Why do some people idealize a leader and create a group that worships him as a demigod?
Because it is precisely in these particular people that the internal analog of such an internalized relationship is activated.
That is, somewhere in the imagination there is an ideal father, an ideal mother. This does not mean that this person had an ideal father or an ideal mother. No, but the lack of them gave birth to an inner person of an ideal father or mother, as an ideal that one is constantly trying to find.
We have all had shortcomings from our parents, but for some people the shortcomings they have had from their parents lead them to create the ideal of an absolute mother who will outshine them, that she exists somewhere. He may not even think about it, he may not even know that he has created this ideal, but the unconscious is looking for it.
And some may find it, let us say, in a sect. They enter a strange sect, religious or otherwise, and there, because they find this absolute embrace (the sect acts like an absolute mother, like an ideal), they surrender, they regress.
To move forward in life, you have to come to terms with the idea that there is no absolute completeness. You will feel the lack within and struggle and find joy in life through creativity and love while there is lack...
What I can’t fully comprehend is that some people idealize clearly awful leaders, terrible personalities, with criminal records… like I read about a rich politician (from Poland? Slovakia? Not sure anymore but some catholic country) who had like twelve kids with eleven women but very popular particularly among the female voters, often with an argument that he is very pro-family based because he can take care of his children. His political party is rather conservative, I think, in power now.
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People want someone to look up to and to guide them through their ways no matter how bad things look from the outside. I think people are searching for that, even if it doesn't exist. Often times, they idealize as a way to cope with the situation.
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I think that when it comes to identifying with a character, a leader or a person, people are very naive and let themselves be carried away from the point of view of their weaknesses... of what they lack, which is why it has happened in many places in the world or in countries where they have managed to establish empty, corrupt, dirty, bad thoughts, such as, for example, in that South American country of Venezuela, that place where a president managed to change the thinking of many people and they branded him as a leader! friend of the people! friend of the poor when it was the complete opposite... it was simply a facade with which he was unseating the country with which he was stealing everything he could and the twists and turns of fate that person dies and even more so the people who followed him They continued to idolize him and continued to worship him and this has led to a socialist dictatorship of more than 25 years! where people have no opinion... no money... no electricity... they are alone... abandoned by the International community and sadly they have no freedom... what has happened in that place has been that they managed to establish an ideal but a bad ideal towards a person a character and this has led to a total disaster in that country and in the people who are still there and the others have simply left more than 8 million people with confirmed figures who are no longer in that country because the situation is unsustainable and it is a true social crisis..!!
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of course the tyrant H. CHAVEZ was the friend of the people, friend of the poor, let us not forget that it was they who brought him to power! under the hope and the socialist promises that he would distribute the wealth of the country among all.
  • that he would give education to the uneducated (he did it with his socialist schools and universities of free education, which was free but not good).
  • that he would give houses to the homeless (he also did this, he gave away thousands, and all of them poorly made with second or third class materials and thus setting up one of the biggest money laundering and embezzlement of funds in the history of the country, through the Housing Mission 🏠).
  • that he would give loans to entrepreneurs, loans that later nobody paid (they gave away thousands of loans for small and medium businesses, less than 30% of those debtors returned their loan).
  • that would give dollars to travel abroad (in the beginning they gave $5000 per person to travel abroad, there were people who became millionaires, they processed the quotas of the most ignorant people, and then they gave them $500 for their 5k quota and they kept the rest)
And so among other things, the biggest party and looting of a rich and prosperous country took place. 25 years later the people of Venezuela only live the hangover of the great party orchestrated by Chavez and all the Venezuelans who participated in the embezzlement of the country, because if it is true that the main politicians and those close to them are those who have become rich, but the people were also part of the party and the distribution, some to a greater or others to a lesser extent, and everything in this life is "Cause and Effect"
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IME it's because leaders are often someone we pin many of our hopes and fears on so that we don't have to pin them on ourselves and we rationalize not assigning the responsibility to ourselves by giving the leader supernatural abilities.
Unscrupulous leaders are a bit of ponzi focused on bringing in new followers who haven't lived to see them underdeliver and the beliefs of the new followers can help sustain the belief of old followers. Scrupulous, long lived leaders afaict are much more rare and are usually supernatural in ability, effort, and luck.
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Human beings have always sought to have a leader on the outside, but they have never sought an inner leader, that person or that force that makes them fulfill their dreams and their goals.
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I do not agree, on the contrary, humanity has sought to fill that inner void with monotheistic religions mainly, after hyper-Christianization, and the manipulation created with the Bible, which have only been established to manipulate and profit from other people 👥 who cannot make the trip on their own, but need a supposed guide. PD: As a curious fact, I recently discovered in a podcast where they were commenting, that churches ⛪are exempt from paying taxes. What they are not exempt from is charging one (tithe) and getting rich at the expense of the unwary who follow them.
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My take is slightly different than yours... people follow leaders in general because they don't believe strongly enouh that they can do good for themselves. It's easier to follow orders of someone who knows what he's doing and shows promis of one's life improvements than to figure out everything on one's own. This is of course misleading because if one does start to figure things out for themselves and moves from unconscious incompetence to consccious incompetence, the ball just starts rolling and effects start compounding. Of course for people who do have at least minimal drive to make their lives better -- this won't work for sheeple...
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