Total Rethink

3When the Revolutionaries Become the Establishment and Stop Blowing Up the Model

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.”

—Samuel Beckett

I have always been fascinated by individuals who are able to motivate millions of people to take on causes and to go headlong into battles that they know might lead to them being killed. The skills of persuasion needed to achieve that are enormous. We in the West are puzzled by the young suicide bombers who are willing to blow themselves to pieces for a religious cause, yet many millions of soldiers over the centuries have been equally willing to take almost as great a risk. The troops who went over the top of the French trenches of the First World War soon learned that the odds of survival were low, but they still believed they should do as they were told. The Japanese pilots who deliberately flew their planes into ships were equally willing to give their lives for the cause they had been told was worth dying for (nearly four thousand of them died that way in the Second World War).

A movement that starts with one charismatic person – it could be Adolf Hitler or Nelson Mandela, Gandhi or Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-un or Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro or Pol Pot – can grow powerful enough to topple a whole government, lead a country into war or into committing genocide, and can change the course of civilization as a result. Just as some of these game changers can do great amounts of damage, other exceptional individuals ...