unleashing consequences

Path Breakers

The most audacious leaders often are the most flawed. These individuals draw attention because of their unceasing efforts, polarising policy prescriptions, frequently over-the-top criticisms of opponents, unpredictable, ‘path breaking’ styles. The path breakers (PBs) assume monumental roles in history because they are so determined and larger-than-life. They invariably want to discard the current context because they understand why the failure can be so much better under their guidance. Belittling of other mere conventional folks, PBs persistently attack their doubters while often making deals with rather odious members of the fringes of societies or political groups.

PBs rarely, if ever, concede their movements are synonymous with personal ambition for unfettered power. Hubris on their part makes that tough.

These PBs become the galvanising forces behind major movements, empowering their supporters to see into the void with the leader while advocating trajectories woefully short on details of how transformation will occur. Initial detail is good but further explanations on reconciling contradictions engender harsh rebuttals that the answer is to eradicate opposition.

The PBs also are often so extreme because one cannot create new position by emulating those who went before. That wouldn’t be as noteworthy nor would it leave open the prospect of decisively solving ‘how things end’ to paraphrase a quotation often ascribed to David Petraeus during the Iraq War. The complete idea was ‘Tell me how it will end.’ Doing what others did before, only better, would mean that things end relatively similar to where the PBs started but that is never sufficient for these grandiose folks.

The audacious proudly and decisively predict precisely how their paths, so rarely taken by most, can lead to an unquestionably better outcome. They belittle those who challenge their analyses. Almost invariably narcissistic, PBs draw people to the certainty by igniting a sense of vengeance and retribution for past treatment. These leaders promise an outcome unachievable by anyone else leading the movement, thus precluding other potential competitors who cannot see as brazenly or confidently as the path breakers.

Their movements often unleash factors and people far beyond the path breakers’ control. Inevitably, the polarising PBs ultimately confront the reality that pursuing the most extreme elements of a program or a goal empowers allies for convenience rather than for submission. These radicals genuinely seek not to reform but to destroy structures, values, institutions, and the existing contracts of human intercourse at the systemic level. Having a replacement is not often already clear.

The PBs not only lose control over their movements but almost invariably unveil their own weaknesses in the process of urging the movement forward. In showing they too have human foibles, the movement’s passion usually discards them in the detritus of the old because the end justifies the means, including creating collateral damage out of the leader.

But this rarely ends well for anyone involved.

Sound familiar? The truth is none of us control ‘how does this end’. And those actions can have profoundly important consequences for all.

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Be well and be safe. FIN