Group dynamics in Orwellian thought-controlled societies

Imagine that it is virtually impossible to make a call from a cell phone to the ground below from an aircraft traveling at high altitude.

As I read it, it is indeed virtually impossible. Aircraft have to be equipped with special communication equipment to achieve this feat, and hardly any are, none in 2001. And, in my routine flights here and there over the last ten years, I have tried to do so. I often made contact – that is, the phone tells me that I have a connection, but it does not complete the call. It is just dead air.These days we we can be fined, even arrested for trying to do so, and it is odd, as it does not interfere with the aircraft in the least.

Anyway, set that aside. Religious groups insist on adherence to dogma, as do political groupings. And yet, internally, most people know that group dogmas are false, that two plus two does not equal five. They internalize such dogma to achieve harmony, as it is important to belong to a group structure. So people who profess otherwise know that there was no rising from the dead or walking on water or virgin birth. They are merely submitting to group dominance.

The suppression of the knowledge that the beliefs are false is often described as “cognitive dissonance,” which is simply the ability to adhere to irreconcilable beliefs.

Some of us do not bond easily to groups, and suffer accordingly. But we learn to live on our own, without approbation. The odds of us meeting are slim, as most people meet other people via membership in various groups. But the blogs are a good way to meet outliers.

A nasty aspect of my personality is to hold in disdain those who define themselves by group membership. I rebel when groups try to bind me and force me to conform to group norms. I was never a good employee,and never happy as an employee. I was not a good Republican, and was horrible Democrat. I even found the Greens restrictive – they more than any party have a large share of nonconformists, but it was a little bit oppressive.

What is the mechanism by which groups enforce cohesion? I think there are two elements: One is a need in each of us to belong, and the other are enforcers who patrol the fringes of groups to make sure that none leave the herd. These are self-appointed sheepdogs.

In real life, I am a nice person and indistinguishable in a crowd. I do ordinary work for ordinary pay, watch football with family on Thanksgiving, smile and joke and do all of the normal things. But on the blogs I am impatient, condescending, snippy, and even mean at times. The people who have been on the receiving end of this negative torrent are genuinely nice and caring of the people around them. But on the blogs, they too exhibit different characteristics.

These are the sheepdogs. They patrol the edges of groups, and define what is acceptable and what is not. Or so I perceive. each of them, as I perceive them, is so caught up in group insight that they have lost track of what is real, in fact, have no desire to know what is real.

And so they literally whip people, citing grouptruth, using absurdly tedious reasoning to force reality into a square box. “It is so, as my words force it to be so.“ The act of banning is a sheepdog at work, patrolling the outer perimeters of the group. Mormons call it shunning.

The whole of the allowed political spectrum in the U.S. is right-leaning. In such an environment, Republicans are free to explore as far into the extremities of thought on that parameter as they please. Thus we have our Beck’s and Coulter’s, each day bringing us new outrageous thoughts, never disciplined. Lefties, on the other hand, are not even seen. Noam Chomsky* is not allowed on the airwaves. But even those who we perceive to be leftist – right-leaning centrists like Ed Schultz or Paul Krugman, have to constantly watch their words and mind their manners, as jobs are lost, promotions denied … there is no easy way for even a right-leaning centrist to make it in this in mad mad city called Rightwingville.

Democrats who hold steady to party doctrine know this, and so internalize massive contradictions and acknowledge 2+2=5. To do so as well requires enormous self-persuasion and internal denial, a need to belong to a group that runs so deep that they cannot embrace the idea of not belonging.

So what has all this to do with the ability to make a cell phone from a jet aircraft? There is a mechanism in place that forces group adherence. It is accomplished by sheep dogs riding the perimeter. When you read that cell phones cannot make phone calls from airplanes, you immediately felt the pressure of the group and thought to yourself … “oh god, he’s not going there, is he?” That, my friend, is group pressure at work, the power of conformity. You just experienced it.

I don’t know what happened that day, and am missing so much information that I cannot begin to ever know what happened that day. I merely doubt the official conspiracy theory – the one about 19 Arabs.

I refuse to waste my time worrying about this, as whoever had enough power to unleash that event controls perceived reality. There’s no changing that. Essential information is missing, and will not appear in my lifetime, if ever.

But inside, when I think of the official explanation of the events of that day, I sort of doubt it all. There were no phone calls, there was no “Let’s roll!” The aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was surely shot down.

But I know nothing of demolition dynamics or the behavior of metals at high temperatures. I cannot begin to parse together the behaviors of thousands of people in utter chaos. It’s too much for me. It is madness. And compared to the crimes my own country has committed against others in response, it is minor.

My only point here is that it isn’t just me, but you too, who doubts the official version of events on 9/11, and the only difference between us is that you will never say so publicly, because you know you will be ridiculed and brought back into line by group strictures.

I don’t cotton to sheep dogs, I guess. It is not necessarily a good thing. It is what it is. So now, at this time, group member,, your appropriate response to this post and the thought crime contained therein is … ridicule. Have at it.

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*PS: I hasten to add here that Professor Chomsky does not disparage the official version of events on 9/11. He is not guilty by the fact that he is mentioned here. He merely exemplifies official “shunning” as practiced in the U.S.