Leadership: The Pyramid of Doom

Posting after a certain hour of the evening often leaves thoughts unfinished. Here is something I don't understand entirely: Group mentallity. I've always associated it with stupidity, or in fact it has always been for me the definition of stupidity. That is to surrender your will to others.
From my marketing studies I know that Affiliation is a basic human need. People need reference groups. That's okay, identifying with a group, whether it be artists, rock stars or emo pussies can be a powerful form of group expression.
Yet I must admit once you enter a certain strata of the general public I tend to find the groups people tend to affiliate with get bigger and blander until they effectively obscure themselves from all interest.
It may be regarded as the country town telephone conversation, to overhear one of these does things to the ear and brain. Talking about things of such little consequence and entertainment values one wonders how they could talk about them at all.
It's not that I have anything against country people, in fact since moving to the city I've discovered almost 93% of interesting people have moved here from somewhere else and 60% that somewhere else is the country.
But they are starved of information, you may say there's plenty interesting in any conversation a notted up ball of string might entertain an economist or mathematician for months. But I digress and I digress hard...
what I mean to say is the subscription of most people to common sense, common knowledge and common appearance.
I never thought I'd lose my ability to keep it real, but I've started arrogantly using the term 'white bread' even though I personally eat more white bread than multi-grain.
I think the fact that I've managed to immerse myself in a broad cross section of society to the degree I have to use this term means I'm keeping it realer perhaps than when I lived in IH.
Anyway one baffling mystery to me is the power of ACA and Today Tonight, they are quite the conundrum, the rate better the less informative their stories are. They can have people believing Chappelle Corby a white bread drug traffiker is innocent and David Hick's a confused and emotional man locked up in an UNCONSTITUTIONAL prison, with no charges, NO CHARGES... is guilty of treason. Which he obviously can't be because he hasn't been charged with treason.
Yet most people would probably vote this way. Yet there's obviously an undercurrant as well, there are no street protests to free Chappelle. There is no more money pooring into appeals.
There is however for David Hicks, there's also decent quality lawyers defending him, voluntarily. In fact they stepped up to prosecute the Government.
But it isn't just that I've heard ignorant opinions on, the most overwhelmingly depressing subscriptions aren't social injustices, they are far more mundane.

1. Overtime - Hard work will be rewarded. The most conventional wisdom of all with the least backing it.
2. Tennants have too many rights - I work every day doing activities of value to someone, I pay roughly 28% of the proceeds to some dude I don't know so I can live in a room he doesn't need. Arguably he is providing me with the service of a room and this is of value to society but I would argue it would be much more value to society if it where given to me who doesn't have somewhere to live and he could keep living in his house not working.
3. Public transport is useless I need a car - If public transport had the potential to make as much money for our economy as the car industry (which we pay taxes to support as well) you could bet it would be fantastic - you could even bet you wouldn't need a car.

And so on and so on.
Fact is everyone wants a piece, but not everyone is a leader. I read Freakonomics which had some important studies in it I'll give you the conclusions though - in terms of success at school it matters who parents are but almost not at all when it comes to what parents do.
In all studies money has not helped elect any candidates, votes don't follow money, money follows votes.

Companies look for leadership these days, everyone looks for leadership. Leaders can be good or bad. A leader I must admit may well be something you are or aren't.
What companies and individuals have alike in there desire for leadership is that they place stock in indicators not causes of leadership.
I'm pretty sure we all could agree we've been told various indicators we should aquire to get better jobs, like working for McDonalds, part time work, volunteer work, being school captain blah blah blah.
But these things don't cause leadership, they may indicate someone who is a leader.
I would suggest leadership is a relative thing too, all of us have some propensity to lead but it tends to be relative to the other members of the group.
A douchebag at your work for example may go home to be leader of a family of douchebags, their douchebag kids may even look up to and respect their douchebag parent.
But we all tend to bow down to a stronger leader, there's a price for everyone in finding someone older and more experienced to defer judgement to, again one of those affiliation needs.
Yet it's far more complicated than that, or simpler I don't know what I mean. In most countries the big leader has most appeal to the lowest common denominator. Democracy especially favors this outcome.
Brilliance can be alienating.
If the majority of people are average (which by definition we must be) what are the chances they will relate to someone brilliant?
None. Unless of course they feel threatened by someone else brilliant. This is what I like to call the 'he's a bully but he's our bully' it probably in early times and times of conflict led to feudal lords, someone who felt they owned all the social pyramid below them, and has in turn propagated brilliant people into popular imagination.
What surprises me is that a person will subjugate their will to that of another person in any context. Just give it up and toe the line. There's agreeing with someone (implicit cognitive process) and there's towing the line (no thought whatsoever) which is where most demand for leadership comes along in greater society.
It leads to gang mentality.
Honest Abe says: 'You can please All the People some of the time, or you can please Some of the people all the time, but you can't please All the people All the time.'

I would say:

'You can please some of the people, some of the time.' and leave it at that. If you can please someone all the time there's something wrong with that person.
Even the closest relatives have enormously divergent experiences so at some point you can hav a disagreement with your sibling (if you have one) why be loyal, unswervingly loyal to anyone.
From this basic human downfall erupts, religion, politics, office culture etc.

More thoughts later.