October 22, 2009

Are we doomed?

Dave Pollard is one of the unique voices I'd never have heard but for the internet. He writes with tremendous passion, intensity and bluntness.

I remember him saying he was a happy pessimist, which is a great paradoxical truth about Dave. He tends to think we're all heading for hell in a handcart, but carries on his life with incredible gusto.

What he's just posted, Nobody Knows Anything, is Dave at his most eloquent. I think he's right to challenge our collective willingness to invest in the notion of leaders who can save us. That he does so so boldly is challenging and exciting. Here's a taste, but I recommend the whole thing.

Economists, financial 'experts', psychologists, consultants, pundits, celebrities, policy wonks, advisors, barons of industry, doctors -- none of these people really know what they're doing. They want you to believe they know what they're doing, so that they can justify what they're taking out of the system in salaries, bonuses, perks, commissions and fees. But they're making it up as they go along...It's all veneer. Beneath each $2000 suit, behind all the swagger, from the boardroom to the office of the commander in chief, there's an insecure, terrified little boy pretending to be in charge, faking it, and easily swept away by the first pretty young adoring intern who will go down on her knees before him.
I'm not as sure as Dave appears to be that we're all doomed. In a way, that is another false certainty to cling to. I've felt for sometime that we're in some kind of race: will our talent for collaboration and collective intelligence catch up fast enough with our opposing talents for waste and obsessive rivalry?

Posted by Johnnie Moore at 11:25 in Miscellaneous (everything is)
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Stuart Reid says

I read recently that in Finland an optimist is someone who says 'Today is great! Because tomorrow everything's going to go to hell!'

Interesting observations Johnnie. Paradoxical and obvious at the same time.

Of course, nobody knows anything when speaking about the future, except that it will be different. However, the future will only be different in a positive way, if one of those nobodies decides to do something, driven by his or her know nothing mindset.

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