Following the Crowd – Sunday, December 06, 1942
Somehow there comes to mind again an old and well-worn subject — a practice that is tritely described by the phrase “following the crowd.” The old and unimpressive excuse that we must do certain things because “everybody is doing them” is quite threadbare. In the first place, everybody isn’t doing them.
In any crowd, thinking people, whether they are in the minority or the majority, are still shaping their own thoughts, making their own decisions, and regulating their own personal conduct, and the philosophy, among our young people especially, of doing things “to be a good sport” is an insidious doctrine greatly to be feared and constantly to be resisted. One thing that youth should remember is that the crowd is not always right.
On the contrary, all history proves that the crowd is so very often wrong. It is the crowd who have burned the prophets and ridiculed the pioneers of every generation. It is usually the crowd who start a boy doing “just this once,” as they say, things which lead to bad habits and more serious consequences. Often it is the crowd who lead you into trouble and desert you when you are in trouble. Following the crowd unthinkingly is an indication of lack of character, or lack, of thought, or lack of moral courage, or lack of understanding.
The great deceiver of all men, who was a liar from the beginning, has no more useful method of leading his subjects astray than by suggesting that they do things because the crowd does them; and those who persuade others to do what they know they shouldn’t do, because they desire to have company in their foolishness, are inviting grave hazard to themselves and to others, because the crowd usually hasn’t any very good idea where it is going.
The crowd can’t think. It is only individuals who can think. And so, lest we blindly follow the crowd, it would be well to make our own decisions in accordance with our own convictions, because the crowd may be going in the wrong direction as it has done so many countless times before.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Dec. 6, 1942, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1942.
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December 06, 1942
Broadcast Number 0,694