{{username}}, imagine yourself at a crossroads where two paths open up before you: one, wide and crowded, followed by the majority, and the other, less traveled:
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“ […] but here the most beaten and frequented tracks are those which lead us most astray. Nothing, therefore, is more important than that we should not, like sheep, follow the flock that has gone before us, and thus proceed
not whither we ought,
but whither the rest are going.
Now nothing gets us into greater troubles than our subservience to common rumour,
and our habit of thinking that those things are best which are most generally received as such, of taking many counterfeits for truly good things, and of living not by reason but by imitation of others.
This is the cause of those great heaps into which men rush till they are piled one upon another.
In a great crush of people, when the crowd presses upon itself, no one can fall without drawing some one else down upon him, and those who go before cause the destruction of those who follow them. You may observe the same thing in human life: no one can merely go wrong by himself, but he must become both the cause and adviser of another's wrong doing.
It is harmful to follow the march of those who go before us, and since every one had rather believe another than form his own opinion, we never pass a deliberate judgment upon life, but some traditional error always entangles us and brings us to ruin, and we perish because we follow other men's examples: we should be cured of this if we were to disengage ourselves from the herd; but as it is, the mob is ready to fight against reason in defence of its own mistake.
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It's easy to go with the flow, to applaud what the crowd applauds, to follow what everyone else is doing without ever stopping to think for yourself. But that's exactly the trap, {{username}}: When you blindly follow, you don't realize that you could also be the cause of other people being led astray. It's a chain reaction - a domino where each piece pulls the other down with it. Not only are you risking your own downfall, but you're also contributing to the downfall of others.
So what can you do?
Step back.
Use your critical mind.
Distance yourself from the masses.
Listen to your mind, your intellect.
And say to yourself: "Is this really the path I want to take?