Group Think

Group think is difficult to avoid in this society, especially when a majority of us are conditioned for over 12 years to conform to certain standards in school. On top of that, we're taught to draw inside the lines, raise our hands before speaking, and follow the instructor's every word.

However much contrived and coerced group think may seem bad, especially when perpetuated by institutions such as compulsory education, it is my sincere belief that social group think, brought by peer pressure and willful ignorance, is what really damages our intellectual capabilities. Case in point, I had plenty of frie

nds growing up who would drink beyond their tolerances. Shit, I still have friends like that, but I diverge. Although binge drinking is never good, what is even worse is driving while intoxicated. I lost a friend to drunk driving because of two group think kinda behaviors: 1) people believing they are fine to drive after having too many drinks and 2) trusting too much in the protection of a car.

Drinking and driving is dumb, flat out. The pa

rt where group think comes in is when the group, as a whole, permits this behavior. But for my friend's death, the silence of his friends wasn't the only factor. As I mentioned above, an even bigger false belief, that people should also not have while driving sober, is that cars are perfectly safe.

An object weighing several thousand pounds moving at several times the speed and average person can run is a deadly object. It's a pretty simple deduction, really. Of course, the larger your car, the more safety you have at the expense of others. Because people perceive cars as safe, they engage in distracting behaviors such as talking on the phone, eating, shaving, etc., that takes attention away from the act of driving.

I was going to go into car culture, but I feel that would make this post obnoxiously long.