A clear-sighted, well-argued plea for individuality of thought in an age of mass emotions and social conditioning.

Doris Lessing has faith in the power of writers to stay detached from these mass emotions and "enable us to see ourselves as others see us." I like the image she gives of writers as a collective organism, constantly evolving but always providing this same crucial function of detached examination of the human condition.

There are some fascinating passages on the way mass emotions are constructed by governments and leaders, for example pointing out how often "blood" is invoked when calling people to war or revolution - this, she says, is a harking back to our long ancestral history of ritual sacrifice, cleansing through blood. Also the constant projection of an Enemy to rally people together.

It's refreshing to hear Lessing's account of how often majority opinion has been completely wrong, and the most seemingly unchangeable opinions have changed completely - for example the white minority in the Rhodesia of her childhood thought that their racist regime would last forever, but it didn't. Also in World War Two, Britons revered friendly, pipe-smoking Uncle Joe Stalin, their ally against Hitler, but then a couple of years later he was their worst enemy (I remember my grandmother talking about this as well).

There are lots of fascinating psychological experiments showing how much we will do to agree with authority or with the group - only a small minority (she puts it at 10%) is usually prepared to go against the group opinion, often at great individual cost. She says that all of us are, to some degree, brainwashed by the society we live in, and that "There is nothing much we can do about this except to remember that it is so."

She goes on: "It seems to me that we are being governed by waves of mass emotion, and while they last it is not possible to ask cool, serious questions. One simply has to shut up and wait, everything passes." This reminds me of living in New York through 9/11 and the hugely irrational responses to it. In that time, there were certain things you simply couldn't say.

Lessing gives several examples of this group thinking, from classic psychological experiments (such as the one where people are divided into prisoners and warders, and the warders quickly become sadistic and authoritarian) to the world of literature, where certain writers are praised by everyone, then suddenly fall out of fashion (Lessing herself wrote a couple of novels under a pseudonym to see if they got the same reaction as her other work, and of course they were rejected by her two regular publishers and ignored by the critics).

This book was written in 1987, before the arrival of technologies like the internet. The methods of control and manipulation are surely stronger now than in 1987, but so are the possibilities for resistance. It's easier now to find the information that undercuts official propaganda, or to publish your own individual views, or to connect with other people who dissent from the majority opinion. Not following the herd is a challenge at any time, but, as Lessing says, it's vital:

"Of course, there are original minds, people who do take their own line, who do not fall victim to the need to say, or do, what everyone else does. But they are few. Very few. On them depends the health, the vitality of all our institutions." ( )

A series of five Massey Lectures on the theme of how the individual is manipulated by crowd psychology. Lessing discusses social research pertaining to how group thinking, particularly in a political context, stifles individuality of thought. Social psychology provides tools for encouraging the revitalization of society, however, the encouragement of individualistic thinking is anathema when the state seeks to maintain a general state of complacency and manageability through propaganda and "patriotic" groupthink.

As an example, Lessing insists that, in time of war, rationality goes out the window as "war fever" spreads through the citizenry. A study of history, which Lessing believes the young are disinclined toward, shows how time puts these mass enthusiasms in perspective. World War I, for instance, approached with a sense of foreboding, but during the war years, propaganda regarding the "enemy" galvanized societies into enthusiasm for the cause. Only from a longer perspective, after the war, did society at large come to recognize the futility of the conflict and the propaganda that stoked the citizenry into support of the war.

Given in 1985, these lectures surely have resonance today.

Some favorite quotes:

Against these enormously powerful primitive instincts, we have this: the ability to observe ourselves from other viewpoints. (4)

I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us to see ourselves as others see us. (7)

Novels should be on the same shelf with anthropology, says one friend of mine, an anthropologist. Writers comment on the human condition, talk about it continually. It is our subject. Literature is one of the most useful ways we have of achieving this “other eye,” this detached manner of seeing ourselves; history is another. Yet literature and history increasingly are not seen like this by the young, as indispensable tools for living . . . but I’ll come back to this later. (8)

… The sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are capable… (9)

I think it is sentimental to discuss the subject of war, or peace, without acknowledging that a great many people enjoy war –not only the idea of it, but the fighting itself. (9)

It was evident that the actual combatants on both sides, both blacks and whites, had thoroughly enjoyed the war. It was a fighting that demanded great skill, individual bravery, initiative, resourcefulness –the skills of a guerrilla, talents that through a long peace-time life may never have been called in to use. Yet people may suspect they have them, and secretly long for an opportunity to show them. This is not the least of the reasons, I believe, that wars happen.
These people, black and white, men and women, had been living in that extreme of tension, alertness, danger, with all their capacities in full use. I heard people say that nothing could ever come up to that experience. (11)

It is by now of course a cliché that political movements and religious movements behave alike. (25)

… It is not possible for the Church –as was the case till only yesterday, historically speaking –to dominate a whole society as the sole arbiter of conduct and thought. But for two thousand years Europe was under a tyrant –the Christian church –which allowed no other way of thinking, cut off all influences from outside, did not hesitate to kill, extirpate, persecute, burn and torture in the name of God. To remember this history is not for the sake of keeping alive the memories of old tyrannies, but to recognize present tyranny, for these patterns are in a still. It would be strange if they were not.
It is these patterns that I believe we should study, become conscious of, and recognize as they emerge in us and in the societies we live in. (25-26)

It is the heritage of the structure of Christian thought in us that we should study. (26)

Every one of us is part of the great comforting illusions, and part illusions, which every society uses to keep up its confidence in itself. These are hard to examine, and the best we can hope for is that a kindly friend from another culture will enable us to look at our culture with dispassionate eyes. (33)

Of course, if you are a member of a group that by its own definition is right, good and true, with all the complacent attitudes that go with this –such as that one’s opponents are evil –then of course it is hard to stand aside, hard to take that necessary step upwards on the ladder into objectivity. (39)

We are group animals still, and there is nothing wrong with that. But what is dangerous is not the belonging to a group, or groups, but not understanding the social laws that govern groups and govern us. (48)

This “inner censorship” is what the psychologists call “internalizing” an exterior pressure –such as a parent –and what happens is that a previously resisted and disliked attitude becomes your own. (56)

… When war starts, countries cannot afford disinterested examination of their behaviour. When a war starts, nations go mad - and have to go mad, in order to survive. (61)

… All types of society produced privileged elites…
Elites, privileged classes, groups better educated than others… This seems to be the stage at which the world is now, or at least, nothing else seems to be visible anywhere. (67)
Suppose we redefine the word “elite,” for our present purposes, too mean any group of people who for any reason are in the possession of ideas that put them ahead of the majority? (68)

To my mind the whole push and thrust and development of the world is towards the more complex, the flexible, the open-minded, the ability to entertain many ideas, sometimes contradictory ones, in one’s mind at the same time. (71-72) ( )

A collection of five lectures given in 1985. Drawing from politics, literature, social thought, religion and history, Doris Lessing draws a portrait of the extraordinary contradictions of modern society.