What's your idealized society's protection against mob mentality/herd thinking?

[CurtSibling]

The golden age was when @CurtSibling was jealous of @Simon Darkshade 's post count.

Simon was a good friend, and one of the best posters to ever frequent OT.
I was top poster for a while, but it was Perfection who took the spam crown.

 

[Ironsided]

Herd mentality is one of those natural instincts that sometimes contradict our cognitive implications. I believe herd mentality is our natural response to uncertainty or fear of the unknown or simply a survival instinct. I’m not a psychologist but I suppose it is a learnt behaviour? We do tell our children to stick together rather than wander off alone. It gives a proven higher success of survival. Seemingly at the expense of “crazy man” discovery and progress.


If we want to protect society against herd mentality we need to lessen the fears and anxieties of being part of society. One way to do that is to make sure all people are valued parts of society measured on just “being”. The value of a man must be equal and related to conditions on an individual level. The strong and rational need to provide more than the weak and crazy without extra compensation. Suffice to say it will not be dealt with anytime soon. Maybe we just don’t mind herd mentality that much? At least not enough to pay for that rabble.

 

[Traitorfish]

Uh the Amish aren't a society to emulate. If we all acted like them the human race would've been wiped out be disease years ago.

If we all acted like Amish, we'd live in dispersed rural communities that are less susceptible to disease. The Amish are vulnerable in part because the rest of us aren't Amish- although, at this point, it's mostly reversed, a sort of large-scale herd immunity. Contagious diseases are complicated.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think this is the wrong question. As much as we think of mob mentality and herd thinking as negatives, and irrational behavior, it's the same behavior that has gotten society to accept every step of social progress that we've ever made. We do need it, that's how ideas spread through societies - because nobody has the time to critically analyze and examine every idea they come across, a large part of our world view can only be us accepting the things that people around us accept as "right".

The actual question should be something along the lines of: "How can we make sure our mob mentality/herd thinking is not used against us?", and the answer to that is proper education, but then again, "proper education" is probably a also just a lie told by the schools to get away with indoctrinating kids into the moral system that is accepted by society.

We can do better than groupthink/herd behavior. We have lots of things that made us successful in history that would be viewed unkindly today, and irrational thought processes do not seem to carry any merit as an exception.

Genetic engineering might become advanced enough in our lifetimes to push this consideration to the fore. Maybe new people can be made so they're inclined to think and act how someone would like. Who that "someone(s)" is can become a major global influence. Groupthink itself will probably resist this, similar to the outcry over cloning animals.