then at least there’s a pathway left to us. If they don’t, then the creative geniuses we need to redesign what’s left our civilization will be stuck there, their potential wasted away, and all the resources flowing to exactly the wrong kinds of people and personalities instead, not empathic, creative, authentic, wise, and allocentric kinds, but selfish, ruthless, and more or less sociopathic kinds.

Are second-tier, more functional, leaders of Kamala’s form—who are the best we currently have, and so I don’t mean that as an insult, just analytically—capable of doing that? I don’t know. But do they? That’s the question.

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