Left, Right, Left, Right: Muscular Bonding and the Hive Trigger

In the 1940's reknowned historian, William McNeill, found out first hand how syncopated motion in a group of humans can produce a state of profound euphoria. Drilling with his fellow soldiers, he was able to observe the galvanizing effect of moving in unison: synchronized motion triggers a sublimation of selfish drives and needs in order to function as a single organism.

In a disparate group, say in a unit of young men derived from radically different socio-economic, political, and religious backgrounds (as was the case in WWII era America); the simple act of marching in time with one another erases those distinctions, and produces a powerful sensation of unity. Although we are now beginning to understand the evolutionary roots behind this phenomena, there have been countless men and women who have recognized this propensity for what it is, and have exploited it accordingly to mobilize individuals into armies. It begs the question: how much more profound must this effect be in groups that already exhibit a high degree of cultural homogeneity?



It is becoming more and more widely accepted that in the last 20,000 years or so, our process of selection as a species has become culturally driven, that changes occur exponentially more swiftly than when the environment did our selecting for us, and that those who are able to cooperate within large groups are the ones who avoid genetic marginalization.

Syncopated speech and chanting has the same effect as synchronized motion.

The military applications are as old as war itself, but we are beginning to see it manifesting elsewhere.



Seems innocuous enough? Well, you better believe this kind of footage has certain folks sweating through their Brooks Brothers blazers.

From what we know of human bonding, and how physical attunement (synchronized breathing, heart-rate, eye contact) determines the strength of our bonds as individuals, it makes perfect sense that the "hive" overlay that we have developed in order to cooperate as a group would also depend on physical synchronization.

Now. How do we keep this deep-seated source of human strength and awesomeness from being used by predatory in-groups to direct the collective energies of the whole toward aims inimical to our species and the planet?

Further reading:
www.scientificamerican.com...
personal.stevens.edu...

reply to post by Eidolon23


Actually, I have a much better question than that. ^

How do we use this propensity to our advantage? Can you even begin to imagine the beneficial effects of this thing we are capable of when we move as one?



Well, check this video out. At the outset, this could easily be any military or nationalist rally. Rousing music, majestic architecture designed to make the individual feel overawed and effaced, there's even a visible charge to the crowd that will be familiar to anyone who has experienced this sort of event, or watched a lot of footage.

Yet, when the Tai Chi kicks in, it turns into a whole new animal. These people are not being riled up, as is the object of traditional displays of syncopation- they are being soothed en masse. We can help each other to feel relaxed and energized, leading to peaceful manifestations of group cohesion.



We can give each other euphoria and acceptance. We can help one another to feel good about being human, to trust each other as easily as we breathe.

And here's where it gets ultra-weird. I know a lot of you are going to be familiar with this study, but please reconsider its implications in light of what we have now learned about muscular bonding:

This study presents the final results of a two-month prospective experiment to reduce violent crime in Washington, DC. On the basis of previous research it was hypothesized that the level of violent crime in the District of Columbia would drop significantly with the creation of a large group of participants in the Transcendental Meditation® and TM-Sidhi® programs to increase coherence and reduce stress in the District...

Based on the results of the study, the steady state gain (long-term effect) associated with a permanent group of 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs was calculated as a 48% reduction in HRA crimes in the District of Columbia.

istpp.org...

Now, a key feature of this experiment is that all the participants meditated at the same time. One wonders what could be gleaned if their heart-rates and breathing were also monitored? I wonder if there was an unusual degree of autonomic syncopation?

reply to post by Eidolon23


flagged and starred
posting to bookmark
will be back when i can give this thread the proper attention

but for now i'll just leave this:
Flocking behavior

Flocking behavior is the behavior exhibited when a group of birds, called a flock, are foraging or in flight. There are parallels with the shoaling behavior of fish, the swarming behavior of insects, and herd behavior of land animals.

