Emergence of a Global Misleadership Council?

Emergence of a Global Misleadership Council (Part #12)

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Given the essential ambiguity between leadership and misleadership emphasized above, the question is the extent to which the emergence of some form of Global Misleadership Council can be detected.

Conspiracy theorists have for many decades been highly creative in presenting evidence for the threatening influence of secret elites on society -- and the web is a natural medium for the development and proliferation of such rumours. These elite networks have variously included and combined bodies noted in Figure 12 (for a more comprehensive list see Global Elite Wiki). Some variants focus on emergence of a New World Order, New Age conspiracies, Illuminati, extraterrestrials, and esoteric secret societies.

Many of these preoccupations have been dismissed as unfounded speculation. They do however offer an interesting institutional complement -- the possibility of a singular manipulative global body -- to the contemporary strategic tendency to promote a singular global threat as a necessary focus for future strategy and attention (cf Promoting a Singular Global Threat -- Terrorism Strategy of choice for world governance, 2002).

Like "front organizations", false flag operations are prime examples of misleadership in practice -- whether to be understood as strategically justified or totally questionable in any "just war". Given the historical possibility of false flag operations -- covert operations conducted by governments and others to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities -- it is curious that no official media discuss such a possibility on the occasion of "terrorist incidents" (cf Cui Bono: Groupthink vs Thinking the Unthinkable? Reframing the suffocating consensus in response to 7/7, 2005). Failure to mention such lines of inquiry seriously undermines the credibility of the knee-jerk security responses triggered by such incidents and of the predictable explanations so quickly offered.

These are an exemplification of groupthink -- unworthy of any intelligent community. A case of mobilizing national resources to "bolt the door after the horse has fled" -- a desperate token demonstration of "post facto efficacy" (cf Max Hastings, This gesture security is inevitable: but it has barely any practical value, Guardian, 2 July 2007). Such a socially destabilizing and restrictive response is precisely how terrorists seek to achieve their objectives with comparatively trivial allocation of resources (cf Simon Jenkins, We are offering the terrorist a megaphone for his cause, Guardian, 4 July 2007).

In addition to such specific examples (however mistakenly cited), religions, sects and cults, whether esoteric, New Age or otherwise, explicitly operate with multiple levels of secrecy accessible only through some initiatory experience, paradigm shift -- or by some understanding of the "grace of God". It is curious how such concentric levels of knowing are echoed in the neolithic architecture of places such as Stonehenge.

Through such levels of misleadership, the leadership within such inner circles must then necessarily mislead -- both those in outer circles and outsiders -- as to its nature and the transformation it seeks to bring about (cf Strategic Opportunities of the Twice Born: reflections on systemic camouflage of mass deception, 2004; Global Strategic Implications of the "Unsaid": from myth-making towards a "wisdom society", 2003).

Given the characteristic self-righteousness, it may be believed by such leadership (and strongly asserted) that this is being done "in the best interests" of others (and despite their reservations). Even their democratically elected "representatives" avoid seeking their consent -- as with the EU constitutional treaty process. The subsequently proposed Reform Treaty, avoiding any previous commitment to a referendum, is a prime example of "hardcore misleadership" -- with many leaders indicating that its content was at least 90% of that which had previously been rejected (cf EU Referendum, 25 July 2007; Steve Watson, EU Federal Superstate Becoming A Reality: European globalists no longer even pretend the people will have a say, 18 April 2007). This highlights "misrepresentation" in a democracy as a problem of similar nature to "misleadership". As noted earlier, followers evoke from leaders, to some degree, the degree of misleadership that best responds to their collective circumstances. Unconsciously followers may not wish to be conscious of the challenges and decisions the (mis)leader feels to be appropriate.

