The people who murdered in the name of the state just wanted a better life. They voted for the man with big ideas and were unaware of the path this blind obedience takes them. Their lives while working in a slaughterhouse for humans were not different than their lives when they worked in a slaughterhouse for animals. Daily life is daily life; we all filter out the world we don’t want to see.

We are all different in how we look and what we’ve been through and somewhat different in our wants and needs. Some of us want to find our own way, and others just want to follow. Most of us fall somewhere in between. We have to live together knowing that a quarter of the people in our society have no problems rounding up their neighbors if they are ordered to when shame is taken away. Those are the people who have no rationale for why they obey the strong man, the man who knows “the right words.”

Do you obey?

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

Hannah Arendt