leadership for Libertarians
As Leader of the Libertarian Party of Canada it is my job to
be the public face of the party and assume the role of Prime Minister if our
party forms government. My formal title of Leader is kind of flashy and it’s an
honor to hold this position, but it isn’t nearly as important as the job I
share with everyone reading this and that is leadership.
We all know Leaders who aren’t leaders and we also know
leaders who have no official title or organizational authority. It is the small
“l” leaders that make organizations effective, that inspire action, that change
the world. Today I want to discuss how we can up our leadership game and become
more effective leaders and how this relates to creating the kind of change we
want to see in the world around us as libertarians who are also Libertarians.
The Purpose Driven Life
I think that far to many people view the pursuit of
happiness as chasing a sustained feeling of joy, or immediate gratification, or
finding a safe space devoid of any challenge. As a firefighter/paramedic I’ve
spent over two decades picking up people pursuing that type of happiness and can
tell you it doesn’t do a body or soul any good. Those people have made
themselves slaves in almost every sense of the word.
Those people aren’t likely reading this article, but those
are the people that need liberating the most. In many ways that corrupt pursuit
of happiness is what’s led to big government. I define happiness as the conscious
awareness that I am living my life purpose. Purpose is the motivating spark
that causes us to act consciously in the world and create change (aka leadership).
A purpose driven life can have periods of joy, pleasure and love but also
periods of extreme hardship, sadness, frustration, hatred and anger. A purpose
driven life is a life fully lived committed to something bigger than ones self.
I assume that people reading this share a similar life
purpose to me. You want to see a world with more liberty and you are determined
to do something about it. I have disliked big government and been a bit of a
liberty activist for over a decade now, however, I had never really concretized
advancing liberty as a life purpose in my heart and mind. Evidence that I hadn’t
made a commitment to advancing liberty was everywhere. I would spend inordinate
amounts of time trolling statists online, and engaging in debates where I made
other people look foolish. This type of activity gave me hits all sorts of
immediate gratification but it wasn’t serving any kind of purpose.
This all changed for me when, as a firefighter, I found
myself lost, alone, in the pitch black of the basement of a house that was on
fire tangled up in debris with an unbearable heat rising rapidly. I knew I was
going to die within minutes and I had a flood of regrets about all the things I
had left undone and unsaid. That motivated me and I found a way out and
survived. I emerged from that fire driven by purpose and it changed my life and
I am so grateful.
The fact that I had to almost die to get serious about
living a life of purpose is kind of embarrassing, but I think it can help most
people clarify their life’s purpose to remember that they are going to die
(memento mori). I often imagine my funeral. Who will attend? What will they
say? What will my life have meant to my children, my wife, the world? I
encourage you to concretize your life purpose, remind yourself regularly what
your purpose on the Earth is, and make all your goals and actions congruent with
that purpose. Purpose turns trolls into lions.
All Systems Are
Self-Organizing
Its not enough to just have purpose. We have to have an
accurate mental model of reality or we are condemned to impotence. This can be
difficult in a world where our view of reality is warped by a matrix of
language that turns armed extortion into a virtue called “taxation”. Being an
effective leader requires having a clear understanding of how a system is held
together. We can’t be effective change agents if we are working on a straw man
we’ve built in our heads. One of the straw men I had built suddenly dissolved
while I was working on my graduate degree.
My major project involved studying how leadership manifested in self-organizing systems, specifically teams of firefighters, and I was having a difficult time differentiating a system that could be described as top-down versus a system that could be described as self-organizing. I noticed that teams that had a formal Leader who was autocratic tended to be more chaotic; fires would take longer to put out, there was less organization between team members, and dangerous unintended conditions tended to emerge more often. However, this was not always the case, sometimes an informal leader stepped up and served the needs of the team and the team came together and got the job done effectively despite the Leader being an autocrat.
The difference between these two teams had less to do with the Leader and more to do with the constituent team members. In one team the constituent members viewed the Leader as the ultimate authority to be feared, on the other team the constituent members viewed the same type of autocrat as a schmuck to be ignored. Put another way, two teams could have the exact same Leader engaging in the exact same behavior and they could show up as completely different systems. The primary determination of how a team showed up had more to do with the character and belief system of the individuals on each team than it did with the Leader.
America was formed when libertarians picked up arms and drove off the Red Coats. They had liberty inscribed across their hearts and minds and would not tolerate an autocrat. Kim Jong Un wouldn’t have survived 5 minutes in 1776 America, yet he is worshipped as a deity in modern day North Korea. If North Korea and 1776 America swapped citizens but left the same government and bureaucracy in place it is my contention that you would see dramatic changes in those institutions in short order.
