By way of introduction to the below essay, I'll provide a little bit of information on its author,
Yehezkel Dror.

Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a member of the Club of Rome, scholar and international advisor on statecraft, governance, and policy planning. He served as a senior staff member of the RAND Corporation in the USA; Senior Advisor in the Offices of Israeli Prime Ministers and Ministers of Defense; Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study and Science Center; and senior professor at the European Institute of Public Administration, Maastricht. He participated in advisory missions on behalf of the UN, UNDP, OECD and the European Union to governments around the world, and is the author of many articles and books in seven languages, including The Capacity to Govern: A Report to the Club of Rome. link

Dror is founding president of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (established by the Jewish Agency).

A term used frequently in the below essay is "global governance". It's a buzzword used by Internationalists/Globalists to denote their sorrow at the fact that isn't yet a World Government though if they had their way, it would happen soon.

In this essay, Dror, a leading Globalist, calls for limiting the flow of information and for "limitation of state sovereignty", both longterm goals of those that think they're born booted and spurred, ready to ride all of us into the grave.

Dror states in his essay:

"For all you do, however valid in itself, you need a lot of power. Unavoidably you will have to use stratagems which may in be immoral."

This reminds one of a sentence from a work considered a forgery:

"The ruler who is governed by the moral is not a skilled politician, and is therefore unstable on his throne."

It's hard to tell the forgeries from the real thing anymore.

----------

Global Leadership for the 21st Century: The New Ruler
By Yehezkel Dror

Eine grosse Epoche hat das Jahrhundert geboren,
Aber der grosse Moment findet ein keines Geschlecht
Und noch kleinere Herscher

• Friedrich Schiller: Der Zeitpunkt 1796, bold addition by author

Our century has given birth to a great epoch,
But the great moment finds a stunned generation
And even more stunned rulers

• Friedrich Schiller: The Present Moment, bold addition by author

Leitmotif

Humanity is entering a radically new epoch in which, for the first time in history, it has the power to destroy itself, by deliberate or unintended action. To prevent grievous harm resulting from this power and to use it for the better, radical improvements in critical future-shaping actors, processes and institutions are essential, especially in the moral and cognitive qualities of rulers.

1. Focus

This paper explores the core missions of 21st century political leadership worldwide, and preliminarily presents some of the qualities required for fulfilling them. The emphasis is on qualities related to weaving the future and foundational tasks, which should characterize political leadership in the 21st century. Generic leadership attributes, necessary at all times, are left to the wide literature dealing with them.

To focus on what is most important, I have coined the term “New Ruler” to denote a “model” high quality top level political leader required in the 21st century. I am aware that the term “ruler” may be distasteful to many, but it is the correct one for institutionalized high-level political leadership, as discussed in this paper. It does not contain or indicate any meanings in contradiction to democratic values and the principle of “sovereignty of the people”. And calling a spade a spade is essential for penetrating the troublesome issues taken up in this paper.

Political leaders who lack essential qualities befitting their location in timespace have always been harmful. But the damage caused by inadequate political leaders is increasing exponentially, potentially endangering the very existence of humanity. Hence the need for New Rulers differing in important characteristics from all but the very few outstanding heads of governments of the 20th century and earlier.

The required qualities of the New Ruler are presented in this paper in the form of an optimal, and some might say ideal model. They should be realized by all high-level politicians and comparable leaders as much as achievable with serious efforts to do so. Politicians who do not meet significantly the main requirements should be gotten rid off. But rulers who impact significantly on the future of humanity or their country should satisfy the requirements nearly fully, assisted in doing so as far as necessary by counselors and other staffs. This applies in particular to presidents or prime ministers of major powers and heads of major global governance institutions should satisfy all requirements to a nearly full extent, as should top level politicians in countries facing situations requiring high-quality leadership.

More is required than the development of leadership who individually meet the new and demanding qualities discussed in this paper. Also necessary are changes in democratic or other procedures for selecting and re-evaluating political leaders, together with regime structures that enable them to perform their missions by providing adequate democratic power concentration safe-guarded by checks and balances. Thus, providing voters with fuller information on candidates can help, including public hearings at which top candidates are subjected to vigorous questioning. Various incentives to politicians, especially younger ones, to acquire the learnable qualifications are also useful.

