AvantGarde Politician Leaders for a New Epoch Yehezkel Dror 9781935907855 Books
Download As PDF : AvantGarde Politician Leaders for a New Epoch Yehezkel Dror 9781935907855 Books
In this iconoclastic book, Dror argues that humanity cascades through a metamorphosis, driven mainly by science and technology. Radical human enhancement, synthesis of viruses, quasi-intelligent robots and molecular engineering illustrate the emerging quantum leap, as do value changes ranging between mass-killing fanaticisms to human “maturation.” Along with the windfall of opportunities for thriving that the emerging epoch offers, dangers of calamities, including the demise of humanity, require thinking in terms of raison d’humanité, a powerful Global Authority and new modes of human existence. Dror argues that a new approach to political leadership is the key to the future of humanity amidst these monumental changes. Our current political leaders are inadequate new, avant-garde politicians are required to cope with the fateful challenges that lie ahead. Avant-Garde Politician offers a thorough overview of the changing human condition. The author proposes innovative human survival and thriving imperatives, a Global Humanity Constitutions establishing a decisive global regime, and some radical value changes – including the addition of duties to human rights. He also suggests novel approaches to composing humanity-craft, such as regulating science and technology. And specifies the qualities required from avant-garde politicians together with ways to acquire them. Based on multiple academic disciplines combined with extensive personal experience of the author in “hot corridors” of power worldwide, this book will be of interest to leaders, policy advisors, scholars, scientists, students, and all concerned about the future of humanity. Of this work, Michael Marien, WAAS Fellow and Director of Global Foresight Books, has said, "Suffice to say that all members of the US Congress, and national leaders and would-be leaders everywhere (along with leading editors and relevant academics), should spend a week with Avant-Garde Politician if we are to get serious about world order in an undeniable age of metamorphosis and possible global collapse. It won’t happen, of course. But the slim possibility of a maturing humanity would be improved if this were so, and if we could acknowledge the structural problems that keep us from learning about—and seriously debating--more appropriate worldviews for our turbulent times." For the full review, visit http//bit.ly/1Edf2Wm
AvantGarde Politician Leaders for a New Epoch Yehezkel Dror 9781935907855 Books
Yehezkel Dror, Avant-Garde Politician: Leaders for a New Epoch, Washington, D.C.: Westphalia Press, 2014.A ‘mirror for princes’: contemporary, Israeli, hopeful
Reviewed by David Williams
A tall erect cleric, simply dressed as a monk, descends the right side of a grand Baroque stairwell, absorbed in reading what appears to be his breviary. He seems entirely uninterested in the minor sensation his mere appearance has caused among a small array of courtiers, who bow and concede the bulk of the stairs to this man of the cloth.
The painting in question, now in Boston, is titled L'Eminence Grise’. In Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1873 reimagining of the scene, the French artist dramatically conveys the atmosphere of awe and deference, indeed fear inspired by Pere Joseph, the original grey eminence. So this is the Capuchin monk who served as confessor and confident to Cardinal Richelieu, who in turn was one of the most influential European leaders of the seventeenth century, the power behind the French throne who made Louis XIII great and France even greater. In the systematic and successful pursuit of national power via grand strategy, Richelieu’s only rivals may be Otto von Bismarck and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Richelieu and Father Joseph would qualify as classic case studies in Yehezkel Dror’s new book, Avant-Garde Politicians: Leaders for a New Epoch. Certainly both of these master players of court politics could have had added their own chapters to history’s most famous books on leadership. Machiavelli’s The Prince, for example. Such guides to the effective exercise of power have traditionally been known as ‘Mirrors for Princes’, and Professor Dror has attempted to update this genre to serve the needs of our leaders and their advisors, both today and tomorrow.
Yet this master of foresight studies and professor emeritus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem might also concede that his provocative harvest of argument and reflection is more likely to end up in the hands of the Pere Josephs of this world rather that the contemporary heirs of the kings and cardinals who decide policy. Why this marginalization?
Part of the reason is found in what Dror expects from the political leaders our new age. At the beginning of this book about whether humanity will survive or not (the author insists our question is Hamlet’s: to be or not to be), Dror declares ‘Most of my discourse is located within a time horizon of about one hundred years’. This is the past that he regards as our prologue; the past that gives us the indispensable set of trends with which the futurologist might project our understanding into an otherwise unknowable future.
