——After watching "The Wave" and "Death Experiment (2001 Germany)"
Abstract: How organizations are formed: why members obey (collective temptation, their own shortcomings); why leaders succeed (elements of organizations, qualities and means of leaders); the strength of organizations / why organizations fail: the power gap and mobility caused by democracy Sex, aberrations in leadership psychology, factors of organizational breakdown
Citation: Key analysis of typical characters:
Tim, Lisa, Sinan in "The Tide", Barry, Eckert, and Burris (obey the collective) in "Death Experiment", Teacher Chinese Gere in "The Tide", Duke Ray in "Death Experiment" Dr. En
text:
I heard a piece of advice before: "Don't listen to pyramid schemes." Even if you claim to be highly educated, have a calm and sober rational judgment, or even try to expose or experience, you are still faced with being completely brainwashed. great danger. What governs our feelings? When everything is calm again, we don't believe that little ripple will stir up the surging of the heart lake, but that really threatens each of us, watching "The Wave", watching "Death Experiment", the thought that really gives us the creeps Yes: we may too.
The top students who confidently said at the beginning of "The Tide", "Now is a civilized society, how can the Nazis repeat themselves?", in "Death Experiment", they screened out "the most stable emotions and value judgments" after strict screening. , and the experimental members who were warned that the "violent person is out", in a special collective situation, their behavior has changed beyond recognition, and they have fallen into a kind of madness that is beyond redemption. How should we reflect on this matter?
First of all, what is the charm of the collective that attracts the individual? In Western Europe where democratic politics is developed, is this a "desert fear" when populism is rampant? This is the result of the interaction between the individual and the collective, and the compensatory aesthetics prompts the individual to rush to the collective.
One, collectively arouses erotic desire. Let's look at the most radical Tim in "The Wave". He climbed the tower and posted signs, took out a gun to intimidate the "enemy", made radical remarks on the website, loyally wanted to be the guardian of Teacher Wengel, and suggested in the white shirt. Immediately after that, he burned his Nike Adidas... In fact, his monologue was very sad. "No one cares about him, loves him, so the tide is the whole of his life." The most significant and important impact brought about by the formation of the collective is the "emotional excitement or intensity" produced by each member. McDowell believes that the emotional arousal that people receive in a group is rarely or completely unavailable in other situations, and it can be a very pleasant experience for those who participate in it, and can be released without reservation. Emotions, so as to integrate into the collective. That's why he says, "I don't feel like my life is meaningful until I join the wave."
The second is the collective sense of equality. In the past, I would be amazed at the huge driving force brought by the "crusades" to open up new routes, but now I will feel that the sacrifice of the human bombs of "Allah Amen", and the spiritual consolation role of religion, has turned extreme into a kind of terrorist here. Brainwashed, but why? Walking into a Christian church, one can’t help but be washed with sanctification. What the faithful most often say is “the equal love of Jesus Christ”. In this group, common psychological needs make people united, and common characteristics blur the boundaries of individuality. , Inferiority and pride are very good stealth. Let's look at Lisa and Sinan in "The Wave", one is a girl with a mediocre appearance, the other is a person who is prejudiced because of his Muslim identity, Eckert and Boris in "Death Experiment". Given a new identity, there is no need to feel inferior again because of the prejudiced and discriminated personality. Everyone has the same equality, and after this, when the psychological sense of rights gradually expands, they will take the initiative to do harm to them. Compensatory revenge for intensified revenge for past injuries, which will be discussed later. Fromm put forward the famous concept "authoritarian personality" when analyzing the psychology of Nazism in "The Fear of Freedom", which refers to the psychological tendency of individuals to give up freedom in order to escape the feeling of loneliness and helplessness. The expression in Le Pen's "The Crowd" is similar: "Individuals in a group are repressed to varying degrees, and even if there is no external force, they are willing to let the spirit of the group replace their own."
To sum up, loneliness is the enemy that human beings have to fight all their lives. On the one hand, people become dependent on power (also, as will be discussed later, unitaryism plays a powerful role in stabilizing collective psychology in resolving conflicts.) ), in an atomized society people tend to rely on state symbols with political authority, that is, among all the evils of mankind, "absolutism likes egoism the most"; on the other hand, (the spiral theory of silence) The fear of isolation makes people in the group have the characteristics of convergence and depersonalization. Even if there is dissent, as Freud said in "The Self and the Id": "Even a highly intelligent mind, the emotional Reinforcement creates an environment that is not conducive to effective mental work, and because individuals are afraid of the collective, their mental activities are not free." The school bullies in "Youth as a Teenager" are also forced to do so because they cannot bear the psychological anxiety of being isolated by a small group. Damn, it's all sad.
