You’ve lived beyond your relevance—
Another song, another age,
Another line while in a trance,
Routine by prompt, an empty stage.
The art lives past the life, and all
They want is what you did when young,
The bright first thing, the curtain call,
When fireworks flew and bells were rung.
Yet still the audience appears.
The props are now collectible,
But all creation’s in arrears,
And art is imperfectible.
A shiver slices to your core.
Your fans will get the eulogy
Before you end the trilogy
You started many years before:
A snowball with a granite shard,
The encore to an emptied hall,
The dance all done, the classics played.
Back then it was not so hard
To be the major act, enthrall
Your fans, at least the ones who stayed.
A fad will rise, a bubble pop
With the slightest touch. The greatest hits
Came out before you called it quits,
And “timeless love” was set to stop.
You won the day but lost the war,
Remembered as the one who did
That thing, you know, the thing he did,
The thing he does for one more tour,
The thing he did, the thing he did before.
Feature Image: The Chimera, by Louis Jean Desprez, 1777-1784. Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears’ – it takes a lot more than these kind of words today to get listened to, followed, and to exert influence and effectiveness over time. Effective change leaders remove barriers to employee success. Leaders of unsuccessful change tend to focus on results, and more often than not employees don’t get the supports they need for change. ‘Process’ and ‘people’ components of leadership are both equally critical, and therefore hard to prioritise since in reality they run parallel.
A 360-Degree Leader
The qualities that a 360-degree leader possesses, as per John Maxwell’s work, include adaptability, discernment, perspective, communication, security, resourcefulness, maturity, endurance, and the ability always to be counted on. This list is certainly not exhaustive but does capture the essentials.
The difficulty in generalising this skillset is that they can differ across markets, crises, industry, and perspectives in specific contexts. For such individuals, who are or aim to become 360-degree leaders, there is also a form of assessment that provides feedback in which their skills, effectiveness and influence as an executive, leader or manager are evaluated. This is an effective process in organisations to give leaders clear feedback from their peers, employees and managers. At the same time, this is mostly done in context, e.g. how any process is conducted for a Human Resources director would differ from Sales Leader or Communications Head. Both the process and feedback are tailored to roles and contexts.
(a) Influence
The role of influence is critical to leadership. It is not only about ensuring compliance, but also the commitment essential to drive change, and therefore includes the ‘people’ part of the change most. At the same time, looking at wider stakeholder expectations today, developing a ‘reward culture’ also goes a long way.
In particular, when the immediate fire of a crisis is over the leaders must reflect on who rose to the occasion, who struggled and why. Several organisational roles will change post-crisis and therefore leaders can strategise who they want to be at the table both during and after the crisis to head to the new normal.
During periods of business-as-usual, influence can shape and affect long-term strategy making, talent acquisition and retention mechanism as well as seek knowledge and business partners as fitting.
In some cases, where exercising command is difficult, since leaders are working in peer groups and therefore the dynamic is different, i.e. not the typical leader-follower setting, influence comes out to be the strongest and the most effective trait that an individual can demonstrate. This is because it involves leading across levels, including peers involved in the same stage.
(b) Operations and Strategic Management
The effectiveness of good leaders can be demonstrated firstly by mobilising realistic and time-bound goals; secondly, laying out clear objectives and setting up the deliverables; thirdly, by building high-performance teams; fourthly by creating a risk-resilient company culture; fifthly by creating organisational knowledge building; and finally by creating a culture of value.
For sure, however, these are not magic bullets, nor meant to address the challenges or promote business growth overnight. The strategies and planned action that leaders take within firms, whether a large corporation or Small or Medium-Sized Enterprise (SME), would be largely determined by the stage of growth where a company find itself at a given point in time. In addition, building a reward and trust culture would make employees more confident in making decisions and not being risk-averse.
Besides effectively managing operations, business development, consolidation or a strategic integration of mergers and acquisitions, new research by McKinsey shows that leaders have the following six broad functions: Aspiration; Inspiration; Imagination, Creativity, Authenticity; and Integrity. When it comes to either managing culture at the workplace or leading others through crisis, leaders also need to develop the right mindset based on introspection and self-awareness, which are equally critical skills. Several studies by Sloan and HBR show that it is the mindset, adaptiveness and change that leads to growth and, at times, survival.
