Imagine No Mobs

Neither with the crowd nor against it.

Stand gently aside as it reflexively spasms, wound into tension, maleducated, misled, and manipulated by the finest propaganda ever produced, from institutions highly skilled in manufacturing consent.

The mob has a recognized need to express mental anguish in whatever form they find pleasing.

So too do leaders have a legitimate desire or paid sponsor for whom they must stir crowds into frenzied anger based on imaginary claims, lies, misrepresentations, and preposterously false promises. Believers are in need of incredible claims to believe, never to scrutinize carefully, and leaders must give them the fantasy they crave, complete with catechisms to repeat in public.

Crowds are receptively coerced to the hate their leaders need them to feel, to unify against those who must be keeping them down by conspiring and plotting against them. Whatever their leaders tell them to fear is a monstrous threat and opposed by any means necessary. Together all petty bullies can tear down unwelcome standards of civilization. Their leaders will protect them from any looming dangers, whether one's own shadow or monsters under the bed.

Some want revenge against nature for its cruel inequity, yet few leaders demonstrate control over nature or ability to enact harmless circumvention of nature's laws. Still they promise it with no mention of the consequences of such attempts.

Leaders know appeal to reason is a waste of time, as reason produces little emotional effect and voting is concerned with quantity of opinion, never quality. Quantity must be increased, for obvious reasons.

For individuals, the honor code silently remains in force. You cannot copy the answers of another, nor would you want to. They are not your answers.

Socialized people conform easily, converging diverse opinions into a single form, sheering off nuance, differences, and purpose until opinions are essentially copied, thoughtlessly mimicking the beliefs of shills, entertainers, and useful idiots - without having provoked a single thought.

If honor was still expected, and thus an honor code, each person positing an answer would have to assess the problem at hand and then measure the character and fitness of prospective solutions.

Modern discourse avoids function and substance, instead focusing on measuring feelings rather than results, and then manipulating feelings with scenarios that promote the exception over the rule, favor images over sober consideration of the whole, and dwell on feelings for phony, irrelevant, or freak cases instead of careful responsibility for lasting consequences.

The latest incarnation of the machine is effective but hardly omnipotent as it depends on a willingness to obey and accepting slogans as legitimate communication. Dissenters who ignore advertising or perceive it as a paid presentation of lies representing the opposite of reality will be largely immune to its action.

The crowd is amassed for unified action and belief without any idea why or what is likely to happen. Insanity fuses with dishonesty to produce mass madness.

You'd never want to be part of a mob, majority, or political party.