My major project involved studying how leadership manifested in self-organizing systems, specifically teams of firefighters, and I was having a difficult time differentiating a system that could be described as top-down versus a system that could be described as self-organizing. I noticed that teams that had a formal Leader who was autocratic tended to be more chaotic; fires would take longer to put out, there was less organization between team members, and dangerous unintended conditions tended to emerge more often. However, this was not always the case, sometimes an informal leader stepped up and served the needs of the team and the team came together and got the job done effectively despite the Leader being an autocrat.
The difference between these two teams had less to do with the Leader and more to do with the constituent team members. In one team the constituent members viewed the Leader as the ultimate authority to be feared, on the other team the constituent members viewed the same type of autocrat as a schmuck to be ignored. Put another way, two teams could have the exact same Leader engaging in the exact same behavior and they could show up as completely different systems. The primary determination of how a team showed up had more to do with the character and belief system of the individuals on each team than it did with the Leader.
America was formed when libertarians picked up arms and drove off the Red Coats. They had liberty inscribed across their hearts and minds and would not tolerate an autocrat. Kim Jong Un wouldn’t have survived 5 minutes in 1776 America, yet he is worshipped as a deity in modern day North Korea. If North Korea and 1776 America swapped citizens but left the same government and bureaucracy in place it is my contention that you would see dramatic changes in those institutions in short order.
Viewing the world and political systems as self-organizing
helps explain why changing Leaders does very little to change systems. Bush,
Obama, and Trump are as much slaves to the system as the rest of us and, while
the rhetoric may be different, the system will continue on its trajectory. Our
system is comprised of institutions within institutions, bureaucracies within
bureaucracies all held aloft by the aggregate of beliefs (delusional and
otherwise) held in the brains of the systems individual constituents.
Trump can claim resounding success if he simply continues with Obama’s policies and brags about the mass deportations already occurring, rebrands the bombing of the Middle East as “crushing ISIS”, calls Obamacare something else, and markets already existing protectionist policies as his. Nothing changes but the rhetoric because that is all the American people really demand.
Trump can claim resounding success if he simply continues with Obama’s policies and brags about the mass deportations already occurring, rebrands the bombing of the Middle East as “crushing ISIS”, calls Obamacare something else, and markets already existing protectionist policies as his. Nothing changes but the rhetoric because that is all the American people really demand.
This is important because our perspective about how systems
work determines how we go about trying to create system change. If you view
government as a top-down system of control rather than an emergent property of
culture (the aggregate belief system and narrative of a population of
individuals) then you’re liable to do all the wrong things to try to create the
change you want to see. We see this actually lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy
in culture all the time. If you see racists everywhere, pretty soon racists
emerge because you engage in the very type of activity that nurtures racism.
The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on poverty have all created
self-fulfilling prophecies.
If the system is truly top-down then the number one goal of
a liberty activist should be to get into government so that they can legislate
freedom and start repealing laws. They should use whatever means possible to
achieve this goal; infiltrate mainstream parties, tell people what they want to
hear, reflect culture, pretend to be statist, accept bribes, blackmail
competitors, suck up to influencers, manufacture anxiety to sell safety and
encourage dependency by teaching people they are weak and powerless in the face
of overwhelming forces. Get that seat in power and then simply legislate our
freedom.
If you believe as I do that
we will never see a significant change in government until we see a significant
change in culture then the previous methods are not only impotent they are
probably counterproductive. I would rather see a libertarian system that
resists even a socialist Leader than a libertarian Leader of a socialist system
that they are subservient to and constrained by. In this more accurate view of
our system the way we go about being leaders changes dramatically. In this view
doing the conventional things necessary to become a Leader,
can actually make us less effective leaders.
I often worry that our fixation on government as the root of all evil actually creates more of that which we hate. What if we stopped treating government as the primary problem and started looking at it as a symptom of a deeper issue? We understand that heroine can ruin lives, but we also know that to eliminate the problems caused by heroine we have to look at the root cause of addiction; what need does that heroine serve in the addict?
I often worry that our fixation on government as the root of all evil actually creates more of that which we hate. What if we stopped treating government as the primary problem and started looking at it as a symptom of a deeper issue? We understand that heroine can ruin lives, but we also know that to eliminate the problems caused by heroine we have to look at the root cause of addiction; what need does that heroine serve in the addict?
