Power of groups

After exploring power and leadership for two weeks, I am still not sure about research question, but things are developing.

This week, I am thinking about power of groups. It sounds so far from our daily life , but actually It happens everyday for everyone. It’s not that big , some tiny things like obey the traffic rule, wearing fashion clothes etc. are related to power of groups. We are influenced by it everyday, but we have never thought about it. Why we follow? There are two kinds of reasons to explain this question, we conform because of our lack of knowledge , also because we want to be liked by the group or we want to be the same as others , we don’t want to be so different. It is not always a bad thing, it also can be good. The laws of society need people to follow.

There are many historical event about power of groups and following. There is a political revolution called the Cultural Revolution took place in China from 1966 to 1976 . It lasted for 10 years and it made China a total mess. The original purpose of it was making communist party pure and prevent capitalism taking over China again . But as time went by, it became much more complicated. People began to use power to do things for their own benefit, they used this chance to revenge their enemies. In that revolution, people must follow, people must say a saying of chairman Mao before talking to prove you are for for Mao. If you are against communist party and Mao, you will be followed and you don’t even know what will happen to you and your family. Many people didn’t want to take part in that revolution at first, but they joined it at last because of the pressure of group, they didn’t want people say they are not faithful to the communist party. In that situation, people lose their ability to think and to judge. All they think is how to make themselves safe and followed what others are doing. The world will become terrible if people don’t have ability to judge whether what they are doing is right or not. The difference between animals and human beings is humans have ability to judge , if we lose that ability ,we become animals. There is a evil living in everyone’s mind. Let’s imagine if we can not control them any more, what will happen? The same things happened in Lord of the Flies, when the evil in those kids’ mind were released, they can not be called kids anymore, they became beast.

In World War 2, people who were using their guns to kill people kill lives might not even think about what are they doing and why . They may just want to be praised by their leaders and make their career better .So they just did it. Many soldiers who took part in the war are sorry about what they have done before when they look back. It proves how strong the power of group is. When they were in the group, they don’t have ability to realize the truth or even though they know it, they just let it go because of the pressure of the group. But when they get out of the group, when they calm down to think about all the things, they regret.

All these thing tell us that before we do anything, think twice carefully. Make sure what you are going to do is right rather than just follow without thinking.Don’t think history will not repeat, there are many possibilities for it to repeat.What we need to do is try our best to prevent those mistakes by looking through and learning lessons from history.

Category: power | 1 Comment

August 23

Is the strength through discipline good or not?

Last week when I finished reading The wave. A question came to my mind. I believe everyone who have ever read this book will have the same type of thinking . Is the strength through discipline good or not? Or what will happen if one person has power? What if a group of people have power without a good leader ?

It also tells me how easily can people lose their mind under the pressure of a group. It makes me kind of understand how did Nazi form and why they did so many horrible things but no one in Germany want to stop them or dare to stop them, and everyone pretended not to see or hear. The process of forming of both The wave and Nazi are kind of the same.

Let’s talk about The wave first, it all begins from a history class experiment. At first it seems to be a good thing, everyone is well-behaved. Not only in history class, but also in other classes in school. The students in that class become crazy about The wave . They persuade other students to join The wave. In a short time , a class of students become a grade of students then become almost a school of students in just a few days. Then some unexpected thing happened. The member of The wave don’t allow the non-member of it to see the football game. Some of them revenge the non-member if they refuse to join The wave. The symbol of The wave is everywhere in school. They hold assembly for the member of The wave. Everything loses control. No one dare to say bad things about The wave.

The same thing happened in Nazi Germany. No one dare to say no in that situation. It seems that everyone is equal in an organization. But in some way, it means you don’t have your own mind, you lose your ability to think, think whether everything is right or wrong. You just follow, do the same thing as others. The world will become horrible when no one has their own mind, when people don’t even know who are they following and why.

And it’s also about power, if one person has power, there may be someone who dare to question or say no. But if a group people have power, it becomes much more stronger. No one dare to say no then, because now you are under the pressure of a whole group. When people have power at first, they will value it and use it well. When they get used to having power , they begin to use it for personal benefit. Almost everyone will do it. Greedy is a part of humanity. Now imagine if a group of people all have the same power, because they are equal in an organization. They all use power to get their own benefit. What will happen? It might be the reason why Nazi did so many bad things but no one stand out to stop them.

It’s the strength through discipline.