For this week’s post, I want to expand on the subject we talked about last week of being governed by zombies. Note that there is a big difference between being governed by zombies and being led by zombies. The latter is an oxymoron. Zombies are a group phenomenon. One person wants brains, next thing you know, everybody wants brains. Zombification happens when there are no leaders.
As it happens, I’ve seen the zombification process several times in my work career. Let me tell the story of one of the more memorable examples and how it’s related to a lack of leadership.
I’ll avoid names to protect the guilty, but let’s just say this was one of Australia’s largest companies. Like most corporations here, it has a quasi-monopoly on the market, which means it doesn’t have to really care what customers think. That’s an important caveat because the major political parties in western nations also have a monopoly on “the market.” Sure, they might lose an election, but they still get to sit on the opposition benches and earn a pay cheque.
This creates an environment where there is no real pressure to respond to the real world, and so the institutions gradually slide into senility. It’s not a coincidence that our elites these days behave as if they have dementia, lashing out at the public the way a dementia patient acts towards family members and carers.
Anyway, to return to the story, I’d heard rumours about how the IT department of this corporation was not a good place to work, so I was sceptical about taking the job. However, the people who interviewed me told me they were trying to reshape the way they operated and that my experience was a good fit. In addition, it was a six-month contract role, and the money was very good. So, I decided to give it a go. I was hired and placed on a new project that was just about to start.
It took me about three weeks to realise that the project was a total sham. Most of that time was me being in denial about what I was learning. I kept telling myself I must be missing something. The actual deliverables for the project were trivial, especially considering that a team of thirty people was supposed to build it. That would have been bad enough. But the truly incredible part was that most of the software had already been written in a past project. This project was about completing that work.
To take an analogy, imagine you’re a builder and you get hired to build a house. You rock up to the building site on day one to find that the house is already mostly built, there’s only some trivial bits and pieces to finish it off. Now imagine that there’s a team of thirty builders on site who are all doing something. What they are doing is mostly turning up to meetings and talking. In between meetings, they do some odd jobs that make it look like they are doing work.
Now, this could never really happen on a small construction site since any idiot can tell if a house is already built. But on a software project where everything is intangible, it’s much less obvious. Anybody with basic coding skills can figure it out, but software projects often have a lot of people without coding skills (including the coders!), and, most importantly, management very often does not have coding skills.
This last fact is the crucial one because it links us back to modern politics. California governor, Gavin Newsom, has been in the news this week for obvious reasons. There was a particularly revealing interview where he was standing on the street with a house burning down behind him and the reporter asked why the fire hydrants had no water. Newsom tried to avoid the blame saying it was the fault of the local authorities.
Now, if that’s true and Newsom is not responsible for the problem, why doesn’t he find the person who is responsible and make them explain themselves to the public? But that wouldn’t seem fair because fire hydrants were only one part of the problem. The fire was also caused by the state authorities who drained water reservoirs, the mayor who cut fire department funding, the environmentalist lunatics who stop forest management authorities from preventing the build-up of fuel on the forest floor, and a number of other factors.
The fact that all that is true only reveals why Newsom’s attempt to avoid responsibility is disingenuous. It’s the job of a leader to oversee all those independent developments and to realise that this combination of factors is going to lead to disaster. Otherwise, what is the point of having a leader in the first place? Gavin Newsom doesn’t get to pretend he’s a leader when things are going well and then not be one when disaster strikes. But, of course, he’s not alone. All our so-called leaders do this these days.
The same dynamic holds in a corporation. A software project has numerous different groups of experts working on it. The job of a leader is to make sure they are working together properly to produce an outcome. It is also the job of the leader to ensure the outcome is meaningful in the first place. But corporations rarely have leaders. They have managers.
Thus, the software project I was working on had nobody monitoring from above. This is a very common thing in large corporations. Management is always somewhere else. Just like politicians, they show up occasionally to make speeches.
As it turned out, there was a particularly memorable speech by a manager on the project I was working on. Just at the time when I had realised the whole project was complete bullshit, we had the official kickoff meeting. Some high-level manager showed up to give the introductory pep talk during which he uttered a line I’ll never forget: “We can move the economy with this project.”
