On Walking Alone.

I read this morning that Covid infections have increased by 40% in Britain in the last week, and the rise is being ascribed to the multitude of Queen’s Jubilee celebrations which took place over last weekend. I did wonder at the time whether the events were a bit premature because Covid was already showing signs of increasing, but I thought no more about it because I don’t take part in group activities. So today I asked myself why so many people do.

I suppose it’s simply an expression of the herd mentality. The human animal does naturally aspire to the process of belonging to communities, clubs and shared interest groups, no doubt because it provides a ready-made support mechanism when trouble comes calling or the weight of numbers helps to achieve a desired result.  And that’s fine; I’m not criticising it as far as it goes. The fact that I don’t personally subscribe to the herd mentality, and therefore enjoy no ready-made support mechanism, is my choice.

Interestingly, though, the one group activity I did engage with at one time was playing for sports teams. It was common at half time for the captain to give a pep talk, and I could see that the other players were sometimes inspired by it. I could never understand why because I didn’t see why one person’s rambling – however well meant and well constructed – should have any influence on my own aims and efforts. Allowing myself to be emotionally influenced by such a thing seemed unforgivably weak minded, and therein lies the clue to a major danger inherent in the herd mentality. Sometimes it steps over the mark between light and dark and becomes the mob mentality.

Probably the most obvious example was what happened in Germany in the 1930s when decent, upright, civilised people were inspired by Hitler’s rhetoric to behave abysmally towards innocent Jews. And that isn’t an indictment of Germans. It can happen anywhere, and examples can be seen in the news nearly every week and from all parts of the globe, usually engendered these days by hard line religious leaders or scurrilous rumours circulating on social media. The herd mentality switches track and produces a ravening mob insanely bent on satiating their blood lust, and the effect can be terrifying.

So how do we stop the herd becoming a mob? I don’t suppose we can because they’re both endemic in the human condition. People in the developed world are prone to imagining that such things only happen far away. ‘It couldn’t happen here,’ they say. Couldn’t it? What about the Capitol riots? Seems to me that we’re stuck with it until and unless human evolution takes us beyond it. It won’t happen in my lifetime so I’ll continue to be out of step and stay well away from the herd.