By this I mean, organize around some single person for leadership, or in other contexts focus on a popular figure. Even societies that tend to be described as more collectively-organized/oriented tend to do this.
People are people and are as flawed as one another, so this pervasive tendency to elevate others is odd to me. It can be fun and goofy as a game, but as a more serious organizing or focal principle, it just seems extremely fragile and prone to failure (e.g. numerous groups falling into disarray at the loss of a leader/leader & their family, corruption via nepotism and the like, etc.).
Because it’s easy. You don’t have to think for yourself if you let someone else do it.
Equally important is that, depending on context, leading or forging your own path is hard.
Are you just confused on why leaders exist or something
Nearly every organization a person is in from ages 5-25 is hierarchical. There is always a authority figure you have to at least pretend to listen too. And if you tick off that authority figure by doing something they don’t like, they punish you in some form.
So people learn to ignore authority figures as much as they can and rarely challenge them directly as there are usually consequences for challenging someone in certain contexts. This leads to everyone pretending to agree and pretending to care about what leaders care about to avoid conflict. It is simply easier to cater to those who can and will make your life miserable than to challenge them successfully without creating grudges that might come back to bite you.
It is also worth noting that we are never taught to lead others, We are just expected to figure it out by trial and error or not figure it out at all.
TLDR; It’s learned behavior from the institutions we are exposed to. It’s easier and more encouraged to follow than to challenge authority figures.
Just to add to this: there is, although seeing it thuroughly implemented is comparatively uncommon, there are the practices of ‘democratic education’ and ‘self directed education’. The sudbury valley school in massechusets is one, relatively well known, example of thiese.
In those context, the trends are, in many ways, turned on their head. They, sudbury valles school as an example, havee a website, and a a youtube channel(, accesible vía That froendly alternative frontend that I can’t rember just now) , with intervies with some alumni of the school, and some published books listed with accounts from other svs graduates.
Just wanted to add, that the phenomenon described with in the comment replied to, although all too common, are not universal., nor always are they the only option.
edit: this page gives n OK overview of the self directed edu things : https://www.self-directed.org/sde . Pretty sure it can be seen as related to the question and the above reply.
edit:spelling and grammar.
Just wanted to add, that the phenomenon described with in the comment replied to, although all too common, are not universal., nor always are they the only option.
Great point. The link provided looks interesting, I’ll take a look at it.
Side Note: The spelling mistakes in the first and second paragraph kinda detract from your message about different ways of organizing education. It is pretty ironic to have a post with multiple misspellings recommend a different way of education.
In my defence, I’m new to this keyboard and have big fingers. Also, although I know aof it’s existence, I haven’t attended any sde I schools myself.
My formal language education Is all quite conventional, with conventional leadership structures and decision making processes, and all. So please don’t let that detract from the subjects mentioned.(i really should remember to check spelling, before posting, though 😅)
Anyway, I’m glad that sde style alternatives, and how they relate to the question, may be of intrest.
Yeah, I usually try to avoid correcting people, but I didn’t want any misspellings giving any future viewers a bad first impression of the linked educational resource.
Mine too. As far as spellchecking, I use a front-end(Alexandrite) for Lemmy that spellchecks.However, I get that a lot of people use a mobile interface that makes it easier to miss such things.
I have found myself, recently, rediscovering how to make goals and plans after having them suppressed by the conventional school system for most of my life. That fits with the deschooling term that is used on the linked resource. According to [self-directed.org] (https://www.self-directed.org/sde/conditions/) “In Self-Directed Education communities, young people are sharing an environment with adults who are deschooling alongside them”
We are social animals.
I may be an animal, but I am NOT social.
but I am NOT social.
Said to another human while using a service that is designed for social interaction.
You might be awkward in public but you’re still human.
A lot of people don’t really understand how things work. Rather than try to understand, they latch on to someone who does understand. In return for their loyalty, they get a path up where they won’t threaten the boss in charge.
A lot of people don’t really understand how things work. Rather than try to understand, they latch on to someone who does understand.
Wouldn’t it be more apt to say that a lot of people latch on to someone who appears or acts as if they understand how things work, given the thinking that a lot of people simply don’t understand to begin with?
Definitely. If you don’t understand how the world works, you can’t tell if someone else does either. Only experts can easily spot fake experts. And that’s exactly the trouble with things like pseudoscience and misinformation; it’s easy to fall for without the domain knowledge necessary to avoid falling for it.
A perfect example is this guy from my last job. Thought himself a leader. Thought himself knowledgeable. Always had an answer, regardless of actual facts. Alternated between barking out orders and lamenting on how he had to do everything himself. Constantly getting schooled by people who actually knew the subject matter. Those who had been around just kinda put up with his BS because he filled a position that nobody else wanted.
Enter new management, who was very impressed with his authoritative tone, apparent breadth of knowledge, and willingness to lick boot. Suddenly management is bypassing dude’s bosses to go straight to the horse’s mouth and get the straight dope (which often involved taking credit for other people’s work and bus-chucking whoever was handy). All because someone who barely knew what he was talking about spoke confidently to people that had no idea what was going on.
Yeah, it would be.
This is the best answer so far in my opinion
A great example is when you’re in elementary school and you get that one really athletic kid on your team for some team sport in gym class. You know you’re not on that level and never will be, so you tie yourself to them, knowing that them succeeding is good for you.
