Individuals may be idealistic, smart and articulate – until they join a group. Individual Thais are among the gentlest, warmest, and most gracious people you could ever meet; groups of them were throwing petrol bombs at each other in the capital of Bangkok earlier this week.
by A. A. Sohan
Excerpted from The Star Online
THE late grandmaster Isaac Asimov bequeathed two great legacies to the world of science fiction: His three laws of robotics, and his fictional take on the science of "psychohistory".
In the mundane world, psychohistory is the study of historical events using psychological motivation as its lens. In Asimov’s version, it is a predictive science that uses a combination of psychology and sociology, with a mathematical underpinning using the laws of statistics.
In simpler terms, Asimov posited that you could predict what was going to happen to a society using mathematical formulae. In his Foundation series, the psychohistory pioneer Hari Seldon, with his calculations and foresight, guided the fate and future of an entire galactic civilisation through a few millennia using this tool.
Asimov used gas and the kinetic theory of physics as an analogy – it’s extremely difficult to predict the movement, actions and reactions of a single molecule of gas, yet we can analyse the entirety with a high degree of accuracy.
Sociology, psychohistory – all sciences devoted to studying groups – are all predicated on the belief that while individuals are impossible to pin down, they’re very shallow and easily manipulated when you put enough of them together.
That single devotee of any religion may strive to be forgiving, caring and compassionate. A group of them, however, sees nothing wrong in killing non-believers despite their religion’s teachings to the contrary. Adherents of the faith may be tolerant and accepting; institutions are rarely so. Devotees can find strength in themselves and in their divinity; organisations are usually scared and insecure. ...
Most individual Americans I’ve met have high ethical standards, yet as a society they re-elected a president whose administration saw nothing wrong in invading another land under false pretences, or torturing civilian suspects by just labelling them enemy combatants, or trampling upon civic liberties – in fact, in destroying just about everything the United States stands for. Read the full article here.