(c) Leading through Crises
A crisis is very often systemic in nature and call therefore for solutions that are not quick fixes. In the business world, depending on the nature and scale of a crisis which can make or break a business in the medium-to-long-term needs careful identification and scrutiny after early detection signs become evident. Over the years, studies have evidenced that there is a strong correlation between organisational culture, learning, market orientation, the degree of risk and resilience embedded within the firms. The role of leadership is undeniably paramount.
Most often, it requires that rare ability to dive and drive through the unknown against the known patterns from the past. Leaders should gain new insights, work through new patterns, and determine timely and effective responses to any crisis. For example, during the pandemic, the primary function of leaders of large or high-growth firms was driving innovation, exploring new markets, and enhancing market share.
When the pandemic struck, the immediate focus shifted to reducing costs while maintaining the essential liquidity! Most firms, big and small, faced supply chain and logistical impediments, downsizing the firms and other operational challenges on a daily basis. All of this while working through health and safety issues, managing remote working and also offering empathy to employees and their families.
d) Talent Recognition and Retention
During team meetings it is a good practice to delegate to the right people and establish ‘who’s who’ and ‘who’s doing what’ to avoid confusion and overlap of roles. Leaders need to break through the inertia for business continuity today, while increasing the odds of mid-to-long-term success by focusing on the few things that matter most. Above all they need to listen to advisors and smart people to seek insight and information from diverse sources, and not only from in-group sources. Effective leaders always extend their antennae across the diverse ecosystems in which they operate, while also creating a culture of accountability and transparency during tough times.
e) Leading Change
Most research on organisational change, cognitive flexibility of both leaders and followers, and also managing fast change illustrates a necessary connection between the ‘process’ and the ‘people’ part of the change. These 3Cs that unite effective change leadership are a) Communicate – leaders and followers need a continual discussion on the larger purpose of the change and how it would connect to the organisational values, and more importantly establish the purpose of change by focusing on ‘what’ and the ‘why’. B) Collaborate – aligning organisational values with personal values is something that effective leaders constantly strive for; we can nonetheless admit that doesn’t always happen. It is a level above when cross-cultural leaders bring people together to plan and execute change going beyond barriers of borders and boundaries. They should also include employees in decision making and thereby in a way solidifying their commitment to change while promoting inclusivity. C) Commit – research shows that leaders who negotiated a change successfully are resilient and persistent, and willing to step outside their comfort zone. On the contrary, unsuccessful leaders failed to adapt to challenges, started a blame culture while creating a toxic workplace environment, and were impatient with a lack of results.
f) Leading Remote and Hybrid Work
With hybrid working becoming increasingly formalised, leading a remote workplace becomes a key priority. This sudden change in the working environment comes with pros and cons and is new to all employees. So they need leadership to guide them through the transition.
If your business has employees with more remote working experience than you, let them take charge. Feed off their expertise and appoint them to your business’ remote leadership team. This is the time for them to step up.
Have communication plans ready. Many employees will have an area where they can relax and have a quick chat with colleagues, and a separate area where they can discuss pressing work issues.
Businesses can recognise their ‘at-risk clients,’ who can cope with this eventuality to a certain extent. Similarly, losing staff can have the ripple effect on a small business of losing a clients, leading to a loss of revenue. A lack of profitability, in turn, leads you to have to make hard decisions as to which members of staff are worth retaining. Maintaining a ‘punishment’ or ‘fear’ culture makes people afraid of taking decisions and being accountable for their actions.
Leading Dynamic Capabilities in SMEs
Research into leadership shows how significantly they can affect the morale and confidence of staff (or followers). This will depend on the extent to which leaders perceive mistakes either to be opportunities for learning or leads to them brutally nudging their followers, thereby damaging the self-worth of the latter.
As Sir Richard Branson once said, ‘clients do not come first, employees come first. Take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.’ Leadership, by its nature, can cultivate the foundation of a culture that empowers employees to achieve the company goals and allows you to recognise how vital each of their contributions are to furthering those goals. At the same time, the pandemic showed how important it is for a leader to diversify efforts and strive to innovate for future success.
The core of any leadership’s role is to develop dynamic capabilities that allow organisations to respond and adapt effectively to rapid changes to the external environment. This includes sensing opportunities and threats, seizing opportunities, and transforming the organisation accordingly. This is particularly important for SMEs who may not have the scale or resources of larger firms but can excel through agility and innovation.
