Tag: social comment

Group Think: A Slow Motion Mob

When I was a kid, long before Disney rewrote Hamlet into The Lion King, there were African nature programs.  They were all pretty much the same.  They featured one or two hairy somethings, with human personalities, waddling around, having adventures.  At some point, before the first commercial, an anonymous zebra would get eaten — just to prove things were serious.  Then the creature, whoever he was, would get into a couple of close scrapes himself.  In the end, however, the hero would survive, learn the tricks of the trade, and a new crew of little hairy somethings would emerge from the den.   Basically, it was the circle of life, Grasshopper — with a jugular and some big, ugly teeth.

The one I liked the best, though, was the one about the migration of the gnus (wildebeests, if you’re South African.)  It still wows me that one minute there’s this big herd of gnus, just hanging out on the Serengeti.  Then, one of them turns to his buddy and says, “Man, this place is totally lame.  I’m going south.”  Suddenly a couple of million herbivores are on the move.  Without thought or discussion – they’re just going — and dragging zebras and antelope with them.

The group mind is fascinating in its simplicity.  I’ve seen this happen with people.  You’re standing in line, waiting for a movie or a bus, and one guy shuffles a half-step forward.  Everybody in the line suddenly perks up and readjusts (even the people in front of him, where it doesn’t matter.)  Agitate that line and the people will start to bunch up towards the front; irritate them, and they’ll start banging on the door; piss them off, and you’ve got a mob.  It’s all just group think accelerated.  More importantly, though, the reverse is also true.  Group think it’s really just a mob in slow motion.

The problem with a mob, regardless of what speed it’s travelling at, is it doesn’t think.  You’ve never heard of a lynch thoughtful discussion.  When somebody’s about to swing, it’s always a mob who’s holding the rope.  Those townspeople going after Frankenstein with torches and pitchforks aren’t about to listen to reasonable arguments for and against; they’re out to put a hurtin’ on somebody – or something.  The crowd screaming for the blood of Christ didn’t care if they had to suck up to the eternally-hated Romans to get it, and flogging wasn’t going to be good enough because they’d already bought the hammer and nails.  A couple of centuries later, everybody’s sorry about that (After all, the “Do onto others…” thing is a pretty cool philosophy) but at the time, crucifixion seemed like a grand idea.  But group think isn’t just about frustration and shouting and spur-of-the-moment homicide.  It runs deeper than that.  Group think bends the rules of reasonable discussion.  It turns secular examination into religious fervour.

The very best example of this?  A couple of hundred years ago, in September, 1793, Robespierre and some of his amis were sitting around Paris with a revolution on their hands.  They formed the Committee of Public Safety and started chopping off heads.  By the time they were done, somewhere between 20 and 40 thousand people had been whacked; ironically, most of them peasants.  What we now call The Reign of Terror, ended only when it began to eat its own and Robespierre himself had to kneel before Mademoiselle La Guillotine and lose his head.   But for ten months, the Committee murdered people (There’s no other way to say it) relentlessly, day after day – and here’s the kicker – in full view, and with the public’s approval.  This is group think at its worst.   This isn’t the flare of a mob breaking innocent windows.  It’s the body politic, so intoxicated with its own righteousness that it calmly, carefully, convinces itself that it holds the moral authority to anoint the saints and punish the sinners.

When group think controls the agenda of a nation, honest people are fooled into believing the words of the demagogue.  They abandon rational thought for the fears and tears of emotion.  They hold no reference to reason but follow the wild-eyed cries of the crowd, metaphorically rending their garments.   As the tumult of the time builds, otherwise discerning people follow the loudest voice.  The slow and thoughtful sounds of logic are shouted down by misplaced passion.  Thinking itself staggers under the weight of the tyranny of thoughtless, unexamined belief.