One unfortunate dimension of misleadership is especially problematic in the case of initiatives with which every hope may be legitimately associated. Examples of such are Synthesis Dialogues, World Future Council, World Wisdom Alliance, and The Elders (Evaluating Synthesis Initiatives and their Sustaining Dialogues, 2000; Future World Council Creation, 2004). The challenge however lies in what such initiatives typically avoid in launching out anew. Especially strIking is the exctent to which they take a "green-field" approach, avoiding the "brown-field" issue of why their predecessors "failed" -- even though they may continue to exist and attract resources and support.

Curiously a key to the relationship between (mis)leadership and (mis)followership is in the nature of education (Latin: educare) -- itself derived from an understanding of leading (out of a condition of ignorance). (Mis)leadership may then be understood as a process of education -- recalling the comparison between education as "lies to children" and politics as "lies to adults" (see Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen. The Science of Discworld, 1999).

This ambiguity is especially evident in relation to leadership in the advancement of knowledge where it might be claimed that scientific leadership is necessarily about truth and avoidance of misleading statements. Misleadership is however indeed evident, as with any communication from the wise, in the extent to which an expert is obliged by the nature of the subject matter (at the limits of current understanding) to knowingly mislead when communicating with the modestly informed, unskilled in the language of the relevant discipline. The challenge is evident over time when an earlier (simpler) theory is still used "because it works", even though this thereby misleadingly obscures a subtler truth of greater validity. Chris Lucas (personal communication) makes the point as follows:

A later theory may well be an improvement, but the earlier one still works better than guesswork or a disproved one ! Note that 'replacement' theories are usually rather wider reaching. What quantum mechanics did, compared to Newton's mechanics, was to expand the scope, but Newton's is still usable today, it just doesn't take into account some wider issues. In the same way complexity theory doesn't disprove Newton or quantum mechanics, just widens further the scope - we take account of what we neglected previously (nonlinearity) - so can achieve a 'better guess'.

The current global condition is such that no authority with the power to mislead is able to prove with any credibility that it is not in the process of misleading (cf Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, 1980). This is especially the case when those involved are persuaded of their power and insight

Especially challenging to discernment of appropriateness is the tendency to convene admirable gatherings, even to instiutionalize them, as a basis for admirable initiatives where questions of "misleadership" may then be associated with:

• deliberate discrepancies ("double standards", "contradictions") between the admirable declared intentions and those it is intended to pursue in practice (possibly primarily in the interest of the leaders and their immediate followers)
• inadvertent discrepancies, arising fom negligence or incompetence, between the support they continue to evoke and the effective implementation of the declared intentions in practice.

In presenting the results of the survey of the Pew Global Attitudes Project (Global Unease With Major World Powers, 2007), the co-chairman, former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright commented that the results showed that 'The international system as we know it has broken down, according to these numbers". She spoke of a growth of "nihilism" and the "disarray" of international governance. Others have recalled Albright's response on 60 Minutes (1996) when asked about the deaths of Iraqis under US sponsored sanctions: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?". She responded "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." Some have remarked that her understanding of nihilism may differ from that of others.

Equally strong points about the disarray of Western-dominated international governance, in selecting Tony Blair to be its envoy to Palestine, are made by the Middle East political commentator Robert Fisk (How Could Blair Possibly Get This Job? The Bumbling Envoy, CounterPunch.org, 23/24 June 2007).

For those potentially affected by such misleadership, whether appropriate or not, the challenge is caricatured by the recognition that "if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, then it probably is a duck". In the light of the initiatives of the Coalition of the Willing -- and tacit support for its action, notably by some represented in Figure 12 -- it would appear that there is some form of emergent Global Misleadership Council. Like al-Qaida, it may be primarily an idea inspiring strategic action of various forms by various less-shadowy bodies (Jason Burke, Al-Qaida is now an idea not an organisation, Guardian, 5 August 2005). But the challenge of whether it is understood to be acting appropriately or inappropriately is what will continue to divide people -- dangerously.

The fundamental challenge in a global society may be that of understanding what forms "appropriate misleadership" may take and under what conditions. How to be engaged by strategic options whose nature is beyond our immediate comprehension -- given the credibility challenge of those undertaking such initiatives, supposedly in our "best interests"?

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