117 thoughts on “Take us to your Leader”

  1. An excellent article. I do believe that people are conditioned to be led by society. We are so overloaded with information, pressured to buy the latest and greatest, anything to stop us from thinking for ourselves. Then there is the greatest fraud, religion, which wants nothing but followers.
    Being an individual is hard work, but it beats being just another cig in the machine.

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    1. To be fair, I’m ok with religion as it brings some people peace and gets them through the day. However…I don’t believe in not questioning things. My whole life is just a series of who, what when where and how…

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  2. If I’m on a tour, I don’t mind being led because I will learn from your expertise and be expertly guided in a way I could not do myself. –Emphasis on EXPERT. –But as we are finding out more and more..what makes an expert and how much power over our lives do we give them? (Fauci?)

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  3. My quick take:
    I don’t want to be lead in the sense of political/religious/world leaders but I’d rather they lead by example to whatever platforms they were ‘elected’ to do!
    Also, being lead is far different than following a leader…following is a choice being lead is mindless.

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      1. Only because I feel safe on your site to write this will I posit:
        What has the past year (actually referencing the past administration’s years) shown us in the way of human behaviour being ‘based upon research’?
        Geesh.

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      2. Hey…don’t just stop at one administration. Look hard at all of them. And ask if anyone really wants us to question authority.

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      3. Agreed! The phrasing of ‘questioning authority’ has always irked me, though. I prefer my Ma’s phrasing of “Learn to think for yourself!”
        Just a little differentiation on a similar idea.

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      1. If you ask for direction you are looking for an answer then can choose which route to take or go your own way… no one wants to be led around especially by a poor leader…
        Would you agree with my analogy?

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  5. I certainly don’t want to be led. I don’t mind a suggestion/recommendation in a book, or in life, but I do not want to be led. Without sounding too critical, we’re not sheep! If they don’t believe a certain authors books should be published, then that is their opinion, however they do have the option to simply not read it.
    We should be able to work things out by ourselves x

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    1. Neither had I. It’s shown at the start of the doc, and as I knew I was writing about the first part of the post, it seemed quite apt to my thoughts.

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  7. This is so relevant today, cancel culture, messy politics, people can give opinions but acting as your word is law becomes dangerous. I can talk to you about the Dr. Seuss situation and give my opinion but I will not force or rebuttal your arguments to make my opinion “right”. Oh- I really like that quote about monsters. Very well though out and interesting post.

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  8. I’ve never wanted to be led. I learned as a little girl that too Many Jews in WWll didn’t fight back when led to their deaths because they couldn’t believe that others could be so inhumane. They trusted too much. So whether my desire to question all leadership was innate or environmental I don’t know. This caused issues with my father because he was a military officer and expected compliance. Lol He referred to himself as a benevolent dictator and I respected and trusted him, but I made sure I voiced my opinions early on when I felt his rules were unfair. They drove both my parents crazy. I protested in my youth when I felt the government was wrong. I’m still fighting back and championing causes.
    As a child, teachers always checked the leadership box for me, but I was also checked as a child who was not a good listener or rule follower. I don’t know if you can always be both LOL

    On the other hand, this morning I’m waiting to hear from my oncologist who is going to give me a new plan of action since my cancer antigen numbers In my blood work are elevated again. Of course I’ll follow his lead. He’s an expert in his field. So leadership really depends on expertise. Political leaders are not in the same category. *None of us should be blindly led. We need to think snd weigh our options. There is a huge difference between following a fanatical madman and listening to a doctor or a literature professor, or a ballet instructor. One is about power, the other possesses knowledge.

    I’ve watched students over the years. Some people are born leaders and instantly take charge. Others are followers. But as long as we all are thinkers and have the courage to know the difference between right and wrong we should be ok.

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    1. First: thinking if you as you await test results💗💗 and yes…it’s ok to see an expert and listen to their advice. But also ok to ask the expert questions if you don’t understand or to seek guidance from another source. I think too often we are expected to follow without question. Sooooo wrong. Questioning is good. Research is good

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      1. Absolutely. The bases for everything I did as a teacher was to get students to research the facts. In regard to preparing them for political decisions I told them to research all the facts, determine what was important to their value system, and then make an educated decision on their stance moving forward.
        Basically to think for themselves. But acquiring knowledge was key and so was asking questions. Socrates knew a thing or two about getting others to use their brains!
        I have heard the quote about monsters before. It’s chilling isn’t it? And so true! Great topic.

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      3. Yes! Primo Levi was a Holocaust survivor and therefore lived through the experience of a having citizens do nothing while others were murdered. He knew first hand what could happen. That quote was often shared during the past administration.

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      4. But it goes through so many things…so many times we are supposed to go with the flow…I don’t trust anyone implicitly….I need some proof or reason or rationale

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    1. People don’t like being questioned. They think you should just accept what you say. And yes…I think this is a situation where women are labeled Karen’s…because they ask things

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  11. I think a lot of people want to be led. That’s why we have so many people with blind loyalty to a political party who never question what the party says. It’s why so many people blindly accept rules and censorship without asking questions.