But high quality political leaders cannot be assured by institutional arrangements alone. Also required are major efforts to motivate and develop them. This involves breaking some assumptions widespread in contemporary political cultures, such as the cynical view that nothing can be done about the poor quality of most politicians, and the taboo against putting the need for systematic action to improve high-level politicians on the public discourse agenda. Of interest and very worrying is the fact that main steam contemporary political philosophy and political science ignore this subject, despite the attention devoted to it in classical political science. Instead, to deal effectively with radically new situations, all human institutions and this-worldly ideologies must be reconsidered and in part redesigned, and this includes political leadership.

It is the quantum leap in the human situation characterizing the 21st century and beyond that makes the nearly impossible fatefully necessary, including radical improvements in the qualifications of political leaders proportional to the radical shifts in the challenges they have to cope with. To these I now turn.

The New Ruler

2. Quantum Leap in the Human Situation

Some of the shifts in the human situation, which started in the 20th century but are sure to cascade to unprecedented and in large part inconceivable peaks in the 21st century and beyond, are well recognized: multi-dimensional globalization, escalating environmental impacts, new forms of murderous fundamentalism, demographic changes, cultural transformations, increasing material standards of living of large parts of humanity together with growing disparities, spread of market economics and more. The main two interacting drivers of such shifts are also well recognized, though not fully understood, namely rapid advances in science and technology and value shifts. However, the most fundamental quantum leap and its far-reaching implications, up to leading into a radically new human era, are not adequately recognized.

Thanks largely to science and technology, for the first time in human history human agency has the ability to radically change the future of humanity as a whole, for better or for worse. Examples for the worse include fatal ecological impacts of aggregate human action; doomsday effects of nuclear and biological devices and rendering homo sapiens obsolete thanks to the biotechnological creation of a different and more powerful neo-human being – which can be viewed as desirable or catastrophic, depending on one’s values and beliefs.

The unprecedented future-impacting power given to humanity by science and technology can also, if used wisely for deliberate future-influencing, propel humanity onto a higher level of development in material terms, which can perhaps serve as a platform for a higher spiritual development. But my studies of human history lead me to assign a low probability of realization to such visions, making them less realistic than futuristic nightmares – unless a breakthrough occurs in human moral, cognitive and institutional capacities.

3. Critical Capacity Deficit

The critical question is whether innate or very slowly changing fundamental attributes of human beings and societies have the potential to provide the cognitive, ethical and institutional capacities needed for using the increasing power of humanity to influence and in part shape its future for the better.

Ultimately, the answer to this question to this question, if at all accessible to human beings, depends on better understanding of the “wiring” of the brain and of critical issues in the philosophy of the mind. However, as a matter of fact, human cognitive, ethical and institutional capacities are improving slowly, while the increase in human power to impact on the future is much faster. This leads to a very dangerous capacity deficit. To put it into a neo- Malthusian form: while human power to impact on its future increases geometrically and, even, exponentially, human capacities to use that power for the better improve arithmetically at best. The result is an increasing danger of catastrophic results, unless a radical upgrading of salient human moral, cognitive and institutional capacities can be brought about.

4. Reviving Politics as the Dominant Future-Shaping Arena

Unless one clings to an optimistic teleological view of a good “end of history” sure to come about more or less on its own, which has no basis whatsoever in human history or in all that is known on human individual and collective behavior, the hard question is: what can we deliberately do to radically improve critical future-shaping choices?

This question is all the more crucial, as reliance on semi-automatic social processes and diffuse actors, e.g. free markets and civic society, is valid only within limited, however important, domains. They are very effective in the economy, in initiating environmental protection measures and in a few other fields. But they cannot cope adequately with the most critical issues, such as putting limits on the production and diffusion of dangerous scientific knowledge and the containment of “prophets” armed with mass-killing instruments. Neither can they implement on their own large-scale projects that may be important for the future of humanity, such as extensive and far-reaching space exploration. Nor can they on their own bring about the necessary radical redesign of governing institutions, such as decisive global governance. Furthermore, in terms of legitimacy, political institutions--and they alone- - have the right to make critical future-shaping choices; and often they are the only ones that have the capacity to implement such choices against resistance.

