Entry tags:
Woolgathering
The last phase of the US elections raised my exposure to the annoying portmanteau word "sheeple." I'm hoping its usage will drop down again, but in the meantime, I've started wondering at what point sheep became popular as a metaphor for mindless conformity (as opposed to a metaphor for Not Particularly Aggressive ("wolf in sheep's clothing," frex)). My suspicion is that sheep took off around the time lemmings dropped from popularity as the "brainwashed masses" animal*, but my google-fu is weak today.
My own memory bank turns up two proto-examples of the "sheeple" trope from the twentieth century: the line attributed to Mussolini** about "better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep," and a bandit in a Sergio Leone western justifying his robbery and and extortion of the locals with "if God had not wanted them fleeced, he would not have made them sheep." Note that both examples are villains trying to justify their own behaviour.
The phrase "lambs to the slaughter" comes to mind as well, but I'm not sure if the earlier uses included the connotation that the lambs had it coming for being stupid. This site defines the phrase as meaning In an unconcerned manner - unaware of the impending catastrophe,, yet the examples cited from the KJV and Chaucer seem to be placing emphasis on the victim's innocence and lack of provocation, not his/her foolish unwariness.
* I also wonder to what extent sheep metaphors mutate when actual, non-metaphorical sheep aren't an animal that the average person encounters on an everyday basis.
** This forum suggest it's an old Italian/Roman proverb, and not Mussolini's own invention. This Wiki entry mentions the phrase being adopted in 2008 as the named of a band founded by a former member of Rage Against the Machine, which may have completed its political transition.
My own memory bank turns up two proto-examples of the "sheeple" trope from the twentieth century: the line attributed to Mussolini** about "better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep," and a bandit in a Sergio Leone western justifying his robbery and and extortion of the locals with "if God had not wanted them fleeced, he would not have made them sheep." Note that both examples are villains trying to justify their own behaviour.
The phrase "lambs to the slaughter" comes to mind as well, but I'm not sure if the earlier uses included the connotation that the lambs had it coming for being stupid. This site defines the phrase as meaning In an unconcerned manner - unaware of the impending catastrophe,, yet the examples cited from the KJV and Chaucer seem to be placing emphasis on the victim's innocence and lack of provocation, not his/her foolish unwariness.
* I also wonder to what extent sheep metaphors mutate when actual, non-metaphorical sheep aren't an animal that the average person encounters on an everyday basis.
** This forum suggest it's an old Italian/Roman proverb, and not Mussolini's own invention. This Wiki entry mentions the phrase being adopted in 2008 as the named of a band founded by a former member of Rage Against the Machine, which may have completed its political transition.