On Crowds
On Crowds
The notion of the "madness of the people", or the "madness of the crowds" is nothing new. In this post, we will explore how crowds, broadly conceived, can help and hinder us in our daily lives and what allegiance, if any, we owe to them.
Much of our lives - national, social, local and personal - is structured as being part of some crowd or other. The Guardian, of all newspapers, regularly publishes articles that explicitly appeal to "tribes" such as the "runner tribe", or the "teacher tribe", where interests and identity are shared to a remarkable degree. It is hard, perhaps impossible, to conceive of a world in which such crowds would not play a large, if not necessarily critical or supreme role. The success of such crowds is, ideally, due to the value they produce in the lives of individuals and communities, but that does not seem to be always or even usually the case. Let us examine the often unexamined role such crowds play.
Social life largely presupposes the existence of certain crowds, to which belonging may be automatic/involuntary (such as the nuclear family), semi-voluntary (such as nationality) or wholly voluntary (such as membership of a sports' club or profession). Each of these realms confers certain rights and expectations and they are often sorted and ordered hierarchically, to ensure right order and functioning. In recent history, the psychological aspect of crowds has been subject to serious study in the fields of sociology and social psychology, which underline the power that such crowds have upon individuals and how, alas, they often enable otherwise destructive and abhorrent behaviour (would German or Soviet mass-murderers have committed their crimes if they had been certain of death or life imprisonment, in the same way as an ordinary criminal of the time?). One of the first and most enduring works on these questions is The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895) by Gustave Le Bon. We will discuss its premises in relation to recent events, both in Great Britain and ultra mare.
Le Bon contends that membership of such a crowd can cause "... a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer..." In itself, the fruits of this state may be positive or negative, but it has the clear capacity to suspend the usual norms of individual behaviour and interest. This makes possible both the best and the worst aspects of human morality, making possible both complete self-sacrifice and also the most horrific moments in the history of the race. What really differentiates theft from taxation? The only answer is the authority of the sovereign, which, for whatever reason, is an empowered crowd (be it the king and his nobility, or the common people) that commands obedience. The social nature of such institutions is suggested by their givenness, which, usually, predates the entire living population. Today's crowd is merely the offspring of yesterday's; tomorrow's will be so too. In itself, this is neither good nor evil; it might reflect either the right functioning and continued value of those institutions, or merely the failure of the crowd's leaders to reform or abolish them. A revolution might be considered the riotous usurpation of one crowd by another; reform, the admission of one crowd by the superintendent crowd (thus ancient Rome gradually expanded the franchise of its citizenship). In all cases, the individual, in at least certain of his affairs, is subordinate to the many.
For an illustration of a relatively well-functioning crowd psychology-let us turn to the current affairs of these ancient islands. The recent General Election in the United Kingdom neatly demonstrated and vindicated the political equilibrium of the Westminster Parliament. It does not depend upon formalist notions of democracy (which valorises such things as written constitutions and proportional representation), but upon there existing two viable alternatives for national governance, a choice that, since 1945, has been effectively between the Conservative and Labour parties. The existence of such a choice does much to make accountability effective in a way that, say, referenda do not. MPs and their leaders must put their jobs on the line, both with the manifesto they propose and, if elected, their implementation of it. The Liberal Democrats, seen to betray their 2010 manifesto, lost around four-fifths of their seats in 2015 and have proved largely unelectable ever since. Our system, at its best, provides clear incentives for political parties to gauge and to obey the "popular will". The recent election thus rewarded the Conservative Party and punished the Labour Party for their failure to do so.
The notion of a popular will is at least as old as Rousseau's Le Contrat Social, in which he posited the existence of a general will that should be restrained because it would always act in its own interest. The notion was later vehemently attacked by John Stuart Mill for its lack of realism in how the interests of minorities could be attacked. Nonetheless, Rousseau's notion appears to have some truth in it. That a popular will might exist is, at one level, nonsensical. Only individuals possess will, groups only what is deemed to be a collective will. However, this does not make it any less potent. The psychology of crowds does indeed suggest that such a will, by analogy, can exist that is, by analogy, the soul or mind of a certain crowd. This is perhaps clearest with religious sects, which commonly possess a doctrine sincerely and strongly held by its active adherents. According to Le Bon, belonging to such a crowd places an individual several rungs lower on the ladder of civilisation, for he will submit his reason to the dictates of instinct and popular will in service of a morality that ultimately profits the crowd rather than himself. These often call for a total dedication of oneself to The Cause(TM) at the expense of one's own interests, articulating this in a higher morality that consecrates its martyrs and saints with immortal honours. Acts almost unthinkable or wholly unnecessary in private life thus become both rationalised and necessary.