Here in Canada, we maintain our good name in the world (despite what some would tell you) precisely because we are a discerning people.  We do not rush to adorn our dead with saintly shrouds or hurl our reason on the funeral pyres of our heroes.  We are not swept away by the tenor of our times.  We do not chase the worship of every newly-minted Golden Calf.  We are a slow, deliberate people, loving, hopeful and optimistic; and although we need to be reminded of that sometimes, we are not so brutish that these ideals have eluded us.

But mostly Canada’s good name in the world rests on the fact that we understand that we’re all in this together.  We know that the secrets of our future are not the exclusive province of one man or one group or one philosophy. We are not the puppets of carefully crafted presentations.  It is not in our nature to build pedestals for heroes or shrines for saints, so when we do, we risk being fooled by shimmering platitudes; truisms that seek to exploit our good intentions.  They would have us forsake our reason to blindly follow the single most persistent voice. When we do that, we are nothing more than a slow motion mob — no matter how well-meaning.

Day of Blame: A Modest Proposal

Several years ago, a couple of friends and I were having a few adult beverages.  The evening was old but we were still beautiful, and somewhere between the hockey argument and “I love you, man!” we came up with a cunning plan.  We decided that what this country needed was a National Day of Blame.  It would be a single day, set aside each year, so people could legitimately blame all the various and sundry who had ever done them a dirty.  It was a worthy plan; unfortunately, it didn’t survive the skull pain of the morning after the night before.  However, as bad is just getting worse (here in the second decade of the 21st century) I think me and the bros may have hit on an idea whose time has just begun.

You don’t have to be intoxicated to realize that grievance has become a growth industry in North America.  There aren’t five people on this continent who haven’t got a bitch with somebody – or something.  Everybody from Barack Obama (who’s currently blaming the Republicans) to the guy down the street (who’s blaming a roofer named Jinder or Vinder — I’m not sure which) has got a finger pointed directly in some other guy’s face.  This isn’t healthy.

However, as a result, there’s an entire industry built on the premise that everything is somebody else’s fault.  The most visible proponents of this are government agencies, and the uncivil servants who dwell there, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg.  There’s another whole layer of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) waiting down the block to back them up.  The sole purpose of these groups is to point fingers and assess blame.  These services, if you can call them that, are stocked full of worker bees, called activists.  Remember when activists were people who saw inequality, misfortune or injustice and took time out of their real lives to perform their civic duty and help right a social wrong?  Not anymore; contemporary activists are permanent employees of the grievance industry.  Blaming somebody for something is their 9 to 5 job.  Their children’s lunch money and school clothes depend on it.

There’s also a whole strata of sub-scum hangers-on who feed off grievance as if it were manna from the gods.  There are harassment officers, community organizers and various advocacy groups.  There are also the legal-fecal lawyers who perch like vampires, waiting to sink their fangs into some social complaint that used to be settled with a harsh word and a rude gesture.  And of course, there’s the media: in the history of civilized behaviour, no other collection of ne’er–do-wells has played The Blame Game with such ruthless tenacity – and that’s sugar-coating it.  TV and radio personalities wake up in the morning blaming the sun for shining if it’s a hot day and either Obama or Bachmann if it’s cloudy – and they make millions doing it.  It’s no wonder I blame Phil Donahue for ruining journalism.

Anyway, since finding fault has become a national pastime, it’s time we had a day for it.  The Day of Blame could be March 1st, halfway between St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day.  The sugar shock feel-good of Valentine’s Day has worn off and the pre-Celtic alcohol run-up to St. Paddy’s hasn’t kicked in yet.  Spring is coming, but it hasn’t arrived, and the late days of winter are still cold and miserable.  It’s a perfect time to sit around and grouse about who’s been nasty to you since birth and the reason your kids are ugly.

This thing could catch fire like a meth lab with a short circuit.  People would be having dinner parties with their exes and blaming them for all the love’s labour lost they’ve suffered since they got tossed the first time.  Children would be phoning their parents — collect — and blaming them for every petty neurosis they’ve suffered since puberty.  Grandparents would write letters to the grandchildren, blaming them for being lonely, and the grandkids would be e-mailing back blaming grandma for holding up their inheritance.

