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Mob Mentality
By Vishal Sinha
Feb. 15, 2008 |
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Throughout
the history the strong or the populous have
imposed upon the weak or the less populous. It
requires a lot of rationality to not impose our
so called superiority on to who we see as
inferior or weak. Some actions are done as
individuals - bullies in school, husband ill
treating wife, well to do shortchanging workers
like rickshaw pullers, plumbers etc. Most of
these incidents are small and localised to the
immediate environment of the perpetrator. The
individual would not normally dare to take his
(or her) prejudices to a larger landscape -
limited primarily in his lack of confidence in
the correctness of his beliefs and his ability
to withstand backlash on his actions.
This environmental dynamics changes dramatically
when we get a crowd operating together. Then it
becomes a group dynamics behavior. The group
manipulation is at a much more basic level.
Things that affect a group are much simpler than
something which would affect an individual. For
example a group lynching a dacoit is much more
acceptable and easy than an individual (even if
the individual is physically capable of doing
so). Groups give a force which is much larger
than sum of the individuals. The primary drivers
are drawing on the groups perceived strength and
more importantly inability of the law making
bodies from differentiating the members of the
group effectively.
The people who did break down the Babri Masjid -
would not have done so individually even if they
did have the access. Only within the group does
such an act become possible. The MNS members
trying to throw Bihar and UP residents out of
Maharashtra is the same. While I am not drawing
any parallel between the two examples above, I
just underlining that an individual may not be
committed to a cause enough to cause as much
damage as these acts have done, had he not been
in a group. A corollary to this is the fact that
during our independence struggle, people were
motivated individually to such a great extent
that they did perform acts on their own which
affected the British government's rule.
The underlying cause needs to be investigated.
Which in this case is a perception that workers
from outside are taking away local jobs. All
this talk about Marathi culture and Marathi
language is mostly crap and a wrapper around the
real underlying issue. If I was satisfied with
my lot, happy in my earnings and my children's
future, it will take a lot of effort to be
agitated about language used by someone who does
not know my language.
...But then rational thought, does not matter in
group dynamics.
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