Following the Majority Causes
Mental Numbness
One of the issues that mislead people most is their belief that what the "majority" does is right. Man is usually inclined to accept what he is taught by the people around him, rather than finding the truth by thinking. He sees that things that seem odd to him at first sight are most of the time considered ordinary by people, and moreover are not even noticed by them, and after a while, he too begins to become accustomed to them.
For instance, a great part of the people in his circle does not acknowledge that they will die one day. They do not even let anybody talk about this topic in order not to remember death. Seeing this, the person looks around him and says, "Since everybody is like that, there must be nothing wrong with my behaving the same way" and begins to live without remembering death at all. If, however, the people around him had acted with fear of Allah and struggled with due struggle for the hereafter, most probably this person too would have changed his attitude.
As another example, on TVs and magazines, hundreds of news items of disasters, unfairness, injustice, oppression, suicide, homicide, theft and swindle are covered, and thousands of needy people are mentioned everyday. Yet many people who read these news items turn the pages of the newspaper or switch the TV channels with inner calm. In general, people do not think why there are so many of these kind of news items, or what has to be done and what kind of precautions have to be taken in order to stop them, or what they themselves can do about these problems. Neither do people around them think over those problems. Most people hold others responsible for these problems, employing such logic as "is it up to me to save the world