BDA is not a cult - we don't have to follow leaders blindly

Bermuda is a nation, not a cult.

Characteristically, cults have strong leaders — usually men — who exercise almost magical powers over their followers.

Cult followers, characteristically, are people who — under all circumstances — express strong faith and absolute trust in every decision taken by their leader.

This is the way it was with Jim Jones and his juice-drinking followers in Guyana and the Davidians who died in the Fort Waco shoot-out in Texas.

There was an element of cultism in the Charles Manson Hollywood killings in the 1960s.

Obedience

I am always deeply disturbed when I face a request for blind loyalty and absolute unquestioning obedience.

My background as an experienced professional soldier would seem to suggest that I, of all people, should believe in unquestioning obedience. 

As a former soldier, in step with all other good professional soldiers, I certainly do believe in obedience.

But that obedience never goes as far as the blindly unquestioning obedience shown by cultists.

Instead, soldiers — modern soldiers — are trained to understand the mission, accept the mission and then to apply themselves — and accept all risks in so doing — to achieve that mission. 

By extension, this requires that a soldier in any one part of a battle or operation must accept all orders and instructions in the belief they will help accomplish their mission. However, modern soldiers are also required to think about each order they receive and then apply their experience and brainpower — and accept all risks — to make sure they stay on mission.

In the midst of all that, in modern armies, every soldier is enjoined to apply the lethal force at his lawful disposal such that he does not breach what is now basic universal law. Put simply, the modern soldier has to ensure he does not kill indiscriminately.

It is this final and individual thinking and deciding process that separates the soldier from the cultist.

The cultist does not take or make final, down-to-the-wire, individual decisions.

The cultist just does exactly as his leader tells him — or the cultist does whatever he thinks will please the leader and then justifies the action, whatever that action was, by reference to the leader’s expressed and sometimes even unexpressed wishes.

Disturbed

So I am disturbed, deeply disturbed, whenever I am asked or told or it is suggested that I give loyalty yet not ask questions.

I am disturbed, deeply disturbed, when it is suggested that the mere act of asking questions or making critical comments is considered an act of disloyalty or disobedience.

Every good professional soldier who is about to embark on an operation will ask questions — many questions.

He will look critically at the mission.

He will apply his full brainpower and experience to the task put before him.

Every modern leader of modern soldiers expects to have to answer questions. In a typical air-land environment, all of the supporting arms will have differing views and will make critical and important observations.

Woe betide the commander or commander-in-chief who is too full of his own self-importance and who ignores these observations.

In 2010, our nation of Bermuda is a complex, multi-layered, multi-racial and multi-national society.  

This national group is living on an isolated island at 32N,64W from which operates a sophisticated and currently successful, globally involved international business economy.

This isolated mid-Atlantic complexity needs careful and intelligent national management.

This national management requires wide, open and full input from all participants.

Numbers

I do not believe that, at this time, Bermuda is getting the high quality of input from all participants that is required for Bermuda’s best management. 

There is far too much of the aspect of the blindly obedient cult and cultists floating through some of our national discourse.

The numbers I see and that I have reported and commented on tell me that — and numbers don’t bend to emotion or to cultists.