Mirrors are amazing because they evoke powerful emotions that trigger unconscious behaviors. Watch someone looking at a mirror and you’ll see what I mean.
What we most miss about mirrors is their mysterious benevolence. They sit there quietly reminding us of our greatness.
In my last post I wrote about the end of the Charismatic-leader era. I argued that we are no longer going to see charismatic leaders rising to the fore, leading us to some promised land of Dream Fulfillment. If we can’t rely on a powerful figure, a larger-than-life personality, to save us from ourselves, what or who will fill the void?
After all, we crave solutions to the perceived problems in the world. For as long as I remember, humanity has looked outside itself for someone to come up with the solutions. We’re too busy working, taking care of our families, watching tv or playing Xbox to bother with coming up with our own solutions, or so that’s the way it’s been.
Times are changing, though. Charismatic leadership has given way to the mob. I use “mob” with the fondest intentions. People have for some time relied on strength in numbers as a tactic for effecting change. Charismatic leaders set the stage for this approach. History is chock-full of examples where these towering figures fanned the flames of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people sufficiently to mobilize a march, oppose a government or unjust law, or create a brand new country on the promise of greater freedom from oppression.
Individuals in modern times are using technology to take this strategy—organized opposition—to the next level. Recent demonstrations in countries around the world are benefitting from social media to move millions of people.
Such events used to create grand results. Not so much these days. Tiananmen Square, the Arab Spring, and Tea Party and Occupy Demonstrations are all variations on a theme: Organize by the millions and rally around a common cause, and the establishment will listen.
Uh . . . no.
Despite the millions of marchers, frequent bloodshed, courage, defiance, persistence, and distributed, leaderless organization, organized opposition really hasn’t had much effect on the three-headed-problem—debt-based economics, representative government systems, and corporate control.
Instead, the establishment has become exceedingly efficient at neutralizing such events. The weakest aspect of this approach—its visibility—is its strength. Organized opposition is too overt, too easy to infiltrate and destroy from the inside. So effective has the establishment become at destroying their effectiveness that it doesn’t even try to respond to demonstrations. Ignoring them is easier because they do little other than make headlines.
If the age of the larger-than-life leader is behind us, and organized resistance no longer foots the bill, how can we make change in this new era where the establishment’s momentum is unopposable?
Well, that’s where you come in, Dear Reader.
