23 March

The deepest human desire and behaviour is to imitate. To copy others, because that gives us status and therefore identity in social groups. Imitation can be used for good, or bad. Good is the control of imitation, so that people copy all of the various tasks needed to create social progress. Societies that have/had kings for example had them mostly to take the oxygen out of widespread status-seeking imitative behaviour, to allow the nation to focus on social progress instead. Kings and gods - their actual function is to constrain imitation. To place the pinnacle of status beyond reach, so that energies can be re-focused towards collective need. In the absence of that sort of constraint, societies succumb to the worst form of imitation. Contagions, of all kinds. Everything going ‘viral’, meaningless trivialities become collective obsessions. When millions pack stadiums for example and act like choreographed lemmings, it’s a sign your society is in real trouble. None of this leads to social progress. It makes the performers very rich, that’s all. And the performers usually think the mass crowd is some sort of worshipping of their talent, when in reality the performer is a useful idiot, used by the crowd as the catalyst for their contagion behaviour. Smart performers feel that directly, and flee the crowds at every opportunity. Ask The Beatles. Beatle-mania. An actual collective psychological dysfunction. If you individually have mania or manic behaviour you’ll be treated for a mental health condition. Collective mania is no different. All these modern performers are just imitating that original mania, that ‘countercultural revolution’ that was a wrecking ball through centuries of progress.