THE DAYS OF TOP DOWN LEADERSHIP ARE NUMBERED!

THE DAYS OF TOP DOWN LEADERSHIP ARE NUMBERED!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 10, 2008

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“Nearly 500 years ago (1517), a little known clerical professor in a small community in a tiny church well off the mainstream of Roman Catholic Papal authority, posted 95 theses of concern on the Wittenberg church door. He was Martin Luther (1483 – 1546).

“Luther’s theses denied the pope’s authority to forgive sin, or the right to sell indulgences with the promise of forgiveness for the fee.

“He was an educated man, but at the bottom of Catholic Church hierarchy, where he could be taken for granted, exploited, and expected to conform to papal demands and excesses. He had little influence beyond his students, no way to promulgate his word to the masses, and even less sense of what he could do, or might do, until he did it.

“Despite these deficiencies, perhaps because of them, he defied the ultimate authority of his time with all his passion, energy and mortality.

“By a remarkable accident, Johannes Gutenberg (1400 – 1468) some 50 years before had invented the printing press. This new technology would be the vehicle to spread Luther’s theses to the German people with due diligence.

“Soon, it was translated into other European languages. The Christian populace was swept up in a Lutheran Moment. Later, the German cleric would translate the Bible from the Vulgate Latin into German. Tens of thousands of copies were sold. This gave the German people a common identity through the printed word, and led to a new word, nationalism. European nation states followed in the German mold signaling a new cultural era.

“A score of years later, the brilliant French theologian, John Calvin (1509 – 1564) systematized and organized Protestant ecclesiastical discipline into the doctrine of Predestination. It asserted that God had already chosen the ‘elected,’ that is, people who were to go to heaven. You could tell who they were by their austerity, frugality, industry, and success. This wealth creating system introduced another new word, capitalism.

“This was a ‘bottom-up’ change personified in leadership without power or portfolio.

“Change would persist, but society would regress into its old ways of top-down authority. The Roman Church was severely wounded, but would subsist with its evasive mysticism, resolute dogmatism, and ritualistic practices to this day. The more things change the more they remain the same.”

James R. Fisher, Jr., NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND (unpublished)

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Columnist David Brooks of the New York Times cites a new book, “Culture and Conflict in the Middle East” (2008) by Philip Carl Salzman. The book argues that the al-Maliki Iraqi government in Baghdad’s Green Zone is politically and militarily inept.

United States Army General David Petraeus, commander of American forces in Iraq, has recently said as much on Capital Hill. The same is true of two New York Times war correspondent, who appeared on PBS’s “Charlie Rose” show (April 10, 2008).

The progress that is being noted in a political sense, they report, is largely due to hundreds of Shiite and Sunni tribes taken matters into their own hands.

These observers now concede that Middle East societies are tribal in nature. National leaders have little impact on behalf of the nation because the highest loyalty of Iraqis is to their respective tribes. Order is achieved, and they all agree on this, not by the top-down imposition of abstract law, but through a fluid balance of tribal agreements, or bottom-up consensus.

The Iraqi people have had enough of al-Qaeda and are taking matters into their own hands. They are attempting without a sophisticated game plan, but with muddled determination to gain control of their country.

This bottom-up power surge of diverse Iraqi tribes has little to do with the American military power surge. It is the consequences of being fed up with anarchy, displaced lives, collateral damage, and ubiquitous carnage. Iraqis want desperately to regain a sense of peace and normality in everyman’s everyday life.

The author, the New York Times columnist, the New York Times war correspondents, and General Petraeus appear to be speaking of bottom-up leadership in Iraq. At this late stage, ordinary people in ordinary circumstances are asserting themselves through tribal leadership. This is not new. It is only new to top-down observers and authorities.

For the past twenty years, I have been suggesting that bottom-up leadership is equally true of American institutions in a series of books and articles. Bottom-up leadership is how things get done, and always have gotten done in communities across the world.

