I feel a person should follow your own
"conscious" to try to understand why, they are being led into that "valley"..
You sound as though you don't think they did that.
But in Tennyson's case, the Light Brigade was a picked group who knew what they were about, why they were being led, and why they were following. They understood that they had a role to play, and that it was to accept orders and follow them, and they had accepted that role.
Where would we be today if every soldier, sailor, marine, and airman who took part in D-Day demanded to know in their own "conscious" first why they were being led up onto that particular beach, up that particular, to take out that particular gun emplacement, etc. What they knew was that their cause was just, that their leaders had decreed that they would do this and so, that that was their duty, and that they would follow their duty even to death.
And the rest of the world is--or at least should be--eternally grateful that they did so. |
