What can we do about our biggest, baddest black elephant?

It's decision time.  Braveheart?  Or coward?

30 Second summary

Global leadership is an oxymoron. We have no global leaders, only country leaders.

· Of the 196 country leaders, many are too old, too tyrannical, too corrupt, too scientifically illiterate and just too incompetent and intellectually challenged to be trusted with any global decisions. Look at Europe for example. Potentially the most powerful trading block in the world and it's looking more like the Titanic with no-one on the bridge with all the leaders downstairs debating whether the beer has been brewed properly. And let's not even mention the US, nor the utter shambles in Africa, South America and Asia.

· Knowledge cascades from the complex to the simple. Historically when things get too complex we substitute an absence of understanding with superstition, myths and magic. The bovine brain immune system kicks in where 140 characters is the channel of choice.

· Technology has raced ahead of our ability to lead the emerging complexity and we have no superior global intelligence layer to manage and control both technology and current leadership stupidity.

· We need to create this next layer of genuine global intelligent thinking and intelligent action, including global leadership structures. Clearly the club of clowns has no clue. We need to find a better way.

· Every person can contribute to the evolution of this next layer in his or her circle of influence. The first decision is, will I be a 'Braveheart" or a "Coward"?

 The alien question with no answer

It's the weekend. You are out of town on a hiking trail. You are walking next to a stream, relaxed and deep in thought You turn the corner and suddenly you are confronted by an alien.

"Good morning earthperson!" It says in a strange Stephen Hawking-esque voice. "Please take me to your earth leader."

How would you answer this request?

 Black swans and black elephants

Nassim Taleb introduced us all to Black Swans, the unexpected and unpredictable catastrophes that can come our way – financial crashes and tsunamis for example. Black elephants however are a whole new breed.

A black elephant is an impending catastrophe which we know is coming down the road to trample us, but we simply look the other way and pretend it is not there.

Real specie threatening examples of black elephants include acidification of the oceans, deforestation, dumping millions of tons of plastic into the ocean, population explosion, water shortages, global warming and drought, the obesity epidemic, terrorism and religious extremism.

But the greatest black elephant of them all is the one which leads to all of the above. The complete absence of global leadership.

It is true that we have country leaders - one hundred and ninety-six of them. And just look at them. Some so old it is difficult to tell if they are dead or alive, many completely scientifically illiterate, others corrupt and self-serving, still more who abuse drugs or alcohol, and the vast majority who have absolutely no idea how to manage a highly complex and dynamic global system. Three are so clever that they have withdrawn from the Paris Accord. Rock on!

And look at the way we select these leaders. Techniques and methods designed in the bronze age when the earth was flat, superstition was the internet of the day, and when we couldn't cope we burned a witch or two. Democracy is very much a modern aberration which still struggles to find its feet from time to time.

The bottom line is this. We live on a very special and complex planet that clearly has to be managed as one system if we wish to survive. Enrico Fermi, the famous scientist, once asked "Where is everybody?" Looking at the infinite vastness of the universe with its billions and billions of stars, life he reckoned should be prolific in every galaxy. If true many civilisations could be millions of years older and far more advanced. But there has been no sign of extraterrestial visitors yet, hence his question.

And this presents a disturbing possibility. Civilisations evolve up to the point where technology advances beyond the capability and intelligence to manage the technology. At this point civilisations destroy themselves.

It has taken over four billion years for life to evolve to the point where you can read this on your computer. Perhaps it is time to do something about our software.

 

How do we "know" anything?

In principle knowledge is a layered process with each higher layer giving meaning to the layer below. Imagine you are a jungle native who has never been out of the wild. One day you find a ballpoint pen. However to understand it you would need to understand all about writing, paper, books, printing, book shops and the education that goes with it. And beyond this you would need knowledge and understanding of further layers of complexity involving politics, finance, economics and technology.

Everything you "know" is embedded in a higher more complex layer of either knowledge or superstition 

So without the knowledge of the next layer of complexity at some point you have to create it to make meaning. Perhaps our tribal native above might think the pen was a gift from the gods. Which of course is the exact technique we have used for thousands of years. Whenever we don't know something we simply insert a magical myth or story which keeps most people happy most of the time. The dangerous downside is that it also stops people thinking. (Look out for the bovine eyes.)

But now we have a crisis. The doomsday clock is ticking minutes from midnight and all the myths have lost their magic. We are missing the next important layer of knowledge.

This next layer is our biggest baddest black elephant – global leadership. This is clearly an oxymoron. There is no global leadership. We have national state leaders, but they are not global leaders. The most important knowledge layer which would give us logic and meaning at the country level below is just missing. It is no different from the middle ages when we were told the earth was flat. Instead we have created a world where all the black elephants are someone else's problem. This is our flat earth belief today.

Effectively we have one hundred and ninety six remedial delinquents with no teacher.

Dealing with the leadership black elephant - what can we actually do?

The Fermi question

If we are serious about Enrico Fermi's question of "Where is everyone?" then if we want both our planet and humans to survive we have to create a new layer of knowledge and action at the global level. The technology is already there but we are not. Most of us, understandably, assume that all the black elephants are somewhere else if they don't affect us directly. We need to take on the elephants, one bite at a time.

A simple global problem

Let's take something that we can all agree on. We are dumping millions of tons of plastic into the oceans every year. After time it breaks down into micro particles which the sea creatures consume, and then into nano particles which can pass directly through their skin. And all of this lands up on your plate. Surely only a criminally insane person would say that this is an acceptable long term strategy? And exactly what is our glorious band of 196 doing about it? Pretty much nothing. Zero. Which makes them collectively criminally insane in my view. With one exception.

The challenge is that we cannot fix this problem with one hundred and ninety six independent national leaders of dubious competence. So we have two choices. Fix it ourselves or give up. (Doing nothing is the same as giving up.)

Braveheart or coward. It's decision time

And now action time

The second decision is to take action. Wherever you are, speak up, read, learn, think, ask questions, debate in your family, your community and at work. If you are religious, challenge your priests. What exactly do the gods say about us managing the planet? Generally nothing at all. At least the current pope told us to stop using the planet as a public rubbish dump. Good for him!

Why so much silence from the rest?

If we raise the level of awareness and intelligence in every micro to macro sphere, intelligent action will follow. Here is a wonderful example. Kenya, a small and poor country, has just banned plastic country-wide. In my book they have just raised their intelligence one notch above the other 195.

Edmund Burke reminded us that "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." After four and a half billions of years of evolution, and the lonely possibility that we are the only intelligent civilisation within one hundred light years, if we do nothing to generate real global leadership, that would be the ultimate evil indeed.