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I’ve written before how many of our leaders seem, well, insane. I’ve also discussed at annoying length about how we’re often unseriousness and irresponsible as a culture, while also plugging Ted Gioia and The Unaccountability Machine. Lately I’ve been speculating on the architecture of this madness, namely how do so many – maybe all – of our so-called leaders become completely nuts.
You know what I’m talking about even if we’re talking about different people. People with bizarre beliefs that you can’t imagine any sane person holding – and they’re in charge. So-called adults acting like aspiring teenage Instagram Influencers who have nuclear weapons. It all seems like acting, and bad acting at that – and we can’t even blame Regan anymore (well, as much).
I’m not saying leaders haven’t been completely bonkers over the aeons. I mean, we still discuss the Hapsburgs. But as I’ve done my various historical readings, it seems we’ve managed the madness without the genetic damage and a particularly pathetic kind of madness at that. I think it’s because our leaders are so abstract.
It’s like everyone is so far away. You can’t be aware of how the world works, of the impact of your work. It’s because of layers.
Think of society as layers. There’s layers of work on extraction – farming, raw materials. Layers of crafting. Layers of communications. Layers of medical work. These different layers connect and support each others, but it’s easy to forget them. For instance, I work in medical technology, but I have to recall things like where drug raw materials come from or how shipping affects us.
As we pile layers upon layers to manage society – layers of banking and politics and the likes. Each layer ads more ability to coordinate, to administer, to process – but also more ways to get abstracted or distant. That may sound like a problem, but some people like that – they don’t want to be responsible or deal with complexity.
I’m musing now that our society’s layers have become so abstract that we’ve got some “upper layers” of media and politics so merged and so abstract the people in them are entirely out of touch unless they want to be otherwise. People raised or trapped entirely in a mix of low-brow politicking, media-spheres, and whatever science fiction they consumed 30 years ago. Everyone echoing each other like a pathological message board.
We may not have the Hapsburg inbreeding, but we’ve got people living on some airy layer of our culture, totally abstract from us, mentally inbred. It’s hard not to go mad even if you don’t want to, and if you do lose your mind as a politician or media star, people will just decide you’re sane. Which of course makes you more mad.
Plus you’re so far away you’re free of responsibility and surrounded by yes-people they can insulate you from reality – but not the rest of us.
I’m not against our modern society, but I think we have to ask if all the different layers have created a unique form of “royalty” even more out of touch than legendary royalty of the past. We don’t see it as our system of media and politics amplifies their madness – and tells them what madness of ours they can take advantage of.
We need to find a way to change how the layers of our complex world connect, else we’ll keep dealing with the insanity.
Steven Savage