The Parallel Lives

Sociology looks at how people behave in groups: family, work, politics, and religion. A quote: People in a crowd will do or say something that they would hesitate to do or say as an individual.

     In 2004, a writer named James Surowiecki published a book he entitled “The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations.”

     In it, Surowiecki argues that “a diverse collection of deciding individuals is likely to make certain types of decisions and predictions better than single individuals or even experts. In some cases, groups are remarkably intelligent and often smarter than the smartest people in them.”

     Yet, Surowiecki admits that crowds do make mistakes, due to: “homogeneity, a lack of diversity; imitation, following others; and emotions, such as peer pressure, or the herd instinct.”

     His book’s title, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” is an allusion to Charles Mackay’s 1841 book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.”

     Which is it? Are crowds wise, or are they prone to seasons of madness?

     Mackay’s book is a 702-page tome, a doorstop. Yet, within its pages, he explores a series of mania’s that in past centuries engulfed entire groups of people.

     In his third chapter, “Tulipmania,” Mackay describes how the citizens of Holland drove up the price on “a rare species of tulips in the year 1636, so that regular markets for their sale were established on the Stock Exchange of Amsterdam, in Rotterdam, and other towns.”

     “At last, however, the more prudent began to see that this folly could not last forever. Rich people no longer bought the flowers to plant in their gardens.” Prices dropped as did the mania. 

     In addition to economic manias, Mackay describes social and religious hysterias: the pursuit of witches across central Europe; the Crusades to the Holy Land; alchemists, who tried to turn lead into gold; haunted houses; and the search for relics of famous people. 

     Then, Mackay reveals a true counterfeit, a mountebank, an illusionist named Franz Mesmer, a German who arrived in Paris in 1778. “It is impossible,” said M. Dupotet, “to conceive the sensations which Mesmer’s experiments created in Paris.”

     These experiments, or healing sessions, called animal magnetism, produced group hysteria.

     “The cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations became inflamed; and off they went, one after the other in convulsive fits. Some sobbed and tore their hair, others laughed till the tears ran from their eyes. Mesmer would then wave a wand, and they would calm down.” 

     The English word “mesmerize,”  is derived from Franz Anton Mesmer’s trickery, and means “to put someone into a trance or a hypnotic state.”

     Delusion is defined as “a fixed, false belief that a person holds, despite clear proof or logical evidence that it is wrong.” An illusion though is a trick, like an optical illusion, or a magic trick.

     A favorite essay of mine is entitled “Illusions,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. At its end, he says,   

     “Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament; there is he alone with them alone.

     “On the instant, fall snowstorms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way and that, and whose movement and doings he must obey; the mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now that. 

     “What is he that he should resist their will, and think or act for himself?

     “And when for an instant, the air clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting around him on their thrones—they alone with him alone.”

     Within any given age, a mania, a madness, or a popular delusion can and will emerge. It is extraordinary, and it is then that crowds fail to display much, if any, wisdom.