"Page0018" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bloom Howard - The Lucifer Principle (htm))

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But if the stress response is such a marvelous tool for self defense,

why is it so disabling?  Why do stress reactions shut down our thought

processes, cripple our immune system, and occasionally turn us into

stupefied blobs of jelly?  How do these impairments help us survive?

The answer: they don't.  Men and animals do not merely struggle

to maintain their individual existence.  They are members of larger social

groups.  And all too often, it is the social unit, not the individual, whose

survival comes first.

At first glance, our dependence on our fellow human beings

sounds encouragingly angelic.  But it is a blessing with a barb.  Harvard

psychologist Daniel Goleman, paraphrasing Nietzsche, says

"Madness...is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups."3   A

study by social psychologist Bryan Mullen shows that the larger the

lynch mob the more brutal the lynching.4  Freud declares that groups are

"impulsive, changeable and irritable."  Those caught up within them, he

asserts, can become infantile slaves to emotion, "led almost exclusively

by the unconscious."5  Swept up by the emotions of a crowd, humans

tend to lose their ethical restraints.  As a result, the greatest human evils

are not those that individuals perform in private--the tiny transgressions

against some arbitrary social standard we call sins.  The ultimate evils

are the mass murders that occur in revolution and war, the large-scale

savageries that arise when one agglomeration of humans tries to

dominate another.  They are the deeds of the social group.

The social pack, as we shall see, is a necessary nurturer.  It gives us

love and sustenance.  Without its presence, our mind and body literally

switch on an arsenal of interior devices for self-demolition.  If we ever

save ourselves from the scourge of mass violence, it will be through the

efforts of millions of minds, networked together in the collaborative

processes of science, philosophy, and movements for social change.  In

short, only a group effort can save us from the sporadic insanities of the

group.

12

12

But if the stress response is such a marvelous tool for self defense,

why is it so disabling?  Why do stress reactions shut down our thought

processes, cripple our immune system, and occasionally turn us into

stupefied blobs of jelly?  How do these impairments help us survive?

The answer: they don't.  Men and animals do not merely struggle

to maintain their individual existence.  They are members of larger social

groups.  And all too often, it is the social unit, not the individual, whose

survival comes first.

At first glance, our dependence on our fellow human beings

sounds encouragingly angelic.  But it is a blessing with a barb.  Harvard

psychologist Daniel Goleman, paraphrasing Nietzsche, says

"Madness...is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups."3   A

study by social psychologist Bryan Mullen shows that the larger the

lynch mob the more brutal the lynching.4  Freud declares that groups are

"impulsive, changeable and irritable."  Those caught up within them, he

asserts, can become infantile slaves to emotion, "led almost exclusively

by the unconscious."5  Swept up by the emotions of a crowd, humans

tend to lose their ethical restraints.  As a result, the greatest human evils

are not those that individuals perform in private--the tiny transgressions

against some arbitrary social standard we call sins.  The ultimate evils

are the mass murders that occur in revolution and war, the large-scale

savageries that arise when one agglomeration of humans tries to

dominate another.  They are the deeds of the social group.

The social pack, as we shall see, is a necessary nurturer.  It gives us

love and sustenance.  Without its presence, our mind and body literally

switch on an arsenal of interior devices for self-demolition.  If we ever

save ourselves from the scourge of mass violence, it will be through the

efforts of millions of minds, networked together in the collaborative

processes of science, philosophy, and movements for social change.  In

short, only a group effort can save us from the sporadic insanities of the

group.