I. The paradox of the thinking human
To be human is to reason, we are told. Homo sapiens: the wise ape. The critical thinker. The moral agent. Yet, history and daily life offer an unsettling counterpoint. Time and again, we see individuals, even whole societies, surrender their own judgment to authority, comply with directives they know to be wrong, and engage in behaviors that mock the very faculties of intelligence and discernment we claim to cherish.
What explains this self-erasure of mind? Why do people, supposedly intelligent, educated, thoughtful people abandon their moral compass and follow orders into ruin? Why does the clarity between right and wrong, which seems so obvious from the outside, dissolve into compliance when viewed from within?
This isn’t a question for academic navel-gazing. It is the marrow of every authoritarian turn, every mass delusion, every collective betrayal of conscience. It happens in boardrooms, in religious movements, in military commands, in political spaces, in genocidal campaigns, in Twitter mobs, in HR departments. It is not historical. It is present. It is happening now.
II. Blind following is not an accident
Let us begin by stripping the behavior of its disguise. Blind following is not passive. It is a choice and indeed one often cloaked in invisibility. The follower is not unaware. They are aware but mute. Or more disturbingly, they are aware but convinced that silence is the rational move.
The shock of Stanley Milgram’s 1963 obedience experiments lingers for good reason. In a Yale lab, ordinary participants were instructed by an authority figure to administer what they believed were electric shocks to another person. Despite hearing screams and pleas, over 65% of participants continued delivering shocks up to the maximum voltage. Not because they were cruel, but because someone in a lab coat told them to. Milgram concluded, “Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.”
Let that haunt you: without any particular hostility.
We prefer to think evil is loud, visible, snarling. But often, it is banal, dressed in protocol, passed through memos, enacted with professional courtesy. Hannah Arendt called it “the banality of evil” when she observed the quiet normalcy of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi bureaucrat who organized the logistics of the Holocaust with the detached efficiency of an accountant.
III. The Animal and the apparatus
One might argue that animals follow because they are conditioned, because their survival depends on submission to a hierarchy. But humans? We do not merely follow because we are trained to. We follow because we are terrified not to.
It is not a defect. It is a deeply adaptive response. Belonging to a group was once synonymous with staying alive. The cost of exile was death. And so, inside our DNA, the fear of dissent is laced with the scent of extinction.
Now, we follow not for survival in the jungle, but for acceptance in institutions, peer networks, digital tribes. The primal fear of exclusion has not disappeared; it has simply gone corporate, algorithmic, and aesthetic. The threat is no longer a tiger, but a performance review. A cancelled invitation. A demotion. A pile-on.
IV. The comfort of obedience
Obedience can be a balm. It soothes the mind from the agony of ambiguity. In moments of high uncertainty, the authority figure becomes a lighthouse. In their voice, one hears clarity. In their demand, one finds relief from decision fatigue. The price? Your judgment. Your conscience. Your name.
Consider the tragic case of the 2004 “strip search prank call scam,” where a man posing as a police officer called dozens of fast-food restaurants and convinced managers to perform humiliating and criminal acts on employees. In one Kentucky location, the hoax lasted over three hours. Why? Because the manager believed she was simply following orders.
These weren’t unintelligent people. They were overpowered by the idea that authority, even over the phone, absolves them from responsibility.
V. But it felt right at the time
One of the most chilling refrains from those who follow blindly is, “It felt right at the time.”
This is not an excuse. It is a symptom. A signal of how the machinery of compliance works not only externally through threat and structure but internally through self-deception and rationalization.
The brain is a master of narrative editing. It prefers a coherent story over a true one. If the only way to resolve the cognitive dissonance between “I am a good person” and “I just did something wrong” is to believe that “I had no choice,” then the mind will oblige. And so the internal myth of powerlessness takes root. It is easier to say, “I was just doing my job” than to face the abyss of your own moral silence.
VI. The seduction of collective blindness
Groupthink is not simply about peer pressure. It is a neurological high. Being part of a collective certainty activates reward centers in the brain. The group offers identity, purpose, and immunity from doubt. In such a state, dissent feels like betrayal, not just of the group but of the self.
The Jonestown massacre in 1978, where over 900 followers of cult leader Jim Jones died by mass suicide/murder, remains a brutal testament to the power of collective delusion. Survivors report that dissenters were often silenced not just by Jones, but by other members. In such groups, loyalty is not measured by reason, but by obedience unto death.
In Nigeria, the phenomenon of the “Ikoyi collapsed building” in 2021 offers another revealing case. Despite warnings from engineers and regulatory bodies, construction continued reportedly under pressure from stakeholders and vested interests. Workers on site complied despite knowing the risks. The result? Dozens of deaths. The silence of those who knew better was not ignorance; it was suppressed dissent under the weight of authority and financial intimidation.
