| New Kid in Town: from Spiro T. Agnew to Philosopher Kings |
| Part four of sixteen |
| Betrayal has severed his dependencies. Plato predicts the King will disdain the sceptre. As with Tolkien�s Gandalf and Galadriel, the refusal of the Ring of Power suggests royalty. All beings desire power over their fellows. Only the King and Queen inspect this desire, holding its feet to the burning light. Therefore power is given them. How jarring this reluctance compared with the deportment of our �leaders,� who gloat and glory in their influence and perquisites, manipulating them to personal benefit, twisting them to destroy others, abandoning the weak and defenseless, ignoring the health of the State. America has long been shielded from the woes of this planet. That shielding is ended. The Empire, from Ur to Athens, from Imperial Rome to the Potomac, Will Not Stand. (And yes, King George I and II, you heard it here last.) America, squatting atop its dragon-hoard of riches and power, now descends to trial. Present leadership know not the catacombs of renewal. They wield the staff of office, but in it there is no light. In our crucible the nation, and the species, now require leaders both politically astute and spiritually whole. The Bulldog of the Eschaton is growling, and nothing less will get him fed. Our crisis of re-collectivization, with its myriad mass horrors, demands the constellation of psycho-spiritual executives to guide us down our transformative spiral, and out the other side of history�s wormhole. The political, economic and cultural centralizations of power inherent in re-collectivization � nations, mega-corporations, mass ideologies and mass psychoses -- necessitate de-centralized, non-autocratic leadership, ethically intact, spiritually experienced, and deaf to the sirens of power. Plato says it�s simple. What we need are not more politicians, not another tyrannos, and certainly not Big Mama. Plato says we need shamans. We need Paleolithic wildchilds with analog savvy, having socio-political acumen as well as the ear of the gods. Plato says that we need shamans in political power � shamans -- not tycoons, ideologues, bad actors, lawyers or neo-matriarchs � leading our political institutions and demanding of us fulfillment of our own stated values. Plato suggests that recycling either matriarchs or patriarchs as leaders � market forcers, corporate shills, goddess supremacists -- merely leads Empires to perpetual decadence and ruin. What we�d best hunt down and install, he said, are Philosopher Kings. Four problems arise. UNO The real deal is rare. Pretenders abound. Fire tests the gold. DOS The forgeries of leadership � whether in Fourth Century B.C.E. Athens or 2002 C.E. America � will exert every deception and cruelty to maintain power. Plato relies upon Necessity to bring these dogs to heel. TRES Shamans don�t want to be worldly leaders. Not even a little. They�re the first chosen for the stocks and the stake, the pillory and prison. They spend their lives perfecting invisibility, that they might survive whatever new outbreak of collective blood-mania the People and their leaders next choose to indulge. Philosopher Kings dis the crown, considering it merely another trap, a cold and jagged hunk of metal that chafes their bald spot and magnetizes them to matter. But again, Necessity may herd the reluctant shepherds to the town square. Their suspicion of power is our saving grace. QUATRO The People don�t want spiritual beings as leaders. Americans don�t even like intellectuals � or anybody that might know something they don�t. As for authentically spiritual males, they�re positively un-American. They last as long as a Fudgesicle in hell. The People want �leaders� who will allow them to be vengeful, manipulative, and as greedy as a lotto-winning porcine. The People want their creature comforts, to wallow in an unconscious State resembling permanent infancy with a Big Screen. If possible, the People prefer �leaders� who will share in their covert power schemes, and who will use the might of the State to enforce those schemes. If they are fairly well-off materially, usually what the People most want is for things to Stay the Same, and they�re full willing to have you stomped into grit to maintain stasis. What is the solution for this final predicament? Leadership unafraid to drag the People through their own steaming shit is the solution. Things AREN�T going to Stay the Same. Get used to it. |