Hallmark alone would make a fortune on “It’s Your Fault” cards.  Students could send, “It’s your fault I didn’t get an A” cards to their teachers, and teachers would respond with an “It’s your fault I’m too tired and burned out to write a novel” card, in return.  Every boss in the world would receive an “It’s your fault this company is so screw up” card and every employee would get the same one back.  Then there would be the extra-cool, “It’s your own damn fault” cards.  Husbands could send them to wives and vice versa.  Parents could send their kids, “It’s your own damn fault you flunked out of college; you’re not moving back in with me” cards and settle the question forever.

People would be taking out full-page ads in magazines, blaming a litany of transgressors for every setback they’ve ever had in life.  Instead of those sappy, hackneyed marriage proposals, the Jumbotron at sporting events would have, “John Doe!  It’s your fault our marriage failed.  I want a divorce.”  Tons of people would be blaming Ken Jennings for not winning on Jeopardy, and George Lucas would finally get the blame for ruining Star Wars.

There could be an entirely new social network, not based on hundreds of so called friends, but on all those people who actually caused you problems over the years: your third grade teacher who ruined reading for you, the guy who broke your heart in grade 9, and the McDonald’s manager who fired you for being late every shift.  Of course, it would have to appear at one minute after midnight on March 1st and disappear again at midnight, March 2nd.  Otherwise, it wouldn’t be special.

That’s the true beauty of the Day of Blame.  It’s one special day when we get to blame somebody else for all or any of our problems.  Then, for the other 364, we have to shut up about it; for the rest of the year everybody has to cowboy up and take some personal responsibility.  It would be wonderful.  There would be no more whinging and whining about how bad life has treated all of us.  We’d save billions by closing down those government departments, and politicians would finally have to take the rap for some of the stunts they’ve pulled over the years.  Sanctimonious do-gooders would have to actually do some good instead of sitting around being holier-than-thou and blaming everybody else for the world’s problems.  Lawyers wouldn’t be allowed to advertise, and the media would quit playing “gotcha” and actually tell us what’s going on in the world.

Most importantly, we’d finally realize that, in our affluent western society, we don’t have that much to complain about.   Actually, most of the real blame for screwing up rests on our own little pass-the-buck shoulders.   And, in the end, one day is more than enough to blame the guy down the street for not cleaning up after his dog or all the other petty annoyances of life.

A National Day of Blame might be just what this country needs.

FYI — Day of Blame is the intellectual property of W.D. Fyfe.  If you want to use it, go ahead; but you must give me full credit for the idea and at least 10% of the gross income.  Otherwise, I will find a scuzzy lawyer and make you sorry.

Canadian Justice: The Emperor has No Clothes

When I was a kid, I loved the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”  I thought it was one of the coolest cons around.  If you don‘t know the tale, here’s the Parables for Dummies version.  The best part is at the end when the bratty little kid blows the thing out of the water and the tailors are caught and executed.  Obviously, I pre-date the uber-nice fairytales we feed our children these days.  In my day, there were real consequences for con jobs and other misdemeanours.  The neat thing about it, though, was I learned that when things look stupid, chances are good they are stupid.  More importantly, I learned that there’s always somebody somewhere willing to point this out, even if I wasn’t brave enough to do it myself.  As a child, this gave me tons of faith that I wasn’t the only one watching my back, and sometimes perfect strangers would take care of things for me.  It’s a little thing, but when you’re powerless kid in a powerful world, it means a lot.  This feeling lasted until I became an adult.

