Leaders and followers
Jun. 18th, 2016 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerThere is, I believe, a saying in the BDSM community to the effect that if you are a good submissive you will also be a good dominant. Correct me (um, verbally, for preference) if I'm wrong.
I was told recently, in the course of my discussions on liberals/progressives/lefties thinking they're the smartest people in the room, that very smart people don't make good followers. This is I think one of those stealth-pride things: we're not good at taking orders because, you know, the orders are always stupid, and we have much better ideas, and we're just so brilliant we shouldn't be regimented, and so on. We don't go in for authoritarianism because we know we should be the authorities. Etc.
Perhaps, if you can't be a good follower, you're likely to be a pretty rubbish leader as well. This--perhaps--is what sergeants are for. In politics, of course, you don't have sergeants. (Well, John, of course, but hasn't he taken to ballroom dancing lately?)
Perhaps this is why liberals tend to lose so much of the time. We just can't dial back our massive brains to the point where we understand what it is to be someone who takes orders, so we assume that if you need someone to tell you what to do it must be because you can't think for yourselves, and that must be why you keep voting for the other guy despite the fact that we keep telling you to vote for us, you clods.
Liberals have many defining virtues, and I'm proud to be one. Excessive intelligence, however, is not necessarily one of them. As witness the fact that I am one. :)
I was told recently, in the course of my discussions on liberals/progressives/lefties thinking they're the smartest people in the room, that very smart people don't make good followers. This is I think one of those stealth-pride things: we're not good at taking orders because, you know, the orders are always stupid, and we have much better ideas, and we're just so brilliant we shouldn't be regimented, and so on. We don't go in for authoritarianism because we know we should be the authorities. Etc.
Perhaps, if you can't be a good follower, you're likely to be a pretty rubbish leader as well. This--perhaps--is what sergeants are for. In politics, of course, you don't have sergeants. (Well, John, of course, but hasn't he taken to ballroom dancing lately?)
Perhaps this is why liberals tend to lose so much of the time. We just can't dial back our massive brains to the point where we understand what it is to be someone who takes orders, so we assume that if you need someone to tell you what to do it must be because you can't think for yourselves, and that must be why you keep voting for the other guy despite the fact that we keep telling you to vote for us, you clods.
Liberals have many defining virtues, and I'm proud to be one. Excessive intelligence, however, is not necessarily one of them. As witness the fact that I am one. :)