Asperger's Syndrome sees Group Think
When I read an article candidly concluding that "Group Think" was why we went to war in Iraq, I wondered, what is "Group Think"? Pursuing that question has produced some of those aha! feelings, and I recognize my prior ignorance is probably due to my having Asperger's Syndrome, and the addition of awareness of its existence has become one of the key discoveries to help me understand the world around me and my place in it.
At least in my case, Asperger's Syndrome enables me to achieve near-genius concepts; but at the cost of having to endure being utterly stupid socially nearly all times (particularly when attempting to introduce myself to a potential woman mate); and the lack of comprehending heirarchy, people with urges to bully go on the assault such as by letting me "hold the bag" when I attempt to join in; getting framed up is another repeating mode bullys use against those who miss the point of bully's superiority over others.
The cause of Aspergers' is likely to have been too much mercury in childhood Thimerosol-disinfected innoculations, and swabbed on scrapes as Merthiolate and Mercurichrome, doing a litle something to brain development. In some ways, helpfully.
So now "Group Think" gets added to the list of keys to mysteries I experience much too unpleasantly at times. So here are some of the new understandings, perhaps to help those who have, or deal with, Asperger's Syndrome (and maybe other things, like figuring out the why of wars and street mob action startups.)
So again I ask, what is "group think"? Perhaps it has something to do with the passing around of gossip until so many people have heard and said it that it is held as "the truth" and can be used as basis for action when something unusual happens.
I sometimes discovered that I was the one last to hear what was on "the grapevine"; it seemed that for something to be secret at least one person had to not be told it ... and that person was most often me, apparently. Not that it mattered much to me, most of people's groupie compulsive turmoil was beyond my comprehension, all I needed to know is how to keep from being sucked into it.
Someone proclaiming "everybody knows that ..." and "it is common knowledge that ..." seemed to preclude any thoughts that something needed validating, the individual hearer assuming he/she must have missed something that everybody else knew: so, don't show ignorance by making contrary observations or stupid questions.
Putting a Reward Poster up, in the Old West anyway, somebody's picture and name and "Wanted Dead or Alive", one just knew the person was guilty of awful crime, no questions asked; and if you were enraged about whatever kind of crime mentioned, you were ready to go out and help kill the fingered person, no questions asked, so angry about such things going on. Deliberate use of gossip, about something not easily verifiable, yet not implausable, could be used to stir up a group about something until they could become a hangman's vigilante group, disposing of an unsuspecting innocent, the instigator using the wave of stimulated anger to support a peak of violence of his/hers, then the whole group feels implicated and does a group hushup of the crime, lest all be to blame. Better yet, tell around the horrid deeds of the dead man and brag about how you all were heros saving people from horrid other doings he might have done to them, continue building Group-Think cleverly.
Group-think could also be some unifying common belief system too, a way to identify who belongs through query re some otherwise innocous information re person or place: a true group member quickly responds with the Group Think response.
Yet group think would seem harmlessly idle chat passing the time, or stiring up some adrenaline in an otherwise boring Neighborhood Watch group or political meeting. But also it could be deliberately whipped up to a fervor, like Old West Indians doing a War Dance whooping along as they hop around a blazing fire in the night brandishing their weapons imaginatively at some foe, repeating some statement until they believe it and are ready to go do violence to fix the problem as a group. Then, somehow, they become transformed into a violent, lethal destructive force, perhaps totally amazing to an otherwise innocent and unsuspecting foe that is assaulted by those otherwise peaceable people.
Spreading around enough implications of someone being a dangerous person, get people to watch him and report, do it long enough and what would have been questions, eventually becomes truth, to an excited people; a deliberately seeded and whipped-up social energy dark storm gathers and eventually lightening strikes.
So "Group Think" has potential to be deliberately used, or evolve somehow on its own maybe, from idle gossip to "everybody knows that ..." to a war dance whoop event to a group assault on something. Like Iraq, like maybe the neighbor ... who will be next?
