Curiously I’m still a big believer in the wisdom of crowds. Crowds behaving badly is almost never organic, and almost always the work of elites trying to undermine rival elites. Crowds are naturally wise and have to be forged into massed stupidity by removing structure.
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Show me a mad crowd and I’ll show you an elite power play.
It’s a defection move in a tragedy of elite commons. “Burn the shit to the ground” always has a subtext: “start over there”
The hope is, the burning can be stopped before it turns to “excess”, defined as “our shit”
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From Edmond Taylor in The Fall of the Dynasties (see image)
Framing it this way, a revolutionary mob is an archaic society hijacked by charismatic leadership.
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The question I would pose is: in any 'crowd', with the only constraint being that it comprises some sufficient large number of participants, is there any scenario where 'charismatic leadership (cl)' will not eventually develop? I prefer 'cl' to 'elites', though 2 has traits of 1.
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Yes, sufficiently robust encryption as the foundation of communication. Been thinking about this all day, and I've realized charismatic leadership basically needs big crowds aggregating in a specific way that encrypted comms interfere with.
That's interesting. I was considering 'crowd' in a more traditional but broad sense. 1929 market speculators but also a military company on deployment. And 'charisma' both in the 'baby kissing politician snake' context as well as the Lt. Calley/My Lai context.
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