This statement above by Scott Wilkie of Sydney’s World Without Wars and without Violence keeps it simple.
We all know the usual way things get done, one person in a higher position tells a person in a lower position what to do, or, how things are going to be done. That works. It’s not perfect. That higher ranker might have it wrong, or might even have some hidden agenda. The leader role mostly works but there is a danger of handing too much say-power to that one calling the shots.
In authoritarian societies or organisations it is quite usual for that one at the top to behave ‘accordingly’, authoritatively, and in the more quoted instances – Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yu – there was a lot of support. However, others, and sticking with the Chinese, Mao Tse Tung, did not enjoy such clear cut admiration given the passage of time.
Aside from politics, organisations such as multinationals are set up in a like centralised top-down flow type hierarchy and those monoliths have proliferated and indeed have taken over not just small countries with small GDPs but even the largest economies as per the USA.
The presidential office of the USA, which on one hand seems to have too much power, on the other hand appears to be at the beck and call of such as Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs, a US multinational investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, primarily with institutional clients and presently rules the roost.
Other than a single unit human at the top then what other form of leadership is available? There’s always the committee. Epitomised by the saying: “a camel is a horse designed by a committee!” So enough of that. But really, why don’t committees work? Because the ‘powers’ are able to infiltrate as those committees are part of the same system.
In mountain climbing there is the guide. Now the guide is not necessarily the leader; there is the leader of the expedition and there is the guide – who’s job it is to discern the path to take, however, the leader makes decisions whether to follow the path depending on weather, state of play of the team and so on – consulting the guide.
Then there is the spiritual leader, while some are insistently charismatic and all powerful know-alls, others come with honeyed lips uttering smooth sentences that beguile their hangers on. But not all are like that. The master-disciple relationship is well established in older spiritual traditions and by-and-bye seems to be carried out in a responsible manner, to the good of both parties of the pact.
In the Ch’an Buddhist tradition, known for its radical methodology, the Master might – it depends on the character and preference of the Master and the particular disciple – ascendingly confuse the disciple to such an extent that it brings the lesser one to that decision point where he or she must assume a master-like role. The only valid result being, to walk on in life, creating an ‘own path’ and leaving the Master behind. Then both are free!
In modern times there is yet another ‘Way’. It is a dependance on the group, on the group mind if you will. An instance is the Disciplines of the School of Silo – author of The Inner Look – where disciples of the Mental Discipline – to take one example – went without the guidance of any Master (though influences were underlying) and developed a mental form where each was responsible for ‘self and other’ in the group, seeking the entirety’s development. This mutual reliance was a new phenomenon for those exposed to it.
This ‘style’ was expressed in the form of work presented in the open invitation to participate in the Discipline studies: “We wish to stress that there will not be individual follow up. Rather only general orientation will be given to those who are working alone or in small groups. Some may wish to hold retreats at the Centres of Work in the Parks, or in places where there are no Parks. However, these activities will be done without instructors.”
This departure signalled something different, that we were before a new, never before seen stage, in which the possibility of carrying out the works of levelling of the basic condition of those in the group and then of progressing into the further studies of the Discipline could progress with the entirety on an even keel. Only then did access to the Unnameable (the aim) become available with the needed security of mind, enveloped in the security of the whole. Surely this also depends on the disposition, the intention, the sense of Purpose, of those undertaking to walk that new Way – without the need of a Master.
Now, very much in the public domain, we see what is taking place in such as Take The Square, Madrid, which group has issued statements with the kind of clarity rigorously needed in such a precarious situation. This is instanced in the 15M Movement Youth Manifesto, last paragraph:
*“THE PUBLIC SQUARE IS A SYMBOL OF THE SPIRIT THAT UNITES ALL HUMAN BEINGS:
WE DO NOT WANT EMPTY WORDS.
Together we have generated a unique new process which, if we apply ourselves, can lay the foundations for a true cultural, social and personal revolution. A revolution of all and for all, in which the central value is the human being, and the methodology is active nonviolence.
If this is to endure over time we need to organize. We need an organization that is not bureaucratic, but based on human communication: communication that enriches us and allows us to grow together. Communication that does not lead us to despair or separation; communication based on respect, communication that incites to us action.
That is why we propose, here and now, that we take a moment to think about all the difficulties we’ve had, and everything we have learned from those difficulties…
And now let us remember those good moments that neither we nor the world will ever forget …
BECAUSE THIS IS NOT UTOPIA, THIS IS REALITY.
LET’S ALL PARTICIPATE!
THE FUTURE IS OURS!
EVERYONE TO THE PUBLIC SQUARES!*
When the Occupy Hong Kong action started on October 15 this year there was a strong nucleus of participants who understood that what was happening was something different. Iris Yau, 19, a member of underground radio station FM101’s “action team” and a participant of “Occupy Central” agreed with Jaco Chow Nok-hang, who told HK News Watch: *”Unlike previous rallies – which are usually about single issues or policies – Occupy Central points at the root issue,” adding that the widespread social malaise in the world was due to the inequalities of wealth and power created by capitalism. Yau said the rally had a wider social meaning. “We are trying – even if it’s only on a small scale – a different way of community and decision-making in a group,”* she said.
