Creative Destruction- Sociopaths, Top-Down Systems & Bottom-Up Governance

It was the worst of times. It was the best of times.

We saw the worst unfolding on Capitol Hill last week; in Brexit: in Covid19; in populist, authoritarian governments rising around the world.

The best? Not much in the mainstream news right now, as we collectively attempt to heal the trauma and survive the hard times we’re experiencing. But beneath the surface, largely unreported, there is an incredible upwelling of amazing innovation and breakthroughs, and new generations rising who might reinvent what it means to be human, which means reinventing pretty much everything else.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. A Biden administration will buy us a little time to think more clearly and act more radically to reinvent our failing systems of government and governance. Those other populist and authoritarian governments are still in place for a while. And we need to heal.

The truth is, we’re just all fed-up with “government” and “democracy”, at different levels. There’s the fundamentalist, paranoid level which invaded Capitol Hill last week. Then there are those of us who have been experimenting with radically new ways of doing things for decades but lack the power and authority in the current system to really change anything substantial.