Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

Why Men Go Ape

What we are saying is that when people are dealing with things that are really too big for their brains, they tend to fall back on the irrational, for deep in the older part of their brains, deep in their hearts, under the spell of Venus, mankind still lives according to instincts as old and as savage as zebras and wildebeests. Instinctively, humans still despise anyone who endangers the integrity of the group or the effectiveness of group action by thinking for himself. Men are ready to die for the group and ready to kill anyone who resists its will.

Most likely a combination of cultural and genetic selection led to the elimination—at least in the West—of people unwilling to make the supreme sacrifice “for the country.” Nothing was a bigger disgrace than cowardice. Spartan mothers told their sons to come back with their shields … or upon them. Socrates drank the cup of hemlock, Plato tells us, because he could not imagine himself in contravention of the group.

There is no greater disgrace than failing to do one's duty to the group, nor any greater glory than dying in the course of doing it. And so, as a group's opinion changes from negative to positive … from bullish to bearish … from supporting a war to opposing it, individuals come under great pressure to conform; dissent is made illegal. Noncompliance in politics—such as refusing military service—is often fatal. Markets, in contrast, are more comic than tragic; nonconformance is punished first with losses and ...