‘Groupthink.’
That’s a word that’s been around.
“The practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity.” That’s the essential definition of ‘groupthink.’
Is there such a word as ‘groupdo?’
Unless I’m missing something, I don’t believe ‘groupdo’ is an actual word. I’m not seeing ‘groupdo’ in dictionaries. And ‘groupdo’ doesn’t seem to be the name of anything.
But a word like ‘groupdo’ might explain some things about the world around us… presently, and in the past, as well. Because a lot of people sure seem to be in lockstep, just as folks have been, over the course of history.
There might be some group-thinking going on, occasionally, around you… in your town, and your county. And some groupdo, as well?
Social media, you might say, brought fundamental change… but have they really? When you’ve got folks on one side, or the other side, group-thinking, in various ways, in social media? And, maybe group-doing?
There is, sometimes, thought-provoking commentary in social media. But it’s sort of formula… sort of predictable, at times.
Even in social media, focusing on business, and on business people, and people seeking to have some role in business, there’s groupthink.
In a British newspaper, there was something about a famous artist’s father who, when the Cultural Revolution was underway in China, was sent to a labor camp to correct his thinking.
Could it be, that the artist’s father, who was a celebrated poet, was forced to have his thinking corrected, because of what group-thinking authorities were thinking, all those decades ago, when they didn’t much appreciate intellectuals and artists, and such?
Even now, there seems to be a whole lot of group-thinking in a host of countries.
And here at home, too, what’s what? With a former president of the United States, former POTUS Trump, seeming to want his followers to stay in line, and in lockstep. Anyone failing to do so is being banished, it seems, not to a labor camp, thank heavens, but to some remote place in political purgatory.
Folks seeking to remain in the former president’s good graces have to think exactly as he thinks. Isn’t that, in a way, a way of getting people to be thinking and making decisions “as a group in a way that discourages creativity?”
And then when his followers are doing what he wants them to do – getting them to groupdo, so to speak – some things, somehow, get all smashed up. Like the Capitol building in DC was battered, a year ago, last January, on the 6th?
If prosecutors looking into some things the former president might have been engaging in — involving, for instance, his financial dealings – if they happen to do anything the former president deems to be… probably, whatever he decides to deem… he’s urging supporters to engage in the biggest, ever, protests.
Think like him? Groupthink?
And groupdo whatever he’s thinking they should do, too… so to speak?
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.