From: Tom Lane
Columbus
Whenever we follow anything without question, we set ourselves up for disaster.
I don’t care if it is a religion, a politician/party, or simply a belief that you adopted wholeheartedly.
Following without question is acquiescing to going unconscious to life.
The only thing that keeps us alive in this world is the ability to ask questions, to doubt, to wonder if this is really the right way.
Of course, there is no right way, but you won’t find that unless you constantly question.
When we blindly follow, we go into a deeper sleep.
No one going into this kind of followership ever thinks that they are blindly doing this.
We deny our blindness all the time. How do you know you are not “blindly following?”
Remember all of Hitler’s followers truly believed all the stuff he was selling until after the whole thing collapsed, and then they all backtracked.
You are blindly following (“BFing) when you get information from a narrow set of inputs.
- You are “BFing” when you do not ask questions about the validity of and the sense of what you are hearing and seeing.
- You are “BFing” when you explain contradictions to prior info, as just a way someone interpreted that.
- You are “BFing” when you seek only sources of information that agree with you.
- You are “BFing” when immediately dismiss critics and info that contradicts what you think of who you are following.
- You are “BFing” when find yourself compromising your values and beliefs when they are contradicting who you are following.
- You are “BFing” when you lose friends and colleagues who disagree with you based only on your unflinching “BFing.”
For the more sophisticated followers, they can develop elaborate rationales and logic that defend their positions.
And who am I to say these are incorrect?
The true test of these is when they are not compared to prior views, not looked at in terms are larger systems, and are not open to sincere critique.
All blind followers are very good at creating a reality that supports the “good” reasons to be blind.
They may be about a sense of personal power, a sense of being dismissed, a sense of not being okay in this world, a sense of or simply unclear anger to the system they live in.
Someone comes along and we feel like he/she gets our angst. We don’t really understand why, and we certainly cannot explain it, but it simply “feels right”.
They become blind followers and true believers. They are ones that have caused the greatest pain in human living.
I would imagine you are putting your favorite enemy in this.
But, remember, all those others are a creation of your own believing.
They think you are so wrong for the same reasons you think they are so wrong. Not the same content, but the same process of claiming to have the “truth” and claiming the other wrong.
And we all lose.