It follows that, contrary to contemporary moods, politics has to be revitalized as the arena in which crucial future-shaping decisions are made and enforced. But this will only be useful if the quality of politics, in terms of values and cogitation, is improved step-by-step with the rapidly increasing human power to impact on the future. Ergo, the quality of politics has to be improved radically, up to a new “revolution in governance” befitting a radically new era in the history of humanity which constitutes a real rupture in the timeline of humanity.

5. A Minute Number of Top-level Politicians Exert Dominant Influence on the Future

Once we stop speaking about “politics” in the abstract and ask ourselves who decides what, a large part of the answer is that a minute number of top-level politicians dominate critical future-making choices (including non-choices). This view is unpleasant and for sure very unpopular in Western culture. Therefore, it needs both hedging and justification.

When no critical choices with meaningful alternatives are, or should be, on the agenda, then incremental processes which do not require pivotal decision makers are adequate. But this is not the case in the 21st century, when many choices with profound and even fatal impact on the future are on the agenda, whether recognized as such or not. And in these momentous decisions top-level politicians carry much and often decisive weight. High-level politicians, including top-level ones, are constrained by political and social processes and other actors and operate within high-tension power fields which limit their options. But if they cooperate in small cohorts or when the choices are not exposed to public scrutiny, and if they are skillful in handling mass media, then their freedom of choice is considerable. And even when they are unable to make the choices they wish, they often have a veto-power over options they oppose, which is no less important a futureweaving capacity than is positive decision making.

Let me clarify: I speak about deliberate choices, not about future-impacting processes, including major ones, which are more or less outside the control of politics – though this may, in part, have to change. Break-through thinkers, value and culture creators, scientists, entrepreneurs and other outstanding private individuals and groups, as well as shifting semi-spontaneous public moots, not to mention the importance of “Fortuna”, exert deep influence on the future, often more so than that of any politician or political institution. But here comes the catch: as long as such future-influencers could not endanger the future of humanity, their freedom of action worked often, though not always, for the better; and, at worst, they could effect only limited damage. But this is no longer the case.

Thus, to return to already mentioned examples, a scientist developing biological technologies which can easily be used to kill a large part of humanity or might do so accidentally, or a very charismatic “prophet” calling for the extermination of all non-believers who might gain a hold over large masses -- these cannot and must not be tolerated any longer. And the decisions when and how to restrain them depend largely, though not exclusively, on a small number of top-level politicians.

However, most contemporary high-level politicians (and also historical ones), with all too few exceptions, are grossly inadequate for 21st century futureweaving tasks. Therefore, as there is no substitute for high-level politicians in their critical tasks, unless their qualities can be radically improved, the future looks very bleak indeed. In that case the relatively least pessimistic scenario is: after humanity pays a very high price for the failures of politicians -- learning will occur and steps to assure the high quality of politicians will be taken. But, before depending as a last resort on such very costly and not reliable self-correction processes, let us try and develop a partly novel type of New Ruler equipped with the moral and cognitive qualities essential for engaging in optimal future-weaving.

6. Hope-Providing Precedents

The proposition to work on the radical upgrading of high-level politicians is likely to be rejected out-of-hand as not only “elitist”, which it is, but also as “utopian”, in its popular meaning as something impossible in this world given the innate characteristics of human nature. However, let me prove this view to be false by mentioning a few hope-providing historic precedents from the not-too-far past which show that “mission impossible” is not really and absolutely impossible.

The well-studied example is that of the Founding Fathers of the United States. True, they were exceptional and could emerge only under the special conditions of the first period of the country. But outstanding high-level politicians have occasionally emerged in other foundational periods, such as – to limit myself to the 20th century -- in Singapore and Israel.

Therefore, efforts to develop a new type of politician are not in vain. And, even if improvements do not fully meet requirements, they may be adequate to reduce the dangers of collapse and increase the likelihood of thriving.

7. Foundational Tasks

Up to this point I have used the term “future-weaving” to designate the main mission of high-level politicians in the 21st century. Now is the time to sharpen the mission concept by introducing a more drastic but also more appropriate term, namely “founding”. The 21st century poses dangers and opportunities which add up to a revolution in human affairs. This requires laying new foundations for the future approximating a revolution. In this foundational task, high-level politicians are and should be main actors for whom there exists no substitute. Accordingly, high-level politicians are required who possess core qualities enabling them to fulfill their mission as main actors in weaving the future -- up to founding a world different in critical respects from the past.