By embedding a culture of learning, continuous improvement, and resilience, leaders can position their SMEs not only to survive crises but emerge stronger. This involves empowering employees at all levels to take initiative, encouraging experimentation and calculated risk-taking, and maintaining open communication channels to gather feedback and insights.
Inherent Volatility
Markets today are defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Thus, leadership can no longer be confined to positional authority or tactical decision-making. It requires a 360-degree orientation, one that integrates strategic foresight, operational discipline, emotional intelligence, and which exerts influences across hierarchies and functions. Effective leaders today must navigate crises not just by reacting to disruption but by proactively reimagining systems, realigning cultures at every level of the organisation.
For SMEs in particular, the imperative is clear. Developing dynamic capabilities is no longer a luxury, but a strategic necessity. These capabilities, whether it’s cultivating a learning mindset or institutionalising innovation, allow small firms not only to survive shocks, but to emerge stronger and more competitive to shifting market demands.
Crucially, leadership in this context is not merely about managing transitions; it is more about stewarding transformation, mobilising collective purpose, creating meaning in moments of ambiguity, and holding the long view while delivering in the present.
As Peter Drucker rightly opined: ‘The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, it is to act with yesterday’s logic.’
Feature Image: A highway sign discouraging travel in Toronto, March 2020
On Tuesday last I had an email from the Chancellor of UMass Lowell, where I sometimes teach:
“I am sorry to let you know that this changed over the weekend. As part of the university’s proactive effort to support and inform our international students, the International Students & Scholars Office (ISSO) has been regularly monitoring the federal database used to monitor and track international students. On Saturday, the university discovered that federal authorities had revoked the visa and terminated the immigration status of a UMass Lowell undergraduate student.”
It seems U.S. politics are circling the drain. The U.S. Constitution, I had thought, was designed to prevent the ‘Mad King’ phenomenon, but it turns out that that depended on everyone–executive, legislators, judiciary–playing by rules which, it seems, aren’t rules after all, only habits and customs.
The U.S. has done irreparable harm to its power in the world.
Some Canadians are inclined to jeer at the U.S. and its embarrassment on the world stage. That could become a dangerous habit. Instead let’s be honest and clear-sighted on the strengths and vulnerabilities within our own system of government and our own societal & cultural norms. We need to support leaders who understand Canada’s position within the world and have strategies to strengthen it as the rules of global trade are rewritten. Alliances, military and (is in trade agreements) economic, are not love-fests, but strategic partnerships.
I am uncomfortable when some Canadians get all teary–the other side of jeering–about how much and how blindly they have ‘loved’ the U.S.. The goal of any Canadian government must be to strengthen Canada’s position in the world, with the understanding that no economy or society in a smart, fluid, and connected world is or should be “independent”, and that a system that works to benefit of all players is best for us. (The devil is in the details, of course.)
I admire Prime Minister Mark Carney–the little I know of him– (three Co. Mayo grandparents!)–but he is a new type of Canadian PM: an internationally-minded elitist technocrat. Effective leadership in our decentralized democratic confederation will also demand other, quite different skills. PM Carney is the man of the hour now, though, which is his good fortune and, I hope, Canada’s. Like WSC in 1940, the man is meeting the moment, perhaps.
I respect the measured, sensible language that Prime Minister Carney and Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly use. They accept that the U.S. “Administration” (I think “Régime”, with its suggestion of autocracy, ossification, and damage, is a better noun) can cause immense trouble. They accept the necessity of accommodation, but in their speeches and interviews they have maintained a firm tone and offered clear warnings that somethings are not negotiable.