A popular will thus comes into being by a process of articulation and enforcement of the group's ideals. The cost of belonging to the group is at least visible agreement (or the lack of dissension) with these mores, which might also demand money or a certain pattern of behaviour (such as you find in the LGBTQ "communities"). In social life, these can form incredibly powerful groups that can attack and supersede less well-functioning or powerless groups. Thus, the gay lobby has proved incredibly successful in changing the received mores in society and receiving preferential treatment in treating the illnesses (e.g. HIV, alcoholism, drug abuse, etc.) that are far more prevalent among its members than in society generally. This is coupled with a sanctimony that is incredibly effective at denying personal responsibility for these illnesses, as well as attributing them to dissent from other groups (which, in many circumstances, is now outlawed). This arguably comes at a very negative cost for its members, over whom it exerts a psychological power scarcely different in extent to the medieval inquisition, or Big Brother in 1984. Few of the Protestant "heretics" burnt by the Catholic Church openly ran towards the fiery flames (even Cranmer only offered his hand freely to the fire), but many homosexuals embrace and even celebrate the most dangerous aspects of their lifestyle, euphemistically titling certain of its members "bug chasers" and "gift givers". It is perhaps for this reason that Uganda wishes to punish such behaviour with death by hanging. Yet, still, its members remain loyal while their fellows cart them off to the proverbial fires of Smithfield, the flames enkindled by the Pope of Pooftery himself.
Any member of such a group will find himself made to conform to group mores or face excommunication and anathema. In general, the more voluntary crowds will make the more intimate claims upon behaviour (with the major exception of the family); whereas, in general, the State will make little provision for who I sleep with, the Catholic Church provides ample strictures punishable by everlasting fire in case of disobedience. Likewise, groups will generally reward conformist behaviour and, thus, the Pope is always a Catholic. In all these cases, the individual is, at best, a member, in the same sense that a finger or toe is a member of the body. It is generally impossible for an individual to express himself fully in such a community, without some penalty, even if informal. Although this in the ostensible interest of the group, it can ultimately destroy it, or impose massive costs. Dixon's On the Psychology of Military Incompetence traces such dysfunctional behaviour on a systemic (and deadly) level. He attributes it to the tendency, in peacetime, of such structures to reward conformism and to exclude disruptive, innovative influences. Rank, in such situations, is equated with competence but this is perhaps the most dangerous assumption of all. This temptation is perhaps less, in general, in the groups to which people belong more distantly and less consciously. Thus, British democracy has largely avoided the horrors of arguably more effective crowd-psychologies, such as Nazism and Communism, which scarcely any cost to the supreme leaders except in extremis.
In terms of crowds, these are the most dangerous and visible examples, which the reader can be fairly expected to know. On a more daily level, crowds are more prosaic but no less pervasive. The orientation our family gives us, in terms of class and morals, will usually remain with us for a lifetime. We can, in some sense, leave our family and abandon their fellowship, but the personal cost of this is often too high to entertain. Rather, as with other crowds, the individual must find the "sweet point" between perceived costs and benefits. Yet, there is a fascinating if painful benefit from jumping into the deep-end of any such group. In such a context, the individual will find himself face-to-face with the best and worst of human behaviour. The Catholic Church is exemplary in this with its catalogue of saints and sinners. The worst excesses of the French libertines and of De Sade make most sense when one has lived a truly religious life. In like manner, military service exposes man to the best and worst in human nature.
What of the life of the spirit? Paganism has the outstanding merit of being largely adoctrinal and unecclesial (i.e. there is no organised church, as such) while sharing certain aspects such as a pantheon and general reverence for nature. The individual, if largely the product of the crowds that have nurtured him, must leave room for his own thought and for the conclusions to which these lead him. All the while, he should admit the authority of convention and of the crowd when it is, or at least appears, beneficial. I lose nothing in allowing the police to apprehend robbers, thieves and vagabonds, even if they seem seldom to do it. There is a price in refusing the tyranny of crowds, perhaps most of all in one's professional life, where the one-man-band is something of a joke, but it also has its rewards.
To venture into this life as one's own judge and guide, in the company of those whose reason provides light, is perhaps the most thrilling adventure, if also the most daunting. It is much more comfortable to follow a crowd and its norms closely, to seek for comfort and repose. Yet, is that not the essence of cowardice? Far better to venture and to fail than to have never lived at all.
O, immortal ones, bless us!
