SUBTITLE: "Don't Let The Hivemind In"
Some thoughts that came to me today, as I was walking home from the supermarket. This is my daily jaunt, by the way, as there is no such thing for me, here where I live, as driving to the supermarket, stocking up for the week, loading it into the car and driving home. I very much like my excuse for a good brisk walk every day. I look forward to it. Sometime it's only for a bottle of milk and loaf of bread--sometimes I'm not even sure what it's for--but the point isn't how much to get, it's the motion and air and break from whatever project I happen to be working on. And the spring blossoms are getting really beautiful now. (Today was blustery and cold, though!)
So, the thoughts that came to me walking home today. This may be too abstract, I don't know, but let's try....
In one sentence? Okay, here it is:
You never have to perform on the inside for those on the outside.
NEVER.
Okay, what does that mean?
It means you are absolutely never beholden, morally indebted, emotionally bound, or ethically obligated to conjure up an interior psycho-emotional state, of any kind, at the command (overt or implicit) of somebody who's on the outside (hint: that means everybody who's not you--they're all on the outside).
What do I mean? I mean the way we respond to cues like, "Are you outraged at that? You should be outraged at that. Why aren't you outraged at that?!" (Cue: conjure up an "outraged" feeling on the inside to make that person on the outside happy.)
Or, "If you don't hate/love/want/long for...XYZ, there's something wrong with you." (Cue: conjure up the requisite love, hate, longing, etc., to prove to yourself there's nothing wrong with you.)
Or, "Tell me how you really feel about this, come on, open up, share your true feelings, let it out, don't be bottled up..." when in fact you understand the other person is implicitly demanding that a) you must have a feeling (and you know which one they mean), and, b) you must tell them, as if it's their sovereign right to know. (Hint: it's not.)
I take note of so much of this going on all around us all the time, in just about every group setting. Somebody tries to dictate what everybody should be feeling ("Are ya feelin'' it?"). And everyone sure does feel it--what they feel is the pressure to show they're "feelin' it," to conform to the hive, the de rigueur emotion of the moment, both to reassure themselves of their own normalcy and to keep fitting in. Because the alternative is simply too horrible. (It's really not, but the Great Delusion says it is.)
Because at such moments just about the greatest crime against humanity anybody could commit, so it would seem, is to not "resonate." The even worse one would be to say, "No, I'm not feeling it. And not interested in feeling it either, thanks."
This investment that the "hive" makes in assuring itself all the "bees" are operating on exactly the same emotional wavelength--it's an impenetrable mystery to me.
It is, too, of course, a very dangerous thing in any number of ways.
One way that immediately comes to mind is "personality cult."
That can be an actual cult-y group or organization where the leader (a narcissist, of course) succeeds in browbeating (by charm or otherwise; usually charm first, then otherwise) all the drones into constant, slavish imitation of the leader's moods.
Laugh when he laughs, be mad when he's mad, grave when he's grave, carefree when he's carefree, but always be one thing he never is: afraid. Afraid of the danger that, at some weak moment of inattention you will be, feel, want, think, something on your "inside" that isn't in his. And he'll know. That's a cult.
(The personality-cult "guru" is, of course, under the veneer, always afraid; it is the operative dirty-little-secret of all such pathological group dynamics.)
This dynamic can be "official," in some kind of collective (I'm thinking Scientology, for instance), but it can also operate in a personal, one-on-one relationship. (Hint: a relationship to flee to the hills from, pronto.)
And, too, there are ways it can and, I'm convinced, does operate on the massive sociocultural plane, where it is telegraphed to us in an infinite number of ways, every day, that we should, if we're at all worth the air we're breathing, be inwardly experiencing the program's prescribed excitement, repulsion, longing, outrage, zeal, disgust, fascination. It is the recipe for "culture-drone."
Even apathy can be imposed on us! ("Oh, you still like that?! How funny. nobody cares about that anymore, so why do you?" To which the best answer is, "Why would I tell you? Who are you?").
When you take a step back from the entire dynamic--not just some little quadrant or sector of it, but a giant step back to see the whole picture--you suddenly see what a monstrosity it is. And what wreckage it sadistically wreaks in the psyches of untold millions, billions, of people.
I suppose this relentless mutual "comparing" and interior recalibrating to satisfy exterior cues—a kind of psychoemotional territory-marking—is the language of the "hive." I have increasingly come to realize that it's not mine. I'm pretty good at multiple languages, but not that one.
