group think

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Groupthink is a rapidly spreading illness that is sweeping the "modernised" world. Many of the causes are a direct result of conditioning through media, television, and pop culture. It is a disease more catastrophic in consequences than AIDS (and has no doubt effected more people, like, most of the so-called "free world"). Both "right wing" and "left wing" groups are different flavors of this illness.


Causes of illness:
1. Structural faults in the organisation: insulation of the group, lack of tradition of impartial leadership, lack of norms requiring methodological procedures, homogeneity of members' social background and ideology.

2. Provocative situational context: high stress from external threats, recent failures, excessive difficulties on the decision-making task, moral dilemmas.

3. Directive leadership.
4. Homogeneity of members' social background and ideology.
5. Isolation of the group from outside sources of information and analysis

Symptoms of illness:

1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalising warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty"
6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus
7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8. Mindguards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information
9. total denial of any logical criticism.

I will ad no more here, I only wanted to state my case and see if I've gotten any positive replies. I'm not here to get into any arguments.

What's the cure for sheer stupidity?
I was hoping that evolution will eventually take its toll

It will. The stupid people are breeding the most, so eventually the world will go into a tailspin with no smart people....then they'll have to evolve smart people again.

Unfortunately, you may be right.

That sounds like a group think mentality to me. What proof do you have outside of Hollywood that this is even happening? Ignorance is not the same thing as stupid. What makes you think that in the future you won't find yourself sitting at the stupid table.

Ignorance and stupidity may not be the exact same thing, but they damn sure go hand in hand. Ignorance is in and of itself stupid. You can make an intelligent argument for a flawed or ignorant concept, but your still arguing a flawed concept, no matter how well you verbalize it. If someone wanted to, they could make an intelligent argument for child molestation, or fasting to death to loose weight, that doesn't mean it isn't flawed logic.
But why are you getting all defensive about this post, unless you feel it's talking about you? And why is ignorance worth defending as if it were some positive value?

Are you sure Groupthink is an illness affecting only the modern world? Seems to me that groupthink is the common ground in every civilization in history. The free thinkiers have always either been ostracised or have popped up once in a blue moon. it alsos eems to me that oru society will never be free of groupthink. Even among intellectuals there seems to be a general consensus of what is acceptable and intellient and what in unaccetable and moronic.

This is true, very true..... But the differing groups had been at least a little better able to co-exist prior to 9/11. Now our entire political process here is a joke, it's all about social cliques.... I guess we've always had that but it's really gotten out of hand ever since 9/11 to be honest.

Really? I wouldve hated to have lived in medieval times up to the 1800s with a monarch or an elite upper ruling class that was so blatantly obvious in their decisions- groupthink to the max with NO say if you are a nobody. At least now we can speak up without being wealthy noblemen or leaders of a bloody revolution right?

Well yeah, but I meant it was a lot worse after 9/11 than it was the past few generations here in America. I know if I go further back into old history I'd see this happening somewhere else too, but I was mainly focusing on more recent times. Like since the 70's. It existed back then but it wasn't as bad as it got today.

Ok, so how, after 9-11, has groupthink grown worse? I've noticed it a few years after, but now the aftermath is beginning to wear down and politicians cant use the "But I was in office during 9-11!" speech to get us to agree with them. Well, come to think of it, that's not entirely over. The fear is still there, but the blind support is characteristic of only a few groups.

I hope people look at the candidates' politics>background. McCain is probably the closest thing to Bush III and is likely a pawn reaction for Obama to win since the NWO knows that the populous is over threequels.