“The blind leading the blind” refers to ineffective leadership where leaders lack skills or foresight. The phrase has been used for centuries in art and literature, and has roots in religious texts. “Blind to the world” refers to a general lack of awareness, while “blinders” indicate voluntary avoidance.
When English speakers use the phrase “the blind leading the blind,” they are referring to a situation where the leaders of a group are no more skilled or capable than those who follow them, rendering the leadership process ineffective. This can refer to any type of skill or ability, although it is usually used more to refer to leaders’ inability to plan or anticipate challenges. In general, English speakers often use the word “blind” metaphorically to refer to various types of inability to understand relevant realities.
The phrase “blind leading the blind” has been around for a while, and many historians trace it back to the New Testament of the Bible, where in the book of Matthew, a verse refers to “the blind leading the blind.” Here, this sentence illustrates the use of idiomatic or metaphorical speech in a “parable,” which is a story of an allegorical nature. A similar allegory or metaphor has been found in other sacred texts such as the Upanishads, a central text in the Hindu religion.
Over many centuries, the idea of the blind leading the blind has been a familiar one in English-speaking societies. This idea was reflected in the arts, for example, in oil paintings and plays. The idea is powerful in relation to how humans see the world around them.
A similar phrase is often used for someone’s inability to understand their environment regardless of their leadership status. If someone says that someone else is “blind to the world around them,” it means that this person does not understand key aspects of their environment. This can be used to generally indicate a lack of awareness that can doom an individual in many different ways, for example, where failure to assess responsibility can lead to compromising risks.
Besides phrases like “the blind leading the blind,” where the word “blind” is used to mean inability, there is another similar way to talk about a lack of awareness that has a slightly different meaning. English speakers may also say that a leadership team “has blinders,” where “blinkers” are an allegorical reference to physical objects placed on horses to keep them from becoming frightened when ridden. The difference here is that the use of the word ‘blind’ as opposed to ‘blind’ indicates that it is not the inability to see that ails the subject, but voluntary avoidance, whether self-generated or enforced by other persuasive parties.
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