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[wierd]

I've said my piece.  You cannot have modern societies without delegation of responsibilities and that directly stems from having and using information experts.

Failure to use those information experts is how you get bullshit dumbassery, not "Independent thinkers."

(Clarification--- Compare and contrast these statements--  "I think for myself, and dont' neet Faucci to tell me I need to wear a mask! It's just a little flu!" and "They're clearly all conspiring to make me get the vaccine for some horrible purpose, because they are trying so hard to get me to take it!" --- then cross reference those against the social media circles where people with those mindsets and ideas congregate, and turn into their own flocks, parroting and brandying those statements and that rhetoric.  Are they thinking for themselves, or just delegating that thinking to a less qualified authority?  I would say it is the latter.)

In a modern society, all humans are "sheep". Even the leadership. (who is dependent upon an army of specialists and their knowledge and expertise, to deliver them quality intelligence breifings, quality assessments of plans, and how prior plans operated, so that new ones can be better devised.) 

The only "Not a sheep" people are the ones who live solitary hunter-gatherer lifestyles.  As far as I can tell, that is the literal truth.

The issue is the pejorative, not the conception.

There is no shame, nor anything to be ashamed of, to defer to and leverage the benefits of, specialists with specialist skills and knowledge.  That deference is the heart of "sheepleness". 

A detractor to the above may try (wrongly) to divorce the fundemental need for deferring judgment to another authority from 'sheepleness', by trying to define the condition more like this:


Sheeple are people who trust their government blindly, and do what they are told.


Again, it is incorrect, because it tries to divorce the underlying need from the reality of the human condition, and then tries to smear it with the blame brush.  Can governments (or any authority figure, for that matter) act as judas goats? of course they can. (See also Qanon-- Is Q not a maliciously crafted persona, leading people to misery, for self-serving reasons? He Q not a judas goat, and are the Qanons not sheeple? All they did was just allocate a DIFFERENT, and less qualified authority figure, then defer, as is NECESSARY, when functioning in a complex system.) That reality does not disprove the thesis--- That you MUST defer. You cannot NOT defer-- not and still avoid dangerous, systemically deleterious consequences. (See also, COVID, and the dangers posed by the large unvaccinated population.)

Deriding the 'sheeple', and proclaiming yourself a free thinker (which is demonstrably wrong, as I just gave examples of above--), is not a solution. It is a problem, in and of itself.

[Starver]

Deriding the 'sheeple', and proclaiming yourself a free thinker (which is demonstrably wrong, as I just gave examples of above--), is not a solution. It is a problem, in and of itself.

And maybe in a different way, if you do it badly...

(I was wondering if/when they'd be mentioned.  )

[anewaname]

If the less qualified authority starts with "I don't trust those guys" and you don't trust those guys, you listen to the rest of the less qualified authority's spiel. If they are not asking you for money and you feel like you learned something from the spiel (because when they spewed some techno-babble and described something you didn't know about), now you feel like they gave you something of value.

When the less qualified authority succeeds at emotional communication and the qualified authority does not, part of the herd listens to and follows a different leader.

This is how "confidence games" have always worked.

[Loud Whispers]

My understanding of sheep is that they are fluffy animals domesticated by humanity to be docile and dependent on humans for shearing and survival. Then there's the perjorative aspect of comparing humans to sheep; e.g. herd mentality, or sheep being led to the slaughter by a judas goat. I think there's something lost when we completely ignore comparisons between humans and animals to avoid being seen as cringe, furry and fedora, especially since the times of Aesop's fables comparing humans to animals has always been an entertaining way to tell stories.

• Most humans depend on other humans for shearing. Some humans are only semi-dependent on other humans for shearing, whilst others are completely self-sufficient. Some humans need no shearing still, whilst other humans go completely wild and never shear. So fro this one I'd say "mostly disagree."
• Herd mentality is an interesting one. Humans tend to vary in how strong their convictions are and how pliable they are, but humans also on the whole tend to behave differently when they are in a herd of humans. In this regard I would then say a human is not sheeplike; humans however, have herd mentality tendencies. The only difference between human herds and sheep herds is that the human ones will usually act a lot more violently and aggressively. There are a few exceptions - such as moments where humans will ignore an obvious threat because everyone around them is not acting upon it, but they will all act upon the threat if enough people begin acting. So for this one I'd say this is an "agree."
• Being led to the slaughter by a judas goat. Strongly agree. We are all capable of being led to our own destruction by people we really ought not to trust, even when all of our senses are instinctively warning us we are being led to our demise. The big difference however between the sheep and humans is that humans can recognise when they are being led astray but still be powerless to avert disaster because they made the Judas Goat the supreme overlord

[scriver]

No, the Yule Goat brings presents, not betrayal

[Loud Whispers]

No, the Yule Goat brings presents, not betrayal

where is your goat now

[Starver]

While the Gävle Goat is frequently betrayed...

(It wasn't even a significant wikiwalk.)

[Zangi]

• Being led to the slaughter by a judas goat. Strongly agree. We are all capable of being led to our own destruction by people we really ought not to trust, even when all of our senses are instinctively warning us we are being led to our demise. The big difference however between the sheep and humans is that humans can recognise when they are being led astray but still be powerless to avert disaster because they made the Judas Goat the supreme overlord

Another big difference is that they can reason themselves to following along despite all the warning bells ringing.  Afterwards, further reasoning to themselves that it was good and right, suppressing those warning bells for when they follow deeper in.

[Loud Whispers]

While the Gävle Goat is frequently betrayed...

(It wasn't even a significant wikiwalk.)

Not even a Trojan goat can survive in SOCIETY

Another big difference is that they can reason themselves to following along despite all the warning bells ringing.  Afterwards, further reasoning to themselves that it was good and right, suppressing those warning bells for when they follow deeper in.

Hahaha, I know that feeling. When I was a young schoolboy at an underground train station with my friends, I saw smoke coming out of the tunnel. I told all of my friends there's smoke coming out, I shouted to everyone there was smoke but no one regarded me or reacted despite how obvious the smoke was. I said we should all just alert the station staff and go take another station but no one else wanted to come with me. To this day I engrave that memory in my heart because my friends actually convinced me to get on the train, when all of my senses were telling me to get everyone out of the station immediately. I was correct too - when the train entered the tunnel, the train stopped because of an electrical fire on the tracks caused by burning detritus and rubbish. Fortunately we were only stuck for a few minutes as the fire was small, yet it always fascinates me to this day that even once I could do something so foolish just because a mere platform full of people disagreed with my judgement. Like you say; in my self-doubt I provided my own reasoning for why the risk wasn't as great as the inconvenience of taking a detour, when a fire is a fire