Forget Group Think. What Do YOU Think?!

Humanity is all about groups.

Here a group. There a group. Everywhere a group group.

We (most of us) want to belong.  The only difficulty there, is that it takes other people for belonging to happen.

(Kind of squashes the “me me me . . it only takes one” instinct just a bit, don’t you think?)

And so, at a very early age, we grow to understand that the group is what matters.

The group is what keeps us from being alone and vulnerable.

The group is what supports and protects us – as long as we behave by group norms.

And by that, I mean: Individualism is OUT. Group think is IN. How else could we ever hope for our society to fall to the depths of complacency and mediocrity?

(Okay, so we haven’t advanced much in this regard since cavemen battered dinosaurs for brunch. Your point is what, exactly?)

And OUR group(s) – by their simple association with us – are what matter most to each of us.

The Joys & Challenges Of Group Belonging

Think family group.

Think my family versus your family. Think anything that matters to me versus anything that matters to you, unless what matters to you also matters to me.

Think the Hatfields and the McCoys. Think the Civil War. Think any war! (Can there be any doubt how small disagreements turn to raging feuds?) Ah yes, the joys of family and group belonging . . Group Think!)

But just as much as groups are about belonging, they are also about separation. They are about exclusivity – keeping the “wrong” people out. You know the ones I mean . . THEM (i.e., everyone else . . everyone not in your – or even more, in my – group).

And just as much as groups are about separation, the are also are about competition . . stratification . . pecking order (i.e., the “natural” order of siblinghood . . the “natural” order of life). Belonging to a group is simple. The important thing is, however, do you know your place within that group?!

Consider, just for a moment: How often have you had to “fight” to get in, and then fight even harder – this time against those who are just like you and know you from the inside out – to stay in at a place you want to occupy?

(i.e., Are you at the top or the bottom of the feeding chain? And how much of your soul does it take to hold on at just that spot? How much more might it take to claw your way up to the next rung?)

As I said before, think family. Think generation upon generations of the family group, and the history those generations dutifully pass along and solidify as family think (family group think law).

Parents, of course, seem to get the tough end of the family deal. It’s their job to instill all the generations of family group think into the questioning minds of the group’s youngest members – their darling children.

In my family, there were just two children – my older brother and me. And the way I saw things, I was always on the bottom rung of the family ladder. Of course, I was. I was the youngest – a place of enormous frustration and opportunity.

(Ah, the joys of group dynamics from the youngest child’s perspective. When you’re at the muddy bottom of the group fish tank, you tend to create your own mucked-up picture of the world. And from way down there at the bottom, much of what I saw and tended to believe was a little disjointed . . and just a bit askew.

Kids are smart in the ways of groupism, though. They quickly pick up on the intricate give and take of acceptable family reasoning, thought, and speech. And, as I remember, some of us waste little time turning all that “acceptable” stuff on its ear. (Good thing they’re we were cute.)

Think MY Family Group.

Actually, my big brother was a very accomplished family groupie. He toed the family line well.

Me? Not so much.

Let’s just say I challenged the norms – not in an intentionally bad or harmful way. But I did kind of make an art of stepping out of bounds. (Family group think IS bounded by dotted lines, right?)

I was the family individual. I was the child who always wanted to do things “the other way”. I was the one who challenged authority, pushed the limits, and basically drove everyone else up the wall and back down again.

It happens in the best of families.

I was the one they couldn’t stuff into that neat family-shaped box because I had to know what was on the other side – the outside. Guess I just don’t stuff very well – group-wise.

Then again, I was all over groups when I was young. School . . Church . . Girl Scouts . . Civil Air Patrol (yep, I know. Kind of not really me, but it was full of guys and cool airplanes, and there were only two girls. Go figure) . . Choir (and I say that as one for whom pitch is something you do, not something you have) . .  High school clubs and color guard . .

Back then, I was the height of group integration. And I took my responsibility to seek out and add to the available group think very seriously. Of course, it was a simpler time. The thoughts we encountered were far gentler than many seem to be now.

Think Challenging the Group!

And then came college. That one’s not worth a trip down memory lane for me, except to say the groups I chose were not the ones my family would have chosen for me. (College IS supposed to expand the mind, right?)

I wasn’t trying to push away the thinking my parents had instilled in me. I was just trying to make a place for myself within it – or next to it.

It was a tough time in history – an interesting time. And I wanted for all the world to belong . . somewhere. Just not where I was.

So I pushed back. I challenged.

The thing is: I have to believe it’s very difficult for any new group thought – however compelling – to completely overtake the thinking with which we were raised. I know my family wondered where they’d gone wrong, and I let them. (Actually, I did nothing to stop them.)

They were quite safe, however. I was terrified of doing anything that might permanently twist their picture of the world . . and of me in it. I crossed a lot of lines in college, but never the BIG ones.

And I’ve crossed even more since. But I’ve never forgotten the rock into which I was originally planted.

What I did learn in college and the years that followed was that it’s quite alright to disagree with the thinking of the past. You can’t destroy old thought. You can reshape it . . and sometimes it’s in serious need of reshaping. Each time you do, though, you reshape yourself.

Only What I You Think Matters!

And so here I am today – more than 30 years after those college experiences – reshaped many times over by new and different group memberships and estrangements (marriage, work, new cities/towns, etc.).

In the more than 30 years since college, I’ve been in and out of groups. I’ve followed groups. I’ve led groups. I learned the value and the danger of group thought and group speak.

I guess that almost makes me an expert.

And as that expert of sorts, I have to say what I’ve learned most is the following:

1. Group Think is all around us. As I watch or listen to any news story on the media, I’m all too clearly reminded that I’m being told to believe something. As always, however, it’s ultimately up to me what I choose to do with the information I get. Mostly what I choose to do is not buy into any of the stories too quickly, lest they just as quickly turn inside out and go in the opposite direction of my beliefs. (I never want my thinking to be caught with its pants down.)

2. Group Think is not wrong in and of itself. There is both comfort and strength within the shelter of a group. And the messages I hold to most strongly – at my core – all originated from within groups. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, there is much right with it as long as we never sacrifice ourselves (our values, beliefs, thoughts) to the will of any group.

3. Finding sovereignty and creating one’s own space in the world does not mean over-throwing the lifetime of group membership and thinking that came from others. It does, however, mean taking the time and effort to figure out what we believe and think, and refusing to let anyone else impose their world view on us. Conversation is wonderful. Honest debate is equally wonderful. There comes a point, however, where I draw a line across which no group dares mess with me! And I will stand firmly on that line.

4. What I think as an individual is more important that what any group has to tell me. I love to learn, and I am more than willing to listen to most opposing views. Challenge me to expand my understanding of the world, but do not dare to tell me what I should believe of it. At the end of each day, I must live with myself and my choices. Just as you must live with yours. Think well and choose carefully, my friend.

5. There is no group I can blame for my failings. (Let’s face it, there’s no group that would take the blame. Nor should there be.) I am just as responsible for what I think as I am for the actions that come of my thoughts. Groups tend to be very squishy when it comes to taking responsibility for the messes their thinking stirs up. I can’t afford to be. Nor, would I permit myself to be. If I take a stand, it’s mine. If I make a mistake, it’s equally mine. So be it.

Group think is easy. It’s a cover. It doesn’t really expect anything of you beyond agreeing with it.

Be very careful about that agreeing part.

Know what matters to you. Know where you stand.

Think for yourself. You’re all grown up. You can do that.

Keep growing my friend,

Gail

Tagged as: belonging, competition, Family, family group think, group norms, group think, media, sovereignty, what matters