From the lens of self-organization we can see clearly that
what we must do is entirely unconventional; we have to challenge belief systems,
tell people uncomfortable truths, peddle in cognitive dissonance, help people confront
their anxiety in a constructive manner, teach people that they are powerful
beyond measure, develop our character, and live lives of integrity so that our
words carry the power of lived authenticity. Put another way we have to engage
in legitimate leadership.
This may seem disheartening at first. If only it were as simple as getting the right person elected. This is why the top-down perspective is so tempting; it offers the illusion of immediate gratification like a hit of heroine. The good news is that change in a self-organizing system can start anywhere and go everywhere. A 2011 study showed that the tipping point for a societal paradigm shift is at most 10%. When 10% (at most) of a population adopts an “unshakeable belief” then the majority of the population adopts that belief. Ideas like abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the enlightenment, inalienable rights; each started with one person and then spread everywhere and changed the world.
This is good news in that it means that an organization like the Libertarian Party can be a tremendous catalyst for liberty even if it doesn’t win an election and it also means it can be a tremendous catalyst for liberty if it DOES win an election provided it keeps its focus on shifting culture through legitimate leadership.
Legitimate Leadership
It is important to understand that leadership is not compulsion it is attraction. All life affirming systems operate and grow through attractive forces. If we understand this it can help us be more effective as change agents. Gentlemen, it doesn’t help us in the dating world to imagine that a lady we are trying to court is resisting our advances. It is far more helpful to understand what is really going on when we are failing in our courtship efforts, namely she just isn’t attracted to you. If you view someone as “resistant” your job is to break through the wall, to overcome with force. If you view someone as “not attracted” you suddenly start looking at yourself and wonder how you can make yourself more attractive. It may be something as simple as picking the lettuce out of your teeth.
If you take this perspective a step further and view someone
as “attracted to” a core of personal power, self-esteem, purpose and dignity
you start to unlock huge potential for attraction. Now your focus becomes serving
the needs of others by strengthening their core. Now when a teammate doesn’t
like your idea at all you start to figure out what they are attracted to and
how your idea can strengthen their core of personal power, if your idea is good
it will ultimately serve their needs and once you understand what drives them
you can easily help them connect the dots and they’ll embrace the idea. We can
also apply this perspective when we are communicating our philosophy to others.
How does libertarianism serve the needs of someone who is motivated by empathy
for marginalized people? How does it strengthen the core of a person who is
most concerned about law and order?
Legitimate leaders have to do more than just attract willing
followers though. With enough charisma and charm you can get people to drink
poisoned Kool-Aid, but that isn’t what I would call legitimate leadership. Systems
built around a cult of personality, of amassing followers to feed ones
delusions and desire to be loved, are extremely fragile. The bigger they get,
the harder they fall. Real leaders make a commitment to a cause or goal that is
bigger than them and serve the needs of others. A really good leader eliminates
the need for their leadership by teaching other people to not only master themselves
but to become leaders like them. This takes their organization to the next
level because each of those leaders attracts more individuals and at this point
an excellent leader will have elevated their game even more by becoming a
better version of themselves. In a system that is alive and anti-fragile (grows
stronger in the face of stress and chaos) leaders attract followers so that
they can eliminate the need for that leadership then they become followers
again as they learn and grow themselves.
Developing Character
Once you accept that systems self-organize based on the
actions and ultimately the belief systems of the individual constituents of
that system, and you understand that life-affirming growth occurs in a system
when individuals liberate themselves and in doing so liberate each other, you’ll
naturally understand that the most important thing you can do to create the
kind of change you want to see in the world is to BE THAT CHANGE. This is
incredibly cliché, and its also incredibly difficult and necessary. Did you
think living a purpose driven life was going to be easy?
One of the ways to develop
character is through something I’ve come to call the antifragile mindset based
on the Nassim Taleb book “Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder”. I’ve thought about how to articulate
this quite a bit lately. I have two daughters that are following my career path
and are in school right now to become paramedics. One of them came home and told me about a
friend of hers, a young man in his early 20’s, who broke down and was at wits
end because of the calls he is being exposed to. One call in particular
involved three 13 year old boys in a car wreck where one was DOA, another had
his face ripped off and was gurgling through his trachea, and the third had
mangled legs.
I realized that my daughters are soon going to be faced with
extremely stressful situations as well and I needed to help prepare them.
Emergency service workers today are at far greater risk for developing PTSD and
mental health issues than when I entered the field 20 years ago despite having
more resources, tools and support. My own experience with PTSD gives me a clue
as to why this is the case.
