Anyone whose seen the film Heavenly Creatures understands the horror and power of a shared psychosis. In the film, two somewhat disaffected teenage girls lose themselves in a fantasy world and somehow convince themselves that the fantasy is reality by sheer dint of their collective imagination. Eventually, the power of these two fearsome and fanciful minds bring devastation to the lives of both girls, and to that of their families (see the movie -I refuse to spoil it. But I warn you- it's wonderfully horrible).
I thought of this film today, and the concept of a shared psychosis, as I flitted through my friend's Facebook pages, enjoying the candid photos and blurry videos of their children at play. I felt lulled as I was lured into a strange fantasy world filled with happy, gurgling babies and giddy mothers. I sensed myself being taken over, as if by a force (demonic or angelic, only time will tell).
It was like I'd been infected by their disease -as though I'd been charmed into passive submission to the prevailing notion that "women in their 30s must have babies." And it seemed to me a little like we all might be suffering from a shared psychosis. Irving Janis called it "groupthink." And I fear the crowd because, as Soren Kierkegaard sagely determined, "The crowd is untruth."
"Groupthink" is characterized by the way in which individuals in a larger group alter their ideas to fit what they imagine is the consensus of the group. The key here is imagine. Because each individual, if left to their own devises would never come to the same conclusions and would in fact reject the ideas that they imagine are held by the group. But the individual's desire to conform is so great that they act against their better judgment. Frightening stuff, really. The crowd is untruth.
Sometimes it seems that the mother-cult functions in much the same way. And it is likely the partial cause of some postpartum depression. Women realize too late that they have been sold a bill of goods and if they had stopped momentarily to think it through for themselves, they might not have decided with the group after all.
"Groupthink" is characterized by the way in which individuals in a larger group alter their ideas to fit what they imagine is the consensus of the group. The key here is imagine. Because each individual, if left to their own devises would never come to the same conclusions and would in fact reject the ideas that they imagine are held by the group. But the individual's desire to conform is so great that they act against their better judgment. Frightening stuff, really. The crowd is untruth.
Sometimes it seems that the mother-cult functions in much the same way. And it is likely the partial cause of some postpartum depression. Women realize too late that they have been sold a bill of goods and if they had stopped momentarily to think it through for themselves, they might not have decided with the group after all.
I realize that I'm relating a dark vision here. But I can't be all smiles and joy (and I am half in jest, as ever). I can't help but worry that someday someone will snap their fingers and startle me from my dazed reverie, and I will make a panicked scan of the architecture of my life and wonder in horror at what I have done. Oh -there's no turning back now so it's a senseless and silly train of thought, but I ride it nonetheless and I take you with me...
2 comments:
groupthink assumes we are free of the . We have biological urges to reproduce just like any other mammal. This serves the interests of our species, if not our personal interests. If a woman doesn't have a child in her 30s, she is unlikely to pass her genes on to the next generation. Since we are programmed to keep our species and our specific characteristics alive (and men are programmed to spread their seed widely) it's likely that many women will feel the biological urge to have children while they are still able to.
Whether this is good for them personally or not is an individual case. However, you can take comfort in the research shown in Freakomics. In a study of what factors influence a child's success in life, one of the only things that truly made a difference was the mother being age 30 or over at the birth of her first child.
I think groupthink is more of an issue not so much in deciding to have a child, but what one must/should do when pregnant and in raising a child. Having just returned from an infant story hour at the library, where we arrived by bicycle and walked past a train of fancy-shmancy strollers, I felt the pressure of groupthink there.
:-) If a society doesn't convince its women to have children, it won't last long, it's true.
I can promise you with complete confidence that often, often you'll wonder in horror at what you've done :-> All of us do. But it's pretty rare to find a parent who will say, in a calm and settled moment, that they wish they hadn't had kids.
If you're expecting babies that never cry all night or teens that never say the most wounding things that have ever been said to you, then you are definitely riding for a fall.
It's wonderful, too, though. And it lets you (forces you to?) cross borders in your mind that you would otherwise never have perceived. I can't imagine that I could have done anything in the past twenty years that would have taught me more about who I am and what I'm doing in the world than raising children did, and does.
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