My prior post was on the upwards power of social connectedness. This post is a brief comment on the other side of that coin, the dark power of social rejection.
Most human body cells, when they become separated from the body, simply commit suicide in a process called "apoptosis". In deer, if an animal becomes ill and has a hard time keeping up with the pack, very often it will simply stop running from predators, both ending its life and ending the drain on the herd. In birds, and we have a flock of them, when one bird becomes the "last" in the pecking order, he or she loses their social perks -- no other bird wants to be near them, or groom them, or feed them if they are sick. Rejection is very close to tantamount to a death sentence. I'm sure there are other examples.
In humans, disconnection of a person from society can cut both ways. The person can reject society, and drop out -- drop out of school, drop out of work, drop out of society, or simply commit suicide. In general, the psychological and physical health of dropouts is not good.
Also, a person, or a whole group of people based on some visible characteristic (class or caste, skin color, language or accent, sex, religion, obvious poverty or homelessness, braininess or illiteracy, color of work "collar", area of residence) can be stigmatized and shunned by the rest of society, which can close ranks and turn its collective cold back on them. Again, this imposes a very real very tangible burden on the mental and physical health of those being treated this way. They very often essentially "dent" or take on a new shape which adjusts to their inferior status, in such a strong way that even if the cause of that status goes away, their behavior remains "lower class".
So, there is a dangerous dark side to have a strong "we", and that is the common tendency to accomplish the strong sense of "us" by amplifying the strong sense of "them" -- that is, using disdain or rejection or fear or hostility or hatred of another group (or ALL other groups) as a method of strengthening the sense of unity in the "in" group.
I think that such hostility is an abuse of the situation. Strong teams, such as say a SWAT team or a Navy SEAL team, will indeed consider themselves superior along some dimensions and be proud of it, but that does not require any animosity towards other groups. A group with an actual, honest, true special meaning does not need anger or hatred to make its own members feel good about themselves and value being in the group On the other hand, a group or society that has no actual special value and feels bad about itself and each other may be ripe for a demagogue to rally them together to feel good by feeling superior to some other group, which becomes the opponent, and then the designated enemy group, the target of hatred and comparison.
These binding forces are very powerful, but they are not necessarily always applied in positive ways -- they have a very dark side as one capacity as well. Nor should group cohesion be avoided or disdained because it has a potential downside -- it are simply, like power tools or fire or a driving license, something powerful that can be used or abused.
But the response to negative deviance, (for example gangs or cults) should not be to aim for zero, to target no group coherence as a goal -- it has to be to seek positive deviance, empowering belonging to a larger group that is powered in turn by the members' enthusiasm and spirit.
In any case, it is not socially neutral to have people floating around who are disconnected and disaffected with society as a whole, or, if they are in school, with the whole concept of school as a whole. These are people who have a very high risk of a run-away escalation of dropping out, or run-away violence against themselves or others.
An article in the NY Times today talks about school dropouts and the large fraction of those who end up in prison. Long before these people drop out of school, they almost certainly dropped out, or were pushed out of specific groups and classes within the school, on some basis. Often this is by bullies, those who are strong muscled and highly insecure, and who can only find meaning and can only feel good about themselves when they push around or harm others.
Members of groups carry around an internal map and compass of group norms, and are always comparing actions they are doing, or are about to do, with what others (in their defining group) will think of that action, and think of THEM as a result of that action. This is a very powerful source of behavior modification and control. Internalized norms are far more effective than things like threats or laws at getting people to behave in predictable ways that the group has come to support as critical for group persistence and survival (even if they are wrong about the impact of those behaviors.)
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