People seem quite naturally biased towards the lowest common denominator of what is really the most absurd and idiotic of behaviours. I understand that this is hardly charitable but I’d say that this applies to all of us and even more so when we are unaware or in denial of it. Further to this, it seems as though the majority of behaviours and beliefs that we accept and understand as being normal and sensible or rational are actually quite ridiculous as seen under any mature or well-informed analytical perspective.
The primary method by which a behaviour or belief is considered as sensible is a function of the number of people who share and replicate it. As a consequence, those behaviours and beliefs which most readily self-replicate tend to be in ascendance. This might be why totalitarian states so easily (and serially, cyclically) emerge but, simultaneously, this is why any this or any other model or method of effectively unconscious “groupthink” tends to occur with such uncanny and regrettable frequency.
Add to this that people are never as blindly compliant and unwittingly gullible as when they think that they are being uniquely self-determined and unquestionably individualistic. It’s a planet of the recursively self-replicating behavioural mirrors, I’d say, and as a consequence it is the median or otherwise average systems of thought and communication that tend to be in ascendance.
Daedelus Kite 