COVID-1984
By Kellie J. Miller, May 2, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/covid1984.html

A professor of mine at Princeton University once surveyed his classes and asked them how they would have responded to the unjust laws in Nazi Germany or the Jim Crow South. While history tells us that so few stood against these human rights violations, almost every student felt he would have volunteered to hide Jewish people in Nazi Germany or would have joined those marching for civil rights. I'd predict that most of these students would have also thought themselves one of the few to stand up for Japanese-Americans who were moved to internment camps during World War II.

Were these students all exceptional examples of independent thought and courage? Of course not. Rather, they exemplify two human realities: we have an amazing ability to overestimate our own courage and to believe we would think independently in the face of intense social pressure. If the vast majority were actually so wise and brave, so independent of mind and full of courage, how have there been so many human rights violations throughout history?

The reality is that most of us are not so independent-minded and courageous; rather, we are easily influenced by groupthink. Made famous by George Orwell in his novel 1984, groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational and dysfunctional decision-making outcome. The desire for cohesiveness produces a tendency to agree at all costs, minimizing conflicts and resulting in decisions made without critical evaluation. Groupthink occurs within government decision-making and also in smaller corporate settings. Successful organizations try to avoid it because it prevents a full analysis of difficult issues and results in poor decisions. Social media add a new power to groupthink as mob pressure to conform to popular social media hashtags and promotions further alienates critical thought.


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Social media add a new power to groupthink as mob pressure to conform to popular social media hashtags and promotions further alienates critical thought.

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I think this is a much more powerful force than most of us realize. And, it will become even more so.

Quote: Sanguine wrote in post #2

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Social media add a new power to groupthink as mob pressure to conform to popular social media hashtags and promotions further alienates critical thought.

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I think this is a much more powerful force than most of us realize. And, it will become even more so.

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Oh it is... something that dawned on me a few weeks ago, is that all of the Karens had so much more invested in the fear psyop (than would be expected of people cowering in their homes, minimizing contact), because of being on social media and carrying on with hundreds (if not thousands in some cases) of people all day and night....

It would be a lot easier for some to fess up once they figured it out ("dang, I've been duped, this has been a fraud") if their exposure was limited to a handful of family and friends... but it is a lot harder if you been in full panic and screaming your head off in the midst of so many....