Group Mind aka Spin-World aka Ideology

[coberst]

Group Mind aka Spin-World aka Ideology

 

What do the following entities have in common: fascism, capitalism, communism, political parties, and religions? They all have a common characteristic that can be called “group mind”.

 

What is striking is that members of these entities often undergo a major change in behavior just by being members of such entities. Under certain conditions individuals who become members of these groups behave differently than they would as individuals. These individuals acquire the characteristics of a ‘psychological group’.

 

What is the nature of the ‘group mind’, i.e. the mental changes such individuals undergo as a result of becoming a group?

 

A bond develops much like cells which constitute a living body—group mind is more of an unconscious than a conscious force—there are motives for action that elude conscious attention—distinctiveness and individuality become group behavior based upon unconscious motives—there develops a sentiment of invincible power, anonymous and irresponsible attitudes--repressions of unconscious forces under normal situations are ignored—conscience which results from social anxiety disappear.

 

Contagion sets in—hypnotic order becomes prevalent—individuals sacrifice personal interest for the group interest.

 

Suggestibility of which contagion is a symptom leads to the lose of conscious personality—the individual follows suggestions for actions totally contradictory to person conscience—hypnotic like fascination sets in—will an discernment vanishes—direction is taken from the leader in an hypnotic like manner—the conscious personality disappears.

 

“Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization.” Isolated, he my be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. “He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.”

 

There is a lowering of intellectual ability “pointing to its similarity with the mental life of primitive people and of children…A group is credulous and easily influenced—the improbable seldom exists—they think in images—feelings are very simple and exaggerated—the group knows neither doubt nor uncertainty—extremes are prevalent, antipathy becomes hate and suspicion becomes certainty.

 

Force is king—force is respected and obeyed without question—kindness is weakness—tradition is triumphant—words have a magical power—supernatural powers are easily accepted—groups never thirst for truth, they demand illusions—the unreal receives precedence over the real—the group is an obedient herd—prestige is a source for domination, however it “is also dependent upon success, and is lost in the event of failure”.

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I have read that some consider objectivism to be a cult rather than a philosophy; I asked my self what is the difference between a philosophy and an ideology. I turned to Freud and his book “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” for my answer. I discovered that Freud had turned to the Frenchman Gustave Le Bon for an understanding of group behavior.

 

Gustave Le Bon was a French social psychologist, sociologist, and amateur physicist. His work on crowd psychology became important in the first half of the twentieth century. Le Bon was one of the great popularizers of theories of the unconscious at a critical moment in the formation of new theories of sociology.

English translation Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, 1922) was explicitly based on a critique of Le Bon's work. The quotes in this post are from this book.

[ErlyRisa]

--all animals behave this way.

 

-as we (as monkeys) brooded around a fire, group mentality was strong, the silver back was the dominanting force. ...interestingly enough the fact that a single dominanting force makes decision transactional yet still allowing for faint input from the individual spawns the gathering of more intelligence amongst the group... it's akin to the way an AI processor works. ,,as the group 'learns' more, limbs (individuals) of the group have more freedom of individuality. -our end goal for evolution is to - all be able to depend on nothing but ourselves -everything from gathering energy to continue existance to procurrig infinite tangent thought processes. Sadly our inventions seem to be able to outcompete us ---singularity.

 

--there is a species which has evolved along the individual path and seems to be able to exist happily amongst us.... the Spider -consider the limbs as individuals attatched to the silver back body. -so even the spider holds true to AI evolutionary processing.... sadly it evolved too quickly - it has reached enlightenment and cannot gather the energy to ascend (or maybe it knows that it does, it does sacrifice itself for it's offspring)

[coberst]

I have been giving this group psychology thing some thought and I think that radio talk shows, like the Rush Limbaugh show, display group behavior. I also think that these Internet discussion forums display a hint of this behavior.

[LaurieAG]

I have been giving this group psychology thing some thought and I think that radio talk shows, like the Rush Limbaugh show, display group behavior. I also think that these Internet discussion forums display a hint of this behavior.

 

Hello Coberst,

 

You are referring to groupthink:-

 

"Groupthink is a term coined by psychologist Irving Janis in 1972 to describe one process by which a group can make bad or irrational decisions."

 

One aspect of groupthink that can be found on some forums is the ability to ignore posts from discrete members i.e. closed minded thinking. This closes the group 'mind' to alternate possibilities and can also tend to alienate individuals who might not agree with the groups ideas, correctly or incorrectly.

