Benign Mass Movement Ready to Go

June 25th, 2008 Posted in Concepts, Cadre, Cadre Functions, Global Warming, Mass Movements

Mass movement: The parallel acceptance of a concept by numerous persons as a basis for action. For example: (1) When we link tobacco with cancer we give up tobacco. (2) A military attack on a city and the people flee. (3) A miraculous event and people gather to observe it. A large number of people following the same logic form a mass that acts out a similar pattern.

We call it a mass because the internal organization of the grouping can be simple. Individuals are moved to similar actions by the same understanding. Whether a more complex social order will develop or whether certain prior organizational links might exist is open. Each case will have its own unique rolling-out.

The cadre functions (of initiation, instruction, coordination, planning and such) will be present but how extensive, whether centralized or diffuse, whether formal or informal will all be open. The source and recruitment of cadre personnel will be variable.

The pattern in time and space can arise and dissipate quickly like the hula-hoop craze or it can develop slowly as happened with the shift in diet away from saturated fat–stretching out over the years.

The notion of mass movement as we are defining it here is very broad because it is so simple. I like it because it contains, while also ranging beyond, dictatorial and bureaucratic initiatives and their negations. It recognizes the possibility that the people may understand and act for themselves. The paradigm again: individuals in parallel receive (discover, realize, appreciate) the same concept (idea, theory, understanding) and act upon it.

We have to be aware that the social experiences we are calling up here are not all benign. Some mass movements are the devil’s own. Before being swept up into a movement each of us should pause and impose an ethical test. Since we share a received civilization I expect this test will be very similar for us all though with some differences around the edge.

These movements are occurring all the time. We usually do not notice because they have become conventional and institutionalized (made formal and legal). So the children go to school and the rest of us to work or leisure or whatever. We think of these doings in more specific terms and only use the idea of mass movement for our more tricky, more problematic, less established situations.

A lot of our daily lives are riven with mass movements initiated by commercial, religious, ideological, political cadres using advertising, propaganda, laws, rhetorical appeals, monetary inducements, and, in some places, violence. We are hardly conscious of these induced motives to action even though we understand how they operate.

But there are continuing opportunities for benign action minimally guided by altruistic cadres instead of the almost entirely self-interested ones who continually haunt us. I suspect we are well into the early stages of an anti-global warming and pro-greening mass movement.

We’ll move in this direction in our next post.