WE ARE THE PEOPLE: UNDERAGE AND LONGING FOR LEADERS

By Norbert

[This article originally published on May 6, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,  http://www.feldpolitik.de/feldblog/item.php?I=154.]

Decisions, decisions, decisions…

Incessantly! Where would we be without them? Decisions! One makes them unwillingly. Still one must live with their consequences. One prefers “someone” or “something” to point the way. Some have their personal advisors; some consult maps or the coffee grounds. Some simply let things come to them; some bang their heads against the wall.

It is easier when one doesn’t have to decide oneself and the decision is already made. In case the “wrong decision” is made, “responsibility” can be passed on and one can avoid self-tormenting guilt feelings. Life is so simple when someone else does the thinking for me..

We are an underage little people, we earthlings. Naturally we do not admit this, in any way not very willingly. We think we are creators of our happiness and we know exactly what we want and act accordingly.

What rubbish!

For example, the large part of western humanity is looking for work. They want to think for themselves. One seeks a job instead of creating a job oneself. One seeks a boss to think for himself, a boss with the responsibility of landing contracts who collects money and pays wages. This is more convenient, low in risk and frees from personally responsible conduct.

There is nothing wrong about this. One has enough other worries that must be borne. Other people assuming leadership help. Still the fact is we are an underage little people longing for leaders, we earthlings.

This is not different in politics. Who are we? We are engineers, artisans and scientists but nothing compared to genuine politicians. Genuine politicians know everything. We let them think for us. If they think wrongly, we know at least on whom we can pin the “blame”. This doesn’t help us muddle along. What is really central is not really solving problems, only not being personally affected by them.

Thus we seek leaders. Our whole political system is designed for the search for leaders. Adolf Hitler was only an extreme case in a rebuilt political system. We don’t choose any programs! We can only choose programs when we exert ourselves. We choose persons! We choose parties. While these parties have programs, what the political persons of the parties dream up in their little heads counts, not programs. We don’t even want to change this! If we would suddenly choose genuine programs in the form of a direct democracy, we would be responsible ourselves for this selection. We would have to be concerned about the substantive project and the consequences of the conversion. Who really wants this?

It is convenient to be pushed around by the existing system instead of illuminating visions for its change. It is comfortable to be governed by politicians who know everything instead of becoming responsible ourselves. Therefore we seek persons who take over our wills and lead us. Perhaps we will still agitate.

Now and then persons at the top of our political pyramids have a screw loose somewhere. George Hitler alias Adolf Bush appealing to God is the best example. He is the supreme consequence of a system designed for passing responsibility and choosing persons, a system enormously promoted in the US by the duopoly of parties. There are actually people who think that everything will be different under the US democrats. These people have obviously never really reflected how simple it is to manipulate people and feed them with the information used by the puppet masters in the background. What a John F. Kerry is today can be a George Bush III tomorrow. Whoever was a radical Green yesterday can be a European foreign minister today, a well-adjusted conformist. This can make your head spin!

What are the alternatives? I personally wondered after 1989 whether all this should really have happened. Did the East Germans really take to the streets to replace one corrupt system of political idiots with an even more corrupt system of idiot policy? Obviously the East German citizen must find his way and orient himself for the first time in the labyrinth of the new rules…But can this continue forever? Will idiots in power breed idiots to represent their idiotologies?

I don’t believe so. Rather new concepts will arise in the future, perhaps including new leader concepts. Perhaps new ideas and new systematics will set programs instead of persons in the foreground and encourage new come-of-age existence. The Democratic Platform could be an aid for this development. New concepts could be explained and developed, discussions started or actions developed according to the Wiki-principle.

Perhaps the possibility of using the Internet for democratic processes will result. Every citizen would have a vote for concepts, not for persons. A party would vote in the Bundestag to reflect the voting members on the website, not as the fraction pressure, political correctness or the power politics prescribes…

Perhaps in this way we will manage one day not only to make decisions but to understand why we made them – consciously and actively instead of underage and longing for leaders.