 

Once ignore-ance rules a group anything is possible.

[AtlantaWonder]

Oh yeah its true. Ill be talking to a group of friends about religion and every one of them just totally gives me the shun look, but if i talk to them individually each of them is way open minded to my ideas

[LaurieAG]

Oh yeah its true. Ill be talking to a group of friends about religion and every one of them just totally gives me the shun look, but if i talk to them individually each of them is way open minded to my ideas

 

Hello AW,

 

It's funny how the same thing happens with groups from motorcycle gangs to right wing neocons. It seems that when people refuse to talk alone in an open minded manner they are subject to the 'group mentality' i.e. their self esteem and confidence are deeply tied into the group. These are the people who have the real problem.

[hug]

Mark Twain once observed:

 

"The average man is destitute of independence of opinion. He is not interested in contriving an opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what his neighbor's opinion is and slavishly adopt it."

-- Mark Twain

 

(The Mark Twain quote was sourced from the article, "The Perils of the Imitation Age", by Eric Bonabeau, in Harvard Business Review, June, 2004. Thank you Mr. Twain and thank you Mr. Bonabeau.)

[coberst]

Freud gives a number of reasons for the group behavior but transference appears to one of the most important reasons.

 

Wo/man worships and fears power; we enthusiastically give our loyalty to our leader. Sapiens are at heart slavish. Therein lay the rub, as Shakespeare might say.

 

Freud was the first to focus upon the phenomenon of a patient’s inclination to transfer the feelings s/he had toward her parents as a child to the physician. The patient distorts the perception of the physician; s/he enlarges the figure up far out of reason and becomes dependent upon him. In this transference of feeling, which the patient had for his parents, to the physician the grown person displays all the characteristics of the child at heart, a child who distorts reality in order to relieve his helplessness and fears.

 

Freud saw these transference phenomena as the form of human suggestibility that makes the control over another, as displayed by hypnosis, as being possible. Hypnosis seems mysterious and mystifying to us only because we hide our slavish need for authority from our self. We live the big lie, which lay within this need to submit our self slavishly to another, because we want to think of our self as self-determined and independent in judgment and choice.

 

The predisposition to hypnosis is identical to that which gives rise to transference and it is characteristic of all sapiens. We could not function as adults if we retained this submissive attitude to our parents, however, this attitude of submissiveness, as noted by Ferenczi, is “The need to be subject to someone remains; only the part of the father is transferred to teachers, superiors, impressive personalities; the submissive loyalty to rulers that is so widespread is also a transference of this sort.”

 

Freud saw immediately that when caught up in groups wo/man became dependent children once again. They abandoned their individual egos for that of the leader; they identified with their leader and proceeded to function with him as their ideal.

 

People have an insatiable need to be hypnotized by authority; they seek a magical protection as when they were infants protected by their mother. This is the force that acts to hold groups together, intertwined within a mutually constructed but often mindless interdependence. This mindless group think also builds a feeling of potency. The members feel a sense of unity within the grasp of their leadership.

 

‘Why are groups so blind and stupid?’ Freud asked; and he replied that mankind lived by self delusion. They “constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real.” The real world is too frightening to behold; delusion changes this by making sapiens seem important. This explains the terrible sadism we see in group activity.

[hug]

coberst and others: I'm not an expert on Freud, but my understanding is that, although many of his thoughts are probably helpful in certain situations and in certain ways, much of what he said is not scientifically or psychiatrically accurate according to modern science. There are more modern sources that help shed light, from various angles, on why humans are often influenced or deluded by group pressure and ideas held by the group.

 

A great book on at least some of the imperfections of the human mind, regarding our quest for happiness, is Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness." He is a Harvard prof. and the book is great. It's currently on the NYTimes non-fiction best-seller list. But, aside from that, it's also great. Another thing to read up on is the Stanford Prison Experiment. The prof. that did that experiment is recently written a book. Can't remember the title. But it sounds great. Also, from a very different angle, but still very interesting, is the movie "Manufacturing Consent", featuring Noam Chomsky on the media.

 

I have other quotes on this subject, and I'll share them here as time allows.

[coberst]

hug

 

I am a recent student of the human sciences through the books of Ernest Becker, Norman Brown, and Otto Rank. My knowledge is new and limited but I would say that Freud is the giant upon whose shoulders these others now stand. I think that Freud's accomplishments are somtimes minmized because so many people are turned off by his use of sexual words and words about the basic animal behavior of children.