It also seems that there has to be some sustaining energy, something that persists long enough to pump up a group into some false belief about something enough to get it to become "common knowledge", otherwise there would be little reason to do more than some brief idle prattle, soon forgotten if not reinforced somehow. I've read that it was hunger for oil for energy that was a factor, one of many, including some of psychological origin, in the case of Iraq. Did we really believe we were going to be welcomed by a people liberated from a tyrant rulership, did Group Think blind us... probably so, expecting a grateful "freed" nation to shower us with oil favors forever after. We too have our hidden armed fundamentalist-minded militamen; are such the real problem in today's Iraq?
Is there some practical way that all people be embraced into welcoming belonging, productive for the whole? Much of all religions strive for this, I believe; yet obviously it does not work 100%.
On a smaller scale, how many Asperger's genius loners had the product of their genius absorbed by waiting businessmen when they were mowed down in some clever way by whipping up fervor against him/her using Group Think techniques?
Asperger's hunger to be part of the group, otherwise they could protect themselves better, but their naive nature and need for companionship are forces that can be used by the greedy and mere bullys thrashing around. I well know. And I wonder: my own creative product, KESTS to GEO (ref. http://www.kestsgeo.com ), could bring fortunes to manipulators, eventually vastly more than all the oil in the world... would this provide the energy to Group-Think me out of existence, stiffling its public awareness until the Group-Think-powered dirty deed done, leaving my life's creative product abandoned to the ready grabbers?
Ah, paranoia, must be. But, paranoia is the only thing that helps caution this natually very naive man.
Another "aha!" I got from this thinking, was that "other people" (the 250/1 people who do not have Asperger's Syndrome) are quick to conclude that when there is any problem, the solution is to get rid of some person. that is, it is a person who is the cause of what is going wrong, no matter if it is global warming effects from CO2 buildup, lack of electric power to power the air conditioners, nuclear wastes that nobody wants, or starvation in Africa. Attack some person, solves these problems, that entrenched belief seems to proclaim instantly to "normal" people. This response is apparently because they are "people" oriented, 100%.
Well, I've heard that it is important for each person to not be part of the problem, but instead be part of the solution.
At least in my case, Asperger's Syndrome enables me to achieve near-genius concepts; but at the cost of having to endure being utterly stupid socially nearly all times (particularly when attempting to introduce myself to a potential woman mate); and the lack of comprehending heirarchy, people with urges to bully go on the assault such as by letting me "hold the bag" when I attempt to join in; getting framed up is another repeating mode bullys use against those who miss the point of bully's superiority over others.
The cause of Aspergers' is likely to have been too much mercury in childhood Thimerosol-disinfected innoculations, and swabbed on scrapes as Merthiolate and Mercurichrome, doing a litle something to brain development. In some ways, helpfully.
So now "Group Think" gets added to the list of keys to mysteries I experience much too unpleasantly at times. So here are some of the new understandings, perhaps to help those who have, or deal with, Asperger's Syndrome (and maybe other things, like figuring out the why of wars and street mob action startups.)
So again I ask, what is "group think"? Perhaps it has something to do with the passing around of gossip until so many people have heard and said it that it is held as "the truth" and can be used as basis for action when something unusual happens.
I sometimes discovered that I was the one last to hear what was on "the grapevine"; it seemed that for something to be secret at least one person had to not be told it ... and that person was most often me, apparently. Not that it mattered much to me, most of people's groupie compulsive turmoil was beyond my comprehension, all I needed to know is how to keep from being sucked into it.
Someone proclaiming "everybody knows that ..." and "it is common knowledge that ..." seemed to preclude any thoughts that something needed validating, the individual hearer assuming he/she must have missed something that everybody else knew: so, don't show ignorance by making contrary observations or stupid questions.
