Chapter 2

GROUPTHINK, THE BORG, AND THE CULT OF THE INDIVIDUAL

In the group, I experienced a kind of consciousness that was almost a singularity, like a dropping of personalities and a joining together where there was no sense of conflict. Nobody was in opposition and everybody was just helping each other. It became obvious that we weren't responding to individual personalities but were responding to something much deeper, much more real in each other that was collective, something that we shared—a commonality, really. There was a tremendous sense of listening and awareness that was much greater and much more vast than anything I've ever experienced. And with that experience came a sense that there was just one body in the room.¹

Of course, for most of us in the contemporary west, the idea of becoming part of a “group mind” hardly sounds inviting. In a postmodern culture that has elevated individuality, independence, and autonomy to near-sacred status, the thought of a “collective consciousness” is likely to send many of us running for the nearest mountaintop. What Star Trek fan would disagree that of all the formidable foes faced by Captain Picard and the Next Generation crew, none was as intimidating as the “collective entity” known as “The Borg”? Traveling from planet to planet, “assimilating” every intelligent species it encountered into its own ever-expanding communal mind, this archenemy of interplanetary biodiversity was not only a cleverly imagined cosmic villain but also a clear reflection of our cultural wariness around anything resembling group consciousness. A wariness that's not unwarranted.

From the witch hunts of the Middle Ages to the great social experiments of the past century, history has shown us more than enough evidence of the horrors that groups can perpetrate when mobilized behind a destructive ideology. And in case Nazism and Stalinism hadn't struck quite close enough to home for those of us in the democratic West, in 1972, Yale psychologist Irving Janis sounded a wake-up call to us all with his landmark study on the dangers of “groupthink.” Analyzing some of the major U.S. foreign policy fiascoes of the mid-twentieth century, Janis demonstrated that the forces that drive collectives to bad and sometimes perilous decisions were alive and well, even in groups driven by more wholesome aspirations. In cohesive decision-making groups of all kinds, Janis found, our most basic social drives for belonging and acceptance become magnified, giving rise to an unhealthy climate of conformity in which important questions never get asked.

There may, however, be more to our cultural paranoia around groups than meets the eye. For, upon closer examination, our resistance to being part of a collective reveals itself to be rooted in something more fundamental than a fear of coming to a misguided decision, or even of being swept into dangerous collective madness. Is not our most basic fear of collectives a fear of losing our individuality, our autonomy—and thus, our freedom—in the group? As the Borg story makes clear, it is hard for most of us to imagine a collective consciousness that does not inherently suppress our independence, our liberty to think and act for ourselves. And while at first glance this fear seems well-founded, it does beg an important question: How independent are we really?

Insightful observers, from anthropologist Gregory Bateson to Gautama the Buddha, have been telling us for millennia that despite our perception of ourselves as “independent thinkers,” most of us rarely, if ever, have a truly independent thought pass through our heads. In describing culture as “an ecology of mind,” Bateson illuminated the fact that our thinking is, on the deepest level, conditioned by the narratives of the social environment in which we live. As consciousness researcher Chris Bache explains it, “While individuality is extremely precious and extraordinarily important from an evolutionary perspective, if you look carefully at what that individuality is, you find that it's an open system which reflects the larger cultural and psychological history of the species.” Then there's the evidence from developmental psychology that even our minds themselves only develop in relationship with other minds, that if left in isolation during our formative years, we would end up with but a fraction of our current cognitive and emotional capacity. Add to that the growing body of scientific research which suggests that our minds are not “locked” in our brains at all, but are actually fields that constantly interact with one another to create larger social fields with a tremendous influence on our behavior, and our fear of losing our independence begins to look like a bit of a red herring.

In light of these findings, the issue, then, does not seem to be so much whether it's a good thing to be part of a group mind. If what this research is telling us is true, in some sense, for better or for worse, we already are. From this perspective, the real question facing us is: What sort of group mind are we a part of? Fortunately, in this new emerging collective consciousness, a radical alternative to the dangers of “groupthink” seems to be afoot. “This type of collective is very different than the old way of thinking about the collective, in which the individuals are subordinated or diminished,” Otto Scharmer observes. “In this new type of collective, the individual is actually enhanced. One has the experience that this way of operating actually connects one to one's highest future potential.” According to Scharmer and others who have experienced the emergence of this collective mind, autonomy and individuality, rather than being suppressed, are actually strengthened by participation in the group. Tom Callanan, a program officer at the Fetzer Institute, explains: “My experience with these groups is that the stronger the collective wisdom present, the stronger my sense of unique individuality—only now it's within the context of the whole rather than separate from the whole.”

A FLOCK OF ANGELS

The Blue Angels probably come as close as humans get to flocking. Flying in precision formation at supersonic speeds, these sky-dancing Navy stunt pilots have been inspiring American fairground goers since 1946 with their breathtaking display of grace and coordination. And in this case, it's a grace hard won.

Every winter the Blue Angels leave their spouses and families behind and head out to the desert together for two and a half months. But theirs is no vision quest. It's a training mission—with a uniquely collective twist. “It takes a long time to get everyone in sync, to get into a rhythm together,” Commander Russ Bartlett explains. “So, we're out here to learn the way each other thinks, learn their idiosyncrasies, learn everything about the way we operate so that when we fly together, they can tell by my intonation and the way I'm flying the jet exactly what I'm going to do with it. We fly so close together that we have to execute everything simultaneously.” And in this case, “close together” means close together. In their tightest formation, the Blue Angels overlap their wings until, as Bartlett explained, “my wingtip is twelve inches from my buddy's head.”

In preparation for this high-stakes journey, before each flight the pilots spend forty-five minutes sitting together, eyes closed, listening to Bartlett recite the commands he will use during the flight—an exercise that at least one researcher has compared to the entrainment rituals practiced by hunting tribes. Although Bartlett declares that there is nothing “cosmic” about the synergy that allows these Angels to fly as one, his own descriptions seem to suggest that there might be more to the story than “rote repetition” and “muscle memory” could account for. “Sometimes you have these shows where everybody is on top of their game. Everybody's flowing together. The maneuvers are coming off well, one after another, and nobody has to get out of the formation for any reason. Things go like clockwork. And when you come back, you just go 'Wow! That was awesome.'”