On What Authority? 0
In a timely post at Psychology Today Blogs, Jeremy Sherman muses on why persons become authoritarians and why others follow them. Here’s short bit of a long post:
With authoritarian followers, the thinking is already over. They’re not guessing at what’s true. There’s no interpretation left to do. They and their leaders have already done all the interpretation necessary. They discovered the truth, embraced it, internalized it, and now only have to act on it like machines. They see reality clearly, truly and purely through their unambiguous mechanistic world view.
This is as true of soft spiritual followers as it is of techno-authoritarian nerd followers. Their theory could be warm and fuzzy or hardline firm. Either way, they have stripped the ambiguity from life. There are no tough judgment calls left anymore. Life can be managed with absolute rule-based discipline. Their absolute rules don’t always work, but they won’t admit it. They’ll say “sure there are exceptions, but still, it’s an absolutely universal rule.”
The whole thing is worth your while.