As an adult, I discovered that our world has armies of Emperors and they all have new clothes.  The difference is, as they parade around the streets proud of their attire there isn’t just one little kid laughing at them.  Everybody is – but it never ever stops them.  For example, just ask anybody about our Justice System; everybody from grandmas to grandchildren will tell you it’s so messed up Solomon is spinning in his grave.  There are stray dogs in this town rolling in the weeds, laughing at how we administer justice.  But it never changes.  We all know this particular Emperor has no clothes, but he’s never embarrassed about it; he just keeps prancing along.  The really funny thing is we still trust him to be our Emperor — even as we’re laughing our asses off.

So much for speaking in parables; let me be blunt.  Exactly two months ago, a mob of over-privileged young people rampaged through the streets of Vancouver.  They tore the still-beating heart out of our world-renown reputation and stomped the life out of it.  They burned and smashed like a tribe of Visigoths at a Pillagers’ Convention.  There was millions of dollars in damage.  The next day, the wheels of justice were set in motion.  Everybody from Premier Clark to Mayor Robertson swore up/down and sideways that they would track down the perpetrators of these dastardly crimes with the tenacity of Dudley Do-Right and prosecute them to the full extent of the law.  Justice would be swift and painful.  The criminals were caught in a hail of cliches.

Like hell!  Two months later, despite mountains of video evidence, face recognition software, thousands of photographs, Facebook shaming, eye-witness accounts and several people actually walking into the police station, throwing themselves on the mercy of the courts, and confessing, not one person has been prosecuted – not one.  Not even the guy who confessed on the National News.  What is this — a comedy club?  We should just change our name to Monty Pythonville and get it over with.

Here’s another one.  In 2000, a couple of guys were street-racing in Vancouver.  One of them lost control of his car and killed a woman out for a pleasant evening stroll.  It took the justice system three years to convict them and sentence them to (this is true) two years less a day house arrest and a five year driving ban.  Glaciers move faster than that, and with better results.  The sentence was a year less than the court case!  But wait — there’s more.  Since these wannabe Fast and Furious co-stars were not citizens of Canada, it took the Federales another two and six years respectively to deport them.  Do the math: a total of nine years to see justice (smirk, smirk) done.

These are just two minor examples of the Comedy of Errors our Justice System has become.  It gets a lot more serious.  Since the days of Bindy Johal’s murderous battle with the Dojanjh Brothers in the mid 90s, well-known and often convicted criminals have been play tag with each other, all over metropolitan Vancouver — using live ammunition.  These are not crooks on the run but people who are “known to police.” Armed bandits are roaming our streets, many with enough convictions to make John Dillinger blush.  Everybody knows it and nobody can do a thing about it?  It beggars the imagination.  If the Justice System actually was an Emperor, these guys would steal his clothes.  It’s like we’re living in an episode of Mad TV.

However, here’s how the Ship of Fools system actually does work when it gets rolling.  In March, 2005, a drunken sixteen-year-old did a gas-and-dash for 12 bucks at a Maple Ridge gas bar.  The attendant gave chase and was somehow caught underneath the car and dragged for several kilometres.  He died of his injuries.  Instead of dealing with the criminal and the crime (which, by the way, was never considered murder) the provincial government decided it would be better to change the habits of every single citizen in British Columbia.  They enacted a law (it took them three years to do it) that required everybody to pay for their gas before they pumped it.  People who were nowhere near Maple Ridge that night and all other law-abiding citizens were now subjected by law to the consequences of that crime.  Gas-and-dash was no longer an option, and no other drunken 16-year-olds were tempted to commit murder for $12.00.  Problem solved.  I hate to be sarcastic, but given this logic, the way to prevent robbery is to make it illegal to carry money.  And in an even darker vein, apparently that old platitude “One person can make a difference” is true: this guy certainly changed society.

The parables of my youth were trite, even in my day.  However, tales like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” taught us that scoundrels do exist in the world, but eventually somebody has to say, “Hey! Wait a minute!  That guy’s naked.”  The unfortunate thing is nowadays we’re all screaming it at the top of our lungs, and it’s not doing any good.