The notion of the "madness of the people", or the "madness of the crowds" is nothing new. In this post, we will explore how crowds, broadly conceived, can help and hinder us in our daily lives and what allegiance, if any, we owe to them.
Much of our lives - national, social, local and personal - is structured as being part of some crowd or other. The Guardian, of all newspapers, regularly publishes articles that explicitly appeal to "tribes" such as the "runner tribe", or the "teacher tribe", where interests and identity are shared to a remarkable degree. It is hard, perhaps impossible, to conceive of a world in which such crowds would not play a large, if not necessarily critical or supreme role. The success of such crowds is, ideally, due to the value they produce in the lives of individuals and communities, but that does not seem to be always or even usually the case. Let us examine the often unexamined role such crowds play.
Social life largely presupposes the existence of certain crowds, to which belonging may be automatic/involuntary (such as the nuclear family), semi-voluntary (such as nationality) or wholly voluntary (such as membership of a sports' club or profession). Each of these realms confers certain rights and expectations and they are often sorted and ordered hierarchically, to ensure right order and functioning. In recent history, the psychological aspect of crowds has been subject to serious study in the fields of sociology and social psychology, which underline the power that such crowds have upon individuals and how, alas, they often enable otherwise destructive and abhorrent behaviour (would German or Soviet mass-murderers have committed their crimes if they had been certain of death or life imprisonment, in the same way as an ordinary criminal of the time?). One of the first and most enduring works on these questions is The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895) by Gustave Le Bon. We will discuss its premises in relation to recent events, both in Great Britain and ultra mare.
Le Bon contends that membership of such a crowd can cause "... a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer..." In itself, the fruits of this state may be positive or negative, but it has the clear capacity to suspend the usual norms of individual behaviour and interest. This makes possible both the best and the worst aspects of human morality, making possible both complete self-sacrifice and also the most horrific moments in the history of the race. What really differentiates theft from taxation? The only answer is the authority of the sovereign, which, for whatever reason, is an empowered crowd (be it the king and his nobility, or the common people) that commands obedience. The social nature of such institutions is suggested by their givenness, which, usually, predates the entire living population. Today's crowd is merely the offspring of yesterday's; tomorrow's will be so too. In itself, this is neither good nor evil; it might reflect either the right functioning and continued value of those institutions, or merely the failure of the crowd's leaders to reform or abolish them. A revolution might be considered the riotous usurpation of one crowd by another; reform, the admission of one crowd by the superintendent crowd (thus ancient Rome gradually expanded the franchise of its citizenship). In all cases, the individual, in at least certain of his affairs, is subordinate to the many.
For an illustration of a relatively well-functioning crowd psychology-let us turn to the current affairs of these ancient islands. The recent General Election in the United Kingdom neatly demonstrated and vindicated the political equilibrium of the Westminster Parliament. It does not depend upon formalist notions of democracy (which valorises such things as written constitutions and proportional representation), but upon there existing two viable alternatives for national governance, a choice that, since 1945, has been effectively between the Conservative and Labour parties. The existence of such a choice does much to make accountability effective in a way that, say, referenda do not. MPs and their leaders must put their jobs on the line, both with the manifesto they propose and, if elected, their implementation of it. The Liberal Democrats, seen to betray their 2010 manifesto, lost around four-fifths of their seats in 2015 and have proved largely unelectable ever since. Our system, at its best, provides clear incentives for political parties to gauge and to obey the "popular will". The recent election thus rewarded the Conservative Party and punished the Labour Party for their failure to do so.
The notion of a popular will is at least as old as Rousseau's Le Contrat Social, in which he posited the existence of a general will that should be restrained because it would always act in its own interest. The notion was later vehemently attacked by John Stuart Mill for its lack of realism in how the interests of minorities could be attacked. Nonetheless, Rousseau's notion appears to have some truth in it. That a popular will might exist is, at one level, nonsensical. Only individuals possess will, groups only what is deemed to be a collective will. However, this does not make it any less potent. The psychology of crowds does indeed suggest that such a will, by analogy, can exist that is, by analogy, the soul or mind of a certain crowd. This is perhaps clearest with religious sects, which commonly possess a doctrine sincerely and strongly held by its active adherents. According to Le Bon, belonging to such a crowd places an individual several rungs lower on the ladder of civilisation, for he will submit his reason to the dictates of instinct and popular will in service of a morality that ultimately profits the crowd rather than himself. These often call for a total dedication of oneself to The Cause(TM) at the expense of one's own interests, articulating this in a higher morality that consecrates its martyrs and saints with immortal honours. Acts almost unthinkable or wholly unnecessary in private life thus become both rationalised and necessary.
