30,000 B.C.
October 4th
October 4th
Tonda can’t find his club. He looks and looks but can’t find
it anywhere.
Lana: “Hey, Tonda. I think I saw that funny looking guy over there, Atouk, with a club that looks just like yours.”
Tonda: “What the…?? Get him!”
(Atouk is beaten to death by the clan.)
Lana: “Hey, Tonda. Never mind. It’s over here!”
Atouk
Tonda
In
Afghanistan recently, a woman was accused of burning a Koran. She was beaten with sticks and set on fire by a crowd in broad
daylight. She, too, was innocent. Eight police officers were among those
arrested for the lynching.
When Omnipotentblog was
in Haiti in 1995, a mob attacked and beat a soccer referee nearly to death. His
crime? After the match the referee was exposed by a player as one of the police
force that, under the Cedras regime, had brutalized and tortured the community.
Except that he wasn’t. The ref had red-carded the player during the match. The
player didn’t much like it so he “outed” him to the crowd. The ref was totally
innocent but, you know, ignorance is gasoline.
Occasionally mobs get it right, however, as in this instance when a mob in India stormed a jail and beat an accused
rapist to death. The victim claimed he offered her $50 to keep her mouth shut.
India has suffered a rash of highly publicized rapes recently and rather than
ignorance, it was a banned BBC documentary that lit the fire. There is
apparently an attitude rampant among Indian cavemen that if a girl is out past
nine o’clock, she’s literally a slut and is literally asking to be raped.
Literally. Mukesh Singh, awaiting trial for another brutal gang rape and murder
stated, “A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy…Housework
and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing
wrong things, wearing wrong clothes.” “It was her fault” she died because she
fought back. Indeed.
Feminist of the Year--Mukesh Singh
Financial
bubbles are a different kind of mob but they are emotion-driven groupthink
nonetheless. In the Netherlands in 1637 during the Great Tulip Mania, a bulb
called The Viceroy (manly name for a tulip) eventually sold for 14 times the
salary of a skilled craftsman. Other things traded for single bulbs that year were
12 acres of land, four tons of beer and 1000 lbs. of cheese. The whole country had
gone mad. Housewives, orphans, and mechanics were getting in on the action
until someone finally said, “4150 guilders for a *%^#$! tulip? That’s nuts!” The
market crashed. Panic ensued. A lot of people were ruined.
Much has
been written about the stock market crash of 1929 but the cause was essentially
the same. The Roaring 20’s put cash in everybody’s hands. Housewives, orphans,
and mechanics wanted in on the action. Stock values climbed to absurd heights. Just
before the crash, experts were proclaiming a new paradigm, a perpetual period
of wealth and prosperity.
Michael
Lewis, author of “The Blind Side” and “Moneyball” has written several books on
the recent crash and big finance. In “The Big Short” and “Boomerang”, he
documents how the mortgage, housing and bond industries got so completely out
of control. There were a few sharp-minded contrarians who saw the crash coming
but the vast majority of financial geniuses thought the fountain of money would
flow forever. In retrospect, it should have been obvious but they really didn’t
see it coming. Worse, some who tried to warn others were shunned or even fired.
Are we all slaves
to this groupthink? Maybe. Probably. In “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion”, Jonathan
Haidt describes the mind as an elephant with a rider. The elephant is our unconscious
world view. Haidt’s research shows that we believe that the rider--reason and
intellect--is in charge but the elephant goes where it wants. The rider makes
up justifications for wherever the elephant decides to go. The implication of
this suggests the bulk of humanity is immune to logic and persuasion. History,
a most depressing area of study, sadly bears witness. French Revolutionaries, drunk
on their own opinions, thought they could create a society completely ruled by science
and logic for the first time in history. They created a “Goddess of Reason” to
replace the superstitions of the church. During the Reign of Terror, rivers of
blood flowed in the streets as mobs cheered the thud of the guillotine. Reason!
If Haidt is
right, it means that things like Omnipotentblog are rather useless and
uninfluential (sigh). So how do people change their minds? Do they ever? Yes.
Haidt’s research shows that no man is an island. It is through relationships
that minds are changed. People influence people, not arguments. The notion of a
society based on individualism is lovely but it has its natural limits. Collectivist
experiments have failed spectacularly but it’s also clear that God created us
to travel in packs. Politicians, pastors, and educators, especially
conservative ones, should take note. Armed with slick arguments, mounds of
data, and the righteousness of being utterly correct, you will convince no one
of anything until you convince them you care.
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