Postures and impostures of managers past 77 whether in business or in politics or in entertainment. Hence the anarchy of the contemporary world where all these forms coexist. Dependent upon the materials and hence the technologies available to mankind, the pattern of social organization and management swings violently from stress on the entrepreneur and the virtues of the lonely individualist to the close-knit and emotionally involved group. In the diversified scope of modern business structures, these extremes can express themselves at different levels of the same organization. Tribal cliques can grow in the shade of the old organization tree. The telephone can foster such groups, especially when the “bugging” of the phones is on a large scale. The oral substructure ground quickly undermines the organization “tree.” By the law of change, whatever has reached its extreme must turn back. (I Ching) It is explained in the same context of this 4,000-year-old management manual that innovation “does indeed guide all happenings, but it never behaves outwardly as the leader. Thus true strength is that strength which, mobile as it is hidden, concentrates on the work without being outwardly visible.” What is actually visible in new situations is the ghost of old ones. It is the movie that appears on TV. It is the old written word that appears on Telex. The hidden force of change is the new speed that alters all configurations of power. The new speed creates a new hidden ground against which the old ground becomes the figure of the dropout. The function of the dropout is to reveal the new hidden ground or environment. This development can occur either as individual or corporate. The role of the typical “drop-in” or consultant is to prop up the collapsing foundations. Freud arrived too late to save the nuclear family. He was dumped by the nuclear age. THE HIDDEN PERSUADERS AND THE FRUSTRATED RADICALS All management theories and political ideologies follow an involuntary procedure. The idealists share with the experienced and practical men of their time the infirmity of substituting concepts for percepts. Both concentrate on a clash between past experience and future goals that black out the usual but hidden processes of the present. Both ignore the fact that dialogue as a process of creating the new came before, and goes beyond, the change of “equivalents” that merely reflect or repeat the old. Pastimes Are Past Times
