Herd Logic

“Human beings are animals whose preference for group membership is simultaneously the source of their greatest salvation and their ultimate destruction“

- Xenocrates

This group of happy campers has a rude awakening afoot. Literally.

Some people would like to think that I’m a relatively smart guy. I never really took such regards seriously as I always thought that there were many, many smarter people out there. However, the more I got involved with social debating on various issues, the more I became aware of an ubiquitous intellectual deficit that would seem to suggest that the phrase “common sense” may actually be an oxymoron.

At first, I thought the deficit was a reflection of the cognitive limitations of people in my immediate environment. But when I moved my discussions to the more public domain of the internet, I encountered the same rubbish online as I did offline. As it turns out, even on the internet, the proportion of smart vs. average remained exactly the same.

I now realise that when I perceive simple-mindedness in the folks I regularly interact with in the real world, it is not limited to my immediate geographic location. It seems that 80% of the entire human race is made from the same cognitive mold. They all have the same stupid ideas and do the same stupid things – it’s herd logic.