Followers and Leaders

A few years ago I was having a conversation with a friend about people. I was ruminating on the subject of why nobody ever seemed to take the initiative to change things, I suppose people seemed almost apathetic to me at the time. My friend had a simple response to me, and said something to the effect of: “well, we can’t all be leaders.” The concept behind this struck me as obvious and profound at the same time. I understood what my friend had said as meaning that a society where everyone was a leader would never function, every society needs followers.

Thinking on this subject further I have to say this mentality makes a lot of sense to me. After all, with a Darwinian perspective in mind, wouldn’t a society with many followers fare better then one with few? Having a small number of minds in charge of the decision making process instead of many allows for swift decisions. In the ancient world, I’m sure this was a considerable boon. Societies that were quick to collectively act would be more likely to out-compete ones who took long amounts of time for their decisions.

In this way perhaps people have become accustomed to following the will of their superiors for the collective good, and thus the state of democracy today is explained. After all if you’re a soldier and someone gives you an order then for the army to be efficient you had best follow that order instead of sitting around arguing about it. Since if every soldier questioned and argued about orders constantly, ones army would surely be destroyed by a more efficient army. So perhaps it could be said that group think is a kind of defense mechanism, just based on the natural way in which most of our societies function and have functioned. Leaders and followers, we need both to be successful.

Of course I won’t postulate that people can not switch between being a leader and being a follower. In fact I think that most all of us are leaders sometimes and followers other times. It is just the idea that some people tend to desire to be followers exclusively, with no will to lead anything whatsoever, which interests me.

Vocab:
Boon:Something to be thankful for; blessing; benefit.
Postulate: to assume or claim as true, existent, or necessary