Another chilling Nigerian example is the #EndSARS protests in 2020. As peaceful demonstrators gathered to call out police brutality, security forces opened fire on unarmed youths at the Lekki Toll Gate. The chain of command that sanctioned the use of lethal force has never been fully disclosed. Soldiers claimed they were “following orders”. The complicity ran not through ideology, but blind loyalty.
Across the continent in Rwanda, the 1994 genocide showed how the mass psychology of obedience could be weaponized. Radio stations issued commands, local leaders incited killings, and neighbors turned on neighbors. Several thousands were slaughtered. Many of the killers were not hardened criminals, but ordinary citizens including school teachers, farmers, shopkeepers convinced they were doing what was expected of them.
VII. The follower is not the fool
It is a grave mistake to see followers as fools. They are not. Many are astute, socially intelligent, and morally concerned. That’s what makes blind following so dangerous. The phenomenon does not occur in the absence of intelligence but often in its presence. The follower calculates. They weigh the cost of resistance. And often, tragically, they choose the path of least disruption.
Consider the silence of Nigerian civil servants during the multi-billion-dollar subsidy scams exposed in the early 2010s. The corruption was systemic, yet most insiders remained mute. Not because they approved, but because they feared professional exile, harassment, or worse. Silence became the price of survival.
Or take the case of the South African Marikana massacre in 2012, where 34 striking miners were killed by police. Investigations revealed that many officers were uncomfortable with the orders but executed them anyway. The political and command pressure made moral hesitation irrelevant. Obedience swallowed discomfort.
In these moments, the cost of moral courage feels too high. So the human makes a quiet trade. They keep the peace externally while hemorrhaging integrity within.
VIII. Statistics that should terrify us
- In a replication of Milgram’s obedience study in 2009 by Burger, 70% of participants continued to administer shocks even after hearing protests from the supposed victim.
- A 2021 global survey by Edelman revealed that 61% of people believe that government leaders purposely mislead people.
- Yet, paradoxically, over 50% of those same respondents expressed willingness to comply with government mandates without questioning.
- In a 2018 Afrobarometer survey across 34 African countries, 65% of respondents believed that ordinary people “must always obey the law even if they disagree with it.”
- A 2020 Nigerian NOI Polls study revealed that while 78% of Nigerians believed some police practices were abusive, over 62% said they would not intervene or speak out if they witnessed such behavior, citing fear of retaliation.
- In South Africa, a 2019 Human Sciences Research Council report showed that 52% of public sector employees who witnessed unethical behavior chose not to report it due to fear of reprisal or career stagnation.
This is not irony. It is the DNA of blind following: distrust at the level of truth, but compliance at the level of behavior.
IX. The economy of obedience
Blind following flourishes in environments that reward compliance and punish dissent. Most institutions are not built for moral imagination. They are built for stability, predictability, continuity. The employee who flags a problem is often labeled a troublemaker. The whistleblower is exiled. The nonconformist is shunned.
And so, obedience becomes a form of currency. The compliant rise. The questioners are side-lined. Slowly, a silent code of survival emerges: follow, don’t question; execute, don’t reflect.
X. Reclaiming the human mind
To confront blind following is not to posture as superior. It is to recognize our shared vulnerability. All of us have our thresholds, our fears, our limits. The question is not whether we will ever follow blindly. The question is: will we recognize the moment we begin to?
Education will help. But not the kind that glorifies obedience to textbooks or institutions. What we need is an education in discernment. In inner authority. In the slow, often lonely work of learning how to say “no” when the world is screaming “yes.
We must build cultures in companies, governments, schools, families that reward dissent, honor doubt, and cherish the one who says, “I disagree,” even when they are wrong. Because the alternative is far worse: a world where no one dares to think unless told to.
XI. Final thoughts: against the sedative of certainty
Blind following is not the opposite of rationality. It is its betrayal.
It masquerades as order, loyalty, efficiency. But beneath the surface, it rots the very core of what it means to be a thinking, feeling, responsible human being. The rational mind is not one that always obeys. It is one that knows when not to.
If humanity is to survive its own cleverness, we must teach each other the one thing that cannot be downloaded, cannot be taught in modules, and cannot be outsourced to experts: the courage to think aloud.
We will know we are making progress not when people follow the right leaders, but when they dare to disobey the wrong ones.
Dr. Charles Obiajulu Ugwu is a management consultant, adaptability strategist, and regenerative thought leader.
