Real Growth/ Serious Problems

suchandra · April 24, 2007

April 24, 2007

excerpts from John Ralston “unconscious civilization” adapted to nowadays ISKCON society

Filed under: dichos — jaganat @ 7:54 am

Many are surprised that this management elite continues to expand and prosper at a time when society as a whole is clearly blocked by a long term leadership crisis.

There is no reason to be surprised. the reaction of the sophisticated elites when confronted by their own failure to lead society is almost invariably the same: they set about building a wall between themselves and the reality by creating an artificial sense of well being on the inside.

We live in a coup de etat in slow motion. none of us have chosen corporatism but our elites quite happily continue with it.

Liberty was ok for cavemen, but civilization meant a progressive diminution in personal freedom. Mussolini

Corporation is creating a conformist society.

We struggle with the old question of whether obey a superior even when the order is unjust.

Almost all of us are employees in some sort of corporation, public or private.

The primary obligation is loyalty to the corporation.

Where the many are there is security, what the many believe, must of course be true.

Control and efficiency is a secondary business, well behind policy and purpose and for that matter effectiveness.

Wrong management is about system and quantification, not about policy and people.

it is assumed that the public could not know enough to understand and it is not worth wating much effort explaining things to them.

Corporatism is antidemocratic and aimless.

Corporate anorexia -when does not work they cut, but you can´t shrink to greatness.

Cuts can´t produce growth and prosperity, but cutting- a negative tool- is the natural, as suffering is necessary to pay for our sins, so is reformulated as the cutting process.

The failures of an elite to lead effectively drives them further into the arms of ideology, where everything is inevitable.

What is needed is not cutting, but the consolidation of years of increment talk growth in services.

This ability to stop periodically, reexamine and consolidate progress is easy if people are able to deal with problems in a calm way through an overview. The corporatist atmosphere makes this almost inpossible.

The single most important innovation needed today is a calm look at the overall effects of what we have accomplished, followed by serious attempts at positive consolidation.

Decentralization of bureaucratic power. take the programs put of the bureaucrats. move down to regional and local levels, where the citinzery can have a human relationship with more modest grouping s of bureaucrats, and have a real impact on the nature of the programs.this can be if two conditions are met: funding guaranteed and national standards.

The GBC is in a long term crisis because they get less and less support from the corporation (temples) who play one against the other.

We cannot blame them if we cannot organize ourselves.

Now the GBC is handing essential programs down to the regional level in the name of increased democracy.

“Necessity” is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves.

The corporate system tells us that the democratic system is no longer appropriate, only active or passive agreement of the elites.

But democracy is not about prosperity. You can have poor democracies and progressive dictatorships.

Democracy is about the nature of legitimacy and whether the repository of legitimacy -the citizens-are able to exercise the power its possession imposes upon them.

We are having great difficulty today exercising the power of legitimacy. It has therefore shifted away into other hands.

Srila Prabhupada entrusted to all of us with the power of advance KC. We are handing the power to the elite, and paying the consequences.

Technocratic management is comfortable functioning in large management structures. this is centralized monopoly.

From the point of view of the elite, ISKCON´s problems are other´s problems.

They have power without responsibility, which is a basic form of ignorance and prevents enquiry and though. It is reduced to detailed linear argument based upon a fixed, iskcons view.

Those with power are passively certain of themselves as the wait to benefit from the inevitable.

Leaders in power become increasingly comic. their language becomes parodic, even nonsensical. They will say that iskcon is experiencing strong real growth and then in the same paragraph add that it has serious problems, well, which is it?

That is the way of medieval Catholicism (inquisition) would say that God is strong, good and kind therefore we must torture you.

And those who oppose the policies of the passive technocrats, tend to fall into a complex conspirational view of ISKCON. But there is no need for a conspiracy, their logic is public and self-evident. Complex, long range conspiracy requires conscious leaders. To treat the technocrats as such is to give credence to their illusions about themselves.

A more realistic approach to our problems would be to focus on the repeatedly negative self flagelating, doing-harm-to-do-good-character traits of our managerial class.

They use blaming the devotees of lazy, incompetent etc, using the philosophy (lazy in kali yuga, etc), but they overlook their far less competent management.

Efficiency is an arbitratry negative term; effectiveness is about content and results.

Technocrats fear: risk, thought, doubt, admission of error, research and development, long term investment, commitment to concrete places.

What are we to make of these managers who have had almost absolute control of ISKCON for some 30 years, 25 of which have been marked by general crisis.

Did they play a role in bringing the blockage?

They certainly have failed to produce a recovery.

Stalin demonstrated that the best way to power was through the control of personnel. It permits you to promote allies without reference to real accomplishments.

Now they re trying to push themselves to the brahminical standard through university degrees and educational programs.

After more than two decades of having their way the exponents of this theory have no results to show us. They concentrate in any remaining details to prove their point.

Only in severe crisis do the elite group allow the governments (temples) to do their job.

Technocratic class often relies on technology because the inanimate objects can take on a trajectory of their ownvand so cover for the managers inability to give leadership.

I would suggest that we are in desperate need of reformulating the idea of growth. Our society classifies Sunday feast as a cost; a car on the other hand or a computer is an asset which the economy must finance.

Our concepts of assets and liability of goods vs expenses has a negative effect on the reality of growth

The more sophisticated we become the more probable it is that value will lie in things which are not of direct interest: in other words we have to reward those things which society finds useful.

In our elites, there is no desire to initiate changes which would insert the concept of responsibility into that of power. Only a persistent public commitment by the cityzenry could bring this about.

The authoritarian say that populace will run amok unless kept in awe of some sort of authority. And fear of punishment is the best way to control us.

Criticism is the only help tool we have which while disclosing our inadequacies can at the same time awake us to the desire for greater improvement.

Criticism is perhaps the citizens primary weapon in the exercise of her legitimacy.

That is why in this corporate society , conformism, loyalty and silence are so admired and rewarded; while criticism is so punished or marginalized.