From a conversation elsewhere, the herd follower in italics, my comments in bold:
It’s easy to say you don’t follow the leader while following the leader but walking backward, looking in a different direction, or taking the long trail that leads to the same place.
Yeah, the whole “I’m a self-motivated and thoughtful individual, but I can’t really explain WHY I think the way I do and just HAPPEN to be heading the way my fuehrer told me to” thing. They may have the thoughts in their heads, but they’re not thoughts they developed or worked through for them. They’re just the thoughts of the fuehrer.
It’s not really a leader/follower thing. It’s not really a weed legality effect thing either. I’m thinking it’s more of a “how do my actions affect others in the village?” thing. Even if you say you aren’t in the tribe you are living in the village. It’s human nature to live in a tribe (pack/herd? – depending on your outlook). There are a lot of people here who could survive all alone in the woods but who the hell wants to? When you moved to MI did you take your family? Why not go full freedom and be free of those obligations? I’m sure nurture has a lot to do with why you didn’t but I have no doubt nature played a part.
Well…… sorta. You’re looking at different parts of what’s arguably the same elephant.
Certainly a HUGE component is one you’ve put your finger on – “How do my actions affect others around me.” Not even necessarily
as you may well be a visitor in someone else’s village – but the considerations about how your actions affect others need to be taken. And all too often aren’t.
Of course, you’ve also dipped into a reason why sheeple exist and thrive – fuehrers can often give them MORE freedom, though, arguably, “license” would be a better word. There are far too many barbarians (as in “one lacking in civilization”) in the world who love having a basis for living out their barbaric fantasies, of whatever stripe. There is no better license – until it’s revoked – than “I was just following orders.” Of course, that license can be revoked either by a stronger power, or even by their own fuehrer who may need to throw somebody to the wolves to keep his own posterior in power…
When we have a tribe we need to have some order.
Correct. Remember, though, “anarchy” does not mean “without order.” It means “without leaders.” Or, as I’m using the word here due to its negative connotations, “fuehrers.” ANY social group, whether a fully knit by ties of blood clan, a looser knit tribe, the “brittle society” found on, say, a cruise ship, the varying methods of organizing military units, etc. etc. etc., is going to need order. The question, though, is how is that order developed and imposed.
In nature it probably started out with a leader setting the boundaries (ok, maybe it is about leaders). A lot of them killed each other off. So some of the smarter ones realized that it would be an easier life to move the tribe to some other place that has all the resources needed to carry on (that or they were convinced by the smarter members) without having to deal with interference of the other tribes.
In nature it started out with the family unit. The head (not necessarily the leader) was probably dad or grand dad. The head was probably the biggest, meanest, toughest, surviving alpha male around. And don’t think “Ozzie and Harriet Australopithocine Nuclear Family” when I say “family unit,” we’re certainly talking clans, at minimum. Related by blood and ties of family.
Clans allied. Clans fought. Clans feuded. Clans may well have gone to war. But, eventually, you had clans forming into tribes – groups of clans (and even individuals) not necessarily related by blood, though there were likely ties involved as well. This grouping model then continued into what we would consider “modern” humans. And, for that matter, is still a large part of social structure today. One of the unspoken objectives of The State is to develop strategies to break down and wipe out those traditional human bonds that keep people more loyal to each other than to The State. See further examples at “mandatory public schooling and pre-schooling” and “day care” and “welfare.” But I digress.
Early rules were probably basic and hobbesian. Law of the jungle stuff. As tribes grew in size, so did their geographic boundaries and the opportunities to come into contact with other tribes. Such growth and contact created both crises and opportunities. War and trade, both within and without. But also a lot of social contact with differing amounts of intra-tribe affairs. Chief JAFO might suddenly find himself having to explain why Chief coctailer’s tribe seemed so much better fed and why Chief coctailer’s tribe didn’t seem to have every female at the disposal of the chief. Depending on the solidarity of Chief JAFO’s tribe to himself, it might be war to take Chief coctailer’s tribe’s wealth … or one day Chief JAFO may have woken up to find himself a Tribe Of One. Or not woken up at all.
