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Part 26

10/26/2015

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 26: Mob Mentality and Groupthink

All truths passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as self-evident.
-ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860)

Why do people not only believe in, but ready to kill others and even die for, bizarre and outrageous lies, including dubious fatwas, Nazi and communist propaganda, pseudo-science, disinformation, and religious claims? Why would millions of believers cling to every single word of a prophet who was functionally illiterate, yet claimed he was appointed to translate God's will? Consider those who had believed, or still believe, in alien abductions, ghosts, ESP, the Noah's Ark, astrology, racial superiority, superstition, snake oil salesmen, and Elvis sightings for which there is scanty or no evidence whatsoever. In Ottawa (Canada), for example, three Elvis aficionados who pretty much believe the "King" is still alive—in spite of police, press, and the coroner's reports—established The Elvis Sighting Society.

Then, on the other hand, there are also those who disbelieve and flatly deny Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, the Holocaust, the Out Of Africa theory, and climate change in spite of the preponderance of empirical evidence. (I cannot resist the temptation to ask why do people who deny Darwin's theory of evolution are the very same group who audaciously practice Social Darwinism, but let's explore this in another post.) In short, why do people believe or disbelieve?

There are no simple and direct answers, but a dominant psychobiological factor is the knee-jerk reflex to imitate others mindlessly. Among humans, the strong drive to imitate is best explained by English zoologist and evolutionary-anthropologist Desmond Morris (b. 1928): "As a species we are strongly imitative and it is impossible for a healthy individual to grow up and live in a community without becoming infected with its typical-action patterns. The way we walk and stand, laugh and grimace, are all subject to this influence."

Social scientists called this phenomenon social proof a.k.a. herd instinct a.k.a. mob mentality in which individuals feel they behave correctly if other people act in the same way. There is safety in numbers. Quantity brings security. The more, the merrier. As expected, peer pressure to conform with others distorts humans' most valuable asset: common sense. Almost similar to herd instinct is groupthink, which occurs when otherwise intelligent and highly educated people make decisions and choices solely to align their opinions with the expected consensus. Or the Boss, for that matter. Many political pundits are convinced that American decision to invade Iraq in 2003 (based on faulty intelligence and the lack of an Exit Strategy) is a textbook case study of groupthink.

Social proof or groupthink itself is not necessarily bad, as throughout the evolutionary process it has served Homo sapiens quite well as a survival strategy (including but not limited to political survival). The following anecdote from the days of the Soviet Union illustrates how groupthink works:

The First Secretary of the central Committee of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) was busy denouncing his predecessor Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) at a public meeting when a voice shouted out:
-"If you feel this way now, why didn’t you say so then?” To which the Soviet leader thundered: +“Who said that?”
There was a long and petrified silence, which Khrushchev finally broke:
+“Now you know why.”

Indeed herd instinct or mob mentality has also sparked chauvinism, repeated stock market panics, McCarthyism, the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, the Salem Witch Trials, the Holocaust, Jim Crow laws, and religious persecutions all over the world. Only within the last 100 years, countless genocides have been sparked by mob mentality; including but not limited to the Armenian and Assyrian genocide (1915-1923); the Holocaust (1933-1945) as illustrated in The Pianist (2002), Holocaust mini-series (1978), Sophie's Choice (1982), Schindler's List (1993), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) films; the Cambodian genocide (1975-1979) as illustrated in The Killing Fields (1984) film; the Indonesian "G30S Movement/PKI" genocide (1965-1966) as illustrated in The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014) films; the Rwandan genocide (1994) as illustrated in Hotel Rwanda (2004) film; and the Srebrenica massacre (1995) as illustrated in Srebrenica: A Town Betrayed (2011) documentary.

