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The Challenge That Groupthink Presents To The Company
Several years ago, I attended a Tai Chi seminar in Florida, during which we learned a long and complicated series of movements, called a form. We were in a group of about twenty, all of us novices learning the form. The members of the group were all from different parts of the North America. Few of us had met before. Our only connection was a shared interest in Tai Chi.
The master would demonstrate the form from an elevated platform, in this case a park bench, and we would attempt to replicate his movements. Periodically the master would ask the group to perform the movements on their own so that he might gauge our progress. The fascinating thing was that when we did the movements without any instructor for us to follow, the entire group would get stuck at the same place.
We would then get a prompt from the master, proceed further into the form, and yet again the entire group would come to a dead stop at another point further on in the form. Intuitively, this does not make sense. With each of us learning the form directly from the master, how was it that twenty individuals could get stuck in the same place? This is the herd instinct at work. Consciously we perceive ourselves to be following the master, yet simultaneously, on a subconscious level, the strongest influence we experience is that of the group.
This is a demonstration of the impact of a group of strangers on each of the individuals within the group. Imagine how much stronger the influence will be for people who spend each day with each other such as with their colleagues at work. The impact will be greater still from people we have known all our lives, such as our family. This effect is no doubt part of our biological programming as a species. There is none of us, regardless of our degree of affinity to groups, who is exempt from this. We can with increased awareness temper its effect, but we cannot escape it altogether. Even the refusniks, who reject the group, altogether, end up defining themselves in relation to the group, albeit in the negative.
The benefits afforded by belonging to a group do not come for free. There is a price to pay and that price is not a small one. In addition, the more a person identifies with their tribe the less they function as an autonomous individual. Instead, they become an extension of the group. Inside a tribe the conversation is no longer betwixt individuals but rather between two appendages of one collective consciousness.
Tattoos, piercings, uniforms, even hairstyles, all signal our tribal affiliation to those outside as well as those within the tribe. In this regard, there is no difference between the grey pin-striped suit worn by the banker and the gang colors worn on the jacket of a member of a motorcycle club.
This identification with tribes is so deeply ingrained in us that whenever we encounter someone for the first time one of the first things we do is categorize them in terms of which tribe they belong to. If they do not fit any tribe we know of, we simply label them as weird and place them in the tribe called the eccentrics. This then becomes the immediate basis upon which we judge them as good or bad, friend or foe, high or low status, even attractive and unattractive.
By objectifying everyone in this way, we are not experiencing them in their fullness, but only through that narrow sliver which conforms to our own tribal view. They in turn are returning the favour and doing the same to us. They are objectifying us as we are objectifying them
By objectifying others, we are simultaneously objectifying ourselves. In this way, we are distanced from both ourselves and those around us, within and without our tribe. Relationship of course becomes a mere shadow of what it could be. This is the price we must all pay to join the herd. Each of us has to ask the question only we and we alone, can answer for ourselves: Is it worth it?
About the Author John Berling Hardy is author of the e-book "Have We Been
Played?- The Hidden Game Revealed." The insights contained in this series give you the Edge. To find out more about the carefully guarded secret shared by all those who enjoy power and prestige visit Have We Been Played.com.
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