Likewise, we like to attach our fortunes to a designated person, and they become greater than just a person in our mind. Like, that athletic kid is not longer simply a kid who’s good at sports; they’re the athletic kid. Our favored 19th-century political thought leader is no longer just some person who had opinions on society and wrote them down; they’re a political messiah.
You don’t have to “elevate” a person in order for them to be a leader. You just have to recognize that they have a certain organizational skill set that not everyone has. That skill set helps things get done. It’s just a job and they’re just people.
This thread has a lot of frankly bad takes in it. Lots of people going “the majority of people are just hard wired to love authority” and that’s just wrong. Psychological research into authoritarian personalities (the kind of people who are like that) tells us authoritarian follower personalities not rare but by no means are they the majority.
I think you know where all this stuff comes from because the fact that you’re asking the question at all makes me think you’re on the other side of the authoritarian follower spectrum (anti-authoritarian). What would happen to the person who rejected authority figures? They would be hurt. That does not come about by accident and it’s not some innate feature of human psychology. It is intentional. Authority (control) is maintained with violence. Either soft violence (neglect) or actually capital-V Violence.
Asking why like this has the implicit flawed premise that human behaviors like this are products of conscious thought. They are not. (I don’t mean this as a criticism of you particularly, it is inherent in our culture to look at everything humans do as if it were rational and conscious, despite the reality that so much is it is not.)
I’d answer this by saying it is human nature. Most people don’t think about it and are not aware they are doing it. Many might even deny it. This is not to say individuals can’t stop and reflect and be conscious and rational about. Some do but most don’t.
I’d answer this by saying it is human nature.
I would actually disagree with that statement to some degree. I think it is largely learned behavior to follow in the context of modern society. We spend 15+ years of our life having to follow authority in some way via the school system and that conditions us to follow more than lead on a society wide scale.
There is certainly an element of nature too via mirroring. Mirroring is when people subconsciously imitates the gestures and body language of another person to help build trust. However, I believe that our cultures way of nurturing obedience via its institutions is a bigger factor in how we treat leaders.
Asking why like this has the implicit flawed premise that human behaviors like this are products of conscious thought.
This is not generally a flaw. We can ask “why?” questions about lots of natural processes that don’t involve conscious thought. For example, a lot of plant growth follows mathematical patterns; the “why?” is that this optimizes the use of space or of sunlight, so it’s favored by evolution.
Oh I agree with you. I didn’t mean asking why was flawed, but specifically asking why with the implicit assumptions we tend to carry about human actions being rational and conscious. I agree that asking “why is this a part of human nature?” is a good question.
I’d answer this by saying it is human nature.
I follow where you’re coming from, however I’m quoting this little part as I always find arguments to “nature” suspect, especially regarding conscious entities which complicate this observation/thinking. You can probably guess where I’m going with this, that being, “Well, what is human nature?” which as you say isn’t a criticism/dig at you, it’s more of a personal quibble with the “nature” line of thinking.
Nevertheless, I lean towards agreeing with you in the sense that it may be more related to an unreflective/unconscious social predisposition of humans specifically (possibly other social species as well in their own forms).
Well “it’s human nature” can indeed be a cop out. It shouldn’t be a discussion ender. And it shouldn’t be a justification. Murder is a part of human nature too. However it is a reality to be worked with. And one can ask, in what conditions is this behavior brought out, and in what conditions discouraged?
I’ve always wondered this and wish I had an answer. But then again the answer is just that most people are followers. There’s way more copy cats and followers because it’s the easy thing to do. Having original thoughts, ideas, and following through takes actual work.
There‘s nothing more annoying than a group of „individuals“ on a night tour. Each move, either in this or that club, to the right or to the left, stay or lesve this place, as to be discussed in deep detail and from every micro perspective. Until a shared view emerges.
It’s simply a better way to be a group of people to have a leader who hs a say. Good leaders care about the group members and might even have more experience than the groups individuals. I‘m quite happy to have a guide in a museum who can tell stories about the images. I‘m happy to have a leader to follow in the mountains. And I‘m happy to have someone leading a group through new fields of anything, so I learn from an experienced and might do my own steps in this s field alone.
In those situations of course a leader is needed. I wasn’t even thinking of those types when reading ops post.
perhaps, somewhat related, a place to point out the example of tge republic of San Marino. They have, and have had, since an horn’t times: a system of co leadership at the highest national level of government.:+. Two people, elected, jointly holding the position, no singular figure, (and even those two, are changed, at most, every six months on a regular basis, and I belive they can’t serve more than one term consecutively, if at all).
Theyve had, San Marino, a long and sucequite sucessfully history. Perhaps the only country then known to survive the the conquest of many surrounding regions on the peninsula. No civil wars, and no transitions of power of changes of government in wchich anybody seems to have been so much as killed or seriously injured. And the system hof co government, and rotation aahs lasted a long time, the longest lasting continuous republic to exist today, I think it’s supposed to be. San Marino.
Thinking for yourself is difficult. Turning off your brain and doing what you’re told is much easier than forging your own path.
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Insufficient emancipation I guess.
Ignorance is bliss, why do the thinking yourself?
Because people are herd animals. It’s literally just biology.
