"Ego is the destroyer of worlds" - Futurist Jim Carroll
Upon seeing the atomic bomb explode, Robert Oppenheimer is reported to have quoted from the Hindu sacred text the Bhagavad Gita - ‘Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.’
The line has become synonymous with one of the pivotal moments in human history.
Acceptance is the most important part of change. Getting ahead of reality before reality gets ahead of you is critical.
In that context, the problem is that ego can become 'the destroyer of worlds.'
For many of us, it seems as if we are living through that moment in time right now.
People are angry, worried, wound up, confused,
Ego - and hubris - prevent people from making the decisions they could or should make.
If RBG had retired before she died, the future might have turned out very differently.
It was a tragedy to watch Diane Feinstein whither away in the Senate, literally propped up by aides in a Senate Chair.
Some reports are that Ronald Reagan was abysmally incoherent during the end of his term.
Richard Nixon was drinking himself to death and taking sleeping pills in his final days in the Oval Office.
All of them suffered from ego, hubris, and an unwillingness to get moving before the moving gets going.
But this is not just a political thing - it's widespread in the corporate world.
If Jim Balsille of Blackberry / RIM hadn't so casually dismissed the iPhone, the company might have survived.
Steve Ballmer did the same thing, and ignored the early signs of the emergence of cloud computing, dooming Microsoft to the wilderness of anemic growth until Satya Nadella shifted the company.
John DeLorean's fateful decisions around the car that carries his name resulted in a tarnished legacy for him, while the legacy of the car lives on.
Jeff Skilling of Enron believed he was invincible - until he was not.
if Elon Musk hadn't carried his arrogance and hubris into Twitter, it might still have been a viable 'global town square' instead of a putrid petri dish of angry right-wing posts, spam and porn.
People make bad decisions based on ego and hubris. It's the destroyer of careers, legacy, and more.
Power breeds ego. Ego breeds hubris. Hubris breeds destruction.
I wrote about it here: https://hubris.jimcarroll.com
Hubris and ego are the leadership equivalency of an atomic weapon.
Unleashed, when they get in the way, they can change our world and our future, and not in a good way.
Ego.
Hubris.
At some moment in my time, my message won't resonate with audiences; my delivery will suffer.
Hopefully, I will recognize when that time comes and will ensure that I can preserve my legacy before I destroy it.
The ego is the destroyer of worlds.
Futurist Jim Carroll tries to avoid certain topics, but in some cases, just can't help himself.