Even seemingly innocent sporting events have turned deadly because of mob mentality—directly and indirectly. In 2015, for example, Egypt sentenced 21 soccer fans to death after they incited a 2012 stadium riot that killed 74 and injured 1,000 mostly from trampling and falling from stadium balconies. If that's not tragic enough, the verdict itself sparked another riot, which left at least 30 dead and over 400 injured. As pointed out by Daniel Wann, a leading sport psychologist at Murray State University: "The similarities between sport fandom and organized religion are striking. Consider the vocabulary associated with both: faith, devotion, worship, ritual, dedication, sacrifice, commitment, spirit, prayer, suffering, festival, and celebration." Indeed, throughout the first 200 years of ancient Olympic games (as opposed to the modern ones founded by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1894), they only had religious significance to honor a Greek god named Zeus.

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter

Part 25

10/19/2015

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 25: What If Adam had not Eaten an Apple?

Our truth consists of illusions
that we have forgotten are illusions.
-FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)

So significant is our dependency on, or addiction to, narratives that no less than author and linguist Lin Yutang (1895-1976)—the son of a pastor who once prepared for the Christian ministry himself—wrote in The Importance of Living (1937): "the entire structure of the Christian belief hang upon the existence of an apple. If Adam had not eaten an apple, there would be no original sin, and, if there were no original sin, there would be no need of redemption." Of course, we would have lived happily ever after. Furthermore, as if Lin had not rubbed enough salt in our deepest wound, he wrote: "when Adam and Eve ate an apple during their honeymoon, God was so angry that He condemned their posterity to suffer from generation to generation for that little offense but that, when the same posterity murdered the same God's only son, God was so delighted that He forgave them all."

To be fair, narratives that are structured in the Bible and the Qur'an should not be taken literally, and were initially communicated orally after, not during, the alleged events occurred. Indeed there were no voice recorders or minutes of meeting when God spoke to Moses or Muhammad, let alone witness statements under penalty of perjury. Obviously, sketchy details were written down and filled in by second-, third-, or even fourth-hand sources—each with their own personal agendas—many years or even several decades (if not centuries) later. After a time-span of two thousand years (in Christianity) or thirteen hundred years (in Islam), it's quite impossible to know the truthfulness of critical details.

The existence of the Gnostic Gospels—about 54 ancient texts based upon the teachings of several Christian leaders between the second and the fourth century AD—for example, are not officially recognized by the Vatican. What is excluded tells us as much as what is included, and indicates that the Bible is actually a collective project written by many hard-core ideologists and enthusiastic propagandists. Not coincidentally, the word propaganda derived from an office later created by the Catholic Church in 1622 called the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for Propagating the Faith) to suppress the reformation movement.

Thus we expect that to verify the truthfulness of newer 19th- and 20th- century narratives that are framing Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, Jehovah's Witness, or Scientology would be much easier, as they occurred less than 200 years ago. Good luck. Each of these newer religions are also shrouded in the same—if not even higher levels of—secrecy and mystery. As stated in Part 8 (Correlation between Religion and Morality: Illusion or Reality?), the majority of organized religions derive from secretive cults. Cults evolve into sects, then sects evolve into religions, before splitting again into various denominations. History repeats itself.

Take The Book of Mormon for example, which according to Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844) contains the very words of Yahweh as personally revealed by an angel named Moroni to him in the form of golden plates. (The plates were eventually lost by Smith under dubious circumstances). According to Smith, the Book was originally engraved on golden plates in unknown characters comparable to some kind of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Moroni, the last prophet who contributed to the plates, buried them in a hill in present-day New York, then returned as an angel to earth in 1827 to reveal the plates' location to Smith, and requested him to translate them into English. Since Smith himself was functionally illiterate (more on this later), this translation assignment might very well be the first case when a project manager failed to investigate a translator's qualifications properly.