This is such a beautifully crafted piece of bullshit you almost have to admire it. It is simultaneously meaningless while also sounding grandiose. It’s a classic thought-stopper. Of course, it was completely at odds with the reality on the ground. The “economy” is about the sale of goods and services. Our project was not going to produce any good or service. Again, I have to reassure readers that I am not exaggerating for effect here. This project was not going to deliver any good or service. There was no there there.
But that didn’t stop the appearance of a project from taking place. After our kickoff meeting, we got to “work.” In most IT teams these days, there are two common practices. One is to have a daily “standup” meeting in the morning where you say what you are working on. The other is to show that work is written on a small card that is placed on a board that tracks progress. This system exists in order to make clear who is working on what.
Now, I have said that this project was not going to produce a good or service. But there was something that very much looked like one as long as you didn’t ask any silly questions like, “Why would anybody want this?” or “What actual value is being created here?” It was the illusion of a product. It turns out that corporate projects can function just as well with the illusion of a product as with the real thing.
Those familiar with the Bible story of the golden calf will recognise the group psychology that was on display. At the start of each workday, we gathered around and worshipped our illusion. As if to make up for the fact that the work was completely pointless, there seemed to be enormous amounts of it. Our work board was filled with cards, and the standup meeting took more than 30 minutes to complete. Everybody was apparently very busy doing things. What they were doing and why they were doing it were never discussed. To ask such a simple question as “Why do we need that?” could have brought the whole house of cards crashing down.
If we remember the Bible story, the people begin worshipping the golden calf when Moses was away. The moral of the story is the zombification process happens when leaders go missing. That can mean the leaders are physically not present, as in the case of Moses. But it can just as easily happen when people who are nominally leaders fail to do their job, as in the case of Gavin Newsom.
Most of the work of leading is to remind people about the meaning and values that bind them together. If you’re a political leader, you have to reinforce the values of the nation. If you’re leading an IT project in a corporation, you have to reinforce the value of the product being created. Meaningless phrases like “We can move the economy,” are the opposite of leadership.
When viewed this way, we can see that there is a complete leadership vacuum across the entire West right now, which is why the zombies are out in force. Consider these unrelated news stories from just the last week:-
- Newsom avoided responsibility for the Los Angeles fires (Australian readers will remember when our then PM, Scott Morrison, pulled the exact same trick five years ago – “I don’t hold a hose, mate”).
- Mark Zuckerberg admitted that he censored Facebook posts about covid because the government told him to. He’s trying to weasel out of responsibility now that it is politically safe to do so, proof that he completely failed to lead when it mattered.
- There was talk of Biden giving a preemptive pardon to Fauci, thereby ensuring that he doesn’t have to even face the possibility of taking responsibility for his actions during covid
- Keir Starmer refused to hold an enquiry into the rape gangs, ensuring that he doesn’t have to even face the possibility of taking responsibility
This is, of course, the modus operandi of all our so-called elites these days. We don’t have leaders; we have managers. And so we end up worshipping golden calves, quite literally, since the only thing we stand for now is gold (money). The message couldn’t really be clearer at this point: either we find ourselves some leaders, or we’ll end up like Los Angeles.
Hey Simon,
Yeah, it’s a mess, and that’s a great example with what is going on in LA. Vision and values – what are these things again? It fascinates me that an area which apparently voted 90% democrat, is now requesting an official visit from the president elect. They wanted the dude allegedly with dementia, they should ask for him, he’s still in the job, apparently.
There’s also the self reinforcing problem that problems not faced, tend to escalate and lessons are never learned or implemented.
I’ll be curious to hear your views, but I’ve wondered for a while if the lack of an expression and/or defence of values, is perhaps because of a fear of creating winners and losers? Genuine leaders don’t fear becoming unpopular.
And yes, from my perspective, the so called environment activists who promote do-nothing, are a bunch of loonies. It’s notable that there is little to no support for the greens in the bush.