A good relationship with the U.S. will always be in Canada’s interest. At certain times such may not be possible, but we should work to keep those breaks as short as possible, while maintaining a clear awareness of our own interests, and being willing to sometimes pay a price for standing firm…
Right now, many smart people in the U.S. – undergraduates on student visas, scientists and researchers working at the highest levels – are feeling vulnerable. Canada ought to be reaching out to these victimized people with offers not just of asylum, but of freedom–to study, learn, research, contribute (and freedom to protest Israel’s project in Gaza, though that might be as career-threatening in Canada as in U.S.). Intellectual immigrants would give an invaluable, game-changing boost to the knowledge base and skill set of the nation. Just like the thousands of émigré Hungarians who sparked up Montreal and Toronto starting in the 1950s, and other waves of immigrants before and after that…
To offer people in flight from the U.S. educational and research ecosystems place to land, Canada needs to commit to developing the quality, scale, and scope of research in Canadian universities, which have been, for most of our history, second-rate. It will be hard to beat the Chinese in this area, but we can try. (The multitude of Chinese students and graduate students I’ve encountered as Harvard and UCLA this year–suggests that U.S. schools are still a powerful draw globally … up until January 2025, anyway). Many faculty, researchers and students in U.S. schools and institutions feel furious, scared, and – rightly – vulnerable. Canadian schools and institutions should be making offers, backed with serious support for studies and research. As an editor and writing coach, I work with tenured faculty in the highest reaches of Ivy League acclaim and renown who feel censored, threatened, and sickened by the atmosphere. Their world-renowned institutions are poisoned by fear.
Can Canada make an all-out effort to scoop international research and teaching talent from U.S. universities? That will require the federal govt stepping in and up. Canada’s universities are for the most part significantly underfunded. And there are aspects of the U.S. university system, particularly the great public schools like U of Michigan, UTA, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, UMass, U of Wisconsin, UVA, OSU, etc. that Canadians ought to take a closer look at. (Beyond the NCAA football and basketball seasons!) These are large public research institutions with global reach. Asking Canadian undergraduates to pay more, while offering them ready access to scholarships and loans might be step one in improving the landscape for scholarship and research in Canada. I can’t think it’s a bad thing to ask people to invest more deeply in their own education. And I’ll shut up now.
As a barrister I am given to quoting from Shakespeare’s plays in closing speeches. This may seem pretentious, but I find his acute observations on the human condition continue to speak to juries, and judges. He remains highly relevant to legal education, and indeed the practice of law. I would go so far as to say that a good knowledge of his work provides a real advantage to any practitioner.
William Shakespeare’s Birthplace.
Stratford-upon-Avon
Recently, I was delighted to have the opportunity to appear in a rare in-person trial in Royal Leamington Spa, which is in Shakespeare’s home county of Warwickshire. I recalled John Betjeman’s poem about dying in the town, whose name conjures images of Bertie Wooster on a bucolic retreat:
oh, you know that the stucco is peeling.
Do you know that the heart will stop?
From those yellow Italianate arches
Do you hear the plaster drop?
Times have changed. To my chagrin, Leamington Spa is not actually a spa town – any longer at least – but is just a short hop from Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, where I stayed for the duration of proceedings.
Thehouse where Shakespeare was born was previously an ale house and is now a museum. Nearby, in The Holy Trinity Church, lies his grave, which contains a stern warning that his bones should remain in situ.
Unfortunately, the well-preserved Anne Hathaway House was closed for the duration of my stay, but the exterior and gardens were at least visible. Likewise, the complex of theatres – home to the Royal Shakespeare Company – were also no go in this bleak period for the performing arts.
Shakespeare’s era was marked by recurring plague, tyranny and civil strife, themes according to Stephen Greenbelt’s Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics (2018) the Bard approached obliquely, for fear of persecution. Under conditions of tyranny, public art may still be an outlet for mockery of the powerful. Thus we find in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
In what follows I recite some of Shakespeare’s lines that inform my understanding of our present world.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be. (Polonius, Hamlet)
In the light of the bailing out of toxic banks – socialism for the mega rich – and the infliction of austerity, being indebted now brings serious dangers. With so much crime linked to social exclusion and poverty, it is as if we are returning to an era of Debtors’ Prisons, ubiquitous in Shakespeare’s day.
The late David Graeber’s excellent book Debt: the First 5,000 Years(2011) precisely illustrates how debt, and now student debt in particular, is creating a permanent rentier class with no educational outlet for upward mobility, and low prospects of home ownership, at least for those who don’t have access to the bank of Mum and Dad.
The power of bankers in contemporary society should lead to consideration of The Merchant of Venice, which, apart from dreadful antisemitism – Shakespeare often expressed the prejudices of his day – provides a searing attack on the sin of usury, the existence of which is conveniently ignored by far right Christians today.
In the play, Portia (Bassano’s betrothed who finds himself in a spot of bother after taking on a debt on unfavourable terms from Shylock) presents herself in court, disguised as a male lawyer, and pleads for mercy against the enforcement of the bond, which is the extraction of a pound of flesh.
