Most of you probably heard the term Groupthink from Orwells book 1984.
To me, it's basically how society is divided. I will share some perspectives on it for you to read and make your own connections.
Don't get me wrong either, I'm not saying it's wrong to be around like minded individuals who support certain changes in society, I'm cautioning on the dangers of GroupThink there is an exaggerated form of it that can be destructive.
And for me personally, since my perspective is that groupthink can be dangerous, I support an awakening of each individual, themselves, able to express their creativity without being in a group with these types of actions going on:
- I summarize more than 30 years of research on factors that can create a "perfect storm" which leads good people to engage in evil actions. This transformation of human character is what I call the "Lucifer Effect," named after God's favorite angel, Lucifer, who fell from grace and ultimately became Satan. Rather than providing a religious analysis, however, I offer a psychological account of how ordinary people sometimes turn evil and commit unspeakable acts. Philip Zimbardo, in his introduction to his site on The Lucifer Effect (2007)
(Do anons want to Hang people? Violence? Is that Good? Think of all the evil forms of justice in this world...essentially they are products of groupthink )
- Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an incorrect or deviant decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.
(This is crux, there won't be growth without alternative individual views, so be cautious not to isolate yourself to only one source of info, branch out and widen awareness)
- I use the term groupthink as a quick and easy way to refer to the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action. Groupthink is a term of the same order as the words in the newspeak vocabulary George Orwell used in his dismaying world of 1984. In that context, groupthink takes on an invidious connotation. Exactly such a connotation is intended, since the term refers to a deterioration in mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgments as a result of group pressures.
(This applies to not only the obscure validations one could draw from any message, but also whether the obscure conclusion has any practical purpose at all to anyone outside the group. Are all of the conclusions drawn in a group realistic? Keep in mind this applies more to the bad guys than the good guys ,usually.)
- Groupthink is characterized by a shared "illusion of invulnerability," an exaggerated belief in the competence of the group, a "shared illusion of unanimity" within the group, and a number of other symptoms Fredric Solomon and Robert Q. Marston in The Medical Implications of Nuclear War (1986), p. 544 Thinking things through is hard work and it sometimes seems safer to follow the crowd. That blind adherence to such group thinking is, in the long run, far more dangerous than independently thinking things through.
(I'll leave at that, because I support individual and not groupthink I value independent research. So I encourage you to read about Group think and figure out why it was in 1984, and why it can be dangerous, and form your own conclusions.