Group Minds

In “Group Minds” by Doris Lessing, she makes a point of acknowledging how individuals will violate their own common sense, and moral codes in order to be accepted by their peers, and argues why we as a society can’t apply this knowledge to explain how people could be cautious of group pressures. Doris Lessing has been called “the best female novelist” post war era; since 1959, she has written over twenty works of fiction, and has received numerous amounts of scholarly attention. Lessing continuously states that citizens of the Western World are usually boastful when it comes to living in a free society, and claiming that their choices are their own, as well as their opinions, yet are blind to the fact that outside pressures influence their
One great social psychologist by the name of Solomon Asch conducted a series of experiments in the early 1950s that help support Doris Lessing’s thesis about human behavior, and group pressures (655-659). Given the same outline of the previous experiment mentioned, Asch was able to demonstrate how individuals who assumed the majority was just following the first responder, did not realize how they as well had fallen into the group of
Social media has a large hand to deal with this epidemic, with the trends and “what’s hot now” lists being shoved down everyone’s throat it’s very difficult to not be pressured into looking, thinking, or even dressing like the mass. It is fair to say that those of us that live in the Western World take much pride when it comes to individuality, and in fact these days we have begun to praise it more than ever. I understand Doris Lessing’s points, and where the passion for this topic arises from, but I just don’t believe it is this huge epidemic that is crumbling our individualism in modern society. As I read this article the main phrase that I found myself repeating in my head was “I always speak my mind”, now I’m not positive if it’s a millennial thing, but most of my group of friends come from various backgrounds, political views, and religion, yes we might have a few things in common that most likely sparked our friendship, but it is our individuality that keeps our bonds so tightknit. I love the diversity of our society, and I see us embracing every part of it each and every day. It is clear that Doris Lessing had a bigger picture to this small article, yes as a society we tend to draw others like ourselves and conforming a bit to the majority, and maybe even focus more on how to make each other like one another, but that is the beauty of this hypocrisy of a society we have, we still find