The Divine Right of Kings, Caesars and Emperors of the past, along with the Ayatollahs, strong-arm leaders, and heads of church and state of the present are all atavistic. Yet, in this era of media, attention is on top-down authority with little attention, and then only after the fact, of bottom-up authority where leadership now resides.

Top-down leadership in corporate society is being shattered. It is no accident it has happened in Iraq. Iraqis’ best and the brightest are long gone to safe havens across the globe. Common Iraqis, who lack the means or influence to transport and transplant themselves to safety, have had to suffer this terrible nightmare, and now are taking matters into their own hands.

It is a lesson man learns slowly, but learns ultimately as he has no choice.

THE DAYS ARE NUMBERED

The days of corporate executives making a thousand or ten thousand times as much as the working grunt are numbered.

The days of every worker looking to the CEO and the Board of Directors to lift them out of chaos are numbered.

The days of high profiled higher educational institutions, which are grand in design and marginal in delivery, are numbered.

The days of the supreme authority of the head of church, whatever the religion, are numbered.

The days of everyman everywhere taken it on the chin and made to suffer for the malfeasance and excess of the few are numbered.

The days of the glorification of the military as the absolute protector of society while robbing it of its youth and treasure in hopeless causes are numbered.

We are moving into a new era of man.

We are leaving the Sensate Culture of our magnificent past where we glorified ourselves at the expense of our humanistic roots. The days of retreating into self-idolatry, self-indulgence, and sexual-chemical addiction, while failing to discover self-acceptance are numbered.

We have done everything possible to manufacture ourselves into a fashionable commodity instead of finding the joy of living during this brief moment of life. The evidence is in our obsession with staying eternally young on the outside while withering to a prune on inside.

The days for being young and beautiful and potent are in any case numbered.

What will come will come. That is not a dodge. That is a promise. It will not be like anything we have ever known before. The American that had a sense of the power of the people was Jefferson. Adams, Hamilton, Franklin, even Washington were enamored of the harmony and control of the British monarchy. Those days of such captivation are numbered.

NOW IN THE TIME OF FUTURE FATHERS

We are not in the time of our Fore Fathers, but the time of our Future Fathers. They will be everyman everywhere doing everything.

We have seen what excess of top-down leadership and authority has done. It has polluted our environment for profit. It has contaminated our lakes, rivers and oceans for profit. It has exploited our skills and talents and energies for profit. It has infected our minds with guilt and sin for profit. But all those days are numbered.

We are finally reaching a kind of society in which people are not afraid to be human beings, to speak up, and not only be heard, but to take charge.

We are finally reaching a kind of society that is not afraid to mention what troubles them as a human being, be they a worker, student, or citizen of the world.

We are not there yet, but are moving in that direction. I had a conversation with my daughter the other night at my grandson’s fourteenth birthday party. She said, “Africa is not our problem.”

I turned to her and said, “My dear, Africa is our problem. The world is our problem. When 3 billion of the 6 and ½ billion souls on this planet make less than $1,000 a year, and live in squalor, unsanitary conditions, grovel for a life expectancy of 35 years, and are exploited to the nth degree, they are our problem. They are our brothers and sisters. They have not yet come to appreciate they not only count for something, but for everything.”

Eric Hoffer once said that the most dangerous thing in the world is to give a piece of bread to a starving man. We have done that. Change is irrevocable.

We have the Ayatollahs, presidents, prime ministers, the despots, the corporate intimidators, ecclesiastical intimidators, pedagogical intimidators, governmental and media intimidators, but their days, too, are numbered.

We have been looking for leadership in all the wrong places when it has been percolating on low pilot light for over a century. It is now about to break through surface tension and bubble up from the bottom into societal prominence.

We are going to become, finally, a society from the bottom-up, where the problems occur and the solutions reside. We are waiting for the reemergence of the Martin Luther of our age. Perhaps the Internet will find him or her and promulgate the compelling message in nanoseconds to the world. He may be you. What is your thesis?

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See Dr. Fisher’s website and blog: www.fisherofideas.com