Popular Folly

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

I asked my friend S., “do you think we will ever have a primary value system based on something other than the dollar?”

“I don’t know.” Her answer came with a sigh which by my guess meant, “probably not.” S. was born into a family with plenty of money and the pleasures and sorrows which come with it.

"Men (and women, GB), it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." This is from the treatise on popular folly, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay, first published in 1841.

We are puzzling creatures, especially when it comes to our shifts in values. As individuals we will go to great expense by many measures to provide care to a suffering loved one. We will put ourselves at great risk of harm to rescue another from a dangerous situation. Small personal items left by a predecessor have great intrinsic value while the heirlooms sit in boxes in closets.

When we herd up these principles and ethics in all their personal depth indeed go flying out the window. We provide or deny one another medical care based solely on the dollar. In the name of “development” we alter the landscape in long term ways for short term gain. The same goes for the environment, preferably of course when it’s someone else’s back yard. Cloaked in the abstractions of states and policies, on grand scales we murder one another and destroy property to get the resources we want.

While as individuals we commonly abhor the madness of our herd behavior, we seem to keep right on doing it. We evolve physically in response to our environment and without much choice in the matter. But can we evolve socially, changing human nature toward living sensibly? I hope so.

Gordon Bunker