Thus, to provide just a few examples, necessary are:

• decisive global governance; • limitation of state sovereignty; • reduction of inequalities in human levels of development and standards of living; • prevention of dangerous misuses of science and technology, of freedom of information etcetera; • addition of individual responsibility and human duties to human rights; • strict and fully enforced limitations on armament; • containment and reversal of environmental damage; • regulation of large-scale population movements, • novel monitoring and guidance modalities to prevent serious market failures such as worldwide financial crises; And much more.

8. A Note on Value Assumptions

Before proceeding further, the very concepts of “bad” or “good” futures, as used in this paper, require clarification. They are clearly value-sensitive. Thus, a sect believing that killing all of humanity will assure salvation will view as ideal a doomsday scenario regarded by all others as the ultimate catastrophe. Or creation of a new type of “humanity” with the help of genetic engineering may be regarded as the only way out from the cul-de-sac, or “cage”, in which humanity is caught by its hard wiring, or as a sacrilegious cardinal sin. Less extreme examples abound, such as a world dominated by a single power or a small oligarchy of powers as opposed to a world of conflicting but free states – with preferences depending on one’s views on what is necessary to prevent nuclear or bio-technical self-destruct.

For the purposes of this paper, the range of main stream humanitarian values serves as the yardstick for good or bad futures. But the need for a new type of high-level politicians holds true for all values on the desired trajectory of humanity into the future. For sure, values will change, and in part radically so, as illustrated by the not so long away history of slavery – but this will make no difference to the need for New Rulers and little difference to most of the required qualities of such high-level politicians.

9. Recapitulation

All this leads to the mapping of the main missions of high-level 21st century political leadership and the core qualities required for adequately fulfilling them. But first let me recapitulate my reasoning in the form of ten theses:

1. The 21st century is sure to further explosively increase the power of humanity to impact on its future;

2. Human moral, cognitive and institutional capacities as they are now constituted are grossly inadequate for preventing dangerous and perhaps fatal misuses and abuses of that power and for the assurance of its uses for the better.

3. The result is a capacity deficit which is rapidly becoming very dangerous, with human power to impact on the future increasing geometrically while human moral, cognitive and institutional capacities to use that power for the better are increasing at best arithmetically, and even this is not obvious.

4. Therefore, upgrading the main factors determining the capacity to use the power to impact on the future for the better is an urgent necessity.

5. Among these factors, politics is of the utmost importance in making deliberate future-weaving choices, inter alia because of the legitimacy of its future-shaping activities and its command of decisive instruments, including force;

6. Within politics, high-level, and in particular top-level politicians are the single most important future-shaping actors, though operating under many constraints – which, however, they can in part overcome or modify;

7. The prevalent type of contemporary politician is, with all too few exceptions, grossly under-equipped for the critical tasks he or she must fulfill in the 21st century, including in particular, the ability to assure that the new era of humanity, which is coming whether we want it or not, is a better and not a catastrophic one.

8. Therefore, however taboo or difficult, strenuous efforts to radically improve high-level politicians, within the context of basic values such as democracy, are imperative.

9. This is a very difficult task. However historic examples, even if all too few, of top-level politicians possessing the required qualities in adequate measures demonstrate that the task is not impossible. And even partial success in the radical improvement of high-level politicians is of pivotal importance.

10. Trying to develop what I call New Rulers is, therefore, imperative.

10. Political Leadership as a Calling

A first and fundamental requirement from New Rulers is motivation and selfunderstanding of political leaders.

The classical idea of the high-level politician, even if often not fulfilled in reality, was one of calling, mission and vocation. But this has changed over the 19th and 20th centuries, with political leadership increasingly seen as a “career”, especially in Western society which is increasingly dominated by individualistic, anti-elitist and market norms. Concomitantly, ethical demands from politicians have been relaxed and the idea that their private lives should be beyond reproach has been completely abandoned.

This does not imply that the behavior of rulers in the past was any better. In fact it often was much worse. This was recognized, for instance in the theory of the “two bodies” of kings. But moral demands were put forth, both in Western traditions starting in the Bible, and in Chinese rulership literature such as Confucius. In modern society normative demands from high-level politicians are not taken seriously, and the democratic power to punish corrupt behavior of rulers, which did not exist in the past, is not exercised unless there are glaring criminal acts.