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  12. Pretty sure you know my answer to this. My current mission revolves around a work situation and I will beat it to death and toss questions left and right until someone can give me a logical answer. I see the irritation levels rising around me. In an off-hand way I have even heard “it might be better just to do your job…” and what they didn’t add is “and shut up”

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  13. The Covid-19 pandemic answers the question, IMO, because it became obvious that there are sheeple, and then there are those who are skeptics and absolutely adamant about making their own decisions—even when they aren’t good ones. I don’t mind being led, but never forced, and I need to make my own educated decisions. Great topic!

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  14. I think that there is a significant portion of the population that is more comfortable following someone else rather than putting in the effort to lead their own, distinct lives or to think for themselves. So yes, many, many people do want to be led. In a lot of cases, they do so because it is easier. There are a plethora of examples I could note, but have no desire to open that can of worms. Part of the issue is that many of those that want to be led are also those that, if you point that out to them, will rage at the offense of doing so. Not many people want to be labeled as a follower, even if they are. I also think that we all follow to a certain extent. At least in different aspects of our lives. We follow those that have the knowledge and the experience we don’t or those that are interesting or lead a different kind of life than we do. Sometimes we follow to gain knowledge to then be able to make our own choices. There are lots of different aspects to being a follower. The truly dangerous types, though, are those that follow without thought or questioning. I don’t consider myself much of a follower, but I’m certainly not a leader, either.

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  15. Thought provoking post. I don’t want to be led. I want to be left alone. When my kids were in Catholic Elementary school, I’d see things that I thought were wrong. I’d question why and my friends, other moms, kept telling me to leave it alone. They were all about getting along. I didn’t grow up in the Church. I grew up questioning everything. As for Dr. Suess, I ordered Mulberry Street on Amazon after it was banned. A month later I got a letter from the bookseller apologizing that he couldn’t sell me the book or he’d be sued!

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  16. I think that most people do not really want to be led. Yet we are conditioned through school and society to be “good”; to follow the rules; to not rock the boat, so to speak. I think media and marketing prey on our insecurities to manipulate us into buying whatever it is they’re selling. Critical thinking is frowned upon, as a rule. An easily led population far better suits those who profit from keeping the masses passive and compliant. I think we are so conditioned that we are too often on autopilot, just going with the flow. Thinking for ourselves just requires too much effort and we are either too tired or too lazy to make the effort too much of the time. We are our own worst enemies.

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    1. I think it leads to many groups. People blindly adhere to a party…doesn’t matter which party…they just want to “belong”

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  21. Excellent topic and one my wife and I have regularly. “Being led” is not simply black & white. There is a lot of grey. There are people completely and willing led, by the government, by their doctors, by the media and by their friends. If they have a sniffle, they go to the ER, they blindly rely on the government to keep them safe from everything including each other. Their very existence is dependent on be led by others. I refer to them as the people who don’t make it through day 1 of the zombie apocalypse. There are others who try to “fend” for themselves, they don’t want or need the government leading them through their daily life, they make their own decisions and act when circumstance dictate. These people make it through the first week of the zombie apocalypse. Then there are the “enlightened,” who think they need to save the first two groups from themselves. The responses you got from your sister’s post belong in this group. In many ways, they are no different than the first group. The good news is they don’t make it through day 1 of the zombie apocalypse.

    I’ve had some tough experiences in my life and I simply have no room for toxic people. I make up my own mind and make my own decisions, always have. Sometimes they are good and sometimes they’re not but all the time they are mine.

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  22. I personally do not want to be led but I think some people do. I see when I’m at work and I am Lead RN or actually even if I’m not others will come up to me and ask very simple questions as what to do when they should know exactly what to do. It just totally boggles my mind. This makes me think that people want to be led they want a leader and they want someone to tell them what they should do. I am not sure if it’s because of reassurance that they are doing the right thing or because they don’t possess critical thinking skills or maybe they have always been a follower all their life, they just don’t know any different.

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  25. I don’t want to be “led” like a sheep but I wouldn’t mind instruction or information. It’s funny that you used the “how high” example. My mom always said, “The husband is the master of the house. When he says jump, you say how high?” While I didn’t follow that example entirely, the concept has caused some issues at this point in our lives (married 37 years last month). I definitely reserve the right to make my own decisions and I want ALL the facts before I do. Great post.

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  27. I don’t want to lead if that means I am being told what to think, or someone is doing my critical thinking for me. That’s BS.
    I know we have touched on this before and then I shared this list of 100 banned books including (incredibly so) Captain Underpants.

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  29. You might be interested in Eric Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, published in 1941, exploring why people were drawn to authoritarian systems. That question is especially relevant to today’s world.

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  30. There are those without core beliefs that will attempt to lead by going with the crowd and what the majority think, it is about some people being or having a forceful nature and people follow because of the way those thoughts are represented. I don’t want to be led, but I have opinions and beliefs and tend to be drawn to people with the same. I ask questions people who don’t generally want to be led or are easily led.

