Disclaimer: This blog post discusses the narrative side of climate change. It does not deny scientific evidence that Earth's climate is changing.
Recently, I was on a work trip to a Western country. During my stay, it became increasingly clear that everyone I spoke to shared the same narrative:
1. Climate change is bad and caused by humans releasing greenhouse gases through burning fossil fuels.
2. Cars and plastic production constitute a large portion of our fossil fuel consumption.
3. Therefore, switching to electric cars and eliminating plastics will stop climate change, which is good.
While it might be tempting to dissect this narrative's assumptions and conclusions, that's not my point. What fascinates me is the group-think. Every person I encountered recited this same story, using it to justify their behaviors – from using impractical wooden sporks that chafe your mouth to making business investment decisions solely based on predicted sustainability measures.
Climate change has transcended science. It's become a story that people live by, influencing what they buy, where they travel, who they vote for, and even who they love. And here's the kicker: as a story, it works!
Regardless of your stance on the topic, take a step back and consider the power of the climate change narrative. How many decisions is it currently influencing? How many lives is it affecting?
Stories Groups Live By
Stories have an incredible ability to situate a person within a group and that group within a world. More than that, stories tell us how to interact to move the plot forward. In this case, humans are on the brink of losing everything but embark on a quest to fix civilization, save humanity, and the world.
By narrating where we've been, what's happening now, and what we need to do, stories dictate what groups think. Powerful narratives can impact even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant behaviors, like which toilet paper to buy or movies to watch.
This is where I see the danger of group-think. Group members who live by their group’s stories risk letting those stories think for them. They do their thinking through the narrative, viewing decisions only through the lens of the story.
It's like an overzealous salesperson who, at every opportunity, tells you how their product can solve all your problems. Such a person cannot engage in good-faith conversation; there's always an agenda, a background motive waiting to surface.
For most of us, encountering group-think people raises red flags. Why? In my experience, it's because that person isn't trying to understand me, my worldview, or my intentions. Instead, they're scanning my words like a detection machine, looking for connections to their cause – be it left, right, up, or down. That is not the way humans connect in the wild.
Group-think people are addicted to their group's perspective. They've been captured by it. They no longer see the whole world, only their story's limited version of it. All information outside the story is discarded. All contrary evidence ceases to exist. Worse, it's literally not allowed to exist within the confines of their story's world.
This is why I'm not a group-think person. I don't want someone telling me what I can and cannot perceive, feel, or intuit. I don't want limitations on what information is allowed to be real, or who my enemies and friends should be.
I’ll figure that out for myself.
Accurately, this problem of lack of individual decision-making is right there in the term "group-think." The group is doing the thinking, not the person. And when groups think, they do it through overly simple stories about the world. Stories that strengthen the group's identity but, importantly, not the individual. And, for the sake of strength, groups often pressure people to outsource our thinking to the group in exchange for membership. Warning: Do not join these groups and don’t drink the cool-aid.
Conclusion
All that to say, we live in a world. That world is full of groups. Groups have stories that bind them. To be part of the group, you open yourself to the story. To belong to the group, you accept the story. To become the group, you over-identify with the story. It is this last step where things become toxic.
Being a group-think person allows you to have an answer for everything, albeit only through the lens of your group’s story.
Learning to develop and maintain a unique perspective is challenging as it requires genuine observation of the real-world. It forces you to stand apart, looking at reality, alone. This is too much to bear for many people, so they hide within their groups.
By developing a unique perspective, however, we break out of intellectual and civilizational gridlocks, dead-ends, and paradoxes. It allows us to shape our whole world in a way that benefits reality, beyond the group.
See your group for what it is. Love your group. But please, do not become your group.
Maintain your perspective. Think differently. Question.
And if your group rejects you because you had thoughts, then that group wasn’t for you in the first place.