New world leadership order seems founded on little more than spoiling tactics: the politics of undermining — a rejection of the known in favour of the unknown, if only to unseat conventional wisdom.
This hypothesis is, at best, limited. Because it is all very well to foretell, even promise, the future in a campaign, but it cannot be verified, let alone tested. Any of us can say anything about the future, secure in the knowledge that we cannot be proven wrong now. We do, however, have to live in and deal with now.
What’s interesting, if not worrying, is what tactics are used by tomorrow’s aspiring leaders to wrench power away from those presently tasked with exercising it.
It used to be that the currency of war was strength. Victories followed fair fights (not always, but mostly). Better ideas prevailed. The common good was sacrosanct, a test of the worthiness of the battle.
We find ourselves now in wars where the currency is weakness, where we measure defeats, not victories, where the weapon of choice is undermining, not boldness, where the enemy is neither known nor visible — only suspected; where common good can be sacrificed for the preservation of the elite; where being on top is purpose enough.
It is a scary place and it is not serving us well, across the world. Leaders are being elected on what’s wrong, on what has failed. Manifestos have become collections of criticisms, rather than well-thought-out solutions. Insecurity has become veiled with bravado, but still obvious.
The end game is to get power, to wrestle it from wherever it is now, by whatever means. To celebrate accidents, not achievements. To precipitate failure, to frown on success.
Failure, always the refuge of the weak, has ironically become the currency of their quest for power, for there are many weak and few strong.
Populism replaces all ideologies — capitalism, socialism, whatever. If you can promise anything but more of the same to the disaffected, then if there are enough of them you will win.
New promised lands will only prosper if underpinned by the reality of actual delivery. Working with, or replacing or refreshing a functional reality must be incremental, tested, back-filled. Potholes before pipe dreams.
The premise is that all that went before has failed. Across the planet, the EU, globalisation (with all the trade agreements necessary to support it), monetary policy, the valuation of companies, the cost of capital, established demographic economics, functional technology — these are all placed in question by those who would prescribe the future they wish to control, no matter what.
In truth there is a big mess. Our evolution as a species, our civilisation, has led to more division than unity, across all metrics, across the globe.
While there have been fundamental current changes, for sure, I doubt we need to hand over to the naysayers. They offer nothing better. The world we prepared for has changed beyond the measure of it, but smashing the foundations, ignoring the experience will not provide a better base. Cement, a binder of other materials, remains a valuable invention. Established connectivity and tested processes cannot simply be discarded as we move towards the new order — artificial intelligence, the fourth industrial revolution, peace on earth, whatever.
There are real, manifest challenges, new and old. Global warming is supported by empirical evidence now, no campaign about the future can ignore it, but it’s not new.
How we deal with changing demographics will be central to our survival — from migration to the challenge of advanced medicine that pushes longevity beyond economic capacity.
The speed and distribution of information across age groups has changed fundamentally in favour of the younger and will continue to do so. Yes, we will have to listen to them more than we used to, or even more than we’d like to, but information isn’t knowledge and conjecture isn’t practice.
Like we did, they’ll have to get a driver’s licence before we give them the keys to the car. We cannot abdicate reality in favour of unproven promise. They may get voted into the position, but they don’t know what the hell to do once they get there. They don’t seek advice: they should.
Ambition is not a sound basis for governing. We cannot submit to the notion that the only future strategy is not what we have now. We can’t be led by those that have no more to offer than criticism, a good speech and a wind-swept hairstyle.
• Barnes is CEO of the South African Post Office
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