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They seem to be average, common and normal people.
Moreover, before the 26/11 Indian media were show-casing the astounding exploration of Hindu extremists involved in Malegaon Blasts.
While studying both the cases one can easily notice the important applications of psychology of all the cultists. Common definition of cult is “a particular system of religious worship”. The system can be any like Islamo-fascists, Hindu-extremists, Naxalists, and Bajrang Dali’s, SIMI activists, Regionalists (MNS workers and Shiv Sainiks), LTTE supporters, Scientologists, Zionists, Vegetarians, Animal Rightists, Feminists, Libertarians, Sanghis, Communists, Christian Crusaders, Skinheads, racists or others. Ignorance to reality in the form of cultism can be seen in many forms and all these forms hold a visible resemblance.
The common characteristic such aggressors hold is that they belong to a group or other. Their individual thinking does not drive them, they do not function alone. They join a particular group, acquire the ideas of that group, and adopt the characteristic of that group. They act like the droplets of water cohesively giving birth to a devastating flood, which can cause a murderous terrorist attack.
It is the group psychological effect, which makes the terrorist.
It is the group, which produces such terrorist and the cult. The members of the group can be rich or poor, well-educated or illiterate, they can be of same religion or of different religion, they can be of same race or inter-racial, race, religion, economic status and other differences becomes less important when group members vibrantly accepts the ideology of the group. The group members produce a strong, family-like bond, which provides an astounding power to the group over its members leading them even to embrace their own deaths. The member’s own existence becomes less important for him and the goals and ideas of the group become his primary concern and most important asset. To defend these illusive assets, the member even readily accepts sacrificing himself. The members than do not consider others who are not a part of their group as human. They recognize only those as human and brethren who actively engages with them to achieve their ideas. Anyone else, who does not accept their ideas, becomes their enemy. The nature of enemies differ from group to group and these enemies becomes less human and more hurdles for the group members, and to achieve the goals of the group, the hurdles need to be removed.
At least 40 Muslims suffered death in Mumbai attack. The reason was same. Islam did not drive the terrorists, but they were enthusiast by their group ideology. Anyone else not belonging to their group was an enemy. And enemies are things, de-humanized, evil and hence it is not possible for the members of a particular aggressive group to feel empathy or compassion for others.
It is not as if groups always work for destruction. Knowledge is power and groups can be set of knowledge too like the AryaSamajists, Libertarians, Objectivists, Anarcho-capitalists, Austrian economists, Spiritualists, Environmentalists, Aristotelians, Ram Krishna ParamHans Mission, and many others.
There can be great advantage of joining a group of like-minded people with similar thinking and ideas. However, one should be clear about the dangers of joining such groups and one must be careful enough to keep sacrosanct his own individualistic approach of reality. Because if he do not, he may not become a terrorist, but he surely can be a cultist.
As an individual, the member of any group is strongly driven with the “urge to belong” to the group which many a times refrains him from using his own surety, And that creates a scene of monkey like character.
One should be careful about his distinction as an Individualist rather than a member of the group. Once the membership of the group becomes more important than the individual character of that person, he becomes a cultist. He no longer remains a reasonable fan of an ideology; rather he becomes a blind-follower.
Nevertheless, it is not easy to remain an independent thinker. It is not very easy to be a rational performer of a group. Most people are biological robots. Monkey see, monkey do.
It is necessary to check such attitude. One should have proper reasonable grounds to avoid the cultist nature.
A person joining a group (political, religious, philosophical, or other type) should be ready to check the facts independently and should not blindly follow the herd.
As for example, a group of people supporting Gun Rights, should have proper rational ideas about why they support gun rights, similarly, a pro-anti-gun-laws should be clear about the reason for his opposition to the guns.
As a matter of fact, the terrorist and violent groups do not only exploit this group psychological effect over the Individual members, but the nationalists, politicians, bureaucrats and authoritarians often exploit the “Crowd Mentality”. The politics of vote bank based on religion, castes and economic status is also an example of similar cultist behavior. To keep the democracy thriving, the individual participant not only need to defend his freedom to think and have an independent point of view, but also he need to oppose the making of democracy as a means of violent rule of majority over minority, otherwise even such majority rules won’t be much different then the terrorists.
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1 viewsNo Responses to “The Crowd Mentality and Terrorism”
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Mayuresh Says:
December 10th, 2008 at 1:34 am“A person joining a group (political or religious or philosophical or other type) should be ready to check the facts independently and should not blindly follow the herd.” - 100% education is must for this. Moreover “democracy” should be practiced from school level( which rarely happens); so that others do not enforce you to follow something and that you do not get used to “follow the herd”.
Unpretentious Diva Says:
December 10th, 2008 at 1:42 amI will say Parents need to take care of providing open mindedness and democratic perceptions to their kids. It is a parental responsibility. But even for that, at least parents should be aware of the rational ways of education and teaching. One should look towards the Montessori schooling techniques and socratic methods. and yes home schooling should be allowed too.
sd Says:
December 10th, 2008 at 3:29 amThis is also indicative of a social phenomenon called ‘group think’ where people in a strongly cohesive business or work team can start thinking that they are all-knowing and stop using critical and rational thinking altogether in favour of the ‘majority verdict’.