Cheers
Chris
Chris – that’s a good point. We’ve got leaders who want to pretend to be friends with everybody. The most common leadership metaphor throughout history is the father figure (the father of the nation, the founding fathers etc.) which implies the ability to apply discipline when required.
Heh. Look, there’s only so much incompetence that you can get away with until you totally lose legitimacy (or things simply fall apart physically) and someone else takes over. That someone else can be a Caesar, or an invading army, or what have you. But you cannot get away with it forever.
I find it – interesting – that countries that are falling apart internally are so busy lecturing countries half the world away. This, by the way, is precisely when they do pontificate about “values” (Democracy!, Rules Based Order!). Eh. How about doing something about your floods and fires (US), or your child rape gangs and freezing pensioners (UK)?
Irena – well, yes. Problem is that your ability to solve your own problems only works if your empire still makes a profit. Clearly the US empire is trading insolvent at the moment. That’s true financially and metaphorically.
Outer LA was always going to be cooked at some stage regarding fires. When I visited there I couldn’t believe they built some of the suburbs where they did, the topography and climate is insane, but I guess it was built off the back of super cheap local oil and this masked a lot of the inherent environmental issues.
It would be like Melbourne happily approving massive high class subdivisions in the Black Spur range. But at least there is water in the Yarra valley and the climate is usually quite moist, which can’t be said about Los Angeles.
Skip – seems that LA has not had many major fires though. What sort of trees are growing there? I heard they introduced eucalyptus in the 19th century, but I assume those are mostly decorative.
Hi Simon,
The eucalyptus trees growing around LA, were a gift from the Australian government a long time ago. I read somewhere that the eucalyptus trees had grown there for so long, that the locals believe them to be native to the area. The issue as far as I can comprehend vegetation matters there is that LA averages about 350mm of rain annually, whilst some surrounding areas get slightly more (maybe 100mm extra).
To say that amount of average rainfall in LA is sub optimal for growing trees is an understatement. It’s a low desert environment and probably can’t support so many people and/or vegetation without the river flows from elsewhere.
To put the rainfall into some perspective, 950mm fell here last year – and that’s about what I’d expect.
Cheers
Chris
Chris – exactly. Which is why I wonder what the actual fire risk is there. Seems like most of their fires are started by arson.
We don’t really appreciate how absurdly risky the Victorian bush is. If you just take the size of bushfires as a comparison, the 2019 fire was orders of magnitude worse than anywhere else. Victoria seems to have the perfect combination of enough rainfall to get significant growth in good years but not enough in dry years to stop it all burning down.
Hi Simon,
Spot on! As a culture, we happily take the wins, and yet loudly bemoan the losses. The longer I look at the forests and the general tree arrangements, the more I realise that as a culture we need to manage them for the worst years, not the average year, or even the best – but the very worst conditions which will be experienced sooner or later. For an example, you can keep ten large trees in a hectare, when you can sustainably feed and water ten trees in a hectare, in all conditions.
Take away all the super dry – out of place – vegetation in LA, and I suspect that the actual fire risk is still there, but any fires will be much smaller and far easier to prevent and extinguish. Pretty much everywhere on this continent has bushfires, even the deserts. Some of the biggest fires in Australia, are actually way out in the arid lands. The scale is off the charts, we just don’t hear about them.
Check out what happened in the 1974-75 summer, it was ten times larger than the most recent Black Summer 2019-2020: List of major bushfires in Australia.
Dude, they did things bigger in the 1970’s because that was 15% of the entire continental land mass.
It’s completely bonkers that we as a culture don’t take more preventative action.
Cheers
Chris
Chris – yeah, I’d say it’s more on a par with southern Europe and most of the fires there are put out by individuals defending the home, if I understand it correctly. The truly weird thing from the LA fires was that you had people walking around on the street while houses just burned to the ground around them. That would be impossible if you had eucalyptus trees in the area. So, yeah, it’s not just a matter of whether there’s a fire, it’s how much flammable biomass is in the area.
