In his book, The Madness of Crowds, Charles MacKay says of humanity, “it has been well said, they think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one”.
So let’s recover our senses, and in doing so we will recover our power, which is the power to transform ourselves, and thus, all our relationships, by seeing ourselves as we want to be. Not as rich, thin and sexy, but as kind, generous and at peace. Actually, being better at living on less will give us more abundance, being less inclined to stuff our feelings down with food, we will be in better physical shape, and being kinder and more relaxed, we may well become sexier. Above all, we can see ourselves as compassionate, and as being the part of the equation that, when it changes, changes everything. That’s the power we have, collectively. Because, of course, we’re intimately interconnected. Everything is.
James Surowiecki wrote a counter proposal to Mackay’s book which he called The Wisdom of Crowds. He says that crowds are often brighter than the brightest individual member. That means that we literally act as a collective brain, and that makes us better, in concert with others, than thinking alone. Imagine the power that gives us to solve the kinds of problems we now face, like the climate and ecological emergency? Of…
