Group Insanity and Being Oneself

I watched with embarrassment as Carrot Top made fun of Dick Cheney’s heart condition as Mr. Cheney looked on – not 10 feet away at a recent Jay Leno show. Mr. Cheney had courteously agreed to stay and watch the skit and the first 5 jokes were about his own life-threatening cardiac problems.

What was really something to observe was that this was accepted by the group. They laughed and laughed

Fascinating. Such appeared to be the collective judgment of that audience (as a mass) on ethics, good taste, courtesy and general good fellowship.

It is interesting how certain things in this society (a collective group) are not tolerated. Yet others are.

“Collective Think”

It even fears itself. This fear provokes the oddest behaviors. In a country with freedom of expression folks are fired from public jobs for what they say . Dr. Laura was fired for using the “N” word (yea, I have to be careful too) in a contextual conversation discussing the use of that word and its impact. A Tennessee middle school football coach was fired for co-writing a song “When You’re Holding a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail” (a song critical of Obama). Juan Williams was fired by NPR for an anti-Muslim statement. There are many examples – we’ve all heard them.

It  seems like there is a “mass fear” of the “masses”.  What will “they” think?  – and that very concern is, itself, a group, not so much an individual’s, thought.

This is the genesis of our present form of political correctness.

But who decides the “correctness”?

Well, that, too, is the result of “collect think”.  As any group tends to manifest differentiation of individuals (there are always the dominant ones that rise to the top for whatever reasons), I believe the “collective think” is actually a conglomeration of “collect thinks” with certain ones dominating. One of our dominant collective thinks is the Hollywood mindset. Individuals commonly do not agree with that mind-set yet since “Hollywood” is plugged into and creates so much of what we see they tend to dominate.

Whatever the influence or domination the collective think allows marginalization of certain types of classes – and not of others.

And we get the crazy dichotomies. We see images of blood and gut stories while bleeping the curse word. We watch the story of an indigenous group being enslaved, or killed and maimed but must blur the cracks in their asses so as not to offend.

And then, as on Jay Leno, we see the teasing and taunting or this white “conservative” man about his heart condition which will likely kill him very soon. And the audience laughs and laughs. This could be seen as  “collective think” influenced by “collective think” in all its glory.

I would bet that hardly an individual there, if alone with Mr. Cheney, would say anything but, “Sir, I wish you well and hope your health issues remain controlled and improved”. But connect them to the group – and they laugh – in the safety of “collectivism”.

If one looks one will see that all the greatest thoughts, the greatest discoveries, the sanest actions, the most beautiful creations have been those of individuals. Every true science (and by this I mean a science that works and actually improves conditions) has been, at the start, the work of an individual. Sir Isaac Newton was the one who summarized, in a few simple equation, the basics of sub-light motions and forces. No group has improved upon that.

Each us has, within us, basic goodness and amazing abilities.

Perhaps we should remember, as we laugh at another’s expense – in a group setting, that we are doing so as “Part” of a Collective Think – not as ourselves.