Stupidity in numbers

By A.ASOHAN

Individuals may be idealistic, smart and articulate – until they join a group.

The late grandmaster Isaac Asimov bequeathed two great legacies to the world of science fiction: His three laws of robotics, and his fictional take on the science of “psychohistory”.

In the mundane world, psychohistory is the study of historical events using psychological motivation as its lens. In Asimov’s version, it is a predictive science that uses a combination of psychology and sociology, with a mathematical underpinning using the laws of statistics.

In simpler terms, Asimov posited that you could predict what was going to happen to a society using mathematical formulae. In his Foundation series, the psychohistory pioneer Hari Seldon, with his calculations and foresight, guided the fate and future of an entire galactic civilisation through a few millennia using this tool.

Asimov used gas and the kinetic theory of physics as an analogy – it’s extremely difficult to predict the movement, actions and reactions of a single molecule of gas, yet we can analyse the entirety with a high degree of accuracy.

Sociology, psychohistory – all sciences devoted to studying groups – are all predicated on the belief that while individuals are impossible to pin down, they’re very shallow and easily manipulated when you put enough of them together.

That single devotee of any religion may strive to be forgiving, caring and compassionate. A group of them, however, sees nothing wrong in killing non-believers despite their religion’s teachings to the contrary. Adherents of the faith may be tolerant and accepting; institutions are rarely so. Devotees can find strength in themselves and in their divinity; organisations are usually scared and insecure.

Individual Thais are among the gentlest, warmest, and most gracious people you could ever meet; groups of them were throwing petrol bombs at each other in the capital of Bangkok earlier this week.

While some may truly understand the issues involved – their right to their own government, among others – the rest are just being manoeuvred by media-savvy politicians who know which buttons to push.

Most individual Americans I’ve met have high ethical standards, yet as a society they re-elected a president whose administration saw nothing wrong in invading another land under false pretences, or torturing civilian suspects by just labelling them enemy combatants, or trampling upon civic liberties – in fact, in destroying just about everything the United States stands for.

I have no doubt that many who took part in the illegal assembly organised by the outlawed Hindu Rights Action Force in November of 2007 were genuinely concerned about the marginalisation of an entire cross-section of Malaysian society, and how their plight has been neglected for so many decades.

Yet, going by many photographs on the Internet, some held placards of Mahatma Gandhi in one hand while pelting coppers with stones with the other.

Again, individuals may have been cognisant of the Mahatma’s non-violent non-cooperation model of civil disobedience in India’s struggle for independence, but too many in that group just saw an icon that could be manipulated for emotive oomph.

What an injustice to a great leader. Sure, we can’t expect everyone to have read the dozens of biographies on the Mahatma, but perhaps a required screening of Richard Attenborough’s 1982 multiple award-winning Gandhi may have been in order. Who could not be moved by the scene of the salt march, when demonstrators lined up to be savagely beaten by British troops, all without lifting a single finger in retaliation?

In the movie, the American journalist Walker (Martin Sheen) calls in his story over the telephone, his voice taut and broken with emotion: “They walked, with heads up, without music, or cheering, or any hope of escape from injury or death.

“It went on and on and on. Women carried the wounded bodies from the ditch until they dropped from exhaustion. But still it went on.

“Whatever moral ascendance the West held was lost today. India is free ... for she has taken all that steel and cruelty can give, and she has neither cringed nor retreated.”

Then we come to our local politicians (you knew we would come to this sooner or later, didn’t you?). How many times have we seen a young, charismatic and idealistic young person full of promise join a political party and suddenly become – there’s no other word for it – stupid?

Sure, I know all about playing to the gallery and toeing the party line. I accept none of it as an excuse.

Man is a social animal, true. We need our families, clans, tribes, communities, societies, condominium management committees, and autonomous collectives (despite the violence inherent in the system, as those chaps in Monty Python would tell you).

One’s a person, two’s company, three’s a crowd, four has a certain symmetry, and anything above is a mob. And as the Greek philosopher Diogenes said, the mob is the mother of tyrants.

He was being kind. John Dryden, the 17th century English poet and playwright, said it even better: “A mob is the scum that rises upmost when the nation boils.”

So what can I say? Being in a group is nice, but maintain your individuality. After all, it is what makes you, well, you.

- THE STAR