And with a bunch of hungry people like Tim coming to the collective, what can a restaurant offer to make them not only full, but also see the boss as a savior and willing to stay and volunteer? The emergence of leaders is an indispensable condition for the formation of organizations. Often we look back on the leaders in history, and they all have a common quality: tenacity and willpower. Mr. Geer's language in "The Wave" is firm and his goals are clear; the naturally formed leader Boris' paranoid revenge mentality in "Death" is also an extreme manifestation of willpower. The second is fame. Teacher Guo Rin asked at the lunch meeting, "Who is the best mathematician in our class?" We said that we hadn't taken the exam, and she said, "You don't need to look at the grades, everyone has a recognized person, and that's how the leader is. Yes, fame is the most important thing." We can easily cite many examples of this reputation. Chen Sheng pretended to be a ghost and shouted "King Chen Sheng" at night during the Wu Guang uprising, and Hong Xiuquan claimed that after a serious illness, God instructed him to be "the Son of Heaven". Countless emperors and generals who were born with "auspicious signs" just used mystical methods to demonstrate the legitimacy of their rule. In The Iron Law of Oligarchy, Milches said: "The characteristic of fame is that it prevents us from seeing things as they are, and numbs our judgment completely. And the generality of opinion in an organization is governed only by fame." When ruling over an organization, in addition to the quality requirements, the ruler usually uses three methods: assertion, repetition, and contagion, which are accompanied by communication with similar organizations (perhaps in the form of opponents), "Waves". "The opposition between the tide and the anarchist group, as well as the establishment of a common noble goal with moral attributes, the more noble, the more able to deceive the masses. The establishment of a hierarchical order (in "The Wave", where teachers arrange seats, and the natural division of labor between students and students) artificially distances the masses from the leadership core. The greater the organizational influence, the farther the core is from the lower limit. In addition, under the combined effect of organizational markers (Inspur salute gestures, uniforms, monograms, etc.) and the goal of simplistic slogans, Inspur's internal "strong cohesion" and external "collective madness" can be avoided.

Image from Freud's "Self and Id"
After the organization is completed, how destructive is such a powerful organization? Schumpeter commented that Le Pen was the first to effectively elucidate the reality of "the sudden disappearance of moral restraints and civilized ways in thought and feeling of individuals under the influence of groups, the sudden eruption of primitive impulses, childish behavior and criminal tendencies." How can you think of publicly executing someone who disagrees with you? When you are alone, how can you madly impose your beliefs recklessly on others? From the collective equality, collectivism to analyze. First, equality is only equality within the collective. Under the influence of noble goals, it gradually evolves into a sense of self-nobility, which in turn becomes discrimination and harm to dissidents. The inequality to the outside lies in the fact that they are breaking the original self. After being discriminated against, new rules are established that are unfavorable to others, leading to a vicious circle. Second, collectivism relies on a free-willed majority making major decisions, which creates the illusion of entitlement among individuals in the group and reinforces the collective unconscious (brainwashed: blame the dissent; unbrainwashed: out of fear Silence), the illusion of entitlement comes from the destructive power endowed by the large number of collectives (which can be used to avenge private revenge), and the dissolution of individual responsibility brought about by the rationalization of collective opinions (some official media voices in the collective name provide a good opportunity for detractors) . I think of American Sinologist Kong Feili's "Soul Calling": "The potential power that peasants gain by using witchcraft panic is a relationship in a fluid cycle, an intertwined web, where each person is both a power implementer and a victim of power. The controller." When a person from a led group becomes a leader, the power given to him by numbers and vague responsibilities is enough to allow him to justly retaliate against the injustice he has suffered. In this process, we usually use rational, civilized The evils of moral repression are arrogantly gushing out in the name of justice, and there are also some that Jung said: "The universal spirit of human beings accumulated in the deepest part of the heart by the countless experiences of the same type retained by heredity". Is it a reasonable excuse to say that I don't know if I have a personality accumulation?