So here we are. The tribes have all spread out and there aren’t many places for offshoot tribes to form new villages.
THIS is a huge part of the problem, yes. A tribe can no longer break into parts with each part going its own way. Or, as I understand to be the case, just leaving the chief behind. We’ve moved too far down the spectrum from early, “mechanical” societies and into modern “organic” ones, due both to the size of our populations and the growth of the city-based social structure. Add to that the rise of the Professional Fuehrer class, a group dedicated to the idea of shearing the herd for its own economic and psychic benefit, and you get, as you say, to this point today.
Now some of the leaders of the sub tribes want to smoke week and bang each other in the arse but they have no place to do that without pissing a lot of other leaders, with no place to go, off. Oh crap, maybe it is a weed and buttseks thing.
Small parts of the overall problem. Tribal chiefs used to have to maintain their positions through skill. If you couldn’t lead your tribe to where the goodies were, you weren’t chief for very long. That’s still in force today – you have to lead your tribe to the goodies, or you’re out. The other thing you need to do is to convince your tribe to stay together, and since Chief One there has been a winning strategy: Leading them to goodies is good; keeping them afraid of The Other is better. Which is the summary difference (to my way of thinking) between a leader and a fuehrer. A good leader is looking out for the wellbeing of his tribe. It certainly includes guiding them to where the fat antelope are playing, and would of necessity include making sure that the tribe can defend itself. (Note – a leader may be good, as in wanting to do those, but be ineffective in how he manages it. An ineffective leader is not necessarily a fuehrer.) A leader considers himself part of the tribe and wants to benefit himself as part of benefiting the tribe as a whole.
A fuehrer, on the other hand, is all about himself and, at best, a small band of close loyal followers – cronies, as it were. He cares not a whit nor a fig for the needs of those he’s “leading,” and every action, first and foremost, is dedicated toward increasing his own personal wealth and power – frequently for nothing more than the sake of having the increase. The people of his “tribe” are nothing more than sheep to be sheared for his and his cronies’ benefit. He is the sort about whom H.L.Mencken wrote when he said, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
I guess the moral of my story is… fuck you and the leader you choose to follow if he wants the tribal council of leaders to put in writing that you can smoke weed and have buttseks in front of me and the children I haven’t created with the woman I haven’t dragged back to my cave.
Which just suggests that you’re willing to follow and support a fuehrer who’ll make sure that individuals, who are harming no one, are nevertheless forced to conform to your world view. Because you, personally, are not going to be allowed to go around smiting Weedites and Buttsecksites on your vigilante ownsome – you’re going to need a license to do so, and fuehrers are happy to give you such license.
Of course, if you’re supportive of the whole concept of fuehrers, then you really don’t have any basis to whine if other fuehrers do get ahold of the tribal council and make weed and buttsecks and pedophilia completely legal. You’ve agreed to the concept of “tribal councils get to control your actions and are the ultimate source of moral authority.”
And there’s a whole separate essay on the difference between “following” a leader and “accepting the directions” of a leader (or fuehrer). You’re kind of conflating the two.
Oh, and fuck you and the leader you choose to follow if he just wants to erase ALL of the rules set forth by former leaders. It would be nice if being nice was good enough but we all know that wouldn’t be nice. So raise your tribe the best you can and maybe one of them will be the next leader after the current leaders kill each other off. I’m just going to come out of my cave once in a while and beat my chest.
Because, you know, slavery and entrenched oligarchy are such good rules to have – erasure is a baaaad thing?
Don’t hurt people. Don’t take their stuff. And if you do either of those, you have to make it right.
Three simple rules … and all you really need for a smoothly functioning social group. Everything else is either mitigation or aggravation.
Anything beyond those is suggestive that fuehrers, not leaders, are at work.
Hobbit@Law 