This contradicts fundamental requirements the New Ruler must meet. Regarding political leadership as a calling and mission and as providing main meaning and purpose to one’s life is a key-requirement by itself. It is also an essential pre-condition for satisfying other required core qualities. And it is needed for gaining the deep trust of populations necessary for fulfilling foundational tasks which necessarily involve much painful constructive destruction. This is all the more so the case as the effects of mass media “spins” are not only corruptive for their user but also counter-effective as citizens become immunized to their mesmerizing effects.

Related is disinterestedness, in the sense of giving absolute priority to the mission over personal pleasures and acquisitions. This is another example of desiderata emphasized in classical thinking on rulership, however much ignored in practice, which is hardly mentioned in the modern discourse on politicians – but which is critical for the New Ruler.

But it would be unrealistic to ignore an internal contradiction: human beings are keen on power and persons going into politics probably seek power more than others. This per se is not too much of a problem so long as power is regarded mainly as an essential instrument, which as a side product also provides personal gratification but does not become a main goal in itself. However, only a thin line divides between those two subjective feelings about power, all the more so because a lot of power is objectively necessary for engaging in foundational endeavors. This is one of many pitfalls awaiting even the best humanly possible politician, avoidance or at least containment of which requires a personal philosophy and psyche of self-awareness, selfcritique and self-discipline.

Leaving the complexities of this requirement for another occasion, requiring emphasis here it that full-hearted self-dedication to high-quality political leadership, up to regarding it with some sense of “sacredness”, is the ideal to be aimed at by New Rulers. Even partial success in doing so is a massive improvement over the vast majority of contemporary politicians.

11. Value Basis: From Raison d’Etat to Raison d’Humanité

Crucial is the fundamental value base in which all choices and actions of the New Ruler are grounded. While this is a matter for subject choice, however conditioned by culture and environment, required is self-consciousness about the values which the New Ruler strives to realize, an effort to take an “outside” look at one’s values, a recognition of the legitimacy of other values within some red lines, and a good dose of moral reasoning so as to improve one’s values.

To concentrate on the single most different value frame of most contemporary politicians and the New Ruler, essential for the New Ruler is quite some acceptance of raison d’humanité instead of raison d’etat.

Opinions can and do differ on some of the specifics of raison d’humanité, but its overall principle is clear: what is good for humanity as a whole instead of only what is good for one’s country.

Sometimes these two really overlap, or at least appear to do so, but this is often a fallacy that helps to avoid internal value conflicts. Often they contradict each other or compete for the same resources. And, when this is the case, the New Ruler should give a lot of weight to raison d’humanité, whether or not he publicly admits doing so when this would be counterproductive. This requirement is not simple in terms of democratic values. Democracy stipulates that the elected politician should look after the desires and interests of his constituency which elected him, i.e. his country. He may do so with a shorter or longer time horizon, but in principle his duty is directly to the public of his own country. But the good of humanity as a whole often requires giving priority to raison d’humanité even if this involves high costs locally. Saying that “in the long run” raison d’humanité equals raison d’etat and similar reliance on “real and enlightened” versus “imagined” interest is sometimes true, but often is a delusion. Disproportional sacrifices by a part of humanity are frequently necessary for the future of humanity as a whole. All this is well illustrated by the debates on limiting carbon dioxide emissions, however hidden behind empty words and ambiguous formulations.

No formula for avoiding difficult and possibly tragic moral choices can be provided or is at least theoretically possible. Pareto’s optimum and similar magic lanterns are both fallacious and non-implementable. Each New Ruler has to make and improve his own value priority judgments, but raison d’humanité should always be accepted as an important criterion and given increased weight, with public opinion being educated to its moral and practical justification.

12. Educating the Public

This leads directly to a main mission of the New Ruler, harshly neglected by nearly all contemporary high-level politicians who engage in self-marketing instead of enlightening the public. Acceptance of the task of educating the public to better understand the complexities of the new world in the making, with all its implications and its often painful adjustment requirements characterizes the New Ruler, as does the acquisition of the skills and the building of the instruments to do so without sliding into propaganda.

