On Purpose – Part I

Populism has its purpose.

Say what you like about populists … but you know what they stand for.

If you’re British and I asked you what Nigel Farage is about … I think you’d have a pretty clear answer and I think we would all say about the same: restoring a fiercely nostalgic vision of sensible, white, beer-drinking Britain free from interference from anyone overseas.

If you were Indian, you’d understand Modi’s drive to reassert Hindu values, Brazilian’s know that Bolsonaro promised law & order …

… and we all know that Trump is on a mission to Make America Great Again, whatever that actually means.

This post isn’t about the rights and wrongs of populists and authoritarians…

… it’s about why it works …

… and it’s the start of a three-part series exploring the nature of autonomy, mastery and purpose: in selecting leaders, in developing our own minds … and in creating a better future for the whole of humanity, now and in the future.

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The purpose of motivation.

In 2005, a group of MIT researchers lead by Dan Ariely conducted a study into the role of incentives in driving performance. The Daniel Pink talk, illustrated above, gives a great summary of the findings…

What this study shows is that, in a work setting, money is a an extremely poor motivator of performance. In fact for tasks that require even a tiny amount of thinking … increasing monetary reward reduces output.

The study found that to motivate employees: autonomy, mastery and purpose were much more powerful tools to motivate better performance.

Why is this?

My contention is simple: money is an extremely abstract concept … it’s not hard-wired into our mammalian brains and it’s not been part of our biological evolution.

Purpose, on the other hand, is an innate, evolved part of what it is to be human.

In fact … when you boil down anything you do in life, anything you do today … even your choice to read this article … what you find is that “purpose” drives everything. Why you get an early night, why you work hard, why you go to the gym and why you have kids.

Underneath every decision there is a purpose - it is the foundation to everything.

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Hacking Humanity

So why does this matter today? Why did we start talking about populism and suddenly get onto motivational sales training?

Because it’s only when you understand our deep, primordial need for purpose that you understand why populism works. Populism hacks that need.

In fact, it’s more clever than that.

A true populist, like Trump or Farage succeeds not just because they have a sense of purpose … but because they create a vacuum of purpose around themselves that makes it difficult, if not impossible for anyone else to get or keep your attention …

Opposition to populism is never effective, because the opposition is so distracted by trying to examine, critique or undermine the populists message … that any sense of purpose the opposition has evaporates.

Any opposition is left being the people without any more purpose than criticising the populist … and that just doesn’t win hearts, minds … or votes.

Here’s how it works:

Make America Great Again.

Okay, no-one really knows what this means and when was America great in the past anyway? What’s actually changed? What defines “great” ..?

In the end, it actually doesn’t matter.

We can all imagine what it means and unless there’s a real debate on what it means (which there isn’t), what we’re left with is just a feeling.

That feeling is of what?

Direction of travel - that’s what.

In one short statement what this statement does is set out a problem (America is not great), and ideal (America should be great), a goal (become great) and in fact, a goal that is demonstrably achievable (“again” implies it’s possible because America was apparently “great” in the past).

It’s a perfect message of achievable, desirable (but in fact, entirely unknowable, intangible and unmeasurable) purpose. Who can argue with it?

Now, remember your Maya Angelou folks:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

What Trump’s statement does is make you feel something: direction, intent, clarity … and more than anything … as sense of purpose.

It doesn’t matter that he says it while taxing the poor, giving to the rich, pardoning criminals, eviscerating environmental protections, destroying America’s soft power, collapsing the markets, embarrassing himself and the nation and violently rounding up and deporting innocent civilians as a pretext to martial law … because you still feel like: “Hey, at least this guy knows what he’s about — let’s follow him”.

The strength of feeling, is so persuasive and pervasive, that MAGA followers — often turkeys voting for their own Christmas — end up deploying a kind of ‘Zen’ political trust that only Douglas Adams could have imagined.

“He had a tremendous propensity for getting lost when driving. This was largely because of his method of ‘Zen’ navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both.”

– Douglas Adams, Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Keep America Terrible Forever

Okay … so we probably know all that … deep down. We innately like to follow people with purpose … much as we like to work for companies with purpose.

We like buying cheese from farms with a sense of purpose, football teams lift trophies when the coach has a sense of purpose - heck, the whole genre of sport is built around a sense of purpose: winning.

Leadership, success, awards, art, wars … humanity is built around purpose.

But Trump, Farage, Modi … these people don’t exist in a vacuum. In America’s case one would expect things to be far more balanced than they are.

MAGA can’t be the only one’s with purpose?

Can they?

In fact, the Republican’s control of congress is razor thin, most of the economic strength of the United States still sits firmly in deeply blue states and less than half the population actually voted for Trump in any case.

So where’s the foil? Where’s the counterpoint, the resistance, the rebuttal?

There is none.

It’s not that it’s in disarray (as many pundits characterise the Democratic Party)…

… it’s non-existent.

But why?

Well… the “why” here is critically important to understand.

What is the counterpoint to “Make America Great Again” ..? How does a Democratic politician really counter that? Don’t you want America to be great again?

The real reason that populists succeed is not, in fact, just because they have a clear, strong sense of purpose (which people might see through or with which people might disagree) … but that the strength of feeling their sense of purpose engenders sucks any other purpose out of the room.

The reason populists rise up against flailing competition is not because they succeed but that they force others to fail.

And yet, when we look back at 1930’s Europe, perhaps with some confusion, and think “how could it have happened” - we all too often loose sight of the broader political landscape.

Can you name any opposition politicians - heck, even other political parties - in 1930’s Germany?

In America there is no cohesive response to anything Trump, Miller et al are doing. There’s no unity in the Democratic party. There’s no opposition leader. There’s no vision. And: there’s no sense of purpose from anyone in opposition beyond complaining about what The President is doing…

In 2024, did Biden or Harris actually have a slogan? What was their vision?

Where we they offering to take the country, the electorate or the prospects of the people?

The bottom line is this:

When a politician comes along with a strong sense of purpose, it doesn’t matter how problematic that purpose is … the gravitational pull of the certainty itself sucks the air out of the room so that no-one else looks like a contender.

And of course, not everyone is fooled. But invariably, enough of the swing vote that exists in the middle of every democracy, gravitates towards the sense of purpose … the sense of how it makes them feel … and away from all the other politicians who are duped into a feckless “but we’re not them” approach … which inspires precisely nobody and alienates almost everybody.

In the end - our mammalian, gut instinct is to follow the sense of purpose first … before we even have the time for our intelligent upper brains to rationalise what we’re hearing.

By then, it’s too late. The feeling has its foot in the door.

Populists know this … and hack this instinct with ease. That’s why they win.

With purpose.

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Where next?

So where do we go from here?

This is part of a three part exploration … of Purpose, Autonomy & Mastery … and my plan is to publish the next few parts over the next week or two.

I’m going to move on to our sense of mastery in an increasingly AI saturated world … because it’s not just populism that’s on the rise … the machines are coming for us too.

If you’d like to read that - hit subscribe. It’s free.

And if you’ve any questions or ideas … since there’s so much more I could have said … please hit the comments. They’re free too!

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