Herd

Avoiding groups like the plague has always paid off for me. Even if a shy kid, I understood early on that a healthy skepticism for herd mentality was a good thing and I needed to understand why I should do something before agreeing. My father, for example, was exasperated when I needed to know why attending Mass was important.

Establishing our own ideas involves being able to explain them to others. Hence there must be rationality and logic behind them even when dealing with grey human subjects. It's one of the reasons philosophy interests me so much.

People have a tendency to herd for comfort and support but that means we need to be more careful to maintain our own opinions and question everything before swallowing it whole. Every group, company, religion or ideology has falsehoods contained within them and our job is to find them to avoid the traps.