Raising failed leaders

People need leaders, and raising a leader is very much a shot in the dark. It is a shared universal trait mothers have to instinctively want to raise a leader. Parents are ecstatic towards a 2 year old who can calculate arithmetic, boast with pride when a 6 year old wins a public speech competition for juniors, yelling their lungs out at pre-school ice hockey match. Parents (almost) never worry a child hovers high above the norm. That explains why children are raised to go to scouts camp (training them to fit in the norm) though secretly parents wish nothing else than the many merit badges their child might get at the end of the summer. The child, having mastered the art of making fire out of two dried sticks, becomes an entertaining ice breaker when it comes to boast about a child’s trophies to thy neighbors and relatives. It isn’t just the parents who are egocentric or puerile or project all their pent up frustration for having failed, turning their kid into super stars. For even the most conscientious parent, a survival instinct to assure the future will provide leaders.

But I think we taking this abnormally far.

How can I explain parents praising their super smart kids, annoyed at their average kid averaging on average, and giving up on those trailing behind? (Except for when genetic instinct kicks in.) How can I explain parents’ urge to rear a winner while as teenagers they admired the losers (cool) kids, and later as a working people, came to despise the smart ones getting all the attention (and promotion—and kissing ass, how else?), alienating those who might think outside the box, using degrading small talk and ill-intended gossip?

Why would average parents wish for their child a future of alienation and loneliness? Perhaps simply because rearing leaders is more desirable than the well being of a child. The natural instinct supersedes common sense. (My exploration goes on about natural instinct i.e. my clock is ticking all I can smell is my future cafe au lait baby’s skin...)

Almost everybody is being raised to become a leader. Almost everybody fails. The failed leaders fall back into average society with sometimes a head start on life, and sometimes a slight gap to bridge to reach the norm. Failed leaders become team players in various layers of authority, insuring plenty of “vice” managers, and project leaders. In the order of things, failed leaders also have their role to play.

I think now though, we are training too many leaders, having way too many failed leaders in the game. I think we're training the failed leaders too long, thwarting the natural order of things (the failed leaders normally drop out of the leader race in due course). We tie the failed leaders to the back of a jeep and trail them against their best interest on a one way track removing them from the normal average, only to drop them back in the mass, without any skills preparing them for it. Failed leaders who took the long ride back home are maladapted socialites. They have been trained to stand out as the best. Not to stick out for each other.
What we are creating now, with over-educated people* is a race of dissocialized humans.

Having discussed earlier that humans need order to live on, I admit gloom when a compound of order-seeking humans breed sharp competitors, poor collaborators, advocate “nothing is done for free”, swear under contracts , integrity going out of fashion. Envy replaces companionship. Failed leaders coming out of the race with an ego in check might end up as loners, feeling at loss for a purpose, having no clue how to socialize let alone endure a healthy amorous relationship.

I assume it never was a piece of cake raising a child. I wonder if outperforming has always been the norm. It isn’t healthy judging by the number of burned out citizens out there. It isn’t normal. Education ambassadors need to look at the Frankensteins they create, and wonder if they couldn’t come up with more “girl next door”.

On the paradox of the norm vs the norm, my exploration goes on.

*note: the author values education and educators. There also is a lot going on with knowledge, wisdom, peace and serenity, and culture. These issues are not taught in educational institution, on average.

(My new apartment, my wine, my food, my music, my bed, my dog next to me, my bed sheets....24 Sept. 07, Beijing)

Chaos order. Order chaos.

Chaos order. Order chaos.

A topic I have been reflecting on quite seriously in the past while: order. I live in China. You think my musing comes from reflecting on the Chinese leadership and its compulsive mania for normality. But no.

My reflection on order and chaos stems from groups who are much closer to me, namely my expat friends, my tango dancers comrades. And then the whole world in general. No it’s not the Chinese this time. (Welcome to Beijing, land of chaos, more likely than order).

I am reflecting on “order” as being the ultimate goal. “Chaos” being the thing to avoid. I wonder why it is that once we give freedom to an individual, this individual will as soon go back to a world where (s)he’s been taking orders, rather than experiment with unstructured chaos. I should define freedom here as in 1) relaxing laws and leaving it up to the individual to decide on the definition of right and wrong, 2) removing the leader from a group and giving each individual equal opportunity to voice their concerns and wants—the democratic voting system being based on this freedom, 3) giving individual responsibility and asking for accountability in return, 4) giving a range of choices—why does it always comes down to two—one being the good, the other the bad.

“Out of chaos (s)he created order.”

This sentence is somewhere in all the religions I have heard of. And why does order seem to reflect progress in the human condition? I think not. I think in the beginning all was good and then shit hit the fan. That’s what’s happened. I’m not yet worried about whether or not God is responsible for the fan, (though my exploration goes on...).

Why is it we die anyways? Because we have a system which deteriorates. Systems aren’t made to last forever. They are not built to be sustainable to infinite. What is sustainable for infinite are “systems” of chaos such as “microbes”, “falling in love”, “gene selection”.
Order dies. A gash in order creates chaos. Chaos is an entity. It survives as such. It lives as such. Chaos is born and lives on. Until order comes around. And dies out.

This said, why is it the human condition to search so deep, look so high, cry so loud, to attain a model of order? Multiple explanations come to my mind, such as controlling the mass (the order working for you), survival of the fittest (in order from top to bottom one is at the top), immature, irresponsible, non-accountable, feeble individual (having the order work for you), etc...you know I know we know they know. It’s a known fact.

But in an order of 0-10, where we started at zero (ze big bang hitting the fan) and striving to get to 10 (according to global warming we’re about 9.7) is it possible we’re actually not going forward but backwards? I mean, striving to put order in all of that hasn’t led to any outstanding bettering of the condition overall of the humans. We do wear clothes, we do have vaccines, we do live longer sure yes and I’m very happy not to be walking around, showing off my smallpox scars, shivering naked in the cold. But in light of human “happiness”, the feeling of being on track, in tune with oneself etc...Existential crisis is more or less the same. Wars start for the same reasons. Again and again the same aspects of women are preached as the all sins of the earth while the characteristics of a winner is a fairly international standard, we still haven’t been saved by God. Not as a living being in any case.

So is it possible we are actually devolving? From the point of perfection (chaos is self regulated interactive anti-systems etc.) Is it possible we are going further and further away from “it”? I don’t see regulating parking lots against skateboarding as bringing up better or worse adults!
And so, if order is an anti-climax, then is chaos a progress? Would it explain why cultures as old as the earth (I exaggerate) Iran, India, China, display far more chaos than anywhere new?
...
(On this, my exploration goes on)
Cricri, yet another fruitful bicycle ride along the east (now demolished)wall of the forbidden city from the slaughter house district to the filling your stomach before the long walk district.