I'll continue with a post I began
earlier stemming from the Karl Rove statement (from a week or two past) that "the press is not so much liberal as it is oppositional" and continuing into some thoughts on 'groupthink' and the sixties.
So let's start by defining 'groupthink'. From American Heritage:
Quote:The act or practice of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially when characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view.
From Wordnet (Princeton U):
Quote:decision making by a group (especially in a manner that discourages creativity or individual responsibility)
Seems clear...something like
- falling into agreement with a popular notion but without critical investigation or thought
- AND where any such critical investigation of the notion is held as negative or mainly negative
- AND where individuals holding the notion are discouraged from altering or re-evaluating or improving the notion on their own - "don't think for yourself" and even "don't get the notion you have any responsibility to think for yourself, we've done the thinking for you already, and if you try you'll just mess up what's already correct"
We'll all agree that sounds pretty oppressive. Do we have some examples?
I had a discussion some years back with a young lady who was speaking about the evils of clearcuts. When I asked her whether a clearcut that was forty feet by forty feet might be ok, she said all clearcuts were destructive. She wasn't able to critically think through or past the idea.
Bloom gives a wonderful example too. He mentioned that his students commonly could not get past a dogmatic moral relativism and when he would bring up a problem such as "When the Brits were in control of India, they passed a law banning the stoning of women who brought an insufficient dowry into the new husbands family. Was such a law not a moral improvement?" The responses, Bloom said, tended to be of the dilemma-evasive sort, "Well, the Brits shouldn't have been there in the first place"
But another example would be, "My nation right or wrong". Nationalist sentiment, if we look closely at those definitions again, can fit them in a most uncomfortable way. "Our country is right and critical investigation is not appreciated, thank you very much. Keep your nose out of what your betters already have in hand. Go watch a football game."
Another example would be certain sorts of religious belief, the more fundamentalist or literalist sort, the sort that holds itself to be in exclusive possession of the 'truth'. Creative interpretation of - or personal responsibility to understand the scriptures or tenets for oneself - become not an example of faith or spirituality but an example of heresy.
Partisan political membership can be another obvious example of groupthink (as defined above). "Don't question, don't complain, don't second guess...that will only hurt our enterprise...trust us always. You say anything different than we tell you to say and you are OUT!"
(more later)
