Regardless of Age, the “Composite-mind” of the Seminar Makes You Twenty: High in Ideals, Low on Reasoning.

Over the last several years, I've gone to seminars, many seminars. Wealth. Publishing. Investing. Motivation. Marketing. And at first, I didn't think too much about crowds until I went to my last seminar.

It all culminated in an absurd, grotesque display. What I saw stunned me. Shocked me. It, well, set my hair on fire. Literally! (Only because the guy throwing his cigarette away mistook me for one of those new 6' 4" ash trays. It's a long story. Don't ask.)

What did I see, you ask?

I saw the fountain of youth.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh . . . . .

It was a wonder to be hold.

Let me take you there . . .

People of all ages, sizes, shapes, heights, and weights dancing on the stage to loud, dinosaur rock. Songs like, well, Like a Rock, Born to Be Wild (and were they!), Proud Mary, Maggie May, Respect . . . And these kids . . . errrr . . . people dancing like it was their last. I mean rockin'!

Usually, not a problem. Right? A bunch of mostly post-twenties pounding the floor with glee. It is simply a way for the crowd to get "psyched" for the speaker. The main guy. The super guru. The head honcho. The big cheese. The millionaire, mover and shaker about to lift you not only from your financial and business doldrums but to a new emotional state, a revived spiritual awakening, a mystical surge to splurge on to get you up, up, and away in your beautiful, your beautiful new ballooning euphoric state of mind. It is phenomenal. The sights! The sounds! The . . .

Wait a tic!

Settle. Settle. There was just something so wrong with all this dancing. It seemed so . . .  sad, so . . . temporary. The image of these uber-happy people didn't sit well with me. I knew that when I got out of there, when the music subsided and the dancing stopped, I and all the dancing people would be returning to the quiet, disciplined routine of the work-a-day world.

So why was all this dancing so upsetting? So grotesque? What set me to sitting quiet, barely moving, barely talking (except to the excited twenty-something the speaker had pared me with to "explore my goals"). Usually, at seminars I'm moving about, shaking hands, meeting people, giving and receiving business cards (I'm building a fourth wall to my office with them. The Greeks tore it down, I'm putting it back!)

So what's got stuck in my craw of late?

Here's the lowdown. 

According to Diall's Psychology of the Aggregate Mind of an Audience, "individuals in [an] audience . . . are reduced . . . to a single individual, whose characteristics are those of an impulsive youth of twenty, imbued in general with high ideals, but lacking in reasoning power and will" (emphasis added).

According to Joseph Jastrow's Fact and Fable in Psychology,  "Error like truth flourishes in crowds. No form of contagion is so insidious in its outset, so difficult to check in its advance, so certain to leave germs that may at any moment reveal their pernicious power, as a mental contagion. In brief, [in a crowd we see] the recognized lowering of critical ability . . . of rationality, which merely being one of the crowd induces" (emphasis added). 

A question: in attending group events, what is our chief aim? How much do we want to take away that is ours and not merely absorbed subconsciously through the hysteria of being in a hyped-up, overly emotional state? What are the dangers if while attending our "conscious personality vanishes" and we "feel, think and act in a manner quite different from that in which [we] would feel, think and act were [we] in a state of isolation." For "in crowds, it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated" (The Crowd, Le Bon).

Wow! Harsh words! Warranted? You be the judge. 

Unfortunately, oftentimes, regardless of intellect or attitude in times of solitude, or less crowded moments, when in a crowd we get sucked into the crowd mentality becoming a part of the composite individual whose intelligence and emotional control is little above that of its weakest member.

Why does all this happen? The main reason is that emotion takes over the rational mind. The crowd is governed and united by emotion rather than reason. The sum of the crowd's emotion is far greater than the sum of its individual parts. When in a crowd, one is often intimated by this greater emotional strength of the composite individual and is influenced by it and acts accordingly, often overriding any rational understanding that goes counter to what is being "felt." 

But even if you are sucked up into the moment, when you get home there is the inevitable backsliding. This backsliding is well known amongst attendees of religious revivals where the emcee uses his / her oratorical skills to emotionally manipulate the crowd into a frenzy, but when individuals return to their quiet routine there's bound to be withdrawals. The danger is that people who attend these large events oftentimes return for the "high" and become more susceptible to the suggestions being made and lose their individual, rational thought. In revivals, once the high is gone, people oftentimes become indifferent forming an aversion to true religious feelings.

In the overall scheme of things, why is this important? How does this relate to your desire for success? 

Accurate thought is one of the essential characteristics of the successful. If you are not able to control you thought, exert your will, know fact, sort out the necessary from the unnecessary, see through the smog of the mere popular, overcome mere emotion for cold, hard reason then you will be swayed by opinion drifting and shifting along a lengthy path to nowhere. Not success.

To succeed takes great disciple. Those who succeed know their goal. They weed out that which detracts. Avoid that which derails. And seeks that which attracts. You will find few if any at the top who are easily swayed. Build your mind of steel now, but work to overcome yourself first so others  won't overcome you.