Over the last several years, I've gone to seminars, many
seminars. Wealth. Publishing. Investing. Motivation. Marketing. And at first,
I didn't think too much about crowds until I went to my
last seminar.
It all culminated in an absurd, grotesque display. What I saw stunned me.
Shocked me. It, well, set my hair on fire. Literally! (Only because the guy
throwing his cigarette away mistook me for one of those new 6' 4" ash trays.
It's a long story. Don't ask.)
What did I see, you ask?
I saw the fountain of youth.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh . . . . .
It was a wonder to be hold.
Let me take you there . . .
People of all ages, sizes, shapes, heights, and weights
dancing on the stage to loud, dinosaur rock. Songs like, well, Like a Rock,
Born to Be Wild (and were they!), Proud Mary, Maggie May, Respect . . . And
these kids . . . errrr . . . people dancing like it was their last. I mean rockin'!
Usually, not a problem. Right? A bunch of mostly
post-twenties pounding the floor with glee. It is simply a way for the crowd to
get "psyched" for the speaker. The main guy. The super guru. The head honcho.
The big cheese. The millionaire, mover and shaker about to lift you not only
from your financial and business doldrums but to a new emotional state, a
revived spiritual awakening, a mystical surge to splurge on to get you up, up,
and away in your beautiful, your beautiful new ballooning euphoric state of
mind. It is phenomenal. The sights! The sounds! The . . .
Wait a tic!
Settle. Settle. There was just something so wrong
with all this dancing. It seemed so . . . sad, so . . .
temporary. The image of these uber-happy people didn't sit well with me. I knew that when I got out of there, when the
music subsided and the dancing stopped, I and all the dancing people would be returning to the quiet,
disciplined routine of the work-a-day world.
So why was all this dancing so upsetting? So grotesque? What set me to
sitting quiet, barely moving, barely talking (except to the excited
twenty-something the speaker had pared me with to "explore my goals").
Usually, at seminars I'm moving about, shaking hands, meeting people, giving
and receiving business cards (I'm building a fourth wall to my office with
them. The Greeks tore it down, I'm putting it back!)
So what's got stuck in my craw of late?
Here's the lowdown.
According to Diall's Psychology
of the Aggregate Mind of an Audience, "individuals in [an] audience . . .
are reduced . . . to a single individual, whose characteristics are those of an
impulsive youth of twenty, imbued in general with high ideals, but lacking in reasoning power and will"
(emphasis added).
According to Joseph Jastrow's Fact and Fable in Psychology,
"Error like truth flourishes in crowds. No form of contagion is so
insidious in its outset, so difficult to check in its advance, so certain to
leave germs that may at any moment reveal their pernicious power, as a mental
contagion. In brief, [in a crowd we see] the
recognized lowering of critical ability . . . of rationality, which merely
being one of the crowd induces" (emphasis added).
A question: in attending group events, what is our chief
aim? How much do we want to take away that is ours and not merely absorbed
subconsciously through the hysteria of being in a hyped-up, overly emotional
state? What are the dangers if while attending our "conscious personality
vanishes" and we "feel, think and act in a manner quite different from that in
which [we] would feel, think and act were [we] in a state of isolation." For
"in crowds, it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated" (The
Crowd, Le Bon).
Wow! Harsh words! Warranted? You be the judge.
Unfortunately, oftentimes, regardless of intellect or
attitude in times of solitude, or less crowded moments, when in a crowd we get
sucked into the crowd mentality becoming a part of the composite individual
whose intelligence and emotional control is little above that of its weakest
member.
Why does all this
happen? The main reason is that emotion takes over the rational mind. The crowd
is governed and united by emotion rather than reason. The sum of the crowd's emotion
is far greater than the sum of its individual parts. When in a crowd, one is
often intimated by this greater emotional strength of the composite individual
and is influenced by it and acts accordingly, often overriding any rational
understanding that goes counter to what is being "felt."
But even if you are sucked up into the moment, when you get
home there is the inevitable backsliding. This backsliding is well known
amongst attendees of religious revivals where the emcee uses his / her oratorical
skills to emotionally manipulate the crowd into a frenzy, but when individuals
return to their quiet routine there's bound to be withdrawals. The danger is
that people who attend these large events oftentimes return for the "high" and
become more susceptible to the suggestions being made and lose their individual,
rational thought. In revivals, once the high is gone, people oftentimes become
indifferent forming an aversion to true religious feelings.
In the overall scheme of things, why is this important? How
does this relate to your desire for success?
Accurate thought is one of the essential characteristics of
the successful. If you are not able to control you thought, exert your will, know
fact, sort out the necessary from the unnecessary, see through the smog of the
mere popular, overcome mere emotion for cold, hard reason then you will be
swayed by opinion drifting and shifting along a lengthy path to nowhere. Not success.
To succeed takes great disciple. Those who succeed know their
goal. They weed out that which detracts. Avoid that which derails. And seeks
that which attracts. You will find few if any at the top who are easily swayed.
Build your mind of steel now, but work to overcome yourself first so others
won't overcome you.