13. Thinking-and Acting-in-History

In essence, weaving the future involves interventions with history, with foundational activities and grand-policies being radical ones. This requires, first of all, understanding historic processes and their drivers, with emphasis on the current and expectable ones. Thus, at least some science and technology literacy is a must. Additionally it requires the design of realistic nightmares for, say, the next thirty years, to be avoided; and of realistic visions to be implemented as much as possible.

Another essential component is inventions of new policy options and openness to new ideas and facilitation of their production. The identification of the critical masses of intervention needed for achieving desired effects is another component leading to orchestrated action. All this unavoidably takes place within deep uncertainty, making “fuzzy gambling7 sophistication” and rapid learning essential.

The overall frame for deciding on interventions with historic processes is theories of rise-and-decline to be applied to specific situations. However speculative or on the level of guesstimating, the New Ruler should think in terms of rise-and-decline within time horizons from five to, say, fifty years, assisted by high-quality advisors in doing so.

The qualities required for effective intervention with historic processes so as to influence for the better trajectories into the future illustrate, in addition to essential value bases, the demanding cognitive qualities essential for New Rulers. He needs a strategic and grand-strategic mind, expressed in conscious deliberations and in knowledge-based intuitive processes. A lot of knowledge and experience are needed to develop these qualities, this being a life-long endeavor.

14. On Differences between Western and Asian Ways of Thinking

However, differences between Western and Asian ways of thinking8 are very relevant to thinking-and-acting-in-history, as well as to other aspects of high-quality rulership. Thus, Asian thinking tends more towards “flowing with history” till opportunities to change its directions arise, while Westerners are more active and have difficulties with waiting. Asians are much more aware of overall fields and wide contexts, while Westerners tend to focus on a few points. And more.

New Rulers should partake of both Western and Asian frames and modes of thinking, especially in respect to policies understood as interventions with historic processes. But further exploration of this need must wait for more studies on Asian high-quality politicians in action and their basis in Asian ways of perceiving reality and acting on it.

15. Creative-Destruction

Quite different is the creative-destruction requirement, which brings into the foreground power-related qualifications.

Adjusting, up to refounding reality to a new era unavoidably involves a lot of creative destruction, such as institutional restructuring, radical policy innovations and also the re-valuation of some deeply held beliefs and values. All these are not only very difficult because of their dependence on the invention of new alternatives and the development of new values that better fit emerging realities, but also very painful.

Overcoming fixated thinking, vested interests, entitlements, obsolete legal norms and other tyrannies of the status quo therefore requires a lot of political power, as well as a readiness to take personal risks. However, without the strength of will to engage in creative-destruction on well-considered lines and the ability to mobilize the support and resources needed for it, the idea of a New Ruler is void.

16. Partaking in Global Governance

Partaking in building decisive global governance is another key attribute of the New Ruler. The concrete content of this part of the mission depends on each particular situation, but under all circumstances New Rulers must try to join one another in building up global governance and developing global grand-policies aimed at implementing raison d’humanité after operationalizing its concrete meanings within specific contexts.

17. Accumulating Power and Using it for the Better

Power is essential for the New Ruler for fulfilling his mission. Indeed, he needs more power than politicians who do not engage in high-power requiring activities such as creative-destruction, institution redesign and foundational grand-policies. Therefore he needs power accumulation and maintenance skills, which are beyond the scope of this paper, however important. But one feature characterizes the New Ruler, in addition to the already mentioned requirement not to make power into a goal by itself and not to misuse it for personal gains. The New Ruler uses power as essential for fulfilling his mission, minimizing distorting political constraints. He first asks himself what he would do if not constrained by the hard facts of politics, and then tries to approximate the correct action while using all his skills to make them possible -- instead of starting to think “politically” and only then to consider issues on their merit.

Similarly, the New Ruler is not swayed by shifting public moods and not controlled by public opinion polls, acting within his legitimate mandate according to his best conscience, while explaining himself in enlightening ways to the public and justifying his choices on their merits. Also, he does not rush into easy agreed compromises, which often combine the worst features of harder to implement options.

Using his power to fulfill his mission and decide issues on their merits obliges the New Ruler from time to time to use stratagems which are immoral in themselves, such as not always telling the whole truth and sometimes to lie, to present feelings which he does not really have, and more.