Computer simulations and mathematical models which have been developed to emulate the flocking behaviors of birds can generally be applied also to the "flocking" behavior of other species. As a result, the term "flocking" is sometimes applied, in computer science, to species other than birds.
***
Basic models of flocking behavior are controlled by three simple rules:

Separation - avoid crowding neighbors (short range repulsion)
Alignment - steer towards average heading of neighbors
Cohesion - steer towards average position of neighbors (long range attraction)

With these three simple rules, the flock moves in an extremely realistic way, creating complex motion and interaction that would be extremely hard to create otherwise.

The basic model has been extended in several different ways since Reynolds proposed it. For instance, Delgado-Mata et al. [2] extended the basic model to incorporate the effects of fear. Olfaction was used to transmit emotion between animals, through pheromones modelled as particles in a free expansion gas. Hartman and Benes [3] introduced a complementary force to the alignment that they call the change of leadership.

The Uni-Mind

The Uni-Mind is a fictional composite being in the Marvel Universe. The Uni-Mind and the Eternals were the creation of Jack Kirby.

Normally the Uni-Mind is a mental gestalt entity and collective intelligence of at least seven Eternals, but Uni-Minds have also been composed of Eternals, humans, Deviants and Brethren; Varua of the Young Gods is also able to create a joining with her fellow Young Gods which is similar to the Uni-Mind. The Uni-Mind possesses all the powers, knowledge and combined intellect of those who are part of it, and all the participants share each other's knowledge and can gain new insights and perceptions. The Eternals often use it as a means to address problems or decisions that are deemed too difficult for them to solve as individuals.
***
A Uni-Mind is a collective being which is created by a significant number of Eternals merging their physical and mental beings into one organism, combining the collective psionic and cosmic energy of several hundred Eternals, which manifests itself as a gigantic brain-like organism. As such, it has an immeasurable intellect, and the composite knowledge, skills, abilities, and experience of all its constituent beings. A Uni-Mind possesses vast psionic abilities across a wide range of mental talents, including levitation, psychokinesis, telepathy, the ability to project mental bolts of force, the ability to travel through the vacuum of space unharmed, and intellectual powers of information processing and problem-solving far beyond human understanding. Superior cosmic powers, such as those possessed by Celestials are capable of unbinding the collective form of the Uni-Mind, breaking it down into its constituent beings.

a means of Imanentizing the Eschaton properly[greatest benefit for greatest number, or all for that matter]?

You know, maybe?

Certainly I have been partial in the past to the idea of an emerging super-consciousness in which we participate as individual nodes in an extended super-neural network of unparalleled richness. It sounds pretty, well... super.

As far as syncopation in the rest of the animal kingdom: humans do it differently. We've had to. We developed this capability so late in the game (compared to organisms that display a lesser degree of sapience), that I feel it may be misleading to compare it to hive behavior in insects and flocking in birds and fish. It runs off of very different triggers, having been inculcated in us through cultural rather than environmental factors.

Muscular bonding ties into properties unique to our species such as our linguistic centers, our ability to connect with people who are not members of our in-group, and above all, it ties into some pretty intense and complex emotional responses.

Thank you muchly for the awesome reply, and the uber-geeky reference. It totally made my day.

Yay, David Byrne

With ants it is similar. Certain worker ants (all of whom are female) have designated tasks. A quick smell, via an antennae brush, identifies what a specific worker is best at doing—foraging, cleaning debris elimination, guarding­—and no one tries to “tell them” how to do their jobs. There are no bosses. It is possible for the worker ant to switch jobs, but usually, as with humans, that opportunity arises when the colony is relatively young. After that, the job pool, one’s career, is more or less set. Though, there are always reserves of other ants underground that are recruited if a new food source suddenly becomes available (Thank you Deborah Gordon’s TED talk 2003).

