Group thinking and things I've learned along the way

As those who know me know, I don't like group thinking. I don't like being told how or what to think by well-meaning but ultimately know-it-all groups. I never have, even when I was a child in school. I prefer being able to weigh both sides of a societal or political issue in the peace and quiet of my private space. In solitude. I don't want anyone explaining a situation to me unless I have specifically asked for advice about it. Does that make me difficult to live with? At times, probably. However, when it comes to personal issues, I am very loyal to those I care about. I'll side with them, no questions asked, unless what they've done or are doing is of a truly criminal nature. But again, loyalty is a personal decision, not a group one. If I make a mistake concerning this, I'm the only one who has to answer for it. 

Given the current political climate, I'm glad I don't subscribe to group thinking. I'm glad I don't belong to one political party. I'm glad that I try to think for myself, to reason things out based on the information and news available. But there's the rub. Where to get unbiased news and information? It's getting harder and harder each day. So what do I do? I read newspapers and articles from both sides of the political spectrum. I remain politically independent. I don't belong to either major political party. In the current political climate, some might call that cowardly. I call it smart. You're not going to force me to hand over my intelligence to a mob. I'm not interested in mob thinking. Again, I've been like this for many years, since grammar school. Since I sat at the dinner table when I was a teenager and debated the important political issues with my father, who was both intelligent and kind. We two were the only ones interested in doing this in my family. I'm glad I got that training from him. We didn't always agree, but I learned to discuss and debate an issue and to defend my ways of thinking. Sometimes I changed my mind if I saw the wisdom in the other's point of view. But that was the point, we were able to discuss and debate, something that is long-gone in our current society. Nowadays, if someone disagrees with you, especially on social media or online, you'll find yourself the recipient of a barrage of hate comments, troll comments, laughter emojis or anger emojis. I have yet to read a comment that says 'hey, that's an interesting point. Thanks for posting. You gave me something to think about'. One of the reasons I closed the ability to comment on my blog was because the comments were either spam-like or downright hostile. One of the last ones I received from an anonymous (of course) poster before I shut the comments section said that he/she wished that I would die. I've got to wonder why, since I certainly don't set out to offend anyone when I write my posts. But I'm certainly not going to tolerate such things or even pursue them. My blog, my rules. If you don't like what I write, feel free to go elsewhere for your entertainment.