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  31. I am very tired of those who continue to want to wear masks even if they have had both shots and we are not required to. I am very tired of all the young adults continuing to wear masks including the one who said, “It just feels better. I want to continue like everyone else! ” Huh???

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      2. Sometimes what annoys me is hypocrisy. I doubt if some of these people got their shots because they are afraid or don’t trust the results yet they pushed for everyone else to get the shots. You know what I mean?

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  32. Over here in the UK children’s book are being removed from store shelves, whether this censorship is due to BLM or political correctness, book banning makes me nervous because where does it end? Who’s setting themselves up as the arbitrator of morality and good taste?

    ‘TinTin In The Congo’ with it’s colonial themes is now considered so controversial there’s no longer an English Language edition……..I had to buy a French copy from Europe!!! You’re a mom, surely well balanced intelligent children can handle controversial books?

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  33. I don’t wanna be led, but I will say we’re all susceptible to Kool-aid drinking if it taste good to us 😉

    I’ll also add that I think most of us, across the globe, are raised/taught not to think critically about anything. I mean the whole school system (for most people) is built on just following rules, learning what’s provided, and regurgitating (unless you’re in a specific program, like IB, AP, etc.).

    But to reiterate…nope…I don’t wanna be led.

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    1. You’re right….we are told exactly what and how to think. Someone who questions is a troublemaker…the group is not always right, and to follow blindly without question is bad

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  34. Mmmmm. Not a binary answer here. Some do, some don’t, want to be led. In fact, I would argue that it’s really more about reciprocal leadership. Collaboration, conversation, engagement, and relationship building between and among people. Oftentimes, no offense to your sister’s friend, people that say things like, “they will tell us what to do”, are really more saying, I’m not interested in being a part of the conversation about, well, fill in the blank here. The opposite of leadership, disengagement.

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  35. What has happened recently in our society is a devastatingly excellent answer to your question. Censorship, lockdowns, vaccines, masks. How many of those things occurred because people were told by those in authority to do them? And they complied–often because they were told these things were “in the interest of others.” Now these same leaders are having to backtrack. Will we continue to follow them without thinking or will we stand up and question?

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    1. I know. We were divided into groups of this is “bad” and this is “good” and were expected to blindly follow a path.

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  36. I can’t ignore history. We have had monsters throughout the world that enslaved races and it only took one monster to start and the minions followed. Being a follower is easy. It allows you to put your brain on cruise control and heck out.
    One of the worse parts about college was group projects because there was always one leader and then the rest that sat there like a bump on a log waiting to be told each new step.

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    1. I hate group projects for that very reason….but yes….we tend to get behind the group without questioning if something is wrong…we assume if everyone is doing it it’s ok…

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  37. Do I want to be led? No, categorically not. I make my own risk analysis & decisions. I am also a respecter of laws. But plenty of people do want to be led. Not only because it’s easier than having to carry out the risk analysis themselves, but because they can blame someone else for the decision if it goes wrong. When you mix that kind of thinking with the growing ranks of libertarians who’re only interested in what’s good for them, no wonder society is such a mess.

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  38. Some people do like to be led, although I’m not one of them. And that’s a bad thing, because there’s never any shortage of people who want to tell others exactly how to think and act. I think it goes in cycles, but it’s definitely on the rise in our country right now.

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  39. You might be interested in the Human Behavior Experiments on Obedience and Conformity by Milgram and Zimbardo. Apparently when people think someone else is responsible for the outcome they’ll be more likely to follow and less likely to question the authority. It’s a complicated issue especially when you consider what happened during WWII and Hitler’s regime. Good people are more than capable of doing bad things, this is something we should never forget, C

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    1. That sounds very interesting. Someone else said that people follow because they want to blame someone else. I like that line of thought…escape blame

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      1. ……………………nooo, I just want common sense to get out of this catastrophe as quick as possible, so am I your lol one and only commenter happy to be led? Hope so 😀 .

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  40. I doubt any of your followers want to be led, but I think at least 50% of the people DO expect the experts to handle things most of the time . The of us rest vary from wanting someone to lead them by the collar to wanting to lead someone else by the collar . Think of the bell curve. I think most people are pretty easily led . Obviously I’m a total rebel , but only when I choose to be . Sometimes I’d rather have someone else deal with things. By the way your post was in the Discover section .

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  41. Sitting on the bus, reflecting lol on this posting, AND when it comes to all things Covid I’m happy to be led………..whether that be masks, vaccination and social distancing I’ll do as instructed like a sheep! I’ll do whatever and be injected with whatever if scientists says it’s good for me.

    Why so? Because humans’ are generally selfish thoughtless and stupid, here in the UK the concept of common sense means sweet FA, we pick and choose the laws we follow, we ignore rules that are good for us ALL cause we’re libertarians……………..sometimes in life we need to shut our mouths and do exactly what an expert tells us to especially vaccinations………… 😀 .

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