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Robert McGarveyThe 1960s folksong Where Have All the Flowers Gone? takes listeners on a lyrical journey from innocence to war, destruction and back again, in a recurring cycle of despair.

“Where have all the flowers gone … a long time passing?” Like everything else it seems: “to graveyards everyone.”

“When will they ever learn?”

Today, we are repeating the cycle.

Arguably, the western world is facing its worst crisis since the 1930s. The world has become very dangerous again. A new Cold War with Russia and China is flaring up as violence and realpolitik return as tools of statecraft. Meanwhile, forces of violence and death are rocking the Middle East; the entire region seems to be descending into chaos.

Closer to home the evidence of decay is everywhere: out of control sovereign debts, rising xenophobia, Brexit, police violence and racial hatred in our cities, and the seemingly unstoppable flight of the modern economy to undermine the middle class and reward passive elites.

Where have all the leaders gone?

They seem to have vanished. Political leaders no longer lead, they have sunk into the habit of following. Regrettably, they are following an increasingly frustrated and aging public into a negative cycle of despair. And we all know where that ends.

But maybe we expect too much from politicians. In order to gain our votes, politicians take great pains to identify and reflect popular opinions, appealing directly to widely held prejudices. They want or appear to want to be in harmony with the people. Isn’t that what democracy is all about?

That may be what democracy is all about but it’s not what leadership is about. According to the dictionary, leadership is “the action of leading a group of people or an organization.” The subject of leadership is the group, but the object of leadership is the destination.

If that destination is to be something other than the graveyard over and over again, the successful leader must embody certain qualities to overcome the natural tendency of a group, when fearful, to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Nations are not institutions, they’re just large groups of people. Regrettably, as much as we each like to imagine we are independent individuals, there are deep forces of conformity in groups that impact individuals’ behaviour.

Depressingly, perceptions can be more influential than reality in groups. People often change their opinions in order to conform to what they think the group believes. Marketing guru Joni Avrams calls this “the psychology of imitation.” Mass psychology lies behind much that is good, like civil rights movements. But it can also reinforce racial violence and lies behind the mindless groupthink that leads to war.

Every leader realizes this and, if they are a great leader, uses mass psychology to divert the group toward a more positive destination.

In his famous Gettysburg Address, former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln demonstrated the qualities of a great leader in a time of crisis.

In the aftermath of one of the Civil War’s deadliest battles, when the desire for revenge was at its height, Lincoln raised the tone of the national debate, He used the occasion to remind everyone that the “nation was conceived in liberty,” and that despite the enormous pain ahead, “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”

How easy it would have been to run with the mob. But rather than follow the popular course, Lincoln channeled that negative energy and set it to nobler purpose.

There is precious little enlightened leadership today. In Canada and the United States, the politics of negativity and fear have become the weapons of choice. Unchecked, this could rapidly unravel the tenuous fabric of civility, with dangerous consequences. In the U.K., the desire to appease the increasingly xenophobic mob is overwhelming Britons’ common decency and even their economic best interests.

Leadership matters. If the western world is to avoid returning to the graveyard, we need someone, somewhere to articulate a nobler purpose and a more positive destination. Hopefully out of the present crisis a 21st century Lincoln will emerge to raise our sights and ennoble our future.

Robert McGarvey is an economic historian and former managing director of Merlin Consulting, a London, U.K.-based consulting firm. Robert’s most recent book is Futuromics: A Guide to Thriving in Capitalism’s Third Wave.

Robert is a Troy Media contributor. Why aren’t you?

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