When I was young and read this for the first time, I could only think of one situation, life in the country I was born, where everyone had to think the same. At the meetings we all had to vote the same. In literature class we all had to repeat after the teacher what to think about the books we read. I learned to say “We” long before I learned to say “I”. We think, we believe, we judge, instead of I think, I believe, I decide.
It took me a long time to realize that the Bible talks to me, to my soul, not to us. It also does not mean that if you are with minority, you are always right. Each of us has to discover their own lessons in every statement. That particular statement says “Stop, Think for yourself, and then act”, make up your mind, if you follow the majority, they may take you somewhere you don’t really want to be.
Another example of the Bible statement that talks to you and asks your soul, says “Do not judge and you won’t be judged”. It is not a protest against our legislative system, courts are the best places to peacefully solve your unsolvable problems. Again it tells you to stop and think before you start talking about other people faults and spreading the rumors. This one is against gossiping and badmouthing others and taking care of your own faults.
The Bible teaches you how to listen to your conscience and subconscience in decision making and not follow the majority or even someone else. This is hard! It is so much easier to just agree with your classmates when you are at school together bullying one person. It is so much easier to vote like everyone around you instead of speaking up your own opinion. It is especially hard to recognize if you have your own opinion when your entire life they taught you to respect elders, authority, your teachers. It is really scary to say something against a crowd of screaming mob. Bullying scars kids’ souls, fear to say what you think destroys your soul, and participating in a mob act may make you a murderer. This is why The Bible warns you to listen to yourself and not others.
The next step in thinking about mobs brings you back to my childhood and to the country I was growing up in. It was not Hitler who created fascism, it was a crowd of Germans yelling “Hile Hitler!”. It was not Stalin who built the totalitarian Soviet Union, that was done by crowds of soviet people who voted unanimously in every election and selection because we were too scared to speak up against the crowd.
Now we live in virtual world, but it became even easier to join the crowd. Each of us finds the crowd to join and together hate the other crowds. Instead of learning how to speak up and discuss different views, which is still very hard, we just find others who agree with our thoughts, which is easy and pleasurable.
Modern technology helped us to hate instead of to love our neighbor.
We are judging left and right, gossiping about other people opinions. We completely unlearned to listen to different points of view, instead we judge them. We mixed up facts and opinions and often we believe in opinions and call facts fake news. It seems again and again that tecnology does not make us better humans.
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