Mind Ecology

If there's something influencing my thoughts right now, it's these two things: Malcolm X's autobiography and Ghost in the shell stand alone complex.

Well firstly, what is deindividuation? psychologically speaking it's the idea of a loss of individuality in large groups - therefore because of this loss of individuality, you also lose your inhibitions, some of your morality and you feel less emotionally anchored by your surroundings. The best examples of deindividuation is in football hooligan crowds, where riots occur through masses that wouldn't normally commit atrocious acts normally. Now although football hooliganism and humbleness are oceans apart, i think the idea of losing something is important. What's lost is where the two differ, and differ they do!

Well, i think in a setting such as on Hajj, where everyone is dressed in the same attire, going to the same places, but are of different colours, races but are all united by Islam, is a setting for humbleness because you lose your ego in the process of gaining brotherhood and appreciating the sheer scale of the muslim ummah around you. By contrast, in a hooliganistic setting you only lose your morality and instead gain a boost in ego.

So when talking about deindividuation, you could ask; what is controlling or leading those crowds to think as a collectively and act with emergent behaviour? well the context is obviously the most important thing - where you are seriously affects how you act: or in other words reciprocal determinism (you are influenced by your environment but you can also influence your environment), however, in crowd situations where you are more deindividuated (and i emphasise MORE rather than a full deindividuation) i believe that this form of reciprocal determinism is more of a social psychological mind rather than an individual mind.

The best example of what i mean by that is emergent behaviour in termites - who can build large complex structures through simpler tasks - like a hive mind. If anyone has seen Ghost in the shell 2: innocence, i think what Batou says beautifully sums up what im trying to say about emergent behaviour: Our buildings represent the inner working of our mental structure...society's backbone idiosyncracies built on mortar and brick.

What he demonstrates here is the social psychological mind is constructed by the collective input of all those individuals within - so all these complex behaviours are the result of a complex social customs. However, unlike ghost in the shell, i disagree that emergent behaviour can have no origin or source, because if we think about the sociological and political changes brought about via religion they originate through prophets or messengers. Certain individuals can influence and bring about changes, but these changes evolve not through majority influence, rather a change in minority influence that slowly builds up into a zeitgeist.

I think though, that ideas originate from a source but as they evolve they can change over time, a bit like chinese whispers if you will.

So this is where the idea of demagogues come into play: i think you can bring about those changes and you can lead masses of people if you can evolve with the context those masses are in: With that you have to be able to feel your audiences reactions if you are to be sucessful, because if you don't follow the line of thought of the crowd than you cannot bring changes or bring about leadership. So to be a good leader what you need most of all is to be able to know your members feelings and to know how to address these issues, where you have indisputably done what you can to rectify anything or bring change that the social mind is thinking of. So in reality, to be a leader you need to know the social mind to a certain extent. So in order to bring social complexes to play you need to add simple adjustments which have a domino effect to creating something new.

One of the most important things regarding humanity as a whole, is the need for unity beyond the physical and we need spiritual or psychological links between Man. This is something i really do believe in, because we are so divided over race, money and insubstantial factors that don't conclude to anything productive for humanity as a whole.

However, i have to be realistic about the notion of humanity uniting beyond race or materialism since we humans are very in tune to our own habitual natures which are built upon immediate materialism and immediate physical appearances. What i want to say is that people enjoy their quirks and habits and if someone or something new tries to enter can break that habit. So trying to bring in unity will be difficult because it will involve treading on people's habits and toes to get them firstly motivated to a cause and secondly not afraid of new things. Even in today's society we are still seperated by these racial boundaries, but only now it's not so explicit, it's alot more implicit and privately kept in order to maintain a falacy of "political correctness".

We need to go beyond these racial boundaries and be united as Man. I can understand why alot of people enter islam - purely because there are no prejudices on what race you are - you can join without being intimidated and feel loved by brothers and sisters from all over.

"The creator has a master plan - peace and love for every man"

Peace.