Gossip corrodes group cohesion, while negative group processes can feed gossip as people require an outlet for their frustrations.
On a national level, we’re observing a distressing trend. People, disillusioned by ineffective processes, are seeking outlets for their frustrations. This often leads to the scapegoating of marginalized subgroups by influential voices within the group. However, this blame game does nothing to address the root causes of their frustrations, only serving to perpetuate the cycle of negativity.
The consequence of blame-shifting leads to spiralling instability within the group and nation, as is the case with what’s happening worldwide as we experience increasing protests due to historic levels of income injustice.
The solution to this problem is two-fold: address the underlying causes (the elements negatively affecting group processes) and hold leadership accountable for de-escalating rather than escalating group negativity. It’s crucial that we, as a society, hold our leaders responsible for their actions to empower positive change.
On a national scale, we are struggling precisely because of the messaging we are all receiving from all fronts, including political leaders, leaders in our information brokering system (media), and our captains of industry. All forms of leadership in society today are primarily responsible for the increasing destabilization we are experiencing today of what we refer to as a “civilized society.”
We live in a world where those most responsible for ensuring group cohesion act in service to their best interests at the expense of becoming the underlying causes of group destabilization.
We are deliberately inundated with negative messaging because it serves the shallow interests of the few among us with too much power who view the rest of us as pawns in service to their whims. This is a practice of mollifying a public that has existed since the dawn of human civilization and has been taken to new extremes in today’s interconnected world in our information age.
Messaging has become the modern equivalent of tanks on a battlefield where the prize to be won and the territories to be controlled are the minds of the little people who serve as pawns in their games of power.
“All other things being equal, messages received in greater volume and from more sources will be more persuasive.”
Russia’s “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model
Since its 2008 incursion into Georgia, there has been a remarkable evolution in Russia’s approach to propaganda. Effective solutions can be found in the same psychology literature that explains the Russian propaganda model’s surprising success.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
Fortunately, we can refuse the negativity directed toward our fellow victims because we outnumber the few who seek control over the many and because we can lose our ability to make our own determinations about the future we want by willingly handing over control of our minds to those who would seek to sublimate all of human society to servants in thrall to their whims.
We can reject gossip and demand adherence to the primacy of facts from all our leaders, politicians, media empires (the Fourth Estate), and plutocrats.
If they don’t obey the wishes of the masses, then we can organize and make them follow the social contract they are beholden to and obey the needs of the societies they benefit from.
thotbag 