But, while differentiating between his brain and his mouth and wearing multiple masks, the New Ruler does so to a minimum essential degree, dislikes doing so, and – most important of all – is not himself mislead by them. He maintains membranes between his inner space and his external behavior, letting his mind shape his behavior but not letting behavior distort his mind. Thus, while he may have to lie to others, he makes a maximum effort not to lie to himself.

18. Consulting Speakers of Truth to Power

Even the best of New Rulers is not and cannot be self-contained. He or she knows only a small part of what is relevant to the issues he is facing and he is error-prone as are all human beings. Self-skepticism combined with decisiveness is essential, but not enough. Therefore, the New Ruler depends on a large range of colleagues, assistants and staff, must be fully aware of the importance of their partnership and be willing to work to improve it. Most critical of all is seeking a diverse set of advisors and counselors who speak the truth to power. The New Ruler encourages frank criticism of his own ideas and designs multiple advisory systems so as to be exposed to a variety of perspectives, values, views, evaluations, and options.

19. Preparing the Next Generation of High-Quality Politicians

The last task of the New Rulers to be mentioned here is the preparation of the next generation of high-quality politicians. Taking interns and understudies, setting up leadership development institutes, investing in coaching promising young politicians – these illustrate relatively easy steps. More painful is grooming of your recommended successors, because they may also be your competitors and remind you of the finitude of your term in office. But, still, a New Ruler is measured by his impact on the future, including assurance of future and even better rulers to carry on his tasks as they see fit to do.

20. Personal Philosophy .

To become more of a New Ruler a fitting personal philosophy is required, quite independent of one’s transcendental beliefs. To give but one example, particularly required is a good dose of stoic enthusiasm. This sounds like a selfcontradiction, but is not. Enthusiasm is needed to persist in very difficult and demaning foundational endeavor. A good dose of stoicism is essential in order not to despair and to avoid burn-out. Keeping these two in balance, on line with Aristotle’s Golden Mean principle is not easy, but nothing about being a New Ruler is easy. However is not impossible given strenuous selfcrafting effort.

21. Self-Evaluation Leading to Constant Self-Improvement

This leads to the last quality required of New Rulers taken up in this paper, namely self-evaluation leading to constant self-improvement. Constant selfevaluation, with contemplative time to be periodically reserved for doing so as a requirement of the examined life has a long tradition. But it is clear that very few high-level politicians do so, certainly not searchingly, frankly and self-critically. This was bad in the past, but becomes intolerable given their increasing future-impacting importance. Therefore, self-evaluation is a main requirement from the New Rulers.

A proposed mental tool for doing so is a "privileged historian", that is an imagined "privileged historian" who knows all the facts, including subjective feelings and mental processes of the ruler. An additional assumption is that the historian shares the ruler’s values other than clearly obnoxious ones. However he gives much weight in evaluating the ruler to raison d’humanité as presently conceivable.

The way a New Ruler uses this (or other) virtual judges is by thought experiments imagining how such a historian would evaluate him. Unavoidably, such selfevaluations suffer from many biases, but making a sincere effort at systematic self-evaluation is much better than constant self-indulgence, self-justification and all too much self-congratulation with blaming of others for all failures which are too glaring to be ignored – as is the habit of the vast majority of present and past high-level politicians, with all too few exceptions. However, self-evaluation is here not a goal by itself, however laudable morally. It should serve as a basis for constant self-improvement up to some measure of self-crafting and even self-recreating. There are many ways to do so, such as selective reading, psycho-therapy, personal coaching, discourses with trusted counselors, participation in study retreats and more.

Young aspirants to becoming New Rulers should choose appropriate study courses, such as history, social science, public policy and public law (as long as they do not absorb too much the mind of a lawyer, which is not good for the critical future-weaving mission of a New Ruler). But these are subjects for another occasion.

21. Mirror Mirror on the Wall

To sum up this preliminary discourse on the New Ruler who is essential for the thriving of humanity in the 21st century and beyond, and to add some more specifications, let me conclude with a kind of virtual "mirror". In it required qualities of the New Ruler are engraved so his reflection contrasts his actual self with what is needed – thus guiding existing and nascent politicians in selfevaluation as necessary for the climb to remake themselves more fully into New Rulers.

PERSONAL MIRROR FOR POLITICIANS WHO ASPIRE TO BECOME MORE LIKE NEW RULERS

1. As a foundation for all you think and do, regard being a New Ruler as a calling and mission which imposes on you many responsibilities with privileges being but an instrument to help you fulfill your tasks.