Since we all are humans and love stories anyway, let's delve into two paragraphs about The Book's background as told by British literary critic and l'enfant terrible Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) in his God Is Not Great (2009):

"(Joseph) Smith refused to show the golden plates to anybody, claiming that for other eyes to view them would mean death. But he encountered a problem that will be familiar to students of Islam. He was extremely glib and fluent as a debater and story-weaver, as many accounts attest. But he was illiterate, at least in the sense that while he could read a little, he could not write. A scribe was therefore necessary to take his inspired dictation. This scribe was at first his wife Emma and then, when more hands were necessary, a luckless neighbor named Martin Harris. Hearing Smith cite the words of Isaiah 29, verses 11–12, concerning the repeated injunction to "Read," Harris mortgaged his farm to help in the task and moved in with the Smiths. He sat on one side of a blanket hung across the kitchen, and Smith sat on the other with his translation stones, intoning through the blanket. As if to make this an even happier scene, Harris was warned that if he tried to glimpse the plates, or look at the prophet, he would be struck dead.

Mrs. Harris was having none of this, and was already furious with the fecklessness of her husband. She stole the first hundred and sixteen pages and challenged Smith to reproduce them, as presumably—given his power of revelation—he could. (Determined women like this appear far too seldom in the history of religion.) After a very bad few weeks, the ingenious Smith countered with another revelation. He could not replicate the original, which might be in the devil's hands by now and open to a "satanic verses" interpretation. But the all-foreseeing Lord had meanwhile furnished some smaller plates, indeed the very plates of Nephi, which told a fairly similar tale. With infinite labor, the translation was resumed, with new scriveners behind the blanket as occasion demanded, and when it was completed all the original golden plates were transported to heaven, where apparently they remain to this day."

As famously stated by Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), who was Hitler's Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda: "(i)f you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." His boss was too ruthless to not exploit this vulnerability one step further. In Mein Kampf (1924) Hitler declared: "In view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, the masses more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a little one."

Believe it or not: the bigger the lie, the more believable is the narrative!

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter

Part 24

10/12/2015

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 24: The Unquenchable Thirst for a Narrative

Man is a make-believe animal—he is never
so truly himself as when he is acting a part.
-WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830)

In addition to geographical and temporal determinants as outlined in Part 23 (Do We Choose a Belief or Does a Belief Choose Us?), another reason why we believe in something—rather than nothing—is our psychobiological nature. As we know, psychobiological is the adjective of psychobiology (noun) which is "the study of mental functioning and behavior in relation to other biological processes" (Merriam-Webster).

We believe in something because that something (belief, religion, ideology, whatever) provides a comforting Grand Narrative that satisfies our unquenchable thirst for one. I would go as far as stating that a narrative is perhaps the oxygen of our spiritual existence. As a matter of fact, the three super bestselling books in our civilization—the Bible, Quotations from Chairman Mao ("Little Red Book"), and the Qur'an—frame Grand Narratives which are or had been subscribed one way or another by their respective believers, whether Jews, Christians, the Chinese, or Muslims all over the world. Granted, some of these books might not have been bought voluntarily by willing readers. In fact, they might have been ordered wholesale by the Powers That Be (whether the Gideons or the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee), then efficiently distributed for maximum readership—either as required or complimentary reading available 7/24/365 in a hotel room nightstand. In any case let's give them, whoever they are, the benefit of doubt.

"Every life is in search of a narrative," argued Richard Kearney in On Stories: Thinking in Action (2002). "The narrative imperative has assumed many genres—myth, epic, sacred history, legend, saga, folktale, romance, allegory, confession, chronicle, satire, novel… But no matter how distinct in style, voice or plot, every story shares the common function of someone telling something to someone about something." It's not an exaggeration to say that the human mind needs narratives as desperately as the body needs nourishment.

And here is the interesting part: It does not matter whether that something is true or not, or whether it is based on empirical fact or fiction. "What men believe to be true is true in its consequences," claimed English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). In fact, aggregated data compiled by booksellers shows that fiction books outsell non-fiction ones by a ratio of 3 to 1. All best-selling books with approximate sales of 100 million copies or more are fiction, instead of non-fiction: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (200 million), The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (150 million), The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (140.6 million), Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (140 million), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling (107 million), And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (100 million), Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin (100 million), and She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard (100 million).

