Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Occupy Wall Street

Is the era of the single, charismatic leader/visionary over?

One month ago, the Occupation of Wall Street began, and in the intervening 30 days, we've seen other occupations, demonstrations, and gatherings in over a thousand cities around the world. This movement is basically leaderless. At the very least, there is no singular charismatic figure who is orchestrating what is happening. It is happening more as a force of nature than as a force of will. It is happening because it needs to happen, because there are so many people who share a disillusionment with the way things are and disenfranchisement from the existing social and economic structure.

During this month of occupation, Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, and there has been a lot written about his genius, and also about how difficult he was to work for. But whatever you think of him, there can be little doubt that he was the singular leader of Apple that transformed the way we interact with technology several times over.

Also during this month, the Memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr., was dedicated in Washington, DC, on October 16. It had been scheduled for August 28th, the 48th Anniversary of King's "I have a dream" speech, but was postponed due to Hurricane Irene. King, of course, was a charismatic leader of the Civil Rights Movement who was assassinated in 1968.

The passing of Jobs, and the memory of King, leave me wondering if something has changed in our world with regard to leadership. The fact that the Occupation movement manages to grow and spread without a singular leader makes me wonder if the era of "name above the title" "larger than life" personas like Jobs and King and so many others is simply over.

Clearly, we need leaders. And clearly, there are many leaders involved in the Occupation movement. But as soon as one singular leader emerges, as soon as one person stands up and says, "I speak for all the disaffected here," that person will very likely be immediately vilified, first by conservatives (watch how fast Fox News digs up dirt on this person), then by the mainstream media (trying to fill the 24 hours news cycle), then by elected officials, who will doubt this person's legitimacy, then by other leaders in the Occupation movement, and then by everyone else. This whole process will probably take a few days. It was shocking to watch how fast Julian Assange, the leader of Wikileaks, was discredited, brought up on charges, and silenced for the most part... all immediately following his rise to international prominence.

Why do we do this to our leaders? And what has changed to make this possible? Well, clearly, globalization, the Internet, the speed of communication, and the 24-hour news cycle enable this to happen. No sooner does a figure emerge on a national platform than we know everything there is to know about them. We've seen leaders like Eliot Spitzer, Rod Blagojevich, and many others exposed, discredited, and dismissed from public office almost instantly. When David Paterson took over for Spitzer after Spitzer's resignation, Paterson was quick to disclose publicly all of his dirty laundry: drug use, infidelity, basically everything he could think of that could be uncovered later... He just gave it all away, prior to his swearing-in, taking all the ammunition out of his enemy's hands.

So our leaders are instant targets... As soon as they emerge, they become the subject of a million Google searches, a hundred TV news stories, and a great hunger to figure out who they are, and what they have to hide. And that's scary. But maybe there's another way to look at this as a positive development... Since our leaders are no longer seen as everything, are no longer able to stand as singular representatives of all our collective hopes and dreams, it puts the responsibility more squarely on all of us, as leaders, to pull together and build the world that we would like to see.

Rapidly, the Occupy Wall Street movement has developed tools to communicate, both locally (the People's Mic) and globally (through websites and Twitter), and to make decisions (through the General Assembly and the proposed 2012 People's Congress). These tools, though in their infancy, are designed to reduce the power or authority of any one person over any other, to communicate and make decisions in as level a playing field as possible, to flatten the hierarchical structure that we all live and work in, so that every voice can be heard and that that decisions that are made can be as representative as possible of the collective will of the people.

And, if this movement can continue to pursue its highest ideals, without becoming compromised by the lure of the existing financial/governmental/media power structure, perhaps it can continue to grow without singular charismatic leaders. It can have spokespeople, of course. But as long as the movement continues to believe that every voice is as important as every other voice, maybe we won't need one singular voice to speak for us all. Maybe we can finally all speak for ourselves.