Are you having a hard time making sense of it all? Are life's problems getting to be too much? Would you like to stop having to figure things out on your own? Would you like to never again have to learn anything new?
Many people who answer "Yes" to these questions find the comfort, security and certainty they seek in the services of a surrogate thinker.
In most cultures throughout the world, surrogate thinkers have been in high demand for millennia, and even today's advanced societies include a large majority of people who prefer to live without the pressure of trusting their own informed judgment, exercising their own powers of reason or experiencing new ideas firsthand.
Although some surrogate thinkers specialize in specific areas, such as predicting the future, most are generalists and offer clients life management assistance from birth to death and beyond. They go by many different names, including shaman, priest, psychic, rabbi, guru, astrologer, mullah, witch-doctor and minister, but their jobs are the same: think for others.
They offer easy answers to hard questions so that their clients don't need to struggle with either. While brash freethinkers torment themselves by trying to understand the complexities of evidence and proof, followthinkers simply delegate their reason to surrogates who supply instant solutions to the most difficult and troubling problems.
Science, with its intransigent reliance on empirical fact, offers only incomplete answers in a constant state of flux to comply with new discoveries. For followthinkers, it is too hard to keep up with the unpredictable meandering of paths to scientific knowledge. And science has practical application to nature but not to life. It doesn't provide the meaning and purpose people need.
While some surrogate thinkers merely fill this void, most offer a complete suite of universal knowledge that replaces science and eliminates all doubt. Because followthinkers, as a rule, are not discriminating consumers and, after all, want to avoid thought, the accuracy of surrogate thought is less important than its simplicity and comprehensiveness.
Therefore, the most popular brands of surrogate thought are those that explain life, the universe and everything with a single idea. Over time, the idea itself has been reduced further until it became one word, God, and the word was given personality. Despite being nonsensical, the person-word has acquired a mantric power.
Surrogate thinkers use it to placate their clients with soothing answers to their questions: Where did I come from? God. You are his creation. Why am I here? God. You must serve him. Where am I going? God. You will be rewarded or punished by him. A tornado destroyed my house, killed my family and paralyzed me. What should I do? God. Thank him for your life.
As the simplest unified theory of everything, God is very attractive to people seeking an escape from reason and responsibility. Not surprisingly, its power has been harnessed in marketing campaigns designed to recruit followthinkers (a practice known as "conversion"). For instance, television's CNN is now broadcasting 30-second spots for a book about God called "Power for Living."
The spots feature intellectual luminaries, including a football player, a racecar driver and a beauty-contest winner, giving so-called "testimony" that what has given them the strength to overcome hardship in their lives has been their "personal relationship with God." They urge viewers to call for the free book and start their own affair with God.
Although doing away with the human surrogate and relying only on a book seems at first to be a radical approach to surrogate thought, it is actually very common among surrogate thinkers themselves. While assuming the task of reasoning for others, they slavishly submit their own minds to anonymous ancient authors.
Ironically, the best followthinkers make the best surrogate thinkers.