When I started my career in Emergency Services we were just
starting to be told a story about how Critical Incident Stress could take us
down. It was a nasty thing that we should be on guard for, stressful calls
where lives were lost could inflict it on us. I had three bad calls within the
first couple months of work that involved children dying in front of me. The
constellation of symptoms I was experiencing is now called PTSD: flashbacks,
insomnia, withdrawal from family, using alcohol to numb myself, anxiety about
going to work, a feeling of helplessness in my life.
One counseling session, in fact one question in that
counseling session, cured my symptoms immediately, made me immune from
experiencing those symptoms again, and in fact set me up to experience
post-traumatic stress growth from similar calls in the future. The question my
therapist asked me interrupted my rant of self-pity about how useless I was. He
asked, “Are you telling me that you provided no value to anybody on those calls?”
Considering that question carefully I realized that I was
providing tremendous value on those calls. I wasn’t able to reverse
catastrophic aneurysms or injuries, those kids were going to die no matter what
I did, but I had the ability to serve the needs of their parents, explain what
was going on, give them the peace of mind of knowing that everything possible
was being done, bring order to a chaotic scene etc. I learned that by focusing
on the things I could control I became a better care provider and a better
person. It wasn’t external trauma that was the source of my suffering, it was
my own thoughts, the way I viewed my experiences.
Taleb points out that systems can either be fragile (break
from disorder), robust (withstand disorder), or antifragile (gain for
disorder). The story we are sold in our profession is the same as the one sold
to society at large. Namely that we are fragilistas, that we are powerless in
the face of overwhelming forces like patriarchy, racism, terrorism, critical
incident stress, mental disorders. That the best we can be is robust
individuals that can take a hit and return to baseline.
The story that nobody is
telling is that we are antifragile individuals, that living life outside our
comfort zone makes us better versions of ourselves, that we are in control of
our own minds and therefore our own freedom and our own happiness. I believe
that my daughters will be entering an extremely stressful career and I'm grateful for that. This stress is going to make them better
human beings because I’m teaching them an antifragile mindset. I feel
incredible sympathy for my daughters friend who is suffering needlessly because
industry Leaders have failed him by promoting a fragile mindset and he doesn’t
have a leader who can help him turn on an antifragile mindset.
Consider how the fragile mindset is spread through our culture
on both sides of the political spectrum and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The political left are people who are focused on traditional mom attributes;
encouraging sharing of resources, nurturing the marginalized, caretaking the
environment etc. The political right are people who are focused on traditional dad
attributes; threat vigilance, boundary enforcement, gathering resources etc. In
an antifragile system moms and dads work together as a team and value what each
other bring to the table. They see each other as complimentary in their roles.
A firm but permeable boundary* is established, threats kept out and brings life giving resources in. Within
this membrane life is nurtured and caretaking occurs.
In a fragile system moms complain about the patriarchy and
dads complain about the matriarchy and they are at each others throats at all
magnifications of order from broken families going through divorce, to third
wave feminists vs mens rights activists on university campuses, to Democrats
and Republicans accusing each other of literally being Satan. Boundaries of order
breakdown and become brittle, no longer bringing in the life giving resources
or protecting the system from threats. Toxicity replaces nurturing, and
encouragement gives way to shrill neuropathy. With a fragile mindset we can
expect to see the worst fears of both sides come true as self-fulfilling
prophecies accelerate; more racism, more terrorism, a patriarchy growing
alongside a matriarchy, growing conflict between multiple cultures, more pearl
clutching all around as fear drives us towards civil strife.
Imagine a world full of antifragile individuals, where
people viscerally recoil from purveyors of paternalism, dependency, and safe
spaces. Imagine a world where people projecting their worst fears through
apoplectic cries for a state to sooth their anxieties are recognized as
purveyors of mental illness. A world with this type of culture would view
government like a healthy person views opiates, something to be avoided except
in rare emergencies.
Its important that
libertarians develop their character lest they fall into the fragilista trap
and contribute to a decline of Western Civilization. What does a fragile
mindset look like in a libertarian? I would submit that its fruits are
recognizable when a libertarian is concerned with cutting someone down rather
than persuading them or connecting to an audience. Like a neocon bombing the
Middle East you can see these keyboard warriors fighting the state by
destroying statists in chat rooms with little thought to the blow back and
radicalization they nurture. It manifests when I resign myself to the idea that the only way for me to flourish is
if the state gets out of my life. It’s there when I think that my life can only
get better and civilization can only be saved if my guy gets elected. This way
of thinking engenders helplessness, anxiety, frustration, anger and impotence
because I place my destiny firmly in the hands of other people that are far
less competent at my personal flourishing than I am.
