– An Explanation, Not a Defense
I want to share a story. It’s one I’ve shared with numerous students over my career. Whether it makes anyone think differently or not, whether it will even give pause, I don’t know. But maybe it will explain how easily and quickly people can get caught up in a mob, in a moment.
It was the summer of my
junior year in high school. I was traveling with some of my classmates on a
church!-sponsored youth experience, working with other students from multiple
European countries to rehab a castle in Untergruppenbach Germany. We
were, if memory serves (and, sadly, it’s not as good a servant as it used to
be), the largest single contingent in the “camp.”
Conditions were, at least
from an affluent American kid’s perspective, Spartan, although hardly something out of Oliver!,
had it been filmed yet. We slept on cots in a room repurposed as a dormitory.
But it was the food that became the bone of contention. Breakfast consisted of
a kind of mush or oatmeal, mint tea, and bread. Our morning break was dark
bread and more mint tea. Lunch was a repeat of breakfast. Not typical fare for
us.
Our alleged leader, a
young minister, apparently either took this “abuse” personally or took
advantage of our complaining to try weasel his way into our hearts. (I freely
admit that this is not an unbiased assessment of him; I didn’t like him, didn’t
respect him, although, in my defense, his actions, and not just the one related
in this anecdote, on this trip were the primary causes of my negative opinion.)
In any case, about 3-4 days (as I recall) into the trip, he stood up at lunch
one day, banged his bowl, and said, “We’re not taking this any more. Let’s go!”
It was, at that moment, I
officially lost my mind... ...to the mob. Most (at least) of us also stood up,
bowls of mush in hand, and, following his lead, stormed out the room, looking
for the owner of the castle. Not sure what we were going to do when we found
him; there were no chickens about, so “mushing and feathering” would seem to
have been out. It didn’t take much stomping randomly through the building for
some of us to decide, “Uh, this is stupid and embarrassing;” the mob lost steam
and dissipated. We went from sheep to sheepishly returning to finish our
gruel.
That should have been the
end of it, but it wasn’t, not for me. In retrospect, it remains one of the most
frightening events of my life. I don’t pretend to be particularly modest about
my intellectual abilities. But, for those brief minutes, my mind was not mine;
I was not in control. I was just another anonymous follower. It is a feeling,
one that strikes fear into my heart to this day, that I never want to repeat.
Imagine, now, had the
grievance been serious, legitimate (at least in our perception), of
long-standing, simmering on low-heat over a period of years. Cooks know it
doesn’t take much more heat to turn a simmer into a raging boil, bubbling over
onto the stove. If there’s no one there to turn down the heat, but instead add
fuel to the fire (e.g., media and agenda-driven “leaders”)....
Think it couldn’t happen
to you? Armies have relied on this semi-controlled sublimation of individual
will for centuries. It’s the only rational explanation of the irrational act of
charging to a certain death. Sports mobs, in and out of stadiums, are another
common example. Mass hysteria is well documented. We all like to think we’re
exceptional, to believe that we wouldn’t act that way, but
there’s too much scientific evidence to the contrary for that to be true.
Something to think about before we rush to judgment of others or absolve demagogues of responsibility.
Note: This sat in draft form for over two years, dating back to Ferguson and other events. The more things change....
Note: This sat in draft form for over two years, dating back to Ferguson and other events. The more things change....