A confident grasp of the key developments in the story of humanity since the First World War is not often found among the men and women who direct global affairs today. Quite the contrary, they are a hurried lot, rushing from media-driven pillar to post like doomed souls in Dante. The sober reflective cast of mind or gift for incisive ‘pondering’ (a word Dror much favours) that one finds in Winston Churchill or Jean Monnet, John Paul II or Henry Kissinger is increasingly rare.
Quite the contrary, such ‘pondering’ is judged to be as an unaffordable luxury not only by the leaders themselves but also by their chief advisors who are often equally obsessed with cyber reality. Today Richelieu or Bismarck would find themselves demoted to the status of a media advisor. In such a role, the French cardinal or German statesman might well prove to more formidable than, for example, Donald Rumsfeld (George Bush’s Richelieu?) or Alastair Campbell (Tony Blair’s Bismarck?), but what a waste of their abilities as master strategists and transformers of political reality.
Today the mass media makes us not strategists but tacticians. Dror insists that we fight this diminishment of our human capabilities and ambitions. Thus this Israeli thinker would have us make leadership ‘a total calling’ guided by ‘humanity craft’ in the pursuit of ‘public interest Machiavellianism’. As a political scientist, Dror is a humanist who is also a realist. He does not believe in moral daydreams and he implicitly cautions us again inflicting moral-minded horror on humanity.
Dror holds out the hope that our leaders can learn to bear ‘the moral cost’ of our works and days, and still retain that indispensable core of decency that keeps us human. Our leaders need to learn to act, and in order to act, they must learn to understand. To act and to understand with effect, they must learn to think: to ponder. Certainly someone in the immediate circle of our leaders for a new epoch must make time to read, properly and seriously. To this end, Dror provides a thoughtful and wide-ranging list of books to feed this exercise in reflection.
None of this is to deny that our future leaders must be men and women of action. Dror fully recognises this truth. We need to be more in order to do more because it is the transformation of reality, not image management, that finally matters. After all, what better means do we have today to prevent a terrible war between Iran and Israel or Japan and China than inspired statesmanship?
The kind of master statesman we require is creative, not reactive. He or she makes the weather. The job of handing out umbrellas is left to others. This is the truth that I believe Dror would have us dwell on. It is the reactive quality of contemporary leadership that deflects it from its proper path, and this sober Israeli humanist and political prophet has no time for such deflections.
***
David Williams’s current research focuses on regime change in East Asia, particularly Confucian Revolution, classical and modern, in Vietnam, Korea, Japan and China. Mindful of the enduring geopolitical impact of Confucian ethics, he is campaigning publicly for a more robust effort to advance the cause of historical truth and reconciliation between China and Japan over issues arising from the conflict between 1931 and 1945. With good will on all sides, he believes that lasting peace may be achieved, with the help of international bodies such as UNESCO, between these two Asian powers modelled on the post-war Franco-German success.
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AvantGarde Politician Leaders for a New Epoch Yehezkel Dror 9781935907855 Books Reviews
The author proposes an alternative model for current or aspiring political leaders. While the author acknowledges that politicians focus too much of their time and energy on getting themselves and their peers elected or re-elected, the author views this as a leadership flaw and not a structural issue. I find this to be troubling.
The idea that a political leader must possess specific qualities is highly flawed. I haven't met anyone who possess all the specific idealistic qualities listed in the book, at best the leader may deem it necessary to create the illusion that he or she possesses these qualities to get elected or re-elected. The author was merely self-projecting. It is obvious to me that creating the illusion of possessing the qualities of an avant-garde is easier than actually possessing them, yet you reap the same rewards. .
Yehezkel Dror, Avant-Garde Politician Leaders for a New Epoch, Washington, D.C. Westphalia Press, 2014.
A ‘mirror for princes’ contemporary, Israeli, hopeful
Reviewed by David Williams
A tall erect cleric, simply dressed as a monk, descends the right side of a grand Baroque stairwell, absorbed in reading what appears to be his breviary. He seems entirely uninterested in the minor sensation his mere appearance has caused among a small array of courtiers, who bow and concede the bulk of the stairs to this man of the cloth.
