is the IQ of 100 people less than the wisdom of 1 person?
"One chopstick is lightly broken, ten chopsticks are firmly formed into a group; a slap does not make a sound, and ten thousand people applaud." The old song sings like this pass. But the authors of The Crowd say that the IQ of a group is lower than that of an individual.
What my in-laws said seemed to make sense. I happened to watch a related movie, and I thought about it for a while.
The story of "Hitler's Elite" takes place in 1937. A 17-year-old boy with great boxing potential joined the Nazi military school despite the opposition of his parents under the recommendation of a German officer who had a good look at him.
The solemn campus castle, the neat and tidy team of classmates, and the vision of becoming the hero of tomorrow all made him look forward to it.
However, this school, which claims to admit only the best Aryans, is just one of the state machines of the Nazis under Hitler. Under its well-ordered appearance hides super-totalitarianism, a cult of personality for the national leader, Produced when members are completely deprived of their individuality.
The Nazi military academy was managed with positive and negative reinforcement methods:
1. Positive reinforcement:
1. Praise and applause.
The principle advocated by the Nazi military academy is Darwin's law of the jungle, the nobility of the Aryan origin and the inferiority of the Jewish race, and the students are always required to practice, and they are not allowed to show any emotions on the battlefield.
The protagonist made a ruthless move on and off the boxing arena and beat the unresponsive opponent to the ground. The audience burst into applause, and the protagonist became a superhero; Will let him participate in the school's intercollegiate boxing match.
2. Collective honor.
In a grenade throwing exercise, a timid team member pulled the fuse, his hands trembled, and the grenade fell on the spot. Everyone was terrified, because 20 people would surely die after a five-second countdown. A man hugged the grenade with his body, blood splattered everywhere, this man was the old bed-wetting guy. Afterwards, the principal came forward, held a grand and solemn funeral, and fixed a medal - engraved with the name of this humiliated person on the hero list.
I feel that this person sacrificed himself not because of courage or the mentality of dying for the country, but a kind of guilt caused by the constant humiliation of his personality. His own value has been buried and distorted for a long time, and it is constantly deepened in punishment. , forming a kind of inferiority complex and guilt, and out of a kind of repayment psychology, he made him pounce on the grenade in just a few seconds.
3. Future fame.
"Each of you will be remembered firmly in history," said the Nazi principal. "In the future, we will need many officers, and they will come out of you. You rule not only Germany, but also New York, Washington, D.C. and Moscow".
2. Negative reinforcement:
1. Punish
public humiliation and compromise with team pressure. When a student wets the bed, the supervisor immediately asks the person to go back to the room to bring the mattress and urinate on the mattress in front of the other team members. The other team members perform high-intensity training exercises until the team member urinates. This made the player even more bedwetting out of fear.
2. Disregarding
the son of a senior officer to go to the military school, this young man is good at writing and likes to read, but his father, whose feelings have been exhausted in the war, hopes that he can join the Nazi SS, and the child has been forced to inherit his father's resistance for a long time. , finally broke out after witnessing the prisoner being shot and killed while escaping. He understood the huge contrast between his inner world and the outer world. He began to openly contradict the control of the military academy. Compared with the state machine, the power of the individual is insignificant. The officer's son sinks himself to the bottom of a lake during an ice cave crossing training. The military academy refused to issue an obituary for this person, saying that "only honors are given to the warriors who gave their lives for the country."
The crazy description of the masses makes me feel very scared. It is not the mania of others, but the association of myself. If I was born in that era, I am afraid it is difficult to be alone. In an era far from the absolute domination of ideas, I have also played many times as a maniac among the masses.
I remember being dragged to see Tian Zhen and Cui Jian's rock concert in Shenzhen. The lights were all over the stage and the sound of the bowls was loud, but it didn't resonate with me. I was already drowsy in the early hours of the morning. In the middle of the night, he was awakened by a loud shout, very excited, and then drowned his own shouts in the sound, and then his voice was hoarse for two days.
During the SARS period, when it was said to be the most dangerous period, everyone would stay behind closed doors. I decided to come forward and go to Xidan Bookstore alone. On that day, there were only two people in the bus except the driver. As fast as BMW, special car store, happy and leisurely, in the car in the store, I was the only warrior who didn't wear a mask. When I went home and watched the news to find out how many people hung up that day, I was still afraid. Later, there was a commotion that Beijing was about to close the city and would run out of food. I couldn’t sit still any longer. I rushed out first, lined up in a long queue, and bought three boxes of instant noodles.
In June, housing prices were soaring. This unreasonable change made people who hold currency to buy want to scold the street. After reading the economic data, I realized that the real estate industry began to dance the loyalty dance neatly and uniformly under the guidance. I bought "The Crowd", I hope to remind myself and cool down (attempted).
The author said that the IQ of the group is lower than the wisdom of the individual. I don’t believe it. I think he is too absolute. There is an old song, “One chopstick is gently broken, ten chopsticks are firmly formed; There was a loud applause from thousands of people.” This statement was easily refuted by him: he argued that 1,000 people who happened to gather in a public place, without any clear purpose, were not a group at all in a psychological sense. . And the primary feature of group performance is not always that some individuals appear in the same place at the same time. Sometimes, under the influence of some violent emotion-for example, because of the influence of national events, thousands of isolated people will also acquire a psychological group. Characteristics.
——“An accidental event is enough to make a group of people gather together and immediately acquire the unique attributes of group activities. The ferocity of group feelings, especially among heterogeneous groups, will be intensified by the complete disappearance of the sense of responsibility.” . The realization that there will be no punishment—and the greater the number, the more certain it is—and the momentary sense of power that comes with being outnumbered. Causes groups to exhibit emotions and actions that are impossible for isolated individuals. "
—"The disappearance of the conscious personality, the gain of the unconscious personality, the turning of thoughts and feelings in a common direction by suggestion and mutual contagion, and the tendency to immediately convert suggested ideas into actions, are the individuals that make up a group main feature. The person in the group is no longer himself, he has become a doll not subject to his own will. "
In short, I feel that it is a very bluffing thing to be wiped out of personality and everyone seems to have just climbed out of the mold. In "The Matrix", the future people are all born in the womb of machines, with consistent IQ and ability, which is terrifying. The deep sadness and despair of the robot children in "Artificial Intelligence" also comes from the fact that he saw so many people with him in the factory. The "brothers" with the exact same appearance and personality are no longer the only ones. In life, too, some people advocate perfectionism, but they don’t know that it is precisely because of imperfection that they fail to meet the requirements of the standard template and take a path different from the common ones. not too late).
Putting people on the assembly line is a necessary means of centralized management? Can the power of the masses have the penetrating power of lasers? Forget who said that when a country faces a crisis, especially a military crisis, the methods of centralization, arbitrariness, and national idolatry combined with a powerful ruler are often more effective. However, to develop business and prosper culture, it is necessary to do the opposite - to learn from each other's strengths to complement each other's weaknesses, to accommodate all rivers, and to attach a democratic administrator to be more efficient.
I think, the former may be a super aircraft carrier, with a unified direction, invincible and direct to the other side, but as an individual loses himself; the latter may be just a boat or a sampan, no matter how fast or slow, It will make people find the meaning of growth in the process of moving towards the goal.
Naturally I would also like to work and live in the latter environment.
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