Shylock and Portia (1835) by Thomas Sully
In a famous passage she argues:
The quality of mercy is not strained, it dropped as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed, it blessed him that gives, and him that takes, tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown, His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, the attribute to awe and majesty, wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings: But mercy is above this sceptred sway, it is enthroned in the heart of kings, it is an attribute to God himself; and earthly power doth then show likes god’s, when mercy seasons justice…
Shylock responds with a narrow vision of justice that sadly is all too familiar in our time of dispossessions:
I crave the law, the penalty and forfeit of my bond.
Portia then shifts ground and cleverly argues that the bond should be enforced but:
The bond gives thee there no jot of blood – The words expressly are a pound of flesh … Then take they bond, take thou thy pound of flesh, but in the cutting it, if thou dost shed one drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods are by the laws of Venice confiscate … For as thou urge justice, be assured, thou shalt have justice more than thou deserts.
In this morality tale, therefore, Shylock – unlike our contemporary bankers in most cases – is forestalled in his extraction of the pound of flesh. If only such arguments against the extraction of financial flesh were available to barristers defending the disposed today.
Three daughters of King Lear by Gustav Pope
The True Criminals
So who are the true criminals today? Shakespeare offered an answer through the medium of the wise Fool in Kind Lear:
What art mad. A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears see how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark in thine ear, change places, and handy dandy, what is the justice which is the thief.
Governments bail out Goldman Sachs and other banks. There are no repercussions for their reckless lending, save in Nordic countries like Iceland. But If Jean Valjean steals a loaf of bread, they pursue him to the ends of the Earth to extract the pound of flesh.
Similarly, if you become a whistle-blower and reveal the machinations of the powerful such as Julian Assange, then you are turned into a criminal, while Messrs Blair, Kissinger, and indeed Varadkar, are never forced to face the music.
Amanda Knox
The lady doth protest too much, methinks, (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2).
Stacey Schiff’s Witches: Salem 1692 (2015) observes how the hysteria of witch hunts appear to represent a sublimation of pre-existing grievances, and envy. This remains the case for modern day witch hunts such as that directed against Amanda Knox, which have been highlighted by the Innocence Project.
The book makes clear that children can be manipulated into holding false belief, even to the extent that they incriminate themselves. False allegations are also linked to hysterical parents or authority figures. As occurred in Amanda Knox’s case, young minds are easily turned to mush by persistent questioning, fear of authority, and interaction with nefarious police officers and social workers.
This is what is referred to as falsely implanted memory syndrome, on which subject Elizabeth Loftus and Maggie Bruck are experts.
Categorising someone as a witch or a warlock also reflects jealousy if that person holds a gift you do not possess. Seen in Freudian terms, it is a form of transference of perceived inadequacies.
All that glisters is not gold. (The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene 7)
This zeitgeist is one of post-truth amorality, a phenomenon with long antecedents. In King Lear we hear that ‘a scurvy politician seems to see the thing thou does not’; while Henry VI speaks of: ‘Stuffing the ears of men with false reports’, which seems curiously relevant to Covid Times.
Purveyors of nonsense and incomprehensible prose – the structuralists and post-modernists who took over the universities – represent a movement, or grouping, united in their rejection of universal values. Relativism leads to the dismissal of evidence, rationality, science, rigour, precision and all the integrative forces that tie society together, as Noam Chomsky has observed: ‘if I am missing something, then show me what it is, in terms I can understand.’
The first point to note about the post modernists nonsense is that it has encouraged a distrust of the truth and an atmosphere of looseness and imprecision, wherein any old argument, or moral position, is accorded equal weight.
In 2005 the lateDavid Foster Wallace observed that this created an epistemic free-for-all in which any truth is seen from the vantage of perspective and agenda.
Relativistic and structuralist ideas such as the indeterminacy of texts, alternative ways of knowing and the instability of language fed into Trump and his aides saying that every word he utters should not be taken literally. Just as a text by Derrida could contradict itself, similarly Trump can jump from one inconsistency to the next.
The work of The Innocence Project is littered with examples of perjured evidence, false and fabricated claims and cognitive and confirmation bias by experts or pseudo experts, which have led to wrongful convictions. All too many innocent people are incarcerated on the basis of lies. With the embrace of subjectivity, we are celebrating opinion over knowledge, feelings over facts.
