Summary Of 'Follower Problem' By David Brooks

Societies that live within the current era have recently been experiencing a problem that has risen over the last decades. Individuals have begun to fall out of line by refusing authority resulting in a more barbaric state of civilization. People that question or refuse authority might not realize that without the proper authority, they would begin to digress and become less civil. Another reason that authority is essential in societies is because people who have authority create an audience that will support them. Abraham Lincoln, for example, had authority and as a result, had many followers and they all supported and trusted his decisions. Long after Lincoln, people aspire to be someone similar to Lincoln. Without authority, our communities …show more content…
In his writing titled “Follower Problem” the author states how authority has been represented less frequently in monuments and other statues. In fact, out of the many different monuments of iconic figures such as Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other that point to specific events in relation to the vietnam war, and the Korean memorial, the only monuments that express authority is the Lincoln and Jefferson monuments. One of the authors reason to the question “Why can’t today’s memorial designers think straight about authority?” is because it’s easier to focus on the victims of power rather than the person with power. But people shouldn’t observe power as a way of domination, they should view it as “bind and build”. The author also explains how citizens have forgotten what ‘Question Authority’ means. They believe that it’s a way to oppose it rather than justify if it's right or …show more content…
Authority is shown as a negative force and we are starting to oppose authority. If we only see the victims subjected to power, we will become fearful of anyone who has power and naturally, we’ll oppose it because we want it to end. Yes, authority and power has been used to manipulate and has been used for disasters events. But humans are smart and learn from their mistakes. An example is when a child touches a hot stove. They learn personally, touching a stove can burn them and thus will prevent them from doing so later on. The same concept is applied here, if we can distinguish between just and unjust authority we might not perceive authority as we do today. However, I do not believe that authority should be represented as strongly as Brooks believes. I believe some monuments should show the ones who fought for their lives, or show how we participated in wars because that our history. We shouldn’t forget our past and we can’t forget the ones who fought for us in our own home and across seas. Authority should be expressed more, but we should never forget what shaped us into the community we have