The Emerging Lynchpin

Herds Happen

Will we emerge as individuals with choices and freedoms or herds without? Herds can be big or small. The individual question may be how you will influence your herd, or how your herd will influence you? That decision could change our world, and it is only a few months away.

From the term herd mentality is the word herd, meaning "group of living creatures," and mentality, implying a certain frame of a thinkable mind. The condensed and personalized definition might be: "how large numbers of people are influenced to act in the same way at the same time."

Herd behavior is distinguished from herd mentality because it applies to animals and people, whereas the term mentality implies a uniquely human phenomenon. Herd mentality can also imply a fear-based reaction to peer pressure which makes individuals act in order to avoid feeling "left behind or left out" from the group. Herd mentality is also sometimes known as "mob mentality.”

Today, we are being conditioned by unexplained and unchallenged polls, undocumented news information, articles and posts, corporate edicts, labor groups, political organizations, various religious movements, and a zillion other herding influences.

Considering the stakes, it would be well worth each of us to take a reflective inventory of how we are interconnected to these herds (e.g. all social networks are a form of herding).

The answer to how all of this may turn out could be:

“Who will influence the herds?”

As always…you will decide.