On the blog of Global Voices (21 October), an international community of bloggers who report on blogs and citizen media from around the world, Hong Kong ‘occupier’ Hui Yuk was interviewed and he told the media that he believes that the greatest achievement of the occupation is the reflective space it has generated:
*“When people begin to accept an indefinite goal, they start imagining, which is a state of demanding. The occupation has disrupted our habit and opened up a reflective space. People are yet to understand and exclaim: occupation can happen in Hong Kong! We have to be aware that “occupation” is not just a pure resistant action like protecting one’s home. The media only sees occupation as social struggle and cannot understand its multidimensional meaning. It has subverted the symbolic space, such as turning an office into a home and turning the workers into guests. People have to reconstruct the order of the space and the activists have to re-interpret such space. People within that space transform from being passive users or consumers into active interpreters and in the process they have reclaimed their autonomy.”*
By October 25 a fellow simply calling himself Derrick, a Chinese camped out among the others at the prestigious Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank building, said to myself as a reporter: *“What we are doing is, among the different people here – as we have Marxists, we have anarchists, we have liberals but we are all suffering under the capitalism system – some people who are starting to ask why, why do we have to live in this system always, is there no other system? These questions go around and we think about these things. How to go against it? How to move beyond it? This is what we are doing here. We won’t finish it in a day or a week or a month – this is a very long discussion, so we are living here as long as we can because we think we can’t discuss this on the Internet, we have to do it face-to-face, so we live together.”*
Hugo Novotny, independent researcher from the Argentinian Park of Study and Reflection, Carcarana, spoke at the World Forum: “Dialogue of Civilisations” in Rhodes, Greece, on 9th of October, 2011. His speech was titled, “The new generations and new paradigms in the XXI century.” Speaking of the Occupy Movement and including the fore-runners in North Africa and the Middle East he said, *“…in the above mentioned cases, independent of the notable social, economic and cultural differences among countries, we can distinguish three phenomena common to these events:*
*“One, the morphological fracture in the system of values that gives direction to social behaviour. The lack of a fit between the representation of ‘the heights’ – as a space where there are beings especially endowed with strength, wisdom and kindness – and social reality, because of the growing mistrust in the capabilities and intentions of leaders in terms of improving the lives of the majority, be it in the political field, or in the economic, religious and trade union ones. This situation has led to the breakdown of the old and the emergence of a new system of references, in which the concept of “the profound” acquires a predominant significance. Profound in this case signifies true, reflective, human, giver of meaning …sacred in the most ample sense of the word. This new horizontal morphology of values, corresponds entirely with the current concepts of “networks”, “interactivity”, “communities”, “self-regulation” and “self-organisation”.*
*“Two, the vertiginous scientific-technological advances, especially in the field of information technology and its influence in the collective consciousness. Here we are not only considering the extraordinary technological achievements that allow present day scientists to direct remotely spaceships through our solar system and even beyond its limits; to reproduce the most complex natural processes in computers, reaching the point of decoding the genome and creating artificial life. But also the development of communication systems and Internet that amplify exponentially access to informational resources accumulated by humanity (libraries, virtual encyclopaedias, private and governmental sites); largely augmenting the possibilities of communication of people, without temporal or spatial limits; creating conditions that allow teamwork in real time, independent of the physical location of the group or community members; giving the possibility of utilising, as much for work as for personal contact, different ‘skins’ and ‘avatars’ (profiles or characters). In the field of photography and digital video, until recently the possibility of looking simultaneously at the same thing another person is looking at in another point of the planet was just the product of sci-fi writers imagination. Today it is something habitual for any child or youth with a personal mobile telephone. Not to mention the present possibility of editing and modifying the image of reality being shown at the same time that events are taking place, something that today can already be seen in today’s international televisions networks.*
*“Finally, the dramatic increase of alternative media over the Internet allows an unprecedented widening of the diversity of viewpoints about reality. The examples given make evident not just a process of exponential expansion of the volume and accessibility of the social memory to individuals, but also of a huge diversification of possibilities of perception of the world and its representation.”*
In other words, what is taking place all across the planet, from Egypt, to Tunisia, to Madrid, to the USA and even to Hong Kong is a reassessment and re-engagement that not only turns things topsy turvy but inside out! That’s a revolution that does not depend on a leader and which in fact does away with any permanent leader.
An analogy of a migrating flock of starlings comes to mind. It’s not that the one starling that happens to be at the apex of the most recent swerve is leading the swarm, no, that feathered one just happens to be in that place at that time. Everything is moving simultaneously and intelligently and efficiently and there is a real destination and practicality in that new form of group travel into the starlings future as a species, maintaining and creating that new future!
This statement below from the Spanish Humanist Party, released just as this writing is being undertaken, adds to the documentation foretelling of the great potential of what is being unleashed as the human race prepares to leave the era of leaders to venture into the world of what? What to call this which is taking place today? Let’s tune in to the youth who seem to somehow know or intuit where-lies our next stage of evolution, of the human spirit – and what will be born!
*”Individualism has dug in deep, which is why it is hard to move to other organizational forms that can truly replace the system. The proposal to transform the economic system cannot be addressed only in terms of technical feasibility, nor in terms of the conveniences of the majority. It must be addressed from a social mystique whose banner is the ethic of coherence, which places the solution to the basic needs of the whole world before any other interest, be it of a group or individual.”*
