I grew up on a cattle ranch, and young cattle--especially those of about a year of age--are extremely prone to taking fright if they see another animal looking frightened, and the whole lot of them will bolt. That's known as a stampede. Contrary to popular belief, it's hard to stampede older cows. They've been around, they're wise in the ways of cows, and it's really hard to induce them to panic.
People, on the other hand, never seem to grow out of the ability to achieve wide-spread panic. Why is that? A human being is thoughtful, smart, and generally pretty capable. Put us all together en masse and we are 2 brain cells from stampeding off cliffs.
I tried looking for books on mob mentality , but the only one I found was written in 1896 by Gustave Le Bon, so he missed some of the modern day lulus, but otherwise it's still very interesting. It's an interesting book to be reading while our election process is going on.....
2 comments:
Rather an interesting topic to be reading. Rather apt for the times too. It strikes me that the Stock Market is rather prone to panicking, especially at the moment.
I agree with Mandy on this, people seem to be panicing and that too is a mob mentalilty if you ask me.
Interesting post,
Gill in Canada
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