Things I've learned, especially during the last ten years--

• Those who shout the loudest are usually those who have little to say, or nothing to say that's of any value. You can shout in my face, be aggressive or threatening, and I'm still not going to convert to your way of thinking. I will 'listen' to you, as in, my eyes will be focused on your face and you will think I'm listening to you, but I'm really not. I learned that technique in the third grade when a teacher, who was particularly odious, singled out her pet scapegoats for her particular brand of mobbing. She was a bully, and the school let her continue as a teacher. Her modus operandi was to instill fear; she succeeded with some students, I'm sure. She only succeeded in awakening an anger in me that can truly scare even me when it is fully unleased. And I learned to unleash it as an adult. You would not like to be in my presence if you have wronged me or another that I care about. Why am I so preoccupied with fairness and justice for others? I need only think back to that teacher and how she treated some fellow students, and I know why. Or I think back to a time when I was treated poorly by another. You would not like to know some of the thoughts that ran through my head at those times. But then, I could not act on my anger. I was a child/young adult, and I was constrained by my upbringing ('be nice') and my religion ('be kind to others'). It took a long time to understand that anger is a good emotion, and when used correctly, can actually be helpful in changing your current situation or changing your life. 
• The above post also applies to those priests who like to bark out their sermons from the pulpit. Who think they know best. Do you win me over with your fire and brimstone sermons? You do not. And as many of you know, I have been (and remain) in non-agreement with some of the positions that my religion stubbornly will not discuss (female priests and married priests). And I was and remain furious with them for not prosecuting their pedophile priests, however small the number, for the criminals they were and are. The church, as my father used to say, is not infallible. It is filled with fallible men, and that must be understood.
• I don't particularly like bureaucracies (just ask my former colleagues), but I've come to admit that they are necessary. Yes, some of them are too big. No, I don't think that they should be completely dismantled. What happens when you do the latter? You disrupt a society that needs bureaucracies in order to function, a society where some of its people rely on disability and/or welfare payments, health insurance, etc. We are not all wealthy billionaires. I only object to bureaucracies when they micromanage all aspects of people's lives and/or careers and when they try to convert non-bureaucrats (e.g. scientists, doctors) to a bureaucratic way of thinking, which is what happened in my former workplace. 
• Disruption and creating chaos are tactics to get a society to accept group thinking. Think about it. If you disrupt the functioning of a society and create chaos, and then you come along as the great leader who will save society, you gain followers. They think, oh, the savior has arrived. I will follow him or her. I will be loyal to him or her, and I will badmouth all the others who try to stop him or her.
• Social media and the AI algorithms that power them play a huge role in the creation of group thinking. Take Facebook, for example. If you like a particular group or page, your feed will be inundated with posts having to do with that particular topic (in my case--gardens and gardening). If you extrapolate to political posts, you'll find that if you click 'like' on some 'leftist' or 'rightist' post, your feed will suddenly be filled with posts from left-leaning or right-leaning newspapers and organizations. After a time, that is all that you will read or focus on. And the algorithms are clever, they'll always find a new group for you to peruse and agree with. I call it subtle brainwashing. It's the same with tv; if you watch one channel that pushes a right-wing agenda, you'll eventually end up thinking like them if that's your only source of information. Why do the right-wing stations think they're the only ones who present 'the facts and the truth'? How do they 'know' that? They don't, but they're telling you that they're the only ones who know the truth and have the real facts. It's insidious. And the left-wing channels do the same, they're no better. 
• Group thinking leads to intolerance of other ways of thinking. Think about it. Each time we are 100% certain that our way of thinking is the 'right' way of thinking, we close the door to others. We close the door to diverse ways of thinking, to innovative and creative solutions to problems. We close the door to compassion and empathy. The woke movement, while it may have been well-meaning at the start, has also become intolerant of those who don't accept its ways of thinking. It is possible to believe a certain way and have the intelligence to understand that those who think and believe differently are still worthy of our respect and empathy. If this is not the case, what is the definition of civilization and humanity?
• Schools should teach students how to think critically and objectively in order to face an ever-increasing polarization of society. As far as I can see, they do not at present. They have abdicated that role. Parents must therefore try to fill the gap. But they are often tired and without time to do so. I think back to my father's role in my life. He did that job. He taught me to think critically and objectively, even when he was very tired, and I love him for it. There should be more men like my father in the world. 

Where does the buck stop?

I don’t know that I was ever very good at working in a team setting where all members of the team had equal input and worked together on one project or sub-project. I did not enjoy this when I was younger, and I don’t really enjoy it now. I am not comfortable with ‘shared leadership’ or having to report to multiple ‘leaders’. I come from a generation that feels more comfortable with one leader who plans and delegates individual projects/sub-projects to the different group members, each of whom will then be responsible for his or her specific task. But it is the group leader who has the ultimate responsibility for the outcome of a project or new venture, because it is that person who planned it and delegated it. In other words, it is important to me that each person in a group understands his or her function and role in the group, and can proceed accordingly with the tasks in front of them. I think that each member of a group should have responsibility for a project or a sub-project, and that the success of that project or sub-project is dependent primarily on individual input, not on teamwork. Your contribution to the team is your piece of work. A bit daunting perhaps, but the feelings of responsibility and happiness from a successful project outcome are worth their weight in gold. You progress intellectually from such experiences, and that in my opinion should be a goal in the workplace. I have been a group member who was given responsibility for specific projects, and I have been a group leader who has done the same with the people who worked for me. From the feedback I received from them at that time, I know that each person was satisfied with his or her individual projects. There was no overlap between projects, so there was no danger of one person feeling as if his or her project was merely a regurgitation of someone else’s project, or worse still, ‘busy work’ that was of little to no interest to anyone. That is the worst feeling of all—that what you are asked to do is just busy work and not really important overall. If someone hit a roadblock, I discussed the problems in detail with the person involved, not with all members of the group. I did not feel that it was up to the other members of the group to solve whatever problems arose for one of the group members; that was my job as leader. I still feel that way. Group members may talk among themselves, suggest different ways of tackling a situation or problem, but in the end, the decision about what to do was mine to make after discussing the problem or setback with the person involved. This is my approach and I am relatively unapologetic about it.

