Most people are too lethargic to break away from the "heard". It isn't just your fellow citizens. Hiding behind customs and opinions is the easier way. Introspective knowledge is always harder to obtain. With modern life being so engaging and hectic, people hardly have time to form opinions away from the media, "hear say" (a.k.a " the heard") and cultural beliefs (a.k.a the herd).
In many cases people have in fact started to "believe in believing" rather than letting the belief convince them. Transubstantiation in Christianity is one such instance that I can think of in the west . It's moral relativism at work really; that is to say that a persons morality is relative to their surrounding. It is rarer that people recognize the nature of morals and come out slightly more informed about why people act like ignoramuses.
A lot of people imagine that it is impossible and impractical to be a relativist- but this is short sighted- it is in fact easier than being a "preference utilitarian"( a moral position that considers all things pleasurable to the self worth cherishing and all else worth diminishing). Relativism is by default our morality. Especially since according to relativism there are no right or wrong morals but simply relative ones; making all other moral beliefs sub-moral.
