• Silence of the lambs

Silence of the lambs

Ordinary people can gain direct power and legitimacy by choosing to act collectively as they instinctively believe they can’t be heard or noticed otherwise. Due to an inner sense of inferiority, a large segment of society prefers to suffer silently either because of fear or lack of self-confidence and in both cases they remain the lambs whose biggest dream is not make noise as they breathe lest they should be noticed by wolves. Thus, they consider silence to be  a blessing to them because the more silent they keep, the safer they stay. Yet, when each of these weak individuals grows aware of the existence of other patterns similar to his, they reach an incredible amount of self-denial and then their actions start to converge towards a collective behaviour of a crowd made of like-minded individuals, which results in a lethal mental unity. 

  • Investing Crowd behaviour

Masses : The lethal mental unity

Although crowds are characterized by coherence and unity, they are liable to run off the rails because self-denial which was the first step towards forming the crowd engenders an apparent loss of self-control among individuals and the crowd tends to direct itself towards ends which were not initially planned for. The focus of mass psychology is not the peson. It’s not what the person says or want. Only few members in the crowd know what they want and how to achieve it by influencing and directing the masses towards actions and reactions which might not reflect the true objectives of every single individual in the crowd. Only the voice of the crowd prevails but  it does not necessarily express the choices of the individuals. Crowd behaviour is most of the time invested to serve ideologies and orientations that the common man hardly know about. Politicians can serve their agendas and mass media can make money using mass psychology. Even leaders and presidents seek strength and ligitimacy by identifying with the masses choices and aspirations ; the recent Arab Revolutions are a good illustration of this.