I do not hold politicians in high regard. They do not represent the pinnacle of humanity and could be called the opposite. By definition politicians are deceptive, because they promise what people want in order to gain and stay in power, and they reduce us all to the lowest common denominator.
And so I steer clear of them as I invest in their antithesis. I have been an entrepreneur for 23 years, building what I see to be the way forward. This is my vote.
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My brand is about "being yourself for a living", which is my stand for how the emerging world will work. My father used to tell me at school that I shouldn't complain about what's wrong if I don't have a solution, and so I have endeavoured since to personify and implement the way I feel to be right. My business and my life's work are how I have envisioned education and the free market to evolve. This is my vote.Voting means effectively giving power of attorney to a party in exchange for their undertaking to manage some of your affairs on your behalf. It means renouncing elements of your legal majority and, in that, misplacing your personal power and reneging on your individual and communal responsibility.
In theory, the model has practical benefits, but in history it has a ruinous track record in addition to the corruption and exploitation that it invites. It's also a cop-out. Signing over your authority is irresponsible, especially without full understanding. Voting is a compromise and the truth never compromises.Isn't it time for the truth? Isn't humanity transforming into a more intelligent incarnation, shedding its shameful history and emerging as enlightened, as a matter of survival for the species and the planet? Aren't we doing this as individuals and a global village under profound duress and the increasingly obvious folly of our previous ways? If so, politics and voting will have little, if any place, in the new world. A cross on a ballot is a vote for the past and against the future.You cannot vote for change, only for more of the same, which always promises change but never delivers. Next party, next president, same story. Within the presented narrative you can debate lefts and rights but that's the point: you are drawn into the set story and away from awakening and possibility. You are confined to conferring on other people's terms. There is no wisdom or leadership in that.You are also given two or three main choices and coerced into settling for the lesser of those evils. Green, blue and red, the colours of the parties or the banks or most players in any industry. It's theatre, craftily managed from behind the scenes for nefarious personal gain - not sincere collective gain. One front wears berets and the other construction helmets, but it's nothing new, just classical Shakespearean tragicomedy all these centuries later. Lap it up and go back to work.
I stay out of it all and walk my own way. I lead from outside the system and build the new, while the old hangs itself with the rope it stole. I thrive against the odds and the tide turns my way in good time. I live and learn, create, teach and write, and I keepgoing no matter what. I help others do the same and I keep my thumbnails clean. This is my vote.
If people feel that doing their bit amounts to making a cross on a ballot once every five years, then we live in a sad state of affairs. The education system has succeeded in creating clones and not innovators or entrepreneurs, and the school structure remains as stubbornly static as it has been for over a century. Young people are as proud of their uniforms as parents are of their posts on social media, showing that they queued and got marked at the polls. Are they not just children enslaved to the system? "Please, Sir, give me all the answers. Here is my power for you to do with as you decide, because I am too small to determine the way for myself. I maintain my minority status."
It's time for us to grow up and take full responsibility for ourselves and our role in global transformation. It's time to be wiser and more intelligent, and to determine a new reality that liberates humanity. I have been working on this with my best effort for two dozen years and it's working. It's much more meaningful and fun than standing in line and hoping for the best. This is my vote.
• Wheeler is the founder of BEntrepreneurING, a global speaker and author of the Insights series of books..