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What is a crowd?
Nature cannot even create two identical people, each person is unique and inimitable. But when people get together, they turn into a single huge creature capable of both heroic deeds and crimes.
The crowd is a natural social phenomenon generated by the herd instinct, which occupies the same fundamental place in human nature as the instinct of life (reproduction) and death (self-preservation).
The first people lived at first in small groups that united in clans and tribes. They had common property and life. At the dawn of mankind, the individual did not think of himself alone.
Cannibal tribe
The desire to spend time in the company of others of your kind is quite normal. However, a civilized person is obliged to know the patterns of behavior in crowded places in order to protect himself from possible negative consequences.
Collective thinking
As soon as a person gets into a crowd of people, he loses his individuality and becomes a part of an integral psychological mechanism. The human mass behaves like a single creature, endowing all participants with its features. What a man would never have done alone, he can easily accomplish being in a “flock.”
Instinctiveness
In gathering, primitive instincts awaken in people, primitive, but sincere feelings appear. All their desires become heightened, courage and thirst for revenge awaken.
Emotionality
The crowd is very impressionable, it easily succumbs to any pathogen. Emotional speech of the speaker, loud slogans, bright symbols, provocative or daring actions – all this can ignite people in an instant.
Courage, indignation, indignation, decisiveness take possession of the consciousness of each individual, regardless of whether he is inclined to this outside the crowd.
Suggestibility
The assembled people acquire gullibility. Why it happens? Alone, a person thinks and analyzes, that is, processes information. When he is in the “flock”, all the conscious is supplanted by the subconscious. The mind is turned off, instincts are turned on.
Fearlessness and a sense of impunity
The mass of the people is a power, a destructive force, and therefore a person feels protected in it. In the midst of a war or revolution, people selflessly rush into battle, intoxicated with an idea.
Fear is not completely absent in them, but it is greatly dulled. In addition, all acts committed in the “herd” usually remain unpunished, since it is very difficult to determine who did what.
Contagiousness
If one participant is exposed to some kind of emotion, then everyone else begins to experience the same. For example, if one student laughed, everyone laughs, because the class is the audience.
Intolerance and impulsivity
If the national assembly has conceived something, then it wants to implement it immediately (to overthrow the ruler, crown a new one, punish the villain, destroy the enemy or destroy the building). There is no time to think, to weigh the pros and cons, you need to act. The essence of the crowd is physical activity.
Love for the leaders
On the one hand, the people yearn for complete freedom and independence from any authorities or prohibitions. But on the other hand, she needs a leader, an adored and revered leader.
Perhaps this item should have been written one of the first, but still the leader is an optional component. He can both gather a crowd under his command and grow out of it. Leaders can appear spontaneously and similarly disappear or be replaced by new ones.
Crowd types
- homogeneous;
- situational;
- criminal;
- panic;
- festive and others.
These species are formed depending on the circumstances, but the laws of their behavior are the same. How do the masses of people react to a leader or leader? As mentioned above, she has only simple feelings and emotions.
They perceive what is happening at the level of instincts and visual images. In other words, this mass takes everything literally.
Success in the people
The people meet the leader “by his clothes” (if he is new). It is necessary to get the attention of the crowd right away, otherwise it will silence it and reject it. Moreover, it is not necessary to have brilliant oratorical qualities.
The main thing is to speak confidently and firmly. The people profess the cult of strength, so in her eyes it is necessary to look bold and unshakable.
To be successful with the people, the leader must be charismatic, that is, he must clearly stand out from the whole mass of people. It doesn’t matter what he looks like, what he is wearing and what his voice is. But he must have something special and inexplicable – inner magnetism.
There are many cases in history when specific people united entire nations, created nations and states, but after their death everything collapsed like a house of cards.
People follow messiahs and heroes, but only when these leaders have the same interests with them (well, or pretend they have).
It is impossible to convince a crowd of something if it has gathered with a specific idea. This requires a long preliminary preparation. So, it is foolish to make people believe in a strange god, if they are united by blind faith in an old deity.
It is senseless and dangerous to bring the ruler they hate to the front of the furious revolutionaries. If he could not “charm” people while in power, then he is irrevocably rejected by them.
Love and hate
The masses of the people are capable of both ardent love and fierce hate. Often, the idols, from whom the fans came to ecstasy, are brutally overthrown by their fans. New leaders – new hopes, illusions, delusions … And again everything in a circle.
But most of all, people love to worship dead authorities. In other words, to make someone a god, they must be killed (or allowed to be killed). A living leader is sacrificed to primal instincts, and then becomes a dazzling deity.
The role of the masses in history is invaluable. The crowd is the blood of humanity. She supplies him with oxygen and fire, makes him move and be reborn. However, if these processes are not regulated, anarchy will ensue.
Who rules the world – are the leaders of the masses? The fact is that some follow from others. The peoples are governed as they allow, the leaders are those who previously recognized themselves as an integral part of the mass.
Why do wars arise? Because a primitive voice, an ancient lust for blood and murder, resonates in man. Thus, humanity instinctively adjusts its quantity. Only the strongest should survive, they will get natural resources and the opportunity to continue their race.
A civilized inhabitant of the Earth can solve this problem in other ways, for example, contraception. But getting into the crowd or watching its frantic zeal from the outside, he involuntarily wants to join this great and terrible mechanism of history.
Or maybe you are being used?
Nobody calls on anyone to stay away from popular gatherings, celebrations and other manifestations of collective life. But before you go somewhere, you should think about whether you should do it, do you really support a particular leader or idea? Or maybe you are just being used?
You need to determine your views and beliefs alone, in a calm atmosphere, and not on the street amid noise and confusion. Before becoming a member of certain crowd actions, you need to figure out if there are safer and more reasonable ways to achieve your goal.
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