I read about this in a book of strange facts when I was still a kid of about ten years, so I apologize in advance if I got the specifics wrong. Lemmings are cute little furry animals that live in underground warrens. In one particular town, every year or so they commit genocide by rushing over the cliff in large numbers and drowning in the sea.
Nobody could explain their behaviour. People thought that it's a traditional mass migration that got screwed up by geographical changes. In any case, the phrase "like lemmings to the sea" has come to represent mindless group behaviour, no matter how harmful.
As I mentioned in my previous blog, there's this friend of mine who associates this kind of "going with the crowd" behaviour without having a carefully thought out plan for yourself as plain stupid. In a way it makes sense, but when you delineate all people in the world into "the masses" and "the rest - the smart ones" it seems extremely insular.
The thinking is something like this: the really intelligent people in the world - the people who matter - the people who ought to be in an Ayn Rand-ian new world - share some common traits. They have their own opinions and do not conform to what other people tell them, but are capable of judging things for themselves. They develop individuality. They have refined tastes, goals in life, and the initiative to make it happen. These things are nothing but different facets of a good mind, and such people are the ones who rise above mediocrity.
Oh, by the way, the thoughts expressed in the last paragraph are neither things I believe in nor the things that this friend of mine said... just think of it as a theory.... food for thought. I personally disagree with most of it.
Cheers,
Prashanth.
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