One of the ways an ant figures out what is going on is oddly similar to the Google search algorithm—it “counts” how many encounters it has with a specific kind of worker. Based on these encounters, the ant can deduce that there is, for example, a major clean up in progress. Instructions and situations in progress are not “described,” but are inferred by the aggregate of encounters.

The consensus “rules” of OWS were (are?) possibly a more accurate example of real crowd (or democratic) decision-making. How did the OWS group, who struggled to maintain their leaderless and self-organized identity, ever make decisions? They endorsed the idea of consensus as opposed to voting. The word consensus comes from a Latin word meaning, “feel together”. Consensus means everyone (eventually) arrives at a place where they will give consent, although they might not be in 100% agreement. The distinction seems a little vague to me.

The well-reported use of hand signals, as a means of reaching this consensus, was adopted (microphones weren’t allowed due to noise restrictions) by the movement. One would be very tempted to ask who exactly decided that consensus would be the mode for decision-making? Who and how was that decision made?

reply to post by Eidolon23


For further study into the subject, check out group dynamics. It basically says that an individual is more defined by the groups they belong to, and not by their individual desires to be a certain way. In other words, you are an amalgam your friends, family, coworkers, spiritual guides you feel you have, and/or other organizational members to which you may belong. If you're a loner, well, then I suppose whatever people are you in touch with, even if it's online, then that affects you; or, if you read books, you 'sync' with the authors.

Also, it's well known that females sync their menstrual cycles in a matter of months.

Synchronous menstruation has been observed among mothers, sisters, and daughters who live together, and sometimes among women who simply work together. McClintock tells of seven female lifeguards who started out one summer with widely scattered periods. Three months later they were all menstruating within four days of one another.

-Source

Women have been described as the "psychic center" of the universe, basically being more emotional and in tune with feelings than most male counterparts. This was from a book I read, Science of Power, by Benjamin Kidd.

When a speaker (preacher, president, Hitler, cult leader, Martin Luther King) wants to sync the crowd, he or she does that by emotionally charging his words. He doesn't appeal to their logic or reason because they could disagree with that or fail to see it. Emotional verbal cooing will get everyone on the same page. This is how music appeals to people, through emotions.

NLP also discussing "mirroring" and mimicking, which get you in sync with another person next to you or across from you. By doing this, a person is more likely to trust you, unless they catch on and realize what you're doing.

Also, when you wear the same clothes or have the same phone as someone else, you behave more like that person(s). It's as if we see them as ourselves because we look so similar. Like they say, birds of a feather...

Fascinating subjects in trying to understand what makes people behave the way they do. A few internet searches would uncover plenty more on these subjects, for anyone curious.

spam removed by Admin

Interesting. I grew up doing this my whole life almost. 13 years.
Not so great quality. Sorry. www.youtube.com...
Link in case video didn't work

reply to post by Eidolon23

23...I have to agree with you upon how countries like North Korea and China which still display Monster Goose Stepping Marches and the powerful euphoria effect that is generated in the Human Brain as a person doing this seems to have their persona magnified to the quantity of others doing the same thing as endorphines rush in to those marching and those marching.

Still...this is a False Sense of Power. I am not Military although my Family is...but I am..."CIVILIAN" in the way the quotes indicate and I work with some of the best and brightest in the U.S. Military when called on to help out.

The United States dropped this form of self masterbational marching years ago and concentrates on obtaining bright individuals who can...using Super Advanced Tech....render such Manpower Displays moot with the touch of a button.

I sometimes work with a team and they have been picked by me and I am getting older and need to find a replacement for myself. The key is to find a person who can think on their feet and consider the success of a Job on being able to keep everyone alive as well as achieve the objective with achieving communication and achieving an understanding. This does not by any means that this...JOB is Lolly Pops and Sunshine...it is VERY DANGEROUS...but can be made more so by having someone in charge who is of the same Goose Stepping Mentality expressed here in charge.

