Blog #214--Many Followers Caught in Catch-22

Some natural followers are fortunate enough to have easy lives. Those born into wealthy families may rarely if ever encounter hardships, as long as someone is there to look after their needs. Those who have friends in high places may be lucky enough to follow their friends’ coattails and benefit from their largess. Those who get onto the ground floor of a growing company or political movement may experience the success their leaders enjoy. Trophy wives may be sheltered and protected throughout their lives.

But many followers are not so lucky. Lacking the directness necessary to make their own decisions, they are forced to follow false leaders or those whose destiny limits their success. Naturally submissive and indirect, their leaders may by no more capable of leadership than they are. If so, they may all get stuck in a negative feedback loop with no resolution. Followers have little choice but to follow someone regardless of their leadership capabilities; it is fairly uncommon for followers to find a leader who can help them achieve long-term success and happiness in their lives.

Politics is a good example of this. In a two-party system like the United States, many people pick one or the other political party and then support it blindly. They need something to believe in, so they accept or ignore warning signs their leaders may be different than advertised. They may continue to excuse their false leaders even when they prove time and again that they lie, cheat and otherwise misrepresent themselves and their policies. After all, once we hitch our wagon to someone else’s star, we must go where the star goes, even if it is a falling one.

Both parties cater to followers because they are by far the largest group of voters. Their candidates for high office promise good-paying jobs and an improving economy, both necessities for survival, but they rarely if ever achieve their declared aims. Their candidates are usually also followers beholden to rich constituents who can finance their campaigns in exchange for policies and opportunities that favor them. Most of these rich benefactors have no desire to keep around a large group of followers. All they want is a relatively few followers for their military and a few more to provide slave labor for their corporations. As a result, most followers’ needs are ignored.

Followers are not leaders, so even if they begin to organize for a common cause, as in the Frank Capra movie “Meet John Doe,” they have no one capable of leading them. They are ripe for the old bait-and-switch game. A rich person provides needed funds to help organize them and then demands he or she become the candidate of the people in exchange for the help. Once elected, policies that go against followers are retained.

When a true leader comes along and tries to disrupt this corrupted system, he or she is summarily dismissed by the media and ignored by the two main candidates. True leaders may draw huge followings to rallies and speeches because they want what the followers need. But they have both political parties working against them. Followers may be capable of voting the true leader into power due to numbers alone, but voting restrictions and polling irregularities prevent many of their votes from being counted.

Another example of this is labor unions. It can be difficult for followers to organize as a group to demand a company or government treat them with respect and provide more tolerable pay and other basic survival needs. When they do, they are fought at every turn, both in the courts and in the streets. Many are subject to frightening scenarios to prevent them from supporting a union; the fear of losing their jobs reduces their enthusiasm for seeking improvements.

The famous Upton Sinclair book “The Jungle” graphically describes the horrid working conditions possible for workers who lack a voice in management. Tennessee Ernie Ford sang “16 Tons,” which reminds us how some companies set up a system that forces workers to pay them for food, housing and other necessities. This prevents any kind of income savings, guaranteeing a continuation of slave-like conditions.

Occasionally, one or more true leaders may emerge from the workers. After all, true leaders can be found in all economic strata. The threat of death has no hold on them, and they may continue to rise up and oppose a system they feel is unjust. Even if they are killed in the process, their martyrdom helps inspire the rest to continue their efforts. Some powerful unions have been created this way in the past.

But followers are not blessed with a large supply of natural leaders. Those who first gain extra rights for their fellow citizens may be effective leaders, but those who come along after them may not be. Power corrupts many.

There are also instances where wolves disguised in sheep clothing infiltrate the unions and worm their way into power. They then reinvent the same wheel the rich corporations are riding on and become as greedy as their former masters. This provides the rich with an excuse to destroy the unions, leaving the followers scared and hungry. They must wait, perhaps many years, before the cycle reverses itself again and a new opportunity for collective bargaining begins.

These are two of many examples of followers suffering due to their natural tendencies. We could also use the example of the 900 souls who committed suicide at the direction of James Jones in Guyana. Or the group that committed suicide so they could meet up with their mother ship. Or those who have become trapped in religions (and false religions) that take their money, abuse their rights and then make it nearly impossible to leave. Followers need leaders too much sometimes, and they end up lacking sufficient rationality to resist false prophets.

If we only had this one lifetime, one could argue there is no creator because a creator wouldn’t create such an unbalanced and unfair system. After all, through no fault of their own, many people suffer excessively because their natural tendencies are being manipulated by the greedy liars of the world. But if we are all one in a world where everything is happening simultaneously, and we are one with every life pathway, we are both the leader and follower. We are both rich and poor, happy and unhappy, healthy and ill, and so on.

If that is true, and I am confident it is, then we have nothing to fear being a follower in a given lifetime. It is just one of an infinite number of life potentials, and we are capable of exploring all of them. We may feel like losers in this life, but in the long run we are all winners.

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