Without using the word "herding" Bruce Lee pretty much hit the nail on the head. The following was taken from this article and trimmed down to focus on this one aspect. While Lee was a legendary martial artist he also did a lot of meditation and it is in these very quiet times in the mind that sometimes the greatest wisdom is discovered and made clear.
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Our lack of self-awareness makes us look to others to tell us who we are. (Learning not to do that is one of life’s hardest, most important lessons.) Lee considers the perilous yet profoundly human impulse for conformity:
We have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything that has its roots in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone; we are not alone when we imitate. It is thus with most of us! We are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts that are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses. Both the strong and the weak grasp at the alibi. The latter hide their malevolence under the virtue of obedience; they acted dishonorably because they had to obey orders. The strong, too, claim absolution by proclaiming themselves the chosen instrument of a higher power — God, history, fate, nation, or humanity. At the root at our misguided grasping at self-worth, Lee asserts, is a confusion between pride and self-esteem. He examines the crucial difference between the two:
Pride is a sense of worth derived from something that is not part of us, while self-esteem derives from the potentialities and achievements of self. We are proud when we identify ourselves with an imaginary self, a leader, a holy cause, a collective body of possessions. There is fear and intolerance in pride; it is insensitive and uncompromising. The less promise and potency in the self, the more imperative is the need for pride. The core of pride is self-rejection.
We acquire a true sense of self-worth by examining ourselves in order to identify our talents and then working hard to realize them. Action is a high road to self-confidence and [self-]esteem. Where it is open, all energies flow toward it. It comes readily to most people and its rewards are tangible. The maintenance of self-esteem is a continuous task that taxes all of the individual’s power and inner resources. We have to prove our worth and justify our existence anew each day. When, for whatever reason, self-esteem is unattainable, the autonomous individual becomes a highly explosive entity. He turns away from an unpromising self and plunges into the pursuit of pride — the explosive substitute for self-esteem. All social disturbances and upheavals have their roots in a crisis of individual self-esteem, and the great endeavors in which the masses most readily unite [are] basically a search for pride.
- Bruce Lee, from an essay titled “The Passionate State of Mind”
