A crowd certainly has collective action potential but today's movie also showed the critical role a leader has to play to guide/misguide the crowd's collective action in his favor. Brutus convinced the crowd of Caesar’s supposedly harmful ambitions thus justifying his murder while Marc Anthony was later successful in convincing the crowd of the Caesar’s greatness and his innocence.
Collective action potential is like wet clay...can be molded by leaders into anything. So the crowd (at least the rational individuals in it) must be careful and a bit critical of the leader's arguments instead of following him blindly.
9 comments:
This is what is missing in some of us. We tend to follow blindly whatever our favourite leader says. We usually forget to look into their nefarious designs. They get what they want and the followers are left to bear the law's brutality. Numerous examples can be found in this regard like the case of Ajmal Kasab. Today he is in our custody but the mastermind behind Mumbai tragedy maybe leading a comfortable life.
SHASHVAT SINGH (30044)
Elections are also an example...leaders successfully ( and unfortunately!!!) divide people and seek votes in the name of region, caste, religion and people do get carried away and do not question the leader's capabilities and intent.
quite true! there certainly is a great potential of collective action, what is required is a correct direction. A leader plays a major role in navigating the path towards the motive. The leader's motive determine the ultimate aim.The collective action may result into destruction or construction depending on the leader.
Wisdom and rationality of individual who follow these leaders are of utmost importance. How is this rationality developed? By prior experience or by contemplating over various issues. Both of them requires a person, who has gained knowledge and wisdom probably through education system, values imparted at home etc. So in the end it boils down to how a person is programmed from childhood days which makes him vulnerable or immune to misguided leadership or contagion effect.
The issue I see from the perspective of a rational individual in the crowd is..he knows that more often than not the leaders are motivated by their personal gains..Now for example both Antony and Brutus had their motives behind their respective persuasive speeches..so how does an the rational individual clearly decide that which one will bring relatively better common good..so getting influenced by the biases one carries and getting influenced is the phenomenon observed very often in these scenarios.
The important thing is for the follower to realize that the leader might have some vested interest and critically examine the leadership's intent before choosing to follow one or the other, in most real life scenarios people go for the leader's charisma with the feeling that "He cannot be wrong" or that "He cannot make a mistake/misguide". Once the followers start questioning....chances of leaders misguiding them reduce.
I feel that in real life people do not question the leadership enough...or critically examine the intent. Especially when it comes to religion and religious leaders. Everything is sacrosanct and people follow things as they are told.
I think in a mob like situation , some total of people's rationalities is less than their individual rationalities put together..
Post a Comment