Leadership roles

Multiple leadership roles

Formal – and just as importantly, self-appointed – leaders of every type and at every level potentially have vital roles in devising local tactics consistent with the Guild Principles. However, some backgrounds will be particularly useful in aligning specific components of the world economy. For instance, Unelected Responsibility is a standard against which potentially all unelected leaders should test themselves in many aspects of their lives. But those working in commercial companies have a particular ability to make a major difference in minimizing Capitalism Crises. Those in Banking and in the News Media have tremendously important leadership roles in this. And multinationals as a group naturally have vital inputs to make.

Industrialization Crises can best be managed by widespread adoption of True Costing. As consumers of energy and fossil-fuel products ranging from plastics to gasoline, every member of the public can have a direct impact simply by the consumer-choices that they make. But governments, economists, ecologists, manufacturing corporations and, naturally, oil and energy companies themselves, have the greatest opportunity to smooth the path to the international community weaning off oil and reducing carbon-emissions without unduly hampering the progress toward Global Renaissance.

Population Crises will necessarily be handled differently in different societies because, more than ever, one size cannot fit all. But all approaches can nevertheless adhere to Collective Sustainability. In general, the public in developing nations have the power to avoid Malthusian Collapse by regulating birth-rate, and women in particular can indirectly be helped by teachers who take a lead in improving female education-standards and by religious authority-figures who encourage birth-control. In developed nations, birth-rates are less of an issue. There, in addition to consumer purchasing choices and the leadership of environmental organizations, the special-connection to Collective Sustainability is in major corporations tied to agriculture and fishing.

In a similar way, although everybody can make an important difference by living their lives according to the Principle of Mirrored Tolerance – always welcoming generous diversity but immediately standing up to intolerant bullies even if they happen to belong to a minority – it is primarily religious and social leaders (at every level) who bring a uniquely powerful influence and who have a deeply-important and potentially-courageous role to play in tackling Religion Crises. However, within the Global Guilds, it is those High-Tech corporations that come under attack from more-extreme religious sects that must push back. And the News Media also have a key role to play in supporting the overall dynamic of Mirrored Tolerance that all the groups involved are endeavoring to apply.

Unleashing the potential of the High-Tech supertrend is an area that can especially benefit from the unique skills of politicians, entrepreneurs, scientists, technologists and computing experts (including those experts who are kids). Similarly, countering direct risks of High-Tech Crises by living up to the Guild Principle of Pre-emptive Recovery is a particularly powerful contribution that can be made by academics researching into science and medicine, as well as those who lead major commercial operations such as IT, telecom and pharmaceutical corporations and cutting-edge organizations such as defense contractors.

And finally, upholding the Principle of Holistic Perspective is something that every member of the international community has a direct ability to impact. Many citizens often have a special fondness, loyalty and pride for the country they live in, or originally are from, or maybe both. People may prize the ethnic, religious or social community to which they feel they most closely belong. But they also each belong to an older family that uniquely binds them all together – Humanity as a whole.

Politicians, teachers, writers, those in film, radio and TV, musicians, artists, athletes and sports personalities all have a special ability to remind the international community of its common roots and of its shared future. But ultimately, that sense most strongly must come from how people view themselves, their self-identity. Celebrating the multiple facets of identity (say, as an American female Moslem member of Humanity, or as a gay black professional-basketball playing member of Humanity) is a far richer as well as more accurate way of viewing individuality than artificially choosing any one element over another.