Last week I said, “Our leaders today pretend to be followers and pretend not to be leaders, and from there are very ineffective.” To expend effort maintaining a façade takes away energy that could be spent more effectively elsewhere. In fairness, I believe our leaders yesterday also pretended when necessary; it was just necessary less often. Also in fairness, our leaders yesterday came from the same self-righteous entitlement as our leaders today. I believe the difference is that yesterday’s leaders could better see a big picture, (today’s big picture is much bigger), and (because there was less pretending) they were more effective advancing the whole. But still, then (as now) their context was flawed and their certainty was divisive.

And in our (inescapable?) context, the whole is indeed always the most important thing. So if the context is flawed and our leadership is misguided and ineffective, how do we reconcile the whole (as it is required to be by the system) with the individual? How do we walk the talk? Or do we just stop talking? Or is the talk necessary to allow time for the walk to catch up? Or is the talk talked to deceive and distract? Maybe both necessary and misleading? A maddeningly slow merry-go-round of mixed messages.

To further fortify ourselves in this circular entrenchment, today’s followers, more so than yesterday, pretend to be leaders mostly by parroting dogma and convention. And just as with leaders, this effort expended on pretending leaves most of these pretenders essentially useless; perhaps able to pull their own weight but unable and unwilling to do their part improving circumstance – circumstance that should be improved for (the least pretentious group amongst us), those followers rendered helpless and powerless by the system.

So, as dictated by our context, we have leaders pretending to be one of us, and we have followers pretending to be leaders, and we have followers who (despite our pretending otherwise and through no fault of their own) are unable to help their selves much less contribute to the whole. So, as dictated by our context, the only efforts toward Beauty-Truth-Wisdom-Justice are individual efforts drowned out by context. And, as dictated by our context, concerted effort toward anything except bureaucracy-convention-certainty-division is forbidden.

I would say “God Help Us” but that is how we got here.