Concerned but confused? Time to coalesce and correct

I had a dream recently. I was going up and down an elevator, to find some event, not sure what. There was nothing doing at the top, but I found people congregating at the bottom, only to hear an announcement that the event was canceled.

So a few of us, milling around--a motley crew of fifteen or so, most of the others young, all of us concerned but confused about the state of the world—made our way to an open field, to do something about it. We kicked around a few ideas, not much of consequence. When another thirty or so people joined, we had a critical mass, all ready to go—but where? Since it was my dream, I took charge, suggesting that, wherever we go, whatever we do, it has to be...

targeted. We should be going after some low-hanging outrage, directly, decisively. Not sitting on Wall Street so much as standing up to some obscenity behind one of its doors. Not the women of America marching on the streets to protest the election of an appalling president so much as the women of Paraguay pelting the house of a corrupt politician with eggs. (He resigned.) Whatever it is, we need to coalesce, to correct some behavior that is truly…

intolerable. We have to fix what can no longer be tolerated (if it ever should have been)—like all the sugar in our diets, or the offensive pricing of pharmaceuticals that allows people to die for want of medicines that could be affordable and adequately profitable. Some outrage that even well-intentioned governments are not fixing, like climate change. (Read about Greta in Sweden.) With this kind of inaction so common, some motley crews at some non-events in some obscure fields will have to act. But let’s be sure it is…

legal, at least morally so, like Mahatma Gandhi’s salt march in India, or Rosa Parks holding her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Both set off groundswells that restored some decency to an indecent world. But, especially, these actions will have to be…

clever, unexpected.   Once upon a time, a big bully was toppled with a slingshot. More recently, in San Antonio, Texas, a big phone company was brought down by a penny. People fed up with it paid their bills plus 1¢. This drove the company crazy and its resistance toppled. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as president of the United States, was asked to act on a social issue, he had a great answer: “I agree with you…make me go out and do it.” This requires what can be called communityship. (If you want to see what it looks like, watch the groundswell that develops from some nut dancing in an open field, thanks to a leadership that follows.)

I dreamt these points, but not their details. These have been on my mind for some time; it was the points that came together that night. But we need no Freud to interpret this dream. The message is clear enough: if you are concerned but confused about the state of the world, forget about finding the answer at some top—nothing doing there these days—and skip the staged events. Find some motley crew in some open field and coalesce to create your own event, on the ground. Target some morally intolerable outrage—there is no shortage of them these days—and correct it: cleverly, decisively, morally, almost legally. Stop dreaming and start acting.

© Henry Mintzberg 18 May 2019. For my daydreaming beyond these night dreams, see Rebalancing Society…radical renewal beyond left, right, and center.

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