Watching the insider off the screen, watching and lamenting the inferiority of human beings, at this time we are like Dr. Duke in "Death Experiment", he said to the female assistant who wanted to stop the experiment: "Do you want to give up? This is a lifetime There is only one chance, and No. 77 and Boris are all we need, and both obedience and violence have appeared.” The scary thing is that in the name of science and the pursuit of truth, the boundaries of ethics and morality can often be blurred. In fact, the volunteers are just for the money. The initial intention is very relaxed. "This is just a game." No. 77 said, "If you have you, watch us, so nothing will happen." But an experiment affects a lifetime. It is the real version of Stanford University Prison Experiment, and Milgram obeys the lessons of experimental blood. Here we can see the quiet changes in the leader's heart, how lofty goals and firm principles were originally set, but the reality is not satisfactory, Le Pen said: "Leaders often come from the group being led. However, with the help of some kind of Those who came to power with an idea later became the rebels of this idea.” The bottom line is that after taking power, the original purity is inevitably corroded, which is because people have an innate desire for power. Holbach said in "The Natural Law of Social System, Morality and Politics": "The desire for power, independence and freedom are the instinctive demands of man. In leaders, the consciousness of self-worth and the desire of the masses for leadership often make He created a sense of superiority in his heart and inspired that spiritual need that is rooted in everyone's heart to dictate them." The same is explained in Adler's "Inferiority and Transcendence": "We find all goals There is a common factor in all of them, that is, their efforts to become gods. People hope to be the focus of the whole world, the object of worship in all directions, and the god who can dominate the power of nature. People talk directly." This kind of change is terrifying, especially after the leader is fully aware of his ability and the inner needs of the masses he rules, we can imagine that Napoleon's subordinates regarded being able to be pulled by his ears as a kind of Blessings, people weeping at the portrait of Kim Jong-un in the North Korean documentary "Under the Sun," the leader can take advantage of to manipulate the collective mind. "Manipulating a large group of people is often much easier than manipulating a small group of people," Milches said. "Mass gatherings are chaotic, short, and chaotic. Once their own proposals become law, the masses are often unable to accept the opposition of a few, and even more so. Personal disapproval is not tolerated. In small gatherings, participants can discuss their own affairs calmly, whereas if a large group gathers in a small place, it is likely to cause chaos and inexplicable frenzy.” The encounter between the traitor Carlo and Poppy can't help but make people tremble. In Herodotus' "History", the wrong decision of the Peloponnesian War was voted by the masses equally, the death of Socrates, the election of Hitler, and the election of Napoleon's nephew. In the discussion of a few rational people, the wisdom endowed by knowledge makes them humble, but this also collides with many different viewpoints. Thoughts improve amid contradictions, but the collective does not accept contradictions, which can be seen from the simplistic and straightforward slogan It is evident that the unitism under the power has abandoned contradictions, and the anti-skepticism spirit has become the mainstream, which can eliminate the insecurity caused by contradictions. In "The Tide", Mr. Wenger turned from good-meaning teaching to himself and fell into the temptation of power, shouting to his beloved wife: "You are just jealous of me!" This is the sense of nobility created by the inequality of the collective outside. And the short, flat and quick slogan he advocated has subtly become the unwavering creed of loyalty in the hearts of the members.
Finally, a passage from Freud as an explanation for the collective breakdown: "Fear arises either from the magnitude of the danger or from the cessation of the emotional bond (desire betting); the latter is similar to neurotic panic or anxiety. Likewise, Fear arises either from the heightened common danger or from the loss of the wicked emotional ties that unite the collective, akin to neurotic anxiety.” When Mr. Wengel declared that the wave was over, the spiritual pillar on which the most loyal believers had relied. It just collapsed, he shot his close friends and shot himself, this is what is called a collapse of faith, and at the end of the organization's life, people will find that "they are just bewitched by the utopian voice and desperately squeeze through the gates of heaven" . But when the door slams behind them, they find themselves in hell. Moments like this make me feel that history likes to laugh." (Kundera, "The Joke") There is a saying "When you Stare into the abyss for too long, and you will become the abyss yourself.” We are inherently limited and fragile, and the variation of individual psychology in the collective is unbelievable. Even if we have the self-control of the pilot in “Death”, we should not easily test ourselves and others. Humanity, how great are we? We timid and humbly admit our inadequacies, then we still have the belief that tomorrow will be better and our human brilliance can infect a little more dark side.
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