Humans being humans, they will always listen to, and even demand, stories—any story that is. This phenomenon is poignantly illustrated by Ciaran Carson in Fishing for Amber: A long Story (2000): "It was a stormy night in the Bay of Biscay and his sailors were seated around the fire. Suddenly the crew said, Tell us a story, Captain. And the Captain began, It was a stormy night in the Bay of Biscay…" Replace the word Captain with Prophet A, Guru B, Wise Man C, Chairman Mao, or Supreme Leader Kim Yong-un, and … you'll get the big picture. (I should know a thing or two about this addiction to stories, as admittedly I'm a hopeless collector when it comes to Zen parables, Sufi teaching-stories, and Taoist folktales.)

Therefore it should not be surprising that even implausible, preposterous, bizarre, and even socially taboo stories will find a willing and receptive audience. I still remember when my sociology professor lectured about cultural relativism, he underlined the fact that even though certain prehistoric cultures condone cannibalism, practically all cultures universally condemn the practice of sexual incest. Consequently we would think that a Grand Narrative that contains repeated cases of incest would be instantly trashed; right? Well, think again.

As meticulously cataloged by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1889-1951), there are no less than nineteen (19) cases of incest that are explicitly described in the most popular Grand Narrative, the Bible: Lot with his elder daughter (Genesis 19:33), Lot with his younger daughter (Genesis 19:35), Abraham with his half sister (Genesis 20:12), Nahor with his niece (Genesis 11:27, 20), Reuben with his father's concubine (Genesis 35:22, 49:4), Amram with his aunt (Exodus 6:20), Judah with his daughter-in-law (Genesis 38:16-18), Amnon with his sister (Second Samuel 13:2, 14), Absalom with his father's ten (10) concubines (Second Samuel 15:16, 16:21-22), and Herod with his sister-in-law (Mark 6:17-18). Universal condemnation? Quite the opposite; there are those who even take the Bible literally.

No wonder Argentine essayist and poet Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) once declared: "Theology is a branch of fantastic literature."

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter

Part 23

10/5/2015

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 23: Do We Choose a Belief or Does a Belief Choose Us?

In Part 6 (You are Confined Only by the Walls You Build Yourself), we started our exploration on What we believe in. Seventeen parts later on, it's now time to explore on Why we believe in what we believe in. Why do we believe in a particular religion, belief or ideology? Why do we disbelieve other things? In fact, do we choose a belief or does a belief choose us? Do we even have a choice?

There is not much choice, according to several scholars who subscribe to the golden rule of real estate: Location, Location, Location. Someone's religion depends very much on where he or she was born. In all probability that means a person is most likely a Sunni if born in Afghanistan; a Southern Baptist if in Atlanta; a Catholic if in Buenos Aires; a Hindu if in Mumbai; a Mormon if in Salt Lake City; and so on. These scholars believe—a belief in itself!—that men are products of their culture; and someone's religion, to a certain extent, is not a choice as it depends on where one was born. Call it fate or destiny, it is all a matter of one's birthplace.

And birthyear indeed. Statistically speaking, someone who was born in Moscow before the 1918 Bolshevik Revolution was most likely a Russian Orthodox Christian, but his grandson who was born in the same city during the Cold War, say in 1968, is most likely an Atheist. Surely there will always be irritating outliers. Admittedly, I'm one of those.

Born in Indonesia, which hosts the largest Muslim population in the world—12.7% of the world's Muslims, more than Pakistan (11.0%), India (10.9%), and Bangladesh (9.2%)—I was raised a Roman Catholic due to the fact that as an orphan, my father was raised in a Dutch Jesuit orphanage and sent to Catholic schools. Even if he was not an orphan, I suspect he would still not be a Muslim due to another statistical fact that the overwhelming belief of the majority of Chinese immigrants and their descendants in Indonesia (then known as Dutch East Indies) is a chaotic syncretism of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. It is not a stretch to say that one not only inherits their genes from their parents, but also their beliefs.

This does not necessarily mean that we always have to lead the same lives or lifestyles like our parents. Do we always live in the same location as our parents? Do we always have the same profession or career like them? Do we always have to root for the same sports teams like them? Then—with all due respect—why can we not have different religions than theirs? When it comes to something as important and critical as religion, do we always have to be on autopilot? Indeed religious conversion abounds.