A popular will thus comes into being by a process of articulation and enforcement of the group's ideals. The cost of belonging to the group is at least visible agreement (or the lack of dissension) with these mores, which might also demand money or a certain pattern of behaviour (such as you find in the LGBTQ "communities"). In social life, these can form incredibly powerful groups that can attack and supersede less well-functioning or powerless groups. Thus, the gay lobby has proved incredibly successful in changing the received mores in society and receiving preferential treatment in treating the illnesses (e.g. HIV, alcoholism, drug abuse, etc.) that are far more prevalent among its members than in society generally. This is coupled with a sanctimony that is incredibly effective at denying personal responsibility for these illnesses, as well as attributing them to dissent from other groups (which, in many circumstances, is now outlawed). This arguably comes at a very negative cost for its members, over whom it exerts a psychological power scarcely different in extent to the medieval inquisition, or Big Brother in 1984. Few of the Protestant "heretics" burnt by the Catholic Church openly ran towards the fiery flames (even Cranmer only offered his hand freely to the fire), but many homosexuals embrace and even celebrate the most dangerous aspects of their lifestyle, euphemistically titling certain of its members "bug chasers" and "gift givers". It is perhaps for this reason that Uganda wishes to punish such behaviour with death by hanging. Yet, still, its members remain loyal while their fellows cart them off to the proverbial fires of Smithfield, the flames enkindled by the Pope of Pooftery himself.
Any member of such a group will find himself made to conform to group mores or face excommunication and anathema. In general, the more voluntary crowds will make the more intimate claims upon behaviour (with the major exception of the family); whereas, in general, the State will make little provision for who I sleep with, the Catholic Church provides ample strictures punishable by everlasting fire in case of disobedience. Likewise, groups will generally reward conformist behaviour and, thus, the Pope is always a Catholic. In all these cases, the individual is, at best, a member, in the same sense that a finger or toe is a member of the body. It is generally impossible for an individual to express himself fully in such a community, without some penalty, even if informal. Although this in the ostensible interest of the group, it can ultimately destroy it, or impose massive costs. Dixon's On the Psychology of Military Incompetence traces such dysfunctional behaviour on a systemic (and deadly) level. He attributes it to the tendency, in peacetime, of such structures to reward conformism and to exclude disruptive, innovative influences. Rank, in such situations, is equated with competence but this is perhaps the most dangerous assumption of all. This temptation is perhaps less, in general, in the groups to which people belong more distantly and less consciously. Thus, British democracy has largely avoided the horrors of arguably more effective crowd-psychologies, such as Nazism and Communism, which scarcely any cost to the supreme leaders except in extremis.
In terms of crowds, these are the most dangerous and visible examples, which the reader can be fairly expected to know. On a more daily level, crowds are more prosaic but no less pervasive. The orientation our family gives us, in terms of class and morals, will usually remain with us for a lifetime. We can, in some sense, leave our family and abandon their fellowship, but the personal cost of this is often too high to entertain. Rather, as with other crowds, the individual must find the "sweet point" between perceived costs and benefits. Yet, there is a fascinating if painful benefit from jumping into the deep-end of any such group. In such a context, the individual will find himself face-to-face with the best and worst of human behaviour. The Catholic Church is exemplary in this with its catalogue of saints and sinners. The worst excesses of the French libertines and of De Sade make most sense when one has lived a truly religious life. In like manner, military service exposes man to the best and worst in human nature.
What of the life of the spirit? Paganism has the outstanding merit of being largely adoctrinal and unecclesial (i.e. there is no organised church, as such) while sharing certain aspects such as a pantheon and general reverence for nature. The individual, if largely the product of the crowds that have nurtured him, must leave room for his own thought and for the conclusions to which these lead him. All the while, he should admit the authority of convention and of the crowd when it is, or at least appears, beneficial. I lose nothing in allowing the police to apprehend robbers, thieves and vagabonds, even if they seem seldom to do it. There is a price in refusing the tyranny of crowds, perhaps most of all in one's professional life, where the one-man-band is something of a joke, but it also has its rewards.
To venture into this life as one's own judge and guide, in the company of those whose reason provides light, is perhaps the most thrilling adventure, if also the most daunting. It is much more comfortable to follow a crowd and its norms closely, to seek for comfort and repose. Yet, is that not the essence of cowardice? Far better to venture and to fail than to have never lived at all.
O, immortal ones, bless us!
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