* [Redo in progress. I'm redoing this essay over the next two days. I wrote the first draft in a hurry at the end of the semester with very little time, and I'm not happy with it. In the past I've done my work on a word processor and then imported it into the wiki all at once. This time I'm going to try working mostly on the wiki, so it may look a little ragged.]

The Key to All Mythologies

"You don't have to change the world." -- Eben during one of our last classes

The Dream

I’ve been chasing a dream for the last few years. I've been obsessed with the question of how mobs work. I would have so much power if I could get my hands on that piece of knowledge. There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires -- something like a more detailed understanding of Freud's super-ego that is at once an intensely personal and collective entity. If I could understand how groups of people created collective desires, then I could act intelligently in collective movements. I would be like an ant in Arnold's anthill that understood how it all actually worked. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, where Pompidou broke up an coalition of worker's unions and bourgeois students by dissolving the representative assembly, which reminded the members of the coalition of their differences by forcing them to chose representatives. Now there's someone who knew how collectives behaved and how to control them! On a slower and more repetitive plane, there's the entertainment industry that creates and profits from collective desires through movies and music. If I could understand how collectives behaved, I could change the world for better or worse.

Black Holes and Other People

I've been drawn to authors that attempt to create what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?" through a materialist philosophy of just about everything. I've studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises that there is a rational explanation for everything. I realize that I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading them -- looking for that lever that will allow me to move the world. In any case, now I feel like someone who's tried to lift way too much without training. My new thesis is that grand-unified theories that attempt to grasp one fundamental aspect of the world – be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – are actually black holes that suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects.

Linked to the idea that there is a grand-unified theory of any discipline is the notion that if you just knew it, you could change the world. As if there were one switch that you could push that would subvert the entire world order. The idea that I have to “change the world” is a intellectual and spiritual heat-sink as well. As a practical matter, the weight of the way-things-are is just too great for me to lift by myself, no matter how much history or philosophy or law I absorb.

What Remains of Thought

So I need to relax and learn to play well with others.

Of course, I don’t need to give up on thought either. Simply belonging to a group that claims to like justice doesn’t necessarily make justice happen. Labeling what I do or what I want to do “public interest” doesn’t make it good either.

--PatrickCronin

Patrick - I just read this paper for the first time. I really think you're onto something, and I look forward to reading and discussing your final version. Like you, I have been thinking a lot about "mob thinking" or group mentality over the last few years, and I agree that understanding this better is the key to a lot of societal problems. In my third paper, I tried (but so far failed, will rewrite this weekend) to explore this issue as it relates to crime. What fascinates me about this is that a seemingly minor change in social norms has the power to trigger a surge in mob thinking. Our personal code of ethics is flexible and changes depending on our environment. I recently read the book "Machete Season," which is a fascinating exploration of the Rwandan genocide from the eyes of the killers - mostly farmers who were somehow "mobbed" into hacking their neighbors to pieces with machetes. How is it that most people tend to lose their capacity for independent decision making when swept up in a collective movement? How can we, as individual members of a collective society, maintain our ability to act intelligently?

--AnjaHavedal, 8 July 2009

Patrick - I too think that there is much to learn here. I think that the turn away from 'grand theories of everything' is very productive. A rejection of grand unifying theories is one of the underpinnings of the Pragmatism movement itself, which formed the foundation of much of the early reading this semester. If you are looking for curious pieces on group thinking and how it gets manipulated, I would recommend Bill Wasik's article describing how and why he invented flash mobs. There is a link here but Harpers charges for content so I would go to a library and get the March 2006 issue; the article is short. The world is changed by small courageous acts, not by grand unified theories.

--AndrewCase, 8 July 2009