This is often disasterous for the group and the project or company relying on the group, for obvious reasons.
Another example would be the 21-year-old terrorist captured in Mumbai. According to an article on BBC World news, he was a petty thief before joining in with the militant training, at which point he was brainwashed into the fundamentalist cause. If this kid (well, really a young man) was not sure of his own path, then it seems clear that he would be swept up in the larger world of fundamentalism, where everybody around seems to move with one purpose.
I guess it just shows that even being ‘100% educated’ isn’t going to solve the problem of personal choice. If people choose to allow themselves to be swept up by the crowd opinion then it doesn’t matter how much education you have.
It’s ultimately your own strength of mind and sense of what YOU want, that has to come through, as Unpretentious states in her post.
Sagar Says:
December 10th, 2008 at 11:40 amGood one!
In today’s world man has forgotten that he has power of thought, that he can think what is right and what wrong. It’s really necessary to be an individualist first before joining a group, reason being the ability to think over the group’s ideologies and then participating in the group’s think process.
Chintan Patel Says:
December 10th, 2008 at 1:48 pmWow… yet another strong post…
Are you a journalist or something?? :P
The Lover Says:
December 12th, 2008 at 9:41 amYou should publicize your blog more. People need to read what you have to say. Really strong stuff.
RINZU SUSAN RAJAN Says:
December 12th, 2008 at 1:43 pmits ignorance to reality as u said…but is more of theoterrorism…
or terrorism for religion which in true sense is not not for religion but a brainwash of the reality and instilled sense of vehemence against a particular group…
as someone suggested u should publicise ur blog more…
people will notice ur words and actually it will make a big difference…
Psycho Says:
December 12th, 2008 at 2:01 pmIt’s got a lot to do with the psychology of the present society. Violence is seen as an acceptable means of resolving issues.
Vinisha Says:
December 13th, 2008 at 4:05 pmI agree with the ‘group mentality’ and ‘cult’ theory here. But that absolutely does not make the individual less accountable. He/she did decide to join the group in the first place.
The problem lies to a deeper level than obvious. How often does our society encourage free thought and speech? I have to be really thick-skinned to be able to say things, to be a devil’s advocate and more importantly, to walk against the crowd.
Tolerance towards individualism is limited. And not many have the guts to walk against the crowd.
Religious extremism may be promoted in groups. But the decision or choice to accept this religious extremism even when it runs to the point of terrorism is solely an individual liability.
Incognito Says:
December 27th, 2008 at 1:22 amAre you sure the Malegaon blast accused are the guilty ones?
Kasab has accepted his crime, and besides, he was caught red-handed.
However, the Sadhvi and the Army Officer have not accepted their crime…
Sadhvi is accused to have once possessed the bike used in the blast- which she had sold off four years back. And the Army Officer was said to have created bomb blast in Samjhauta Exp using RDX whereas RDX was not used in the Samjhauta blast.
Perhaps its only a matter of time (although its now months since they were arrested!) before proof is made available.
Or perhaps their being a Sadhvi and Hindu Officer are reason enough to accept them as guilty…
”..easily notice the important applications of psychology of all the cultists.”
The important applications of psychology … !
May I suggest that you do a great disservice to your own intellect by generalising and equating matters that are not equal at all.
Are you suffering from the crowd mentality yourself- of going along with the media crowd to revile anything and everything Hindu ?
Unpretentious Diva Says:
December 27th, 2008 at 2:14 amAre you sure the Malegaon blast accused are the guilty ones?
When did I claimed that?
I never said they are guilty or not, I mentioned them as accused.
And are you saying that Indian judicial system is free from corruption? I know there are possibilities that both Pragya and the officer will come out of the accusations, there are many loppholes in indian judicial web. it is not a big task for the Saffron gang goons to get their mates out.
May I suggest that you do a great disservice to your own intellect by generalising and equating matters that are not equal at all.
Are you suffering from the crowd mentality yourself- of going along with the media crowd to revile anything and everything Hindu ?
Lol, and what makes you say that?
Where am I blaming Hinduism or islamism?
Both are collectivist in nature and both are culprit. Do i need to even look for media coverage for anything about that?
Am I not aware of DaraSingh episode and Advani’s episode of Ayodhya?
or am I not living in India to see myself how the fanatcis like you do act?
Wasn’t I suffering being a girl of a Hindu family the attrocities and madness of bajrang Dal when a Sindhi girl decided to marry a muslim and bajrang Dal started threatening every Hindu girl of Bhopal city?
Anyways, it is good that you do consider the crowd mentality as wrong. it is different thing that being a hypocrite you won’t change your ways of enjoying the cult.
Nosheen Says:
December 27th, 2008 at 8:26 pmTerrorism like any other vice is created by society and is a result of extremism and fanatic thinking which conditions the minds of vulnerable adn susceptible human beings. I think it is conditioning of mentality rather than herd mentality because today in the capitalist world the mentaility in its generic manifestation is that of a n insensitive and indifferent…not enough to actually break the inertia of inaction