Leaders and followers - An Equal crime.

Some time ago, I wrote about leading and following. That there are two groups of people in this world. Sometimes, we behave as leaders, and sometimes as followers. I considered myself a follower than a leader. Never did I bother to ask what is best, or atleast I couldn't choose one over the other as both had positives and negatives. Yet, I came across following quote in the book by Leo Tolstoy - Calender of Wisdom. Apperently both are a crime - an Equal crime.

"There are people who take responsibility for making decisions for others and determining their relationship to God and to the world; and there are people, the overwhelming majority of them, who give this authority to the others, and blindly believe in everything they are told. Both groups of people commit an equal crime."

Let's apply this principle to the quote itself. And create a paradox.

Firstly, we cannot divide any group of people into two groups. As I mentioned above, each and every one of us have potential to be a leader and follower. At work you may be the Boss who boss around a group of people, but at home, you maybe just following the lead of your spouse. But there is some truth in this scenario, as at any given time, there are more followers in the world than leaders.

If the scentence is true then we should not believe the scentence as it would be just believing, what Leo Tolstoy (the leader) said. We would be just foolish followers. Then there is the question what should we believe in? Can we live devoid of any belief?

A leader

Axioms of Philosophy.

In philosophy, axioms are basic assumptions taken as starting points for reasoning, such as the law of non-contradiction from Aristotle (something cannot be both true and false at the same time), René Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” the principle of sufficient reason from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (everything has a cause or explanation), the identity principle (“A is A”), and ethical starting points like Immanuel Kant’s idea that humans must be treated as ends in themselves or John Stuart Mill’s view that actions should promote happiness.

For something to be an axiom it should have following characteristics.

It is self-evident (seems obviously true), or at least widely accepted

It is not derived from other statements

It is used to support further reasoning

How not to commit an equal crime?

As you can see there is a problem in this. As nobody can prove with absolute certainty that any of these axioms that we assume true are infact true. There seems always a probability that they are not true. Whatever we believe in day to day human functioning, is built upon layers and layers of abstraction, above these axioms. For this reason, they are not absolute. When you say you got a promotion, today at work, it is both true and false at the same time. As there is a framework we can argue "You" do not exist. (this is only one simple explanation). And for this reason, and only for this reason, we commit a crime when we start to blindly believe others. So, the correct action would be to think for ourselves with information, and see what is true and what is false in the same observation.