Julia Roberts converted from Christianity to Hinduism; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Lew Alcindor) and Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) converted from Christianity to Sunni Islam; Richard Gere converted from Christianity to Buddhism; Tom Cruise converted from Christianity to Scientology; Madonna converted from Christianity to Judaism. Raised as a zealous Christian, Lin Yutang became a happy pagan, as he liked to described himself. Emperor Constantine (272-337) went the other way, converting from Roman paganism to Christianity. Joseph Stalin became an atheist in his first year at the Orthodox Seminary of Tiflis, to which he had been awarded a scholarship.

Even most of the founders of organized religions—from Buddha (Buddhism) to Jesus of Nazareth (Christianity), from Muhammad (Islam) to Joseph Smith (Mormonism), from Martin Luther (Protestantism) to Guru Nanak Dev (Sikhism), from Bahá'u'lláh (Bahá’í) to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (Ahmadiyya)—must be the biggest converts themselves. Logically, they could not have initiated new religions while simultaneously still clinging to their parents' respective old religions; could they?

So the question is: do we choose a belief or does a belief choose us? For sure we can never choose a believe, if we never contemplate on our existing personal belief. In my own case, I became an accidental Agnostic simply because once I stumbled upon the Zen Buddhist parable of Tanzan and Ekido while aimlessly browsing random books in a random bookstore in Jakarta in the mid 1970s.

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. As they came around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross at an intersection.

"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he could no longer restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

Still a practicing Catholic, I was immediately hooked by this aforementioned parable in a Zen Buddhist pocketbook, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (compiled by Paul Reps). At that time I barely knew anything about Buddhism, much less about Zen, but the parable certainly feels liberating and enlightening. I still recall holding the book in a bewildered sense of wonder, as I instantly discovered the undeniable freshness, decisiveness, and boldness in the action of Tanzan, which contrasts the stale dogmatic view and inaction of holier-than-thou Ekido. Carrying a young and lovely girl with one's innocent arms for a few minutes seems not as religiously dangerous as carrying her in one's dirty mind for the entire day. You may agree or disagree with Tanzan, but do we choose our baggage or does our baggage choose us? Likewise, do we choose our belief or does a belief choose us?

I did not shed my Catholicism immediately as the conversion and soul-searching process from Catholicism to Agnosticism happened gradually over a period of twenty years or so. There is no doubt however that the bookstore moment was truly a defining moment. In fact, in a twist of irony, I eventually embrace Agnosticism instead of Zen Buddhism, even though the catalyst for change was a Zen Buddhist parable. Indeed, all roads do not necessarily lead to Rome, or Mecca, or Varanasi, or Jerusalem.

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter

Part 26

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 26: Mob Mentality and Groupthink

Part 25

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 25: What If Adam had not Eaten an Apple?

Part 24

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 24: The Unquenchable Thirst for a Narrative

Part 23

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 23: Do We Choose a Belief or Does a Belief Choose Us?

Continuously exploring literal, semantic, idiomatic, contextual, metaphorical, symptomatic, conceptual and metaphysical meanings of everything worth thinking about.

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Part 26

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima SyndromePart 26: Mob Mentality and Groupthink

Part 25

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima SyndromePart 25: What If Adam had not Eaten an Apple?

Part 24

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima SyndromePart 24: The Unquenchable Thirst for a Narrative

Part 23

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima SyndromePart 23: Do We Choose a Belief or Does a Belief Choose Us?

Continuously exploring literal, semantic, idiomatic, contextual, metaphorical, symptomatic, conceptual and metaphysical meanings of everything worth thinking about.

Archives

Categories

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 26: Mob Mentality and Groupthink

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 25: What If Adam had not Eaten an Apple?

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 24: The Unquenchable Thirst for a Narrative

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 23: Do We Choose a Belief or Does a Belief Choose Us?