The antifragile libertarian looks at the state as a
challenge, an opportunity for personal growth, it says, “how can I flourish and
embody freedom despite the state, how can I use this challenge to grow into a
better version of myself?” In liberating yourself you become a light that
liberates others and the state withers away becoming far less relevant. As your
character grows your words carry more impact, your connections with others grow
deeper, your ability to be a change agent grows exponentially. Imagine what a
team of antifragile libertarians can do.
Team Loyalty
I’ve noticed that libertarians are often people who have
been on the outside of groups growing up. You’re unlikely to find a prom king
or queen who has grown into a libertarian, popular kids have too much at stake
to disabuse themselves of group think. Libertarians usually have a history of
being on the outside, whether its because we don’t have an affinity for being
in groups or because we have been ostracized by groups, gives us the ability to
notice the contradictions and irrationality that these groups have and gives us
the ability to look at systems more objectively. Unfortunately this strength
also makes loyalty to groups a foreign concept, which can make organizational
work difficult.**
This casual observation was
recently backed up by a comprehensive study social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and colleagues conducted on libertarian
psychology. The study found that, compared to both liberals and conservatives,
libertarians had a higher IQ, relied on emotions less and reason more, were low
on empathy and high on systems thinking, and had low group loyalty. Looking at
ourselves honestly in mirror can be unpleasant, but self-knowledge means we no
longer have to be slaves to our old patterns of thinking and feeling and I
firmly believe we can turn on group loyalty when we need to.
As a career firefighter I can tell you that there is often
drama and fighting in the firehouse, but no matter how much we sometimes hate
each other as individuals behind closed doors when its time to do our job we
will go to war for our teammates. It is easy to find team loyalty when you are
staring down a destructive beast that can kill you. Sometimes I wish big
government was as immediately visible and obviously dangerous as fire because
then the importance of team loyalty would be smacking each of us in the face.
Big government kills far more people and ruins more lives than fire so if I’m ever having a hard time getting along with a team member I picture myself facing down a giant fire with that team member by my side, even if his methods aren’t ideal, or he’s weaker than I’d like, or he is unpleasant to be around, or his philosophy isn’t as pure as mine, he is in the fight with me and he is my brother.
Big government kills far more people and ruins more lives than fire so if I’m ever having a hard time getting along with a team member I picture myself facing down a giant fire with that team member by my side, even if his methods aren’t ideal, or he’s weaker than I’d like, or he is unpleasant to be around, or his philosophy isn’t as pure as mine, he is in the fight with me and he is my brother.
I’m not suggesting that there shouldn’t be disagreements or
even heated debate, I’m not suggesting we take all the fun out of being a
libertarian. What I’m suggesting is that there is a time and a place for
disagreement and heated debate (ie the operational debrief or team policy
meetings), I’m suggesting that doing this in the middle of a fire fight
jeopardizes your teams mission.
If there is one thing I could leave my fellow libertarians
with it is that loyalty to your team=loyalty to your goals= loyalty to your
principles=loyalty to yourself.
Conclusion
For the sake of space I triaged the areas where I see the
biggest opportunities for growth in libertarians who are trying to create
change. Leadership is not a skill we are born with so much as it is a skill that
we can learn and improve upon. I would encourage you to concretize your life
purpose so that you can avoid wasting time with fruitless pursuits and
activities, operate from a mental model that is congruent with reality so that
you an leverage areas in the system where real change can occur, engage in
legitimate leadership by serving the needs of others, constantly strive to
become a better version of yourself by rejecting safe spaces and adopting an
antifragile mindset, and recognize that a team will help you better achieve
your goals as an individual if you make a commitment to build up your brothers
and sisters and go to war for them despite their imperfections.
*Firm but permeable boundaries are recognized by most self-organizing systems theorists as a necessary element of anti-fragile/living systems.
**I’ve noticed that there are a lot of libertarians who are INTJs on the Meyers-Briggs personality profile, if I had to guess its between 25-50%. This personality profile is rare and comprises only 2% of the general male population and 0.8% of the general female population. If my anecdotal observations are right then it may be that specific personality types are more predisposed to the libertarian message, which has significant implications in terms of targeted messaging, recruiting and shifting culture.
**I’ve noticed that there are a lot of libertarians who are INTJs on the Meyers-Briggs personality profile, if I had to guess its between 25-50%. This personality profile is rare and comprises only 2% of the general male population and 0.8% of the general female population. If my anecdotal observations are right then it may be that specific personality types are more predisposed to the libertarian message, which has significant implications in terms of targeted messaging, recruiting and shifting culture.
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