Confirmation bias applies where people rush to judgment, and give into their prejudices, rather than evaluating evidence.
According to Evan Davies in his recent book Post Truth, one aspect of all this bullshit is a desire to believe something unreasonable to be true. Pope Francis sagely remarked that ‘There is no such thing as harmless disinformation: trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences.’
There is no such thing as harmless disinformation; trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences.
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3)
In general, social media is weaving a web of deceit and destroying the social fabric through lies, disinformation, smears, and character assassination. Pierre Omidyar a founder of eBay argued that the monetization and manipulation of information is rapidly tearing us apart.
Trolls and bots were unleased by Trump, Bannon, and Cambridge Analytica to spread disinformation in the U.S presidential election, undermining democratic institutions and fact-driven debates.
Now the social media platforms have moved on to shilling for Big Pharma – laying the ground for a Screen New Deal – while shutting down alternative assessments of the pandemic, and unprofitable treatments.
It leads me to an unhappy conclusion that we increasingly developing a generation of technocratic fascist, selfish, materialistic ultra-conformists receptive to post-truth deception. The silos they occupy reinforce their prejudices. It is less important now to establish the truth than to ask whose side you are on.
As Cicero, a minor character in Julius Caesar remarks:
Indeed, it is as strange, disposed time but men may construe things after their fashion clean from the purpose of things themselves.
Lies in fact have become intrinsic to commercial and business interaction. In The People of the Lie(1983) Scott Peck contends that Evil is untruth, undermining life and liveliness. Such people operate by covert means. Evil people, Peck argues, scapegoat others, and cover up their misdeeds. They prevent the rest of us from making informed choices. Evil is also linked to a self-image of respectability and, as Peck defines it, the exercise of coercive power, often by authority figures. Evil is also surprisingly obedient to authority.
In contrast, in times of stress those who genuinely good people, even in times of acute stress, do not desert principles.
Hannah Arendt presaged our Brave New World.
The ideal subject for totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (standards of thought) no longer exists.
Cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war, (Mark Antony, Julius Caesar)
The film, Wag the Dog witnesses the beginning of a fake war. Today, apart from military engagements that are generally played out on our television screens – such as Iraq and Afghanistan – there are new types of fake wars. The War on Drugs is a smokescreen that obscures failure to deal with the root causes in poverty and austerity. Now the war on the virus – a disproportionate reaction to a significant but not overwhelming public health crisis – has generated unprecedented panic.
People are told to comply or face gruesome death. But how safe are we really in these circumstances? We will not be safe in authoritarian police states with restrictions on liberty, freedom of movement, privacy and associational or community ties. Nor will we be necessarily safe from a plethora of hastily tested pharmaceutical products, enforced by so-called vaccine passports.
How to subjugate the world population? Create a hyper real sense of emergency. Engender panic, leading to compliance and deference
Should we disassociate ourselves from the unvaccinated? Even putting it in these terms shows how admen dominate the discourse.
The disproportionate response to the pandemic represents a fascist creep. People are desensitized to loss of liberty once they are in fear of their lives, and increasingly dependent on the state for the pile of gruel it so generously provides, having removed any prospect of employment for hundreds of thousands in precarious work.
Meanwhile, the corporate law firms and mega rich have won big in our new version of disaster capitalism usingModern Money Theory to oil the chains of patronage.
Thus, whether centrally orchestrated, or more likely arising out a coalition of vested interests, and made possible through an increasingly uneducated, desperate and compliant population, COVID-19 has brought us the Shock Doctrine par excellence.
Procession of Characters from Shakespeare’s Plays. Artist unkown.
The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones. (Mark Anthony, Julius Caesar)
The problem of evil in our times is embodied in extremism, fundamentalism, draconian laws, high consumerism, and the negation of the rule of law. Today, unselfish communal behaviour go unrewarded, while the innocent are framed.
What is left of compassion, sincerity, truth, community, and optimism? Well at least we can still find it in the poetry of Shakespeare.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed.
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owls.
Nor shall death brag thou wander in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’s:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Put simply, love conquers all. Or should. The Bard of Avon has much to say in these troubled times.
Featured Image: Lear and Cordelia by William Blake.
The first point to note about the post modernists nonsense is that it has encouraged a distrust of the truth and an atmosphere of looseness and imprecision, wherein any old argument, or moral position, is accorded equal weight.