I can calculate the motion of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people”, said Sir Isaac Newton. Humans are basically those who carry emotions on their heads. Response and Reaction is the twin edged tool they use to convey their thoughts, feelings and emotions to an input, a communication, to a stimulus and a provocation. Such inputs could be in the form of materials or messages that impact them either personally or collectively. The basic urge to respond or react is born out either fear, insecurity, a survival need or an opportunity for expansion and growth. Oftentimes, these get blended with the derivatives like satisfaction, joy, happiness, entertainment or an urge to establish their identity through performance, gaming or authority. Such tendencies are largely dominated by amygdaline outputs and hence are either soaked in or colored with emotions.
These input- output systems work both at the individual level or at a collective level. Collective responses and reactions in early times have led to the formulation of societies and communities, and through them to the formulation of institutions like families, religion, castes and nationalities. In social and economic domains, they have been the driving forces for culture, heritage, art forms and markets. Collective expression of thoughts, feelings and emotions have designed several political and institutional philosophies. In soft terms, they have been guiding forces for social controls, organizational structures, defined economies and articulation of safe havens for existence.
There has always been a war between reason and emotions. While emotions have a great fluidity and hence seek to own and establish their priority, the reason takes a little lesser traveled road. It is said that reason is all blade wth no handle. Consequently, emotions tend to defeat logic on many occasions. Thus, we have a problem between ‘collective wisdom’ and ‘collective emotions.’ Collective wisdom calls for a debate, a consensus, a reason to be fair, ethical and accommodating, collective emotions play the game of a cyclone, a tornado or when left uncontrolled, a Tsunami! They have the power to sweep the earth in shorter span of time as compared to collective reasoning and wisdom, when they are allowed to display their latent power.
Neuro-cognitive psychologists are yet to establish the role of ‘mirror neurons’ in the design and role-play of collective madness, though their role in the design and execution of social intelligence has well been argued by Daniel Goleman. Nevertheless, the social psychologists have studied in depth about collective emotions leading to collective madness. When collective emotions fail to self-regulate and work on a ‘chain-reaction’ model as in the nuclear reactions, they become explosive losing focus, purpose and gainful objectives.
Playing on collective madness of people has been a ball game both for politicians and social strategists. Market leaders, in recent times, have taken adequate advantage of playing with the emotive behaviour of societies to turn things around both for good and bad. In political terms, collective madness (not really wisdom) has led to social-reengineering, change of political structures and re-defining borders, customs and philosophies, some of them have realized the lack of wisdom sooner than later. Such changes have oftentimes impacted the economic fabric of those societies.
Thanks to the latest breakthrough in communications and information processing, the speed of communication has touched unimaginable levels and territories. This flow of information has been a trigger for immediate responses and reactions by individual and communities. The speed of responses and reactions have now left less time to think effectively, contextually and objectively. Further the authenticity of information, the truth of the source of information have left many in serious doubt – because in many occasions volatile responses and reactions to such triggers have caused social anxiety, stress, chaos and violence, thus empowering ‘collective madness’ rather than ‘collective wisdom’.
Many Market leaders have played a significant role in taking advantage of ‘the collective madness’ – to seed ideas, desires, opportunities, scope for their product, triggering a desire for change, a need for the product, provoking a ‘self-image’ with the possession of the product – thus developing a ‘tribal culture’ with the product tribes.
Some of the features of ‘collective madness’ that have impacted the consumerist tendencies are:
1. We have moved from “need based desire” to “desire-based need.” In simple terms, we need a product whether we actually need or not, just because we have to desire to own it.
2. From the personal need for a product, we have moved to a collective need. In other words, we need the product because we become a part of the community that owns it.
3. We have moved from personal identity profiles to product identity profiles. We try to project our identity through the products that we own rather than our personal traits.
4. We use the ‘product profiles and brands’ as symptoms of our social image and our economic status, though in real terms they are not true.
5. We try to ‘consume’ products and services which are absolutely irrelevant and makes no meaning to our lives, to demonstrate that we traveling on the same boat like the chosen few or who have entirely different needs.
6. We try to establish our relevance by the ‘currency’ of the product rather than the utility of the product. Many consumers feel delighted to show off the current product though its intrinsic value may not be much different from their earlier models.
7. We tend to play the role of the ‘early birds’ by advancing our needs to own the products soon on their arrival as it not only satisfies our ego, but also to send a message of leadership through ownership, which is absolutely false and untrue.
8. Developing an anticipatory need for a product and anxiety to develop the circumstances and the need to own, have led to consumerist stress with psychological trauma.
9. Social networks have facilitated connectivity but the myth of popularity through connect has caused false social and personal images leading to psychological disorders.
10. Oftentimes, misconceptions about relationships and personal images through unknown numbers in social networks have created a ‘falsehood’ about our realities.
There are many facets of collective madness in consumerism. Markets do take advantage of this changing social psyche, thereby reducing the life-cycle of products so that a constant need is kept in the market minds to consume in a continuous manner.
The collective madness is further facilitated by ‘credit facilitation’ thereby engaging the consumer to a continuing debt, as a part of the life process. There have been arguments that such tendencies have helped in social-reengineering to bring better equity and social justice among the consumers. While the argument should not be sidelined, it is important to understand that ‘collective madness in consumerism’ also impacts the social health of a community.
Collective madness has also impacted the social engineering through the selective treatments to knowledge domains by communities and thus losing a holistic perspective of the futuristic vision of the society, oftentimes leading to undesirable social polarization causing restlessness, aggression and impatience in their architecture.
It will be a great idea to use collective emotions in an organized and coordinated manner to positively position the social dynamics and wherever necessary inducting rules that would regulate uninhibited collective madness.
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