hierarchies

     It seems to me that I can say there are three basic styles of peoplle participating in any kind of economy.  There are leaders, there are followers, and there are independents.
     It seems to me that the leaders who build new systems, new hierarchies, are great, gifted men with immense vision and strength .... we can be talking about a new industry, like Henry Ford built, a new system of government, like Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Madison, and all the founding fathers built ... we can be talking about a new religion, like Paul of Tarsus and all the apostles built.  Men whose strengths lie in inspiring others to change their direction and fall in behind.
     It seems like the far and away the most number of participants are the followers.  These are people who may be less gifted but their strength comes in doggedly cooperating for the sake of companionship and cohesion.
     And it seems like out in the fringes, most of them only tolerated by society, are the real thinkers, the artists, the musicians, the single shop keepers, the novelists, the movie directors, people who act alone and give everyone else the real meat of civilization, all the stuff that makes life worthwhile for everybody else,
ubt somehow it never seems to be absorbed and accepted and loved until after those individuals have passed on.  In their day they suffer different levels of ostracation labels and straightjackets of supposed madness and sometimes involuntary incarceration,  persecution, even crucifixion.

     And the problem comes in with hierarchies, institutions, organizations, that have some age to them, some level of expectation that they will always be around.  The problem always seems to arise, sooner or later, that inferior men, with inferior vision, less that selflessness, come into positions of power within the hierarchy.  Usually they are born into it, children and grandchildren of great men, who have the particular affliction that they always feel personally inferior to their forebears and feel the burning need to try to outdo them, but always the only way to accomplish that is to cut corners, introduce flaws, weaknesses, prejudices, little points of potential failure, until inevitably, just as night follows day, a nail falls out of a horse's shoe, of the general leading the army into battle or,a rivet made cheaply shears, the bulkhead gives way and the ship floods, a country priest sins against an altar boy and his higher-ups all try to cover it up instead of correct it, and the whole hierarchy collapses.

     And so it is now, with globalization, a worldwide economy, worldwide manufacturing, communication  and trade and distribution system.

     Can't you just feel it?