What We Need Now Is a Leader

The cult of the single individual, who is responsible for all success, is a farce. Focussing on one person makes the group effort less prominent, instead all the team's efforts are attributed to that individual. This allows or forces us to disregard the others involved, even when there is no way a single person is actually able to do these things. The ramifications of this thinking can be seen if one looks at the aggrandizement of C.E.O.'s across the United States through the 1990's, and the results speak for themselves. While the criminal actions of those involved in schemes like Enron are specific to those executive officers, they would not be possible if a greater amount of attention were paid to the structure as a whole. Political movements, riots, companies, religions, and families are not single-person institutions, it always requires a team, a group, a community, all these examples and more require a multitude of people to function. What the denial of groups means is that we cannot recognize the power that they have, the true power of numbers of people coming together for a common goal. We remain distracted by the illusion of power that one person out front, the "leader", seems to command. By concentrating our attention on one person, we are dis-empowered; because we no longer recognize the power we have in a group, we only see that we have no power as an individual. Instead of recognizing all of the people who prop-up that figure, we focus on the figure, rather than noticing the efforts of the team, some individual is chosen to receive the reward of all their combined efforts. The result is a shift in the balance of power, from the many to the few or the one. Instead of the politicians being representatives of the people, those who elect and direct the politicians now leave the governance entirely to the ones they elected and are left out. These officials do not have the right or "mandate" to 'lead' us, we are the ones who lead, who determine the course of our lives and our country. Just as Abraham Lincoln stated in his address, "...a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." The government is simply an apparatus to carry out our decisions, not some paternal organization gathered to make the best judgments for us. Certain groups are realizing their power, they are acting in a concerted manner, addressing issues that they care about. Are the rest of us just going to lay back and watch in bewilderment the actions of these people? That is exactly what will happen if we are waiting for a person to come along and give us some direction.