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Maybe it's the uninterrupted sunshine ... maybe it's the beginning of real summer warmth... maybe it's vacation, or maybe it's the fact that I'm sitting in a tiny cafe in Wynberg where a cappuccino is just a filter coffee with whipped cream on top -- for whatever reason, it seems the curtain of winter is finally lifting. There's a chance what looked very much like a deep, dark cavern may actually be a tunnel after all.
The world has been in crisis mode for quite some time now. I can't tie it back to an exact moment -- I suppose you could argue it dates back as far as the terrorist attacks of the 90s and even 2001. I think rather those events, and the wars and violence that ensued, were really a preamble to the great crescendo that is now erupting in all segments of society. Economically, politically, even socially, people around the world seem to be asking different versions of the same question -- who's in charge? Where are we headed? How can we slow our tumble and avoid the cliff at the end of the road? Not that all of these questions haven't been asked before, but for the first time in my admittedly short memory, they are begin asked by everyone about everything -- and there are no true leaders granting satisfactory answers anywhere. The image that comes to mind is a series of snapshots of George Bush, Kgalema Motlanthe, Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, Henry Paulsen and Larry Summers, Angela Morkel and Nicholas Sarkozy, shrugging their shoulders and looking left and right for ideas.
The only people who seem to be benefiting from the current chaos are the powers that be in the East. and even they may begin to find that hubris hits the hardest in hindsight.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of the latest series of crises, which I first felt the ripples of in June of this year, is that it affects people on both the micro and macro levels in both obvious and subtle ways. On the ground, it seems the socio-politico-economic storm has permeated even the realm of interpersonal relations. Much like the weather affects the way people interact with each other and their environments, so this "tsunami" of perpetually down-turned events seems to lend additional anxiety to everyone's lives == from retirees who are watching their pensions and retirement funds dwindle under the caving pressure of a recession economy, to children who find that their parents are stressed, their teachers are stressed, and they themselves are manifesting symptoms of anxiety that they cannot comprehend. I see it in my students, both young and old. The weather might not be helping, either, but generally I think there's something bigger than just geologic forces at work.
On the macro level, of course, the ripples and consequences of the Wall Street downturn, political instability, continued threats of social upheaval and religious fundamentalism -- those are the flags that everyone can see flying up ad infinitum -- but few are capable, I think, of comprehending or foretelling exactly what any one of these flags might indicate about the future of our world.
And yet, in the face of what seem to be unstoppable forces of negative change, it runs contrary to the human spirit, or the human condition, to be fatalistic -- if that were the case our civilizations would never have survived infancy. I refer once again to Sisyphus and his unenviable task -- Camus got it right when he pointed to the absurdity of the human will to survive, and the inevitable tragedy it brings.
This tangent, however obscure and esoteric, convinces me that not only will we never stop searching for a solution to the insurmountable task of recreating our world before us, but that at some point we will reach a tipping point at which this crisis will have been overcome, and we can float happily downstream until another crisis inevitably forms from the depths of what we've created.
According to Clem Sunter, what we need to escape from this quagmire boils down to leadership -- when discussing South Africa in the next decade, Sunter described good leadership as being brave, innovative, inclusive, focused on management, strategic... I would imagine that the leadership we need for the next decade must also be selfless, strict, intuitive, certainly inclusive, transnational, international, vocal; the leadership of this century must guide from ahead and behind; it must enable and inspire people to make decisions, both good and bad, that reflect individual and group consciousness -- in other words, the new global leadership must educate and empower, but without being too democratic. Unlike many of my compatriots at school, but much like the political architects of the America I (reluctantly?) call home, I too am wary of pure democracy -- at least when educational systems are compromised by systems which promote and sustain bad leadership and unhealthy institutions and entrenched poverty .
The greatest challenge to finding, channeling, and utilizing the resources of leadership that naturally exist throughout the world, but that must be nurtured in order to flourish, is connecting the macro with the micro. The disconnect between local systems of social, political and economic interaction -- which exist without a sense of greater purpose within the larger global framework -- that frames the challenge facing all people who are desperate to save the planet. Do we think globally and act locally? Or do we jump the gun and go straight to world-wide administration? Do we build up from the grassroots or down from the international? How can we vertically integrate systems of leadership and initiative?
Anyone who has ever entered the world of non-governmental organizations or public service or international volunteerism will recognized this challenge. The old system, of both nurturing leadership at the bottom and the top and hoping that eventually they will come together somewhere in the mezzanine of global systems has produced some outrageously successful results. Partnerships between the United Nations or the Global Fund or Medicins Sans Frontieres and communities on the ground which are desperate for guidance, aid, and recognition -- there are many examples of great successes. But often, in each of these cases, the effort centers around leadership of martyrdom -- someone like Paul Farmer, both a visionary and a fanatic -- is needed to keep the momentum of such relationships going. This is not a sustainable way of approaching development.
Conclusions (or, the "chew on this" part of the post):
-- Leadership of the martyrs is limited in its reach and sustainability.
-- The current systems of pairing transnational and international groups with local organizations on the ground in order to yield productivity and development moves slowly and inefficiently in the best of cases. Despite successes, it is also severely limited.
-- The disparity between the global and the local is not going away, but it can probably be reduced by properly employing technologies of communication.
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