Running with the Herd
 

The herd instinct
its benefits and its costs

Roger Sandall (assisted by Sir Francis Galton)

Most of us are herd animals. Nothing wrong with that of course—or not at first sight. Our sociability makes us happy to walk an extra mile to help a friend, makes us keen for teams and political parties, and makes us fiercely protective of kith and kin. Not only that: tribal solidarity of the more noble and high-spirited kind has led men to sacrifice themselves altruistically in wars again and again.

But there are disadvantages too. A herd animal who wakes up one morning to find the rest of the mob have folded their tents and vamoosed is a sorry sight. He wanders listlessly, clutches his heart in despair, then runs around in circles looking for any collective whatever he can join. Upon finding one he gratefully embraces everybody, and by nightfall calls them his new best friends.

* * *

Fate however made some of us differently, and the difference may be in our genes. Awaking at dawn to find the herd has departed we breathe a sigh of relief. The fact is (speaking personally) I never saw a herd I liked. Individuals yes—lots of them. Herds never. To men of my sort a room filled with a hundred people is a cause for dubiety. A room with a hundred like-minded people is a cause for alarm. A room filled with a hundred people “of one mind” is deeply implausible in itself and almost certainly a sign of intimidation.

I once attended an event at the Sydney Opera House where some 2500 people had gathered. A Danish percussion group were performing and they wanted the crowd to participate. Their leader stood and gave orders—clap, shout, stand, pat your knees—and 2500 men and women obeyed his commands. I myself declined to take part, but the elderly woman beside me, with shining eyes, followed every movement as though she had been waiting eighty years for instructions. She would have stood on her head if they asked.

Philosophical implications

An aversion to crowds and the herd mentality goes deep—much deeper than is generally understood. If Ernest Gellner is right it has philosophical implications, for when René Descartes wrote in the 17th century that “We ought never to allow ourselves to be persuaded of the truth of anything unless on the evidence of our reason” he intimated (for those able to understand) that the emotionally held collective beliefs of culture, imbibed and imposed and punitively enforced from infancy, are not to be trusted.

Descartes himself did not use the term “culture”. He spoke of “custom and example”. But the herd thinking of cultural collectivities is exactly what he had in mind. There are any number of synonymous phrases for “custom and example”—the way things are usually done, social precedent, traditional authority, accepted belief, customary thought, conventional wisdom—but cognitively they amount to much the same thing: all of them are sources of error.

In Gellner’s words, what Descartes challenged was the possibility that “the shared assumptions of an entire society, built into its way of life and sustained by it, should be deeply misguided. Entire societies are committed, with fervour and often with arrogance and with infuriating complacency, to blatant absurdities.” Epitomising what he sees as Descartes’ view, Gellner writes:

So individualism and rationalism are closely linked: that which is collective and customary is non-rational, and the overcoming of unreason and of collective custom are one and the same process…

Error is to be found in culture; and culture is a kind of systematic, communally induced error. It is of the essence of error that it is communally induced and historically accumulated.

It is through community and history that we sink into error, and it is through solitary design and plan that we escape it. Truth is acquired in a planned and orderly manner by an individual, not slowly gathered up by a herd. (Ernest Gellner, Reason and Culture, p3. My emphasis, RS)

All this was of course long before anthropology was an academic subject, and before the study of tribal life was even dreamed of as a discipline. But of one thing we can be sure. If Descartes had ever encountered the kind of old-style traditional societies to be found in Africa, the Pacific, or the Amazon basin, he would have regarded them as miniature monarchies of unreason—veritable reigns of error.

More at: http://www.culturecult.com/sandall_dec06.htm

Finally, an explanation for my wanting to be alone....standardized thinking makes me nervous.

Can I be the "Front Runner"?

As an example, tape measures, utility knives, and screwdrivers are herding animals. They get together on me and herd someplace. Every once in a while I find them all. Where you find one, you'll find the rest. Sometimes I buy another when I can't find the herd. Eventually somehow the new guy will disapear, finding the herd by themselves while I can't.

Socks on the other hand are not herding animals. They want to be alone and if they get a chance they wander away from each other. Some never to be found again.

Yup! know watcha mean.;)


Fences make for good neighbours.




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not to stray from the thread but, why do socks disappear? Someone once told me the agitator eats them- is this true? I had to stop doing men's laundry because of the dreaded "Sock Curse."

Unless, of course, you happen to be nominated to sit on the federal bench. There your dead meat unless you are in the "mainstream" of political thinking whatever that happens to mean.:confused: :rolleyes:

Makes sense. Thats one way people make money investing, do just the opposite of what the herd is doing. IE buy when they are selling, and sell when they are buying.

Groups of mindless zealots make me uncomfortable. I work best when alone.