The painting in question, now in Boston, is titled L'Eminence Grise’. In Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1873 reimagining of the scene, the French artist dramatically conveys the atmosphere of awe and deference, indeed fear inspired by Pere Joseph, the original grey eminence. So this is the Capuchin monk who served as confessor and confident to Cardinal Richelieu, who in turn was one of the most influential European leaders of the seventeenth century, the power behind the French throne who made Louis XIII great and France even greater. In the systematic and successful pursuit of national power via grand strategy, Richelieu’s only rivals may be Otto von Bismarck and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Richelieu and Father Joseph would qualify as classic case studies in Yehezkel Dror’s new book, Avant-Garde Politicians Leaders for a New Epoch. Certainly both of these master players of court politics could have had added their own chapters to history’s most famous books on leadership. Machiavelli’s The Prince, for example. Such guides to the effective exercise of power have traditionally been known as ‘Mirrors for Princes’, and Professor Dror has attempted to update this genre to serve the needs of our leaders and their advisors, both today and tomorrow.
Yet this master of foresight studies and professor emeritus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem might also concede that his provocative harvest of argument and reflection is more likely to end up in the hands of the Pere Josephs of this world rather that the contemporary heirs of the kings and cardinals who decide policy. Why this marginalization?
Part of the reason is found in what Dror expects from the political leaders our new age. At the beginning of this book about whether humanity will survive or not (the author insists our question is Hamlet’s to be or not to be), Dror declares ‘Most of my discourse is located within a time horizon of about one hundred years’. This is the past that he regards as our prologue; the past that gives us the indispensable set of trends with which the futurologist might project our understanding into an otherwise unknowable future.
A confident grasp of the key developments in the story of humanity since the First World War is not often found among the men and women who direct global affairs today. Quite the contrary, they are a hurried lot, rushing from media-driven pillar to post like doomed souls in Dante. The sober reflective cast of mind or gift for incisive ‘pondering’ (a word Dror much favours) that one finds in Winston Churchill or Jean Monnet, John Paul II or Henry Kissinger is increasingly rare.
Quite the contrary, such ‘pondering’ is judged to be as an unaffordable luxury not only by the leaders themselves but also by their chief advisors who are often equally obsessed with cyber reality. Today Richelieu or Bismarck would find themselves demoted to the status of a media advisor. In such a role, the French cardinal or German statesman might well prove to more formidable than, for example, Donald Rumsfeld (George Bush’s Richelieu?) or Alastair Campbell (Tony Blair’s Bismarck?), but what a waste of their abilities as master strategists and transformers of political reality.
Today the mass media makes us not strategists but tacticians. Dror insists that we fight this diminishment of our human capabilities and ambitions. Thus this Israeli thinker would have us make leadership ‘a total calling’ guided by ‘humanity craft’ in the pursuit of ‘public interest Machiavellianism’. As a political scientist, Dror is a humanist who is also a realist. He does not believe in moral daydreams and he implicitly cautions us again inflicting moral-minded horror on humanity.
Dror holds out the hope that our leaders can learn to bear ‘the moral cost’ of our works and days, and still retain that indispensable core of decency that keeps us human. Our leaders need to learn to act, and in order to act, they must learn to understand. To act and to understand with effect, they must learn to think to ponder. Certainly someone in the immediate circle of our leaders for a new epoch must make time to read, properly and seriously. To this end, Dror provides a thoughtful and wide-ranging list of books to feed this exercise in reflection.
None of this is to deny that our future leaders must be men and women of action. Dror fully recognises this truth. We need to be more in order to do more because it is the transformation of reality, not image management, that finally matters. After all, what better means do we have today to prevent a terrible war between Iran and Israel or Japan and China than inspired statesmanship?
The kind of master statesman we require is creative, not reactive. He or she makes the weather. The job of handing out umbrellas is left to others. This is the truth that I believe Dror would have us dwell on. It is the reactive quality of contemporary leadership that deflects it from its proper path, and this sober Israeli humanist and political prophet has no time for such deflections.
***
David Williams’s current research focuses on regime change in East Asia, particularly Confucian Revolution, classical and modern, in Vietnam, Korea, Japan and China. Mindful of the enduring geopolitical impact of Confucian ethics, he is campaigning publicly for a more robust effort to advance the cause of historical truth and reconciliation between China and Japan over issues arising from the conflict between 1931 and 1945. With good will on all sides, he believes that lasting peace may be achieved, with the help of international bodies such as UNESCO, between these two Asian powers modelled on the post-war Franco-German success.
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