My point is....although I agree with you 100% about these videos posted...please understand that their are very good people keeping you safe right now. People who have sacrificed much and have done so voluntarily. This includes Muscular Men and Women of all types. These people are the Gate Keepers of our Freedoms and please do not believe in some peoples ideas that we do not need this and everything would be just fine if we did not have a Military or people like myself who are "CIVILIAN"....things would NOT be fine.

I have been all around the World and have had experiences that could fill several lifetimes. I think I replied to your post because I have to stay in top Physical Condition at my age to keep up with the 20 Somethings that depend on me to keep them alive. So...I guess when I saw the word MUSCLE...it got to me as I use my Intellect FIRST and to keep myself muscular and be able to use my training becomes harder each passing year.

I know that there are Men who are of the type you refer to here and they are but drones and I also know of Men who have spent too much time in the gym...putting on Muscle Weight that changes their concepts and makes up for something they lack thus they tend to misuse their physical strength. BUT...not all Men are like this and even though...even at my age...I am a very well trained and powerful Alpha Male...my greatest strength is my mind. And I wanted you to know that even though I understand where you are going with your scientific and psychological observations on this topic....those of true ability and power seldom show it publicly. And that I would ask you to consider that even though there are still MORONS out there who believe a show of force is intimidating....I and those who I work with..do not find this so...we find it laughable.

I believe you are female...if I am wrong I apologize...but if I am right...understand...I have great respect for women...and when I see one take the time to analize a specific action such as this and classify it...it worries me that she might not see Men in other positive aspects. There are TRUE MEN out there. Some of these are on my team and they are some of the best and brightest of all who live. I just wanted you to know that.
Split Infinity

Originally posted by Eidolon23
The military applications are as old as war itself, but we are beginning to see it manifesting elsewhere.

Nothing new...

It's been used to brainwash the masses for a while now

Sheep go baa baa baa and march in lock step to someone else's tune.

Brainwashing i would have to agree.

reply to post by Eidolon23
Yep, I can. When we move in synchronicity, we collapse bridges.

Originally posted by SLAYER69

Originally posted by Eidolon23
The military applications are as old as war itself, but we are beginning to see it manifesting elsewhere.

Nothing new...

It's been used to brainwash the masses for a while now

Ironic, hey ?

I wonder how long that's been going on actually ?

I mean,does it ever stop ?

Serious question.....

reply to post by Eidolon23

A good thread E23, cant add much to whats been said. Because bonding or falling under spells is one of the great many things I suck at, it may as well not even exist for me some days. But then again there are days were I get up and look at the sun and think to myself "WTF is that thing, and who put it there I don't remember it being there last time" So I may or may not be the person to be asking about such things, but oh ya there in my head somewhere, the ins and outs, and even the downs and ups and even the number of it, but as math is not my religion I don't bother with that part at all, most times

But its something of a positive and a negative, and so it can be used for both good and bad. And intention is what matters, but the intention is always in the equation, and the intention is the equation, but it does not always equate even though it always conforms to the pattern, and the pattern is of the equation but it does not equal it. And conformity is a great deal its language, no doubt you can see it everywhere from TV commercials, to military troops, to just kinds in school running with different clicks, to the birds if flight moving in sync or out of sync, to wolf packs and there hierarchy, to just about anything there is an element of conformity.

Once people found out that, then some thought to themselves hmm if its all basic conformity and conformity by definition is the set of the rules, standards and laws, well from there on you get the picture. What is the golden rule?... He who has the gold makes the rules. Or at least that's one of the golden rules, but the one they believe in the most. There are other rules at play as well that most don't think off. Such as who sets the worth of gold? No doubt a magic trick, not unlike who sets the worth of trading paper, the so called $. And worse there are even rules that they cant even think off, and even ones that no one can even imagine.

But give all that some time and let it flower and eventually you will have yourself a wall-street. Were all kinds of black magic is going on I hear tell. But even that house of cards will come tumbling down one day, as they all realize that gold is in reality like everything else...Worthless. But not any day soon, after all the show must go on.