2. As a 21st century high-level politician, or one aspiring to become one, your main mission is or will be to take care of the long-term future of humanity and your country. This involves devoting much attention, contemplative as well as in action, to weaving the future up to founding parts of a new world.

3. This does not mean that taking care of the here and now is not part of your duty, but you should not let “now-time” and “here I am” dominate your mind and monopolize your attention. Rather, taking care of the future should receive high priority in both your mind and actions.

4. To do so effectively you must develop the character, values, cognitive abilities, knowledge and behavioral skills essential for fulfilling your main mission as well as secondary ones.

5. As a politician, your duty is in part to those who elected and selected you. But you share responsibility for the future of humanity as a whole. Therefore, considerations of raison d’humanité should be given much weight in all your major decisions.

6. Weaving the future involves unprecedented moral issues, such as the meaning of “justice” on a global scale, justified uses of force, limiting the freedom of science and information, and handling the potentials of bio-technology. Pondering such issues is therefore a pressing “practical” condition for responsibly making up your mind on appropriate action. To do so you should engage a lot in deep thinking which provides deep grounding for practice and pragmatics.

7. Indeed, more is needed. To make up your mind in a responsible way, you need to engage in a lot of contemplation. Don’t let the pressures of daily events, your liking for company and the temptations of being “practical” hinder you from engaging in solitude in a lot of action-directed contemplation.

8. Thinking-in-history is at the core of your future-shaping endeavor. You must understand global processes so as to be able to optimize interventions with them, which will often take the form of grandpolicies. This requires a thorough awareness of the complexity of historic processes, which are non-linear and dense not only with uncertainty but also with inconceivability. No less important are the identification and invention of policy options which, if realized with an adequate critical mass, can change historic trajectories in desired directions. Developing your capacities to think, feel and decide in such terms, as well as in frames of rise-and-decline, is imperative.

9. Beware of being captivated by simplistic slogans, such as “sustainability”, or being enslaved by simple “solutions” such as leaving all difficult issues to the magic of the market. And avoid the mental cages of “political correctness”, even if you cannot say so in public.

10. Educating the public is a main mission of yours, as a value in itself and as a pre-condition for realizing new policies and mobilizing the support you need for doing so. Using well new modes of interaction and communication, such as social networking sites like Facebook, blogs, YouTube and so on, can be very useful – and makes you less dependant on monetary resources and mass media popularity. But be careful not to slide from education of the public into the pit of propaganda and mass media spin.

11. The warning above is but an introduction to your difficult and painful task of engaging a lot in creative-destruction, both in respect to your pet ideas and the external stubborn facts of fixed opinions, vested interests and other tyrannies of the status quo.

12. Partaking in building decisive global governance, as essential for the future of humanity, is part of your mission. Cooperating with other New Rulers is a main way to do so.

13. You depend on others to help you think and decide and to implement your choices. Be careful to avoid “yes-men or women” and cronies. Instead, build advisory and advisory and consultative staffs composed of persons willing to speak the truth to power. But do not rely on any single group of advisors. The more important an issue is, the more you should expose yourself to a multiplicity of perspectives, views, evaluations and options. But always be skeptical, both about yourself and others.

14. For all you do, however valid in itself, you need a lot of power. Unavoidably you will have to use stratagems which may in be immoral. Do so sparingly and take extra care not to let them poison your own mind.

15. Avoid “politics as the art of the possible”, being driven by public opinion polls and seeking easy compromises instead of fighting for the best option on its substantive merits. Explaining yourself, enlightening the public and building appropriate coalitions of the willing should be your main tools for achieving needed consensus, not mass-media spins.

16. Also needed is nurturing of a fitting personal philosophy including a lot of stoic enthusiasm, so you can persist in trying to do the very difficult.

17. No human being can become a perfect New Ruler. But you can strive to make yourself into something closer to one. This requires constant self-awareness, self-evaluation and strenuous self-remaking assisted by counselors of high stature whom you trust.

21. Action and Group Discussion Recommendations

The group will decide on its own priorities. My own recommendation is to concentrate on the need for significantly improving politicians in concrete and specific terms. Practical suggestions by the group on ways to facilitate the development of politicians meeting these requirements may be a very useful product of group deliberations.