Politics and Transformation

  Last month I was asked by a noted Australian futurist to preview his new book and write a pre-publication review of it. I agreed and started perusing his manuscript. Soon after I started reading I came across a reference to Australian author and public intellectual Clive Hamilton who “notes that political leaders ‘tend to be those who have internalised the goals of the system most faithfully.’ As a result they are among ‘the most immune to arguments and evidence that might challenge it.’”

This is one of the most concise descriptions of why it is so hard to create meaningful and lasting change in systems. And the more emotionally people are vested in the system, the more loyal they are, the more difficult it is to get anything to happen.

When one strongly identifies with their role in the system – when who they think they are is confused with their position in the system – they can be “immune to arguments and evidence that might challenge it.”

Political leaders are one example. Clergy are another. Educators are yet another example and the list could go on and on. But let’s stick with politics since this was the subject of Hamilton’s reference that caught my attention.

What are the “goals of the system” that politicians have internalized most faithfully? While we would all like their primary goal to be “to serve the public interest” we know that from the politician’s point-of-view the goals also include getting reelected (which includes campaign funding and serving the special interest of one’s constituency) and increasing influence (which includes committee seats, chairing committees, seniority, authoring bills, etc.). But, perhaps the most insidious of all the goals is the one that is implicit in any system in which one is invested - to maintain the status quo and resist all attempts to change it.

Gridlock in Washington and elsewhere is common. Never have so many spent so much to get so little done. In business, this would never do; enterprises displaying such abysmal performance would be declared insolvent and put out of their misery. The system is broken. And it appears unfixable. It may require a new system to be created instead of wasting more time or money, or investing more hopes and dreams in trying to fix the existing one.  

As visionary inventor Buckminster Fuller once wrote: “You never change things by fighting existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

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On the third Thursday each month until further notice, I am hosting a conference call to explore how we might create alternative systems to the dysfunctional and outmoded ones we now endure. The one-hour call takes place at 10 AM Pacific time. If you would like to join one or more of these calls, RSVP to me at john@renesch.com and let me know you’d like to be on the call. I will then send you the call in information.