The Tyranny of the Majority

"In view of the silliness of the majority of mankind," observed Bertrand Russell, "a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." And yet, our modern world has elected the majority as the driving model to weigh on the rest with their choices. We now have professional thinkers—or rather, professional non-thinkers—who provide ready-made opinions for mass consumption.

Among the mass a new category has emerged, the so called "influencers" who speak with absolute certainty about whatever they publish. They lead the choices of their followers, numbering in the millions, who find this enormously reassuring. They don't need to dig deeper (and after all they even couldn't do it!). 

Why struggle with doubt when certainty is available at the touch of a screen? But is their certainty reliably certain? 

Soren Kierkegaard observed that truth rests with the minority, "while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion." And now, the gangs who have no opinion operate with unprecedented efficiency.

Shallow but affermative people have always been attracting followers: they easily become the majority. Their unchallenging "democratising information" shows how easy it is to delegate critical thinking and the natural tendency of human dependency. 

"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it." - Leo Tolstoy 

The remedy seems very simple: "think before believing"! But again this is a very simplistic and superficial suggestion, as this assumes the capacity for thought exists in the first place! 

The uncomfortable truth is that far too many people, including ostensibly educated (!), - in few words: the majority - seem to lack any reflective faculty whatever. They encounter ideas not as things to be examined, but as raw material to be processed into familiar banalities. Russell noted that "a stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because they unconsciously translate what they hear into something they can understand."  

One cannot teach reflection to a mind that operates like a mirror, as it can only reflect back what it already recognizes. Implying therfore no capacity to widen their awareness and knowledge. 

Henrik Ibsen wrote: "The majority is never right. Never! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against."

For the thinking minority this is like a spell where no improving seems possible. But life knows what to do. Life strives for evolution and when the dumm majority prevails, of whatever side it may be, the world sooner or later will explode. Eventually something big, terrible and unthinkable happens, as a natural result of the stupidity. And at the end, this deep shock may induce some kind of awakening. 

The minority, who desperately tried to wake up the dumm majority with no success, has to go through this process and help assisting their awakening. But perhaps we came here on Earth just for that: to be present and support. After all this is the meaning of being the "chosen ones"!