In fact, the amoeba is the simplest animal, just one shapeless cell. They are individualists. They don’t even need other amoebas to help them reproduce, but just split into two amoebas. But individualists have to find individual ways of dealing with difficulties. If you prod one (you would need a sharp needle to attack it, and a microscope to see what you are doing), it just shrinks away from the attack. That isn’t very exciting, but amoebas have survived a long time.
Some people are like amoebas. Faced with any difficulty, or an attack, they just shrink away from it. They might survive that way, but they never face up to a challenge, so they don’t change anything. If you were able to ask an amoeba, it would probably say it wasn’t interested in changing anything. It only wants to survive.
Because they reproduce by splitting, one amoeba only produces two more amoebas, each with exactly the same genes as the ‘parent’. Adapting to change is easier if the next generation are different from their parent(s). That way, as some human parents are disappointed to discover, your child is never an exact replica of you. He or she is somebody different, who will have different ways of reacting to challenges. That is good because new challenges need new responses.
New people have a better chance of managing when their environment, and the challenges it presents, change. The amoebas among us will never change the world.
But if amoebas are so limited, isn’t it strange that we so often trust people who are like amoebas to govern us? A modern politician is taught that to win elections, he or she must change shape to look like whatever the opinion polls say voters want. That is the first rule, and the second is similar: never make a decision that will upset anybody.
Do you remember when we expected Harold Wilson to remove Ian Smith for us? That was a mistake, because Harold Wilson was a born politician. When people asked what he was doing about Rhodesia, still a rebel British colony, he would only promise to do something soon. The satirical magazine Private Eye even called him ‘Harold Willsoon’. He was unable to do anything that might upset anybody.
Most British people were embarrassed by and wanted Ian Smith removed, but that would have upset the bankers and retired colonials in Tunbridge Wells.
This explains why really determined power-hungry people succeed in politics. Most politicians, like amoebas, try to avoid decisions. When they are forced, they choose what will cause them less discomfort in the short term. So all that an Adolf Hitler, Ian Smith or Margaret Thatcher has to do is to persuade the politicians around him or her that opposing him would be more uncomfortable than agreeing. So they agree with him or her. Does that explain the mess we are in now?
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