In July 2005, a newspaper in Turkey carried a caption: 1,500 sheep take suicide to leap off a cliff. The report referred to an incident in Gevas, a town in eastern Turkey when sheep leapt to death from a cliff. Right after 1,500 sheep plunged into the 15-metre drop in a bizarre mass suicide. “There’s nothing we can do. They’re all wasted,” said Nevzat Bayhan, a member of one of the 26 families. The estimated loss for the families tops $100,000, high in a region where the average GDP per head was around $2,700.
Few in this world decide on one’s course of action. Most of us do what our predecessors have done in the past with little to no thought about why. We go through school because everyone went to school; we go to university because everyone goes to university, and we even think of pursuing a degree because everyone pursued one. It only takes a minority of five percent to influence a crowd’s direction, and the other 95 percent follow without realizing.
Though this was not a mistake, like sheep, it’s common for humans to follow one another. Sheep will often roam grasslands with a leading dominant figure, observing and listening to what they say. They focus on what others around them are doing and the expectations they need to meet.
We often do the same. Our parents and teachers, being our authority figures throughout our lives, paint a picture for us of how a life path should look like. Elementary School, High School, College or University and then, off to work in a cubicle farm and a lifetime of indentured servitude!