In the void which is reality nothing has worth, but that which you esteem as worthy, and esteeming is another magic word, and a word that links them all to dance to each-others tunes and move to each-others step, and its worth much more then gold, as gold and other things are but a symbol of it. Not seen or known to them and unbeknownst to them its driving core is what pulls and pushes them in all kinds of directions.

It begs the question: how much more profound must this effect be in groups that already exhibit a high degree of cultural homogeneity?

Absolutely not all that profound. Funny how things work sometimes, you call those same groups that exhibit a high degree of cultural homogeneity one name, and they conform to that. You call them another they conform to that, for instance what happens if you call them sheeple like some have done in this thread? As you can see who sets the worth of things? What do they all esteem?

Seems innocuous enough? Well, you better believe this kind of footage has certain folks sweating through their Brooks Brothers blazers.

Key word...Seems. And no doubt your right on the sweaty sweater people, but I am sure they all got reasons and plans, and even justification for those plans.

It is becoming more and more widely accepted that in the last 20,000 years or so, our process of selection as a species has become culturally driven, that changes occur exponentially more swiftly than when the environment did our selecting for us, and that those who are able to cooperate within large groups are the ones who avoid genetic marginalization.

So what you trying to say, people like me are screwed. Oh well.

Now. How do we keep this deep-seated source of human strength and awesomeness from being used by predatory in-groups to direct the collective energies of the whole toward aims inimical to our species and the planet?

With effort and practice.

Actually, I have a much better question than that. ^

How do we use this propensity to our advantage?

With effort and practice.

Can you even begin to imagine the beneficial effects of this thing we are capable of when we move as one?

Yes we can finality put aside our differences, get some sort of coherence stop all pointless and fruitless endeavors and put the clamp down idiocies. And even achieve a sort of world peace. Then we can move on to more important things, like blowing up the moons. A much nobler goal.

Originally posted by sonnny1
I wonder how long that's been going on actually ?

I mean,does it ever stop ?

Serious question.....

Well the Spartans used to do it before they went into battle...if that gives you some idea, both in terms of a time line and it's application. Nietzche most famously elaborated on it, and the slave boss relied upon it, both of whom influenced Ford when he developed the first production line. Most recently studies have confirmed the relationship between sychrony and destructive obediance, something the military has known, well, since the time of the Spartans.

www.marshall.usc.edu...

I don't know what to make of the thread? It is rather disturbing to see vast oceans of humanity doing things in synchronization when we are often taught as we grow to be individuals. I suppose organized religion has mastered this art as well as governments for centuries. People tend to be quite clannish and open to joining groups. Judging by the videos posted by the OP and other contributors. I suppose the saying, "There is security in numbers," is true?

Acting in a group often removes the weight of conscience and personal responsibility when bad things occur. It is so easy to write off wrongs when it involves a collective. I think of men from World War II whom were accused of atrocities claiming that they were not guilty but only following orders and national policy. I think of men in WWI running in the thousands to be mowed down by machine gun fire and artillery between the trenches in France. Lets look at the various political rallies and protests and how people react on command and in unison as if under a spell or in a trance. All of it is very disturbing.

We are taught since we are able to walk and talk that people are individuals. As individuals we are required to think and solve things on our own. However, I am willing to accept that people are more prone to be followers than leaders in their own right, because it seems to offer some form of security and comfort. Here are some examples of things that come to mind when I think of the phenomena discussed in the OP.

Originally posted by daynight42
reply to post by Eidolon23

 

For further study into the subject, check out group dynamics. It basically says that an individual is more defined by the groups they belong to, and not by their individual desires to be a certain way. In other words, you are an amalgam your friends, family, coworkers, spiritual guides you feel you have......

Fascinating subjects in trying to understand what makes people behave the way they do. A few internet searches would uncover plenty more on these subjects, for anyone curious.

