Social stickiness - or 'the paradox of groups'
This relates to a book recommendation Experiences in Groups by Wilfred R. Bion and both the development of this website, and our BKWSU experience. A wise old friend of mine once said, "life is a classroom where the tests and are given first and the lessons afterwards". I am thinking about the question asked elsewhere on this forum often ... what makes a BK stick to the BKWSU even after the point they have realised that it is all bollocks, corrupt, a lie whatever. I suspected that it was not something conscious ... that those inculted BKs were stuck by something they could not see but felt; part of basic human pre-programming.
The psychologist Bion was a well qualified and highly experience individual who hosted group therapy with groups of neurotics. He discovered that the neurotics in his care were, as a group, conspiring to defeat therapy.
There was no overt communication or coordination but he saw that whenever he tried to do anything that was meant to have an effect, the group would somehow quash it. He asked the question whether these individuals were taking action on their own or was this coordinated as a group?
It is said he never resolved the question. So he decided that was the answer. Are groups of people aggregations of individuals or a cohesive group? His answer was, "hopelessly committed to both". Humans were fundamentally individual, and also fundamentally social. Every one of us has a kind of rational decision-making mind where we can assess what's going on and make decisions and act on them. We are all also able to enter viscerally into emotional bonds with other groups of people that transcend the conscious intellectual aspects of the ourselves. "Group think" or "hive mind".
You join a religion and it start to fail at meeting some threshold of value or interest that you have ... but you don't leave. Why not?
For example, if you were in a shop and you said "I am finished shopping," you would leave. If you were in a cafe and said "I am not hungry now", you would walk out. This inability to leave is the exactly kind of "social stickiness" that Bion was talking about.
But ... something else also happens in life. e.g. you are at a party and one person stands up to gets their coat and leave. What happens?
Suddenly everyone gets up and takes their coats. All at the same time others leave meaning that everyone had decided that the party was not for them ... but no one had done anything about it ... until finally a triggering event let the air out of the group and everyone kind of felt okay about leaving. I pray to God the same thing happens amongst the financiers of the Investment Property Portfolio Acquiring Brokership called the Brahma Kumaris.
This effect is called 'the paradox of groups' - there are no groups without members but there are no members without a group
The coming together of a group, where enough individuals for whatever reason agree that something worthwhile is happening is a very complex moment. The decision they make is approximately, "this is good and must be protected". At that moment, even if it's subconscious, group effects start.
Bion decided that what he was watching the neurotics in his group defend themselves against his attempts to make the group do what they said they were supposed to do. The group was created to "get better" but they were defeating that. He proposed there are very specific patterns arising in societies.
The most basic pattern that groups can always devolve into, away from the sophisticated purpose was;
Group structure is necessary to defend the group from itself ... to keep a group on target, on track, or focused on its own sophisticated goals and to keep a group from sliding into the basic patterns above.
An an aside and interestingly ... groups often gravitate towards members who are the most paranoid and make them leaders, because those are the people who are best at identifying external enemies.
(Adopted from ~ Clay Shirky's Writings About The Internet).
This relates to a book recommendation Experiences in Groups by Wilfred R. Bion and both the development of this website, and our BKWSU experience. A wise old friend of mine once said, "life is a classroom where the tests and are given first and the lessons afterwards". I am thinking about the question asked elsewhere on this forum often ... what makes a BK stick to the BKWSU even after the point they have realised that it is all bollocks, corrupt, a lie whatever. I suspected that it was not something conscious ... that those inculted BKs were stuck by something they could not see but felt; part of basic human pre-programming.
The psychologist Bion was a well qualified and highly experience individual who hosted group therapy with groups of neurotics. He discovered that the neurotics in his care were, as a group, conspiring to defeat therapy.
There was no overt communication or coordination but he saw that whenever he tried to do anything that was meant to have an effect, the group would somehow quash it. He asked the question whether these individuals were taking action on their own or was this coordinated as a group?
It is said he never resolved the question. So he decided that was the answer. Are groups of people aggregations of individuals or a cohesive group? His answer was, "hopelessly committed to both". Humans were fundamentally individual, and also fundamentally social. Every one of us has a kind of rational decision-making mind where we can assess what's going on and make decisions and act on them. We are all also able to enter viscerally into emotional bonds with other groups of people that transcend the conscious intellectual aspects of the ourselves. "Group think" or "hive mind".
You join a religion and it start to fail at meeting some threshold of value or interest that you have ... but you don't leave. Why not?
For example, if you were in a shop and you said "I am finished shopping," you would leave. If you were in a cafe and said "I am not hungry now", you would walk out. This inability to leave is the exactly kind of "social stickiness" that Bion was talking about.
But ... something else also happens in life. e.g. you are at a party and one person stands up to gets their coat and leave. What happens?
Suddenly everyone gets up and takes their coats. All at the same time others leave meaning that everyone had decided that the party was not for them ... but no one had done anything about it ... until finally a triggering event let the air out of the group and everyone kind of felt okay about leaving. I pray to God the same thing happens amongst the financiers of the Investment Property Portfolio Acquiring Brokership called the Brahma Kumaris.
This effect is called 'the paradox of groups' - there are no groups without members but there are no members without a group
The coming together of a group, where enough individuals for whatever reason agree that something worthwhile is happening is a very complex moment. The decision they make is approximately, "this is good and must be protected". At that moment, even if it's subconscious, group effects start.
Bion decided that what he was watching the neurotics in his group defend themselves against his attempts to make the group do what they said they were supposed to do. The group was created to "get better" but they were defeating that. He proposed there are very specific patterns arising in societies.
The most basic pattern that groups can always devolve into, away from the sophisticated purpose was;
- "sex talk" ... a group met for pairing off ... the hosting of flirtatious or salacious talk and to allow emotions to pass between pairs of members.
- "The identification and vilification of external enemies" ... rather than make things better, work on the list of things to do, people would just start to get angry and attack an external enemy. Nothing causes a group to come together like an external enemy (as cult leaders and politicians well know and practise). Even if there is not a real enemy, identifying someone as an enemy causes a pleasant sense of group cohesion.
Groups often gravitate towards members who are the most paranoid and make them leaders, because those are the people who are best at identifying external enemies.
- "Religious veneration" ... the nomination and worship of a religious icon or a set of religious tenets, something individuals nominate as something that's "beyond critique". Question it and you will be attacked because you're interfering with that religious belief. (This does not have to be a religious or even religion as many cults show, just something to be adopted religiously ... vis-a-vis the Brahma Kumaris claiming "not to be a religion".)
Group structure is necessary to defend the group from itself ... to keep a group on target, on track, or focused on its own sophisticated goals and to keep a group from sliding into the basic patterns above.
- Group structure defends the group from the action of its own members.
An an aside and interestingly ... groups often gravitate towards members who are the most paranoid and make them leaders, because those are the people who are best at identifying external enemies.
(Adopted from ~ Clay Shirky's Writings About The Internet).