wide

GROUP-THINK AND 

WHY PERSONAL 

REALITY MATTERS

The idea that persons who look and act morally, quickly revert to immoral behavior as the members of the group is not new. Niebuhr just exposed the hypocrisy of the arguments the ruling group use to justify their favored position and to restrict the opportunities and participation of the other groups that are marginalized.  Lord John Acton's (1834-1902) famous sentence, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Letter to Bishop Creighton, April 5, 1887) reflects the same idea. In other words, the phenomenon was recognized long before fascism conducted its large-scale social experiment on German and Italian people. 

Because we cannot fathom the whole of humanity our loyalty will always be to a group. That means that the highest form of altruism will always be to sacrifice for a group. If it is in the interest of a group to coerce another group then the individuals in that first group will feel loyal and altruistic and moral coercing another group. As simple as that. The question here is limits. Absence of limits means horrible things: we can say that fascism is an ideological groupthink taken to the extreme.  But this is slightly off topic.

Reinhold Niebuhr was a moral philosopher, was one of the most significant religious thinkers this country; he is mostly known for his Serenity Prayer. The original prayer he drafted was, "God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." 

He noted that groupthink is applicable both to small groups and nations: 

"Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy. We have noted that self-deception and hypocrisy is an unvarying element in the moral life of all human beings. It is the tribute which morality pays to immorality . . . ." (95, 117, 141, 177f.)

http://bit.ly/1mDs8YJ

Sent from my iPhone