I did just that... and it lead me to this...

The basic idea of Cog's Ladder is that there are five steps necessary for a small group of people to be able to work efficiently together. These stages are the polite stage, the why we're here stage, the power stage, the cooperation stage and the esprit stage.

This Cog's Ladder reminds me of M Scott Peak's idea of community building
and his idea of the Four Level of Spiritual Awareness, but that is a side issue.
www.whale.to...

Anywho, back to the discussion, it reminds of a book I read years ago called "Emergence"

Emergence is what happens when an interconnected system of relatively simple elements self-organizes to form more intelligent, more adaptive higher-level behavior. It's a bottom-up model rather than being engineered by a general or a master planner, emergence begins at the ground level. Systems that at first glance seem vastly different--ant colonies, human brains, cities, immune systems--all turn out to follow the rules of emergence. In each of these systems, agents residing on one scale start producing behavior that lies a scale above them: ants create colonies, urbanites create neighborhoods.

Steven Johnson approaches this idea of Emergence from numerous angles in his 2001 book, making the case that "local information leads to global wisdom." I think his best example are ants: "When an ant notices a large number of his fellow ants are foraging, he will alter his behavior to another activity." From ants, Johnson jumps to artificial intelligence in video games and then to world wide web. He cites Slashdot.org as an example with its users as the "ants" Slashdot has all the elements of an emergent system: positive and negative feedback, structured randomness, neighbor interactions, and decentralized control. We might even say that we are the "ants" and help make ATS a successful website, however I think there is much room for improvement.

What is important is the "feedback loop" and without that--group think can take people into a dangerous place where you have a mass political movements (like fascism/communism) where the critical thinking of the individual gets turned off. Eric Hoffer had much to say about this in his book "True Believers." Hoffer's observations seem even more keenly relevant today, post 9/11, than they did in the post-Vietnam era. Hoffer treated in one stroke mass movements of every variety in this way: "It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated."

According to Hoffer, the early converts to any mass movement come from the ranks of the "frustrated," that is, "people who..feel that their lives are spoiled or wasted." The true believers' "Faith in [their] holy cause is to a considerable extent a subsitute for [their] lost faith in [themselves]." He says that we are prone to throw ourselves into a mass movement to "supplant and efface the self we want to forget." He then adds, "We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are ready to die for it."

Hofer breaks mass movements down into all its working parts: the appeal of mass movements, the potential converts, united action and self-sacrifice, and the beginning and end. Hofer details the players in mass movements: the poor, the misfits, the inordinately selfish, the ambitious, minorities, the bored, and the sinners. He examines their motives and gratifications. He explains the background of leaders of prior movements, in particular, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, telling us the strengths and limitations they brought to their respective movements. Reading Hoffer made me think very carefully about my motivations for what I 'truly believe' and why I felt the need to join a cause--it revealed something broken in myself and how I was seeking to heal that brokenness by my belief and by joining a movement. I'm happy to report this book help me to see this flaw in my character and seeing this, I have been able to move past it and find healing. Were it not for this I would likely be one of those people who would jump at the chance to join the OWS movement without rhyme or reason.

reply to post by Biliverdin


Thank you,for some clarity.

I learned something today.


Star for you.

Holy crap, guys. This is an embarrassing surfeit of awesome responses. People have brought so many perspectives and new info, I can't wait to get into it all. Unfortunately, I have engagements and appointments and errands for most of the day. I really look forward to responding to you all this evening.

Thanks again.

Originally posted by Jakes51
Acting in a group often removes the weight of conscience and personal responsibility when bad things occur. It is so easy to write off wrongs when it involves a collective.

So true.

But what if - just what if - we were able to channel this energy for positivity?

Insects do it, bees and ants.

Somehow I'm reminded of those scenes in Avatar when the indigenous peoples all locked arms, moved in unison and chanted when trying to connect with their deity.