“The market needs you until you need the market” by John Bittleston
For maybe five years or more we have been complaining about the poor quality of leadership among the world’s politicians. No guts, little charisma, poor judgments, rotten presentation – you name it, we’ve had it. Totally. Politics abhors a vacuum so leaders have been emerging. Putin, Maduro, Kim Jong-un, Erdoğan, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, Orban, the already discarded leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. Europe and the Americas have not been producing strong leaders, in some cases because democracy has drifted into softocracy.
Little wonder, then, that the United States, always ready for a bit of overstatement, has Trumped the lot, even turning the first lady’s job into a MuskHave. The aspirations for which the voters opted have become the avaricious advances of acquisition. They will lead to the desire to dominate as surely as bread becomes toast when faced with flames. It’s not only the weather climate that is changing. The humanitarian climate is changing, too.
Can we handle it?
High tech shares demonstrate what happens to leaders. Crypto, too. Our appetites run out of control so quickly now. Ask Diagio. They will tell you ‘Beer today, gone tomorrow’. In fashion, what is Modish on Monday is Frumpish on Friday. To predict even the simplest trends makes you an influencer.
Brutus put it clearly when talking about Caesar. “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.”
In a very real sense we are all leaders – of our own lives if not of other people’s. Are we in the process of forgetting that – or is it ‘denying’ – to our own detriment? In any case, what should we do about it? All very well to take responsibility but what about action?
Recognise the roundness of the route. Put another way ‘what goes around, comes around’. All the above leaders are in the grip of DSC – Dominant Survival Competition. It’s a disease mostly, though not exclusively, experienced by men. Vulgarly expressed as ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ it combines arrogance with aspiration and makes leaders aim to acquire more land and people over which to exert control. Most of the wars are about it.
The market begs for leaders. Well, it’s got one now. His DSC is emerging. It has taken just over a week to do so. As MuskOvitch says, he who fails will be given the slanted arm. Jolly good idea, many will remark, until it becomes their turn. Then they will vote Democrat. Or whatever’s on offer at the time.
We will handle it best by doing what Brutus suggests. Take the tide now at its flood. Show the valiance of leadership while doing so is favoured. Change is not always a popular word but it is today. Sight your opportunities not your threats. ‘Take the current when it serves’.
You and I are at the peak of opportunity. Grasp it for humanity.
Humanity will thank you forever.
Good morning
John Bittleston
May the spark ignite. If it does, do tell us at [email protected].
7 February 2025