LA is in many ways a mirage (Hollywood, the people in general), but also it’s built off some truly enormous and impressive water works, which were possible because of the great black wealth that lay underground. So what I’m thinking is as California goes down the drain in terms of net energy, the ability to hold things back (fire, drought) is dissipating.
Northern California/Oregon is far more like Southern Vic, and has similar greater fire danger in the big forests.
Something that’s unique about certain spots here is the soil; fires are way worse in infertile areas. Lack of calcium especially is associated with more fire prone vegetation.
Let´s see how much worse it has to get until the majority wakes up to the fact that we are ruled by zombies. I am not hopeful that it happens any time soon, especially in Germany, where we are “treu bis in den Tod” (faithful until death). Most people I know behave like lemmings following the state propaganda, the more “educated” the worse.
Skip – none of which is helped by the fact that they hired a head of the water authority on almost twice the previous salary and clearly not because of her knowledge of water but because of her ideological commitments. Obviously there’s not enough arts faculties for these people to run and so now they’re leeching out of the universities and into essential public utilities, ironically much like a contaminated water supply. We need a word for that…ideological pollution?
Secretface – what’s your take on AfD? Are they likely to make any difference?
The AfD has multiple problems which seem to prevent them from forming a government at all:
1. the party lacks any charismatic and brave figure like The Donald. The leaders are as boring as their block party counterparts.
2. the party is branded as the reincarnation of the NSDAP all the time by the propaganda apparatus. In Germany, this is still very effective as nobody wants to be a Nazi.
3. the party is the strongest in the former DDR. As the “Ossies” are despised outside of the former DDR territory, that counts as another handicap to gain widespread support
I had some hopes that there would be some kind of populist coalition with the newly formed left-wing party BSW (which is based on a cult of personality for the leader Sahra Wagenknecht) but BSW also is under the Nazi spell and will never form a coalition with the AfD. So, until they get more than 50% of the votes, they will not be part of any government (state or federal).
It’s actually related to the point I made in this article. We need leaders, but everybody’s terrified of any real leader. Of course, the people in power, the bureaucrats and party hacks, benefits from the current system. They know that a real leader is the main threat to their power. So, another way to say it is, if we don’t find leaders who can get rid of the bureaucrats and apparatchiks, the system will just slowly bleed to death.
It’s funny how the current circumstances lead us all to cheer on the coming of the Caesars.
Parties like AFD, Reform in the UK and One Nation/Australia 1 here almost seem like controlled opposition to me. They gather all the patriots and many dissidents in one place and let them feel good about themselves, but never have a shot of doing anything policy wise to implement change. Australia and the UK make it basically impossible anyway due to our voting system that keeps Liberdee and Labordum perpetually in power.
Skip – there is something peculiarly distasteful about parliamentary democracy, which is even worse now with the public bureaucracy, a nauseous combination of mediocrity and corruption. Ultimately, all our gripes are basically the same ones Edmund Burke was making 250 years ago.
@Simon
Based on how the first half of the 20th century unfolded, I can to some degree understand why we are afraid of leaders. There is always a chance that you end with someone like Hitler who could blow up the system. Maybe this is preferable to the slow bleeding to death in sense of “Better an end with horror than horror without end.” I wonder if people in the Weimar Republic thought the same way.
It seems that I need to check out Edmund Burke. I have his “Reflections on the Revolution in France” in my book case but somehow did not start reading it until now. Maybe it is because it is a cheap reprint from Eastern Europe instead of a nice looking reprint bound in Cabra leather with gold embossing.
@Skip
I think that dissidents are currently waking up to the reality that they cannot change the current situation by voting for “conservative” parties (or maybe voting at all).
Secretface – true. But there were a number of great leaders among the “good guys” too and even they have been tarred with the same brush. Again, I think that’s simply because the people who profit off the system don’t want leadership, since it means they might actually be held responsible.
You’re right. Accountability is in low demand in our ruling class. That’s why they hate Trump. At least, his rhetoric implies a focus on accountability (e.g. Drain the Swamp).