I chose to write about this today because I saw a poster ad for a new TV show the other day that essentially says the following: ‘when you are faced with one of life’s most important decisions, thirty heads are better than one’. There is a picture of a young woman standing in front of a group of about thirty individuals, to emphasize the fact that no important decisions should be made alone or in a vacuum. This does not resonate with me at all; I think it’s quite ok to ask others for advice, but asking thirty people for such advice seems a bit much to me. To then require that they help me make a crucial decision that affects my life seems untenable; it would never cross my mind to behave like this. An important decision that affects my life is mine to make, and mine alone. Of course this means that I alone bear the responsibility for a bad decision, but that’s the way life works. One head or thirty heads cannot ensure the perfect outcome to a decision, because we don’t live in a perfect world. There is no such thing as a perfect decision or a perfect outcome. You take a risk each time you make a decision; you also take a risk in the sense of knowing that you must live with the ramifications of your decision. It is possible to learn from mistakes or bad decisions, although as I get older, I don’t look at my bad decisions as mistakes; they were simply bad decisions that in many cases were rectifiable. You are allowed in this life to make another decision to counteract a bad one. Nothing is set in stone. We are flexible individuals who change and grow with the years. If we stay fluid, we don’t trap ourselves in outmoded ways of thinking and behaving.

I guess what bothers me about this particular ad is the emphasis on group thinking. It makes me nervous, because it seems to me that we are giving away our personal responsibility for our decisions to others; we are in essence diluting out our personal responsibility. We can always blame ‘the group’ if things go wrong. In this way, we don’t have to feel bad about the outcome of ‘our’ decision. But is this a good thing in the long run? If we extend this type of thinking to the workplace, what are the long-term effects? Who has the ultimate responsibility? Should there be one person who sits with that responsibility? President Harry Truman had a plaque on his desk that said ‘the buck stops here’. I have more respect for that type of thinking than for a plaque that would say ‘the buck stops here, but also in the next office, and in the office down the hall, and in the office after that’.

There are ‘too many chiefs and not enough Indians’ in modern workplaces. That may reflect to a large degree the complexity involved in running modern workplaces in today’s world, most of which are too large. But it’s gotten confusing—confusing to try to figure out who you should talk to when there is a question or a problem. If I want to or attempt to solve a problem myself, I am discouraged from doing so. We are informed that there are others we should talk to—this or that office or department that deals with this or that. So yes, I attempt to contact them, in accordance with company policies. I speak to one person, who then refers me further on in the ‘chain of command’. It’s often difficult to get an answer or a solution to a problem, such that the problem or question is then put on my ‘to do’ list (which is essentially my ‘must wait indefinitely’ list). In this way, problems ‘go away’; there are no problems when you cannot get the answers. It’s a type of contradictory logic that leads to an obstructional workplace. I’m sure there are many such workplaces these days, characterized by multiple levels of leadership, ‘team leadership’, group thinking, dilution of responsibility, confusion as to who’s in charge, too much bureaucracy, and systemic obstruction. Ultimately, these organizations will come to a standstill after a while in terms of innovation and efficiency. If the problems arise from the fact that most companies are too large, then I am all in favor of returning to smaller and better-run companies, where it is clear to all who work there who the leader is and where the buck stops. And I am all in favor of working at a job that is clearly-defined and not to be shared with others; not diluted out to the point that there is little point left in doing that job. ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’, as the old saying goes. It’s true.