Raising Hell and Spoiling Dreams
This book illustrates one of the central problems currently experienced by western metropolitan societies. Governance has become social engineering. Middleton's work is clearly traceable to the earlier writing of Saul Alinsky - Rules for Radicals; where he expressly encourages the young radicals of America to cut their hair and infiltrate the systems of business and governance. He was with the fight against war in Vietnam and choking pollution; but only in as much as he could harness the energies of well-meaning protesters to fight the state and pollute the government (his word not mine).
In this book we see the modern incarnation of Alinsky's diseased ideology, now presented as a C21st century paradigm example of the Emperor with no Clothes: The Leadership Strategy. What is missing throughout is the true justification for the growing mayhem that already leaches into the world from this work in progress. Instead of an adult rationality we enter a juvenile ersatz international where making mistakes and over extending your knowledge base is to be encouraged. Knowledgeable victims of this mocker are labelled 'useful idiots' (out of ear-shot of course) and of late are paraded on our screens for public humiliation.
More like Roald Dahl than a leadership manual we are required to chew through a rind of stale, tedious and ineffectually hypnotic-repetitive transcript. This involves simplistic descriptions of circles (wheels within wheels) of control. And then wade through shiny/happy but stoic quotes from the lives of 'business leaders' whose success is meant to be our blindfold for morality, meaning and direction. And who's cul-de-sac logic is meant to be an education to we star-struck failures.
Although the hints that something is very wrong here are clearly present for those willing to observe closely enough and who read more widely. The increase in volunteering and the commandeering of public institutions and movements is just one area. Common Purpose the 'charity' behind such endeavours now begins to make gains winning contracts within the British Civil Service to train a new generation of 'public servants'. The aim to cut into the state with techniques of dis-empowerment. A central doctrine here and no doubt the main reason why this book is such a poor read comes from Richard 'The Nudge' Thaler's mashup of NLP and Behavioural Psychology. A conditioning technique to Lead (or be led) Beyond Authority. Without reflection there are no consequences surely? Only a crumbling lab-rat society set up to fail. Losing confidence in it's own principles and traditions, unwittingly herded into the cauldrons of Neo-liberal soup. Hand in hand a sylph-like idealism piggy-backs on the trojan carcass of C20th capitalism. Next time you hear a politician announcing a new initiative and they claim that it is a revolutionary change in ... It might be worth remembering that Alinsky uses the word 143 times in his book. While Middleton? Well stealth is more here style, with a hazy, wistful kind of Chocolate factory glow.