Putting a Reward Poster up, in the Old West anyway, somebody's picture and name and "Wanted Dead or Alive", one just knew the person was guilty of awful crime, no questions asked; and if you were enraged about whatever kind of crime mentioned, you were ready to go out and help kill the fingered person, no questions asked, so angry about such things going on. Deliberate use of gossip, about something not easily verifiable, yet not implausable, could be used to stir up a group about something until they could become a hangman's vigilante group, disposing of an unsuspecting innocent, the instigator using the wave of stimulated anger to support a peak of violence of his/hers, then the whole group feels implicated and does a group hushup of the crime, lest all be to blame. Better yet, tell around the horrid deeds of the dead man and brag about how you all were heros saving people from horrid other doings he might have done to them, continue building Group-Think cleverly.
Group-think could also be some unifying common belief system too, a way to identify who belongs through query re some otherwise innocous information re person or place: a true group member quickly responds with the Group Think response.
Yet group think would seem harmlessly idle chat passing the time, or stiring up some adrenaline in an otherwise boring Neighborhood Watch group or political meeting. But also it could be deliberately whipped up to a fervor, like Old West Indians doing a War Dance whooping along as they hop around a blazing fire in the night brandishing their weapons imaginatively at some foe, repeating some statement until they believe it and are ready to go do violence to fix the problem as a group. Then, somehow, they become transformed into a violent, lethal destructive force, perhaps totally amazing to an otherwise innocent and unsuspecting foe that is assaulted by those otherwise peaceable people.
Spreading around enough implications of someone being a dangerous person, get people to watch him and report, do it long enough and what would have been questions, eventually becomes truth, to an excited people; a deliberately seeded and whipped-up social energy dark storm gathers and eventually lightening strikes.
So "Group Think" has potential to be deliberately used, or evolve somehow on its own maybe, from idle gossip to "everybody knows that ..." to a war dance whoop event to a group assault on something. Like Iraq, like maybe the neighbor ... who will be next?
It also seems that there has to be some sustaining energy, something that persists long enough to pump up a group into some false belief about something enough to get it to become "common knowledge", otherwise there would be little reason to do more than some brief idle prattle, soon forgotten if not reinforced somehow. I've read that it was hunger for oil for energy that was a factor, one of many, including some of psychological origin, in the case of Iraq. Did we really believe we were going to be welcomed by a people liberated from a tyrant rulership, did Group Think blind us... probably so, expecting a grateful "freed" nation to shower us with oil favors forever after. We too have our hidden armed fundamentalist-minded militamen; are such the real problem in today's Iraq?
Is there some practical way that all people be embraced into welcoming belonging, productive for the whole? Much of all religions strive for this, I believe; yet obviously it does not work 100%.
On a smaller scale, how many Asperger's genius loners had the product of their genius absorbed by waiting businessmen when they were mowed down in some clever way by whipping up fervor against him/her using Group Think techniques?
Asperger's hunger to be part of the group, otherwise they could protect themselves better, but their naive nature and need for companionship are forces that can be used by the greedy and mere bullys thrashing around. I well know. And I wonder: my own creative product, KESTS to GEO (ref. http://www.kestsgeo.com ), could bring fortunes to manipulators, eventually vastly more than all the oil in the world... would this provide the energy to Group-Think me out of existence, stiffling its public awareness until the Group-Think-powered dirty deed done, leaving my life's creative product abandoned to the ready grabbers?
Ah, paranoia, must be. But, paranoia is the only thing that helps caution this natually very naive man.
Another "aha!" I got from this thinking, was that "other people" (the 250/1 people who do not have Asperger's Syndrome) are quick to conclude that when there is any problem, the solution is to get rid of some person. that is, it is a person who is the cause of what is going wrong, no matter if it is global warming effects from CO2 buildup, lack of electric power to power the air conditioners, nuclear wastes that nobody wants, or starvation in Africa. Attack some person, solves these problems, that entrenched belief seems to proclaim instantly to "normal" people. This response is apparently because they are "people" oriented, 100%.
Well, I've heard that it is important for each person to not be part of the problem, but instead be part of the solution.
posted by Unknown at
12:13
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