 

I think that if we are to understand human nature we must build upon the work that Freud began.

[hug]

coberst, I'm not so sure about Freud. Sometimes, someone's theories, although they may be very helpful in some "senses" and to many people, are pretty far from scientific soundness in terms of how they describe who we are, or why we are the way we are. I think Freud is very interesting, and certainly humans are very sexual beings (to differing degrees and in differing ways), but Freud's understanding of why and how and so forth is not, I think, considered very scientifically accurate these days. The perspective that Freud offers is a perspective, and something to think about, but is not a very good scientific foundation upon which to build, I think.

 

I found the lecture on Becker very helpful, and I seem to agree with him on many things (to the extent that I understand them based on one lecture), but even there, his views and comments are "mid-macro" and "macro" in a sense. That is, at least as far as I can tell, they don't explain root causes and root dynamics. Consider: He (unfortunately) died before many of the most important discoveries and theories associated with evolved human dynamics happened, because many of them have happened in the last three decades . . . "kin selection", "reciprocal altruism", an improved understanding of gene-environment interaction, game theory and Axelrod's "Evolution of Cooperation", Dawkins's work, and so forth. My experience is that understanding things at that level (I don't mean every microscopic detail or latest finding, but at least the basic principles) sheds immense light on the bigger picture and even better informs the "macro" observations that people like Becker made. I mention this because, in hindsight, Freud didn't get very close to those underlying foundations. I may be wrong, however, because I'm not an expert on Freud. (And I like Jung alot more than Freud.)

 

I hope this is helpful. Cheers. "hug"

[silverslith]

Crikey. Maybe I'm not a human being. I've always despised the tendancy to think with the group. And no-one would accuse me of not saying something publicly because its different to what most think.:shrug: I usually get the last laugh.:hihi:

I have noted an annoying tendancy for all my best ideas to crop up publicly within a few years. This group mind phenomina is called synchronicity I believe.;)

[coberst]

silver..

 

Why do you classify "group mind aka spin-world aka ideology" as being 'synchronicity'?

[coberst]

coberst, I'm not so sure about Freud. Sometimes, someone's theories, although they may be very helpful in some "senses" and to many people, are pretty far from scientific soundness in terms of how they describe who we are, or why we are the way we are. I think Freud is very interesting, and certainly humans are very sexual beings (to differing degrees and in differing ways), but Freud's understanding of why and how and so forth is not, I think, considered very scientifically accurate these days. The perspective that Freud offers is a perspective, and something to think about, but is not a very good scientific foundation upon which to build, I think.

 

I found the lecture on Becker very helpful, and I seem to agree with him on many things (to the extent that I understand them based on one lecture), but even there, his views and comments are "mid-macro" and "macro" in a sense. That is, at least as far as I can tell, they don't explain root causes and root dynamics. Consider: He (unfortunately) died before many of the most important discoveries and theories associated with evolved human dynamics happened, because many of them have happened in the last three decades . . . "kin selection", "reciprocal altruism", an improved understanding of gene-environment interaction, game theory and Axelrod's "Evolution of Cooperation", Dawkins's work, and so forth. My experience is that understanding things at that level (I don't mean every microscopic detail or latest finding, but at least the basic principles) sheds immense light on the bigger picture and even better informs the "macro" observations that people like Becker made. I mention this because, in hindsight, Freud didn't get very close to those underlying foundations. I may be wrong, however, because I'm not an expert on Freud. (And I like Jung alot more than Freud.)

 

I hope this is helpful. Cheers. "hug"

 

Becker is a synthesizer of knowledge. If he went into great detail about all of these sciences then he would not be a synthesizer.

 

As to Freud, I also am not an expert but it is my comprehension that Freud created the foundation of the sciences of psychology and psychoanalysis.

 

Jung and Rank were proteges of Freud; they revised and extended his fundamental work but they, like us, stand on the shoulders of this giant who used bad words to construct his theories.

 

Many people, who know nothing about his theories, carry a bias against him because he used bad words like 'sex' and 'anal' to define fundamental concepts. Most people shudder at the connection of 'infant' and 'sex' even though they know nothing about the theory making the connection.

[silverslith]

silver..

 

Why do you classify "group mind aka spin-world aka ideology" as being 'synchronicity'?

 

 

Sorry, probably a little off topic as you guys are discussing crowd psychology.

I mentioned it as a studied "group mind" phenomina. As its been shown to happen without any communication between geographically seperated humans and also monkeys on different islands its not at all like crowd psychology.