Groups

One of my favourite films is "Shane" which I saw, again, a few weeks ago. I knew there was a novel from which the film had been made so I ordered it through Amazon and am now reading it. I have just read the part where Shane and Starrett get to work on a large stump of a tree. In the film it takes minutes but, with cuts and characteristic George Stevens's slow fade cuts, the impression is that it takes hours; in the book it takes about six pages. Both forms are well done, showing how the two unlike men, one a gunfighter (or former one), the other a rough-hewn farmer, sort of bond.
This bonding of people in groups was discussed in an article in The Times recently: someone has produced a theory that when people get together they usually have the same interests but that these interests, by virtue of the bonding, become more striking; if they are political interests they become more intense and sometimes fanatical. The two men in "Shane" have a common purpose and by doing it together they become over-earnest, dedicated to the task, almost fanatical. They are not going to let that stump of a tree beat them. They are not going to get the team of horses out to help them. They are going to do it together even if it kills them.
I had an experience a long time ago of this group mania. I was taking part in a student protest march against something - can't think what. Someone said "look at that sign over there in that garden - let's get it down." And, for some inconceiveable reason, the urge to do just that swept over our group of about six young men and we went over there, pushed and shoved it (as if it was a tree stump?), wrestled with it until it came out of the ground and then we joyfully threw it down. We returned to the march feeling we had achieved something.
We hadn't, of course, acheived anything; we had destroyed something. I don't know what was written on the sign - probably "house for sale" or something. I probably didn't even know at the time. It didn't matter. What mattered was that someone had set in motion an atavistic urge to become a pack who acted as one because.... I suppose because the group wanted it done.
"Me Lud, it wasn't me, it was the group."
Turn to "A Tale of Two Cities" by Dickens to learn more about crowd behaviour, or to Zola's "Germinal".
Looking back it seems so crazy, but at the time it seemed to be the obvious thing to do: pull that sign up and dash it to the ground.