The question is: what should we do to get rid of the zombies? There is a lot of talk but not much action. Should we recapture our institutions? Should we build new ones? Should we follow the Benedict Option and separate from the zombie death cult? Should we wait for the next Caesar or the second coming of Christ?
Well, the first step is to not let your brains be eaten. Anything after that is a bonus 😛
Hi Simon,
Always wise to avoid having one’s brains consumed by zombies. Especially those fast moving zombies, they’re a bit scary. You stand a bit of chance against the slow undead.
Skip had a good point too. The mineral content of the soils and trees makes a difference with fires. I’d observed first hand in the 2009 fires up in Kinglake that well established English oak trees had slowed the fire – the half of the tree facing the fire was burned, whilst the lee side was singed, and grew back first.
Even the local Blackwoods if well established and a bit separated from the eucalyptus trees, did better.
It’s a complicated story, which mostly gets ignored.
Cheers
Chris
Chris – That would be a grand work of “permaculture”. Could we transform the Victorian bush into something other than a death trap.
Shelter belts of oaks and willows do a good job of stopping fires but they need care from a fertility and water perspective.
Perhaps the better question is does anyone actually live in the bush anyway, and if they do, should they? I think bushfires only loom large in our national imagination because so many of our big cities and holiday spots (Sydney, Melbourne, Perth) are trapped in coastal locations with very large mountainous forest close by. Sydney in particular is spectacularly dangerous because of the high rainfall and very low fertility of many places there, which just screams flammable biomass.
A quick look at the settlement pattern of the inland will confirm that very little people live in the actual ‘bush’. Like pre colonial times, the majority of humans live on either the savannahs and grasslands of the riverine plains/valleys or the savannahs and rolling downs of the volcanic plains/plateaus. There isn’t much risk of many of these towns burning down (although a lot of them can certainly flood), and the only towns in really bad spots are usually only there because they were built on the back of mining ( parts of Bendigo are a disaster waiting to happen).
It’s probably the same story in the USA. William Albrecht pointed out the best parts of the country for large animals and humans are the mid continent areas rather than the eastern forests. So it’s no surprise the the biggest inland cities are located there (Chicago, Dallas).
Skip – Bendigo makes a nice case study. Is it possible to turn the area into a fertile one that wouldn’t be at risk of major fire? That seems to me to be an interesting application of the principles of permaculture. After all, we see what are purported to be success stories of turning parts of the desert green, why not turn the bush green too (real green, not “drab green and desolate grey” to use A.D. Hope’s phrasing). I’d be curious to know whether it would be possible and what it would take to do it (setting aside questions of economics).
Plenty have tried (including me). The problem with Bendigo and that box Ironbark country in general is the underlying geology is often brutal in terms of how the granite and quartz underlying the hills sort of pops out from the younger surrounding soil landscape and makes it very hard for trees to get their roots down in many spots on the gold country. It’s why the gold was originally so easy to get, the heavily eroded hills meant it was right in the surface.
Couple that with absolutely apocalyptic devastation from the mining. If you look at old photos of Bendigo during the gold rush it was a moonscape as every single tree was cut down to feed the mines. Any topsoil that was there then washed away straight down the gulleys and you can still see the effects downstream in the soil profile of the flood plain. It’s hard to fathom the destruction.
Taking all this into account it’s actually far easier to green the desert (I always laugh at these stories, just look at the Sunraysia district to see how easy it is if you just add water and fertility) than green our mining hills (valleys are starting to green again as they catch all the runoff), as sand is easier to work with than often what amounts to rock just under the surface, coupled with extreme nutrient imbalances and/or toxicities from human destruction.
Skip – interesting, and makes sense. Reminds me of a permaculture meeting I went to in Castlemaine once. I was asking the people about how their vegetable gardens were going. All seemed to be struggling. Not surprising really, you’ve got long, dry summers, frosty winters, and poor soils. At least with vegetables it’s plausible to just bring in the topsoil. Much harder with anything at scale.
Interesting point about the sand. I hadn’t thought of that, but it does seem like most success stories involve sandy environments. Even the old Findhorn stories from Scotland were on sand.