A person obeys another person because he is influenced by a stronger power, whether it being wealth, intellect, experience, or a higher position. Human beings have been obeying and disobeying since the beginning. They have been thought that obedience is a virtue and disobedience a vice, but this is not true all the time. The person obeying authority must be able to recognize irrational and rational authority, because not being able to do so can become dangerous. When people become a part of a cult or a gang it is usually at a vulnerable time when they are recruited and they were not able to recognize signs needed to make a rational decision. These people become followers to leaders with narcissistic personalities who believe they are some sort of messiah that will make the world a better place. Cults like Heaven's Gate are a perfect example of human being's obedience to authority at a point where it could become dangerous. One should know where to draw the line between reasonable and dangerous obedience.
             Cults are practices centered on false doctrines. Heaven's Gate was a cult founded by Marshall Applewhite. He was able convince thirty-nine people that if they would follow him, a comet "Hale-Bop" would come and take them to the New World. To enter the ship they needed to leave their bodies. On March 26, 1997, thirty-nine men and women in Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide by ingesting a deadly toxin. They were also not permitted to marry, have sex, drink, and they had to give all their possessions to the cult. This cult showed how a small circle of persons who are united by devotion to a person can be manipulated to be incapable to think rationally. In Erich Fromm's essay Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem, he persuades his readers to believe that human beings have evolved from acts of disobedience. He believes that a perfect balance between slavish obedienc
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