Posted on 03/26/2003 9:01:38 PM PST by DaveCooper
A lot of organizations put new members through some sort of initiation ceremony. Fraternities are typical; candidates are forced through some sort of ritual, and it's quite common for it to include at least one episode which is either uncomfortable or unpleasant or deeply embarrassing, or potentially so if you screw up while doing it.
There have been studies about this kind of thing, and what was learned was that members of such groups tend to be more loyal and more dedicated when there is that kind of ritual than they will be without it, and are more likely to remain loyal for the rest of their lives. And if the group has some sort of agenda, they're more likely to adopt that agenda as their own, and to maintain and promote the group and help it to work to achieve its goal.
Such things appear many places in human culture. It applies to various rites of passage, such as adulthood ceremonies (e.g. bar mitzvah, or adolescent circumcision ceremonies in many places around the world). Not only do such ceremonies represent a clean dividing line between "child" and "adult," but they also tend to make each kid bond to the group, and help in promoting group cohesiveness.
By the same token it also tends to induce group chauvinism. If the group is important, and if those in the group are superior because they're members, then it means everyone outside who is not a member is inferior. And you often encounter a kind of smugness about membership, or varying degrees of outright hostility towards nonmembers, to a great extent as a function of the group culture and the kind and amount of ceremonial suffering which is involved in joining it.
Groups like the Masons take this to particularly great lengths. There are varying degrees of membership; an entire ladder, in fact with dozens of rungs.
Each step up the ladder involves a new initiation ceremony, and though the precise details of them are secret (or at least supposed to be, though some have been leaked) they all involve exactly this kind of embarrassing or uncomfortable public display by the candidate in front of the rest of the membership, or in front of those of higher rank who themselves have already gone through it.
At a certain point a member becomes eligible for the "Shrine" and if accepted becomes a "Shrine Mason" (or Shriner), which opens up an entirely new ladder to climb with many further steps of rank. The Shrine recruits from the outer lodge, and its members are seen as being even more special than normal Masons, by themselves and by non-Shrine Masons.
No one really knows for sure why this makes people more loyal to the group, though there's speculation. One idea is that it leads to a period of rationalization: Yes, I did just go through something awful and demeaning but it was worth it because membership in the group is even more important. Therefore the person will assign offsetting value to the group proportional to the degree of unpleasantness they went through to join it or advance within it. Whether that's why it works, it's beyond dispute that it actually does. And this same kind of thing also tends to show up in cults.
And it's also the case that lesser parts of the group culture can enhance this on an ongoing basis. Even something as trivial as having all members wear some sort of silly hat during all group meetings will work to this end. Yes, this fez makes me look like a moron, but it's worth it because it helps me be accepted in this group that I think is particularly important. Thus group meetings as such come to be valued in direct proportion to the silliness of the display.
In cases where this kind of overt display of membership isn't just in secret (i.e., only at lodge meetings) but actually becomes a permanent part of the lifestyle, it works even more strongly.
For example, if a given group always goes around in public wearing strange robes and with most of their hair shaved and a strange braided pigtail, they tend to get strange looks from others, and quite often are avoided or treated with disdain. In some members this will eventually cause them to give up and leave, but it's more common for them to bond more closely to the group because of this. And disdain is given for disdain received; they hate us because they know we're better than they are.
And it may be that the reason they are more likely to remain loyal to the group is that if they do leave, they cease to have the ability to rationalize that all the stupid and painful things they did were worthwhile.
The same kind of thing is at work in certain fringe extremist Christian sects whose members have a predilection for standing on boxes at busy street corners accusing everyone who comes by of being a sinner, and preaching at the top of their lungs about how the end of the world is near. This is seen by members of such groups as being a moral duty, but on a lower level it also has the same bonding effect as fraternity initiation ceremonies. As a practical matter it has negligible chance of recruiting new members or of swaying the public, but it is still an important part of maintaining the group by keeping its own members loyal and subservient.
Many kinds of groups have processes and policies which cause their members to make these same kinds of public displays, which cause them to be disdained by those around them, and which have the effect of causing their members to bond more closely to the organization and its goal. Whether this is deliberate for any given group, or the result of memetic selective processes is hard to say. Even such groups as the Crips and the Bloods have such things, though they can be more subtle. At the height of the gang competition in LA, there were certain colors which each group claimed, and members would never wear a color belonging to the other side. There were certain kinds of styles; certain tastes in music. Sometimes these differences were sufficiently subtle as to not even be apparent to those outside the core cultural group.
In fact, these kinds of initiation and bonding ceremonies, and public displays of membership, are quite common in youth gangs and in criminal organizations. There's an organization of that kind among people from certain parts of SE Asia where members have to get a small but distinctive tattoo on one hand, which pretty much identifies them for life as being a member.
By the way, motorcycle gangs (like the Hell's Angels or the Gypsy Jokers) do this, too, complete with a demeaning initiation ritual and official membership clothing (known as "colors"). And the competition between motorcycle gangs and the mutual hatred can inspire them to outright combat. There was a gunfight in a casino in Nevada last year between members of rival motorcycle gangs and a couple of people died.
It occurred to me yesterday that this phenomenon may explain something happening in the US right now which to many seemed inexplicable.
It's been noted that there is a rising tide of antiwar protests in the US and in Europe, and it's also been noted by many that some of the signs and slogans they're using vary from brainless to idiotic to outright vile. In some cases the demonstrators are doing things which are virtually guaranteed to cause nearly everyone outside the movement to have negative reactions. (For example, the recent protests in San Francisco which involved deliberately interrupting traffic, or ejecting various unpleasant bodily fluids in public places.)
The most obvious theory is that by doing this these people hope to influence the more general public to their point of view politically, but given that it's equally obvious that it's been a notable failure, and indeed in many cases has been causing general animosity, there's also been much speculation that those responsible for these demonstrations are unwise, or stupid, or deluded.
But even if these demonstrations have had little political effect at all, or outright negative effect, on the public as a whole, it also has the effect of making those in the movement itself particularly dedicated to the cause. There's little practical difference between wearing weird robes and dancing and chanting on a street corner, and having a vomit-in at City Hall.
The primary force organizing most of the large antiwar demonstrations in the US now is the Worker's World Party, through various daughter organizations which are mostly staffed by WWP members, and financed by the WWP or its sympathetic contributors. And many who have attended these demonstrations have found themselves listening to speeches advocating positions on various issues which didn't seem to have anything to do with war. Many have been turned off by this, but at least a few have heard things which they found appealing, and have thus potentially become recruits for the larger causes that the WWP works for. The WWP is cynically using this cause as a way of trying to recruit members.
And if they can convince people to join them in public antiwar displays which are painful or disgusting or embarrassing or which cause the general public to react negatively, this has the effect of causing many or most of these new recruits to become bonded to the group, and thus potentially to coming to accept the larger agenda of the parent organization, which is to say, the WWP.
Which would mean that in fact those organizing these displays don't care in the slightest that they have no chance of actually stopping the war or of influencing the population as a whole to oppose war. They're trying to build their membership, and these public demonstrations aid them in doing so. Each of these demonstrations amounts to an initiation ceremony, or a promotion ceremony, which are no different in psychological effect than the ones used by the Masons.
(Excerpt) Read more at denbeste.nu ...
So those "Peace Rallies" are recruitment parties for the WWP. Makes sense.
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