I am unsure whether I have become needlessly obscure, or just a mere bell-tinkler…
The thoughtpolice (as in my oft-quoted Nineteen Eighty-Four) are like the ‘intelligence’ community - licensed to know what people think, and to control how they think. However, they themselves have succumbed to ‘groupthink’, as Irving Janis has defined it, and seem no longer able to think objectively. I just thought it was slightly ironic…
When the thoughtpolice are taken in by their own groupthink, who’s minding the store?
(rhetorical)
Although there is a distinction between propaganda (what the thoughtpolice inculcate) and what they themselves subscribe to. But one can be trapped by ones own propaganda as much as groupthink….
Groups engaging in groupthink usually seem to be minorities who think that their views are best for everyone else without any regard for the way other people may feel about it. They can be as diverse as The Aryan Nation, Al Qaeda, The Moral Majority , Goldwaterite Republicans , the Stalinists in the Communist party or the ultraliberals in the Democratic Party. They can also exist in the corporate world as well as in politics. Enron and WorldCom being two examples. Leaders in such groups see to it that everyone adheres to a "party line" or "company line".
Katy’s point about an Us vs Them mentality in such groups is also well-taken. Even today, Stalinist communists cringe at the mention of "Trotskyites" partly because Stalin strongly disagreed with Trotsky, really hated him and spent a lot of money to get him killed. Yet, in the end, it was Stalin’s "groupthink" policies that became world communism as we know it today. The Trotskyites are still around, but exist as a splinter group in the communist movement at best.
The pres’s motorcade made an appearance here between stops in other communities this afternoon. We took up position between cheerful, well-prepared protesters (bearing clearly readible signs) and conservative dispassionates sporting small signs (if you want the magic marker slogan to be seen on the 6 o’clock news, letter larger than 1" high).
The pres was unfashionably late due to an unscheduled stop in a notoriously conservative city* to buy candy. The pro-Bush crowd began shouting at the pro-Kerry crowd for crossing the police tape. The p-B’s crossed it first, but that’s different.
Suddenly emergency vehicles representing various jurisdictions of the Great State of Wis-caaahhhnson zoomed down the middle of Main Street, without regard for the toddlers clutching their parents’ "Bush" signs (on the wrong side of the police tape). Then HE arrived. I think. Careening down the street at 240 miles per hour was a blur which I guess was the official motorcade.
In some respects, all spectators were conforming to pro or anti groupthink.
gailr
*Definition of notoriously conservative:
Non-white students need sympathetic locals to make arrangements for utility hookup. If they call with any accent, they are told that they are out of the service area (this includes "Main Street" addresses).
Non-white wage workers are strongly discouraged from living in the city limits, and take the 25 minute bus ride back to their inner city homes.
When the public schools attempted to "Celebrate Diversity" the parents keep their children home from school.
Re - they moved Out of the city and taking their dollars with them…
In sociology there is a term for this called "neighborhood succession". It’s been going on for decades in the United States and probably goes on all around the world to some extent. Whites began moving out of the Washington D.C. area in the 1950’s to places like Annapolis and Silver Spring , but there are more than race or color differences that can cause people to want to move. My family moved to Normandy Park (a suburb of Seattle) in 1964 because my dad didn’t want me going to school with White Center (another suburb of Seattle) kids. These kids were all White, but they were poor White. Unfortunately, there was a lot of crime and juvenile delinquency among them. The tradeoff was that I had fewer friends in Normandy Park, and in some ways I would rather have taken a chance getting beaten up in White Center instead!
After the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, James Oberg penned an editorial for USAToday that included the following statement:
By demonizing all non-NASA critics, and by suggesting that questioning the judgment of NASA’s leadership is an insult to every space worker, the memo fully exposes the arrogant groupthink that festers in NASA’s soul.
Having myself almost all my life been self-employed and never been member by my own accord in any association (with one exeption The Swedish Taxpayers association), I am a bit horrified in all the posts above singular slamming of the collective decission as means of governing a society. In my part of the world compromise and unanimity are catch words and the foundation for parlamentarism, hence our sort of democracy. Obviously all Agorians above are fierce induvidualists, but are they also for dictatorship—one man taking the lead? Please, tell me I have missunderstood and that I am wrong!
There is a difference between committees and groupthink. Dictatorship is the problem inherent in "groupthink". The ideals of compromise and awareness of the big picture are lost in the need to conform—absolutely—to the party line, no matter how convoluted, destructive or innane it may be.
Committee decisions can be messy, like the camel/horse description above. Let’s say the strongest voice declares that camels are the best horses, indeed the only true horses, and anyone who raises any other sort of horse is working against nature and nature’s god. Groupthink kicks in when this view is accepted and promulgated, violently if necessary, for the "betterment of society".
There may always be a minority insisting on the existence and preferred status of camels, and another insisting on the existence and preferred status of horses. Others will be clamoring for the livestock of their choice. It’s messy because a concensus cannot be reached on the One True Pack Animal, beyond a narrow area. Can the different herders live together and learn from each other, or will they engage in endless conflict over what horse they are backing?
I wouldn’t say you are wrong pure and simple. I’m sure you have some valid points. History does show us, however, that the natural tendency in human nature is toward ONE-MAN rule and that democracy is something that you have to work hard at. It took the English speaking world 400 years to become democratic. Before that time, it had Henry the Eighth and Oliver Cromwell and it tried to kill Thomas Jefferson. Even some American presidents were not the most democratic. Andrew Jackson defied a Supreme Court decision; Abraham Lincoln threatened to suspend Habeas Corpus during the Civil War.
Our resident Englishman, Garzo, may have some thoughts on this too.
