The easiest way to explain mass hysteria is to think about riots, mobs, and soccer crowds going bonkers. I learned about these ideas when I did a Master's Thesis on "Mobs and Riots in Higher Education". One of the earliest writers on mobs of any kind was Auguste Labon, a French scholar who studied the mobs of the French Revolution. He said something like "We lose our ability to think individually when emotionally engaged in a crowd that becomes a mob."
This inability to think clearly develops early in dysfunctional families. Some families produce children emotionally enmeshed or merged with a parent. These children grow up with an inability to think differently from others and seek groups with whom to lose themselves. Teenagers are notorious for losing their rational minds by merging themselves with other teens that dress alike, listen to the same music and attend the same concerts. They, and motorcycle gangs, inner city gangs, and others insist they are just "Being themselves by being just like their group".
If we cannot think differently from our family, we are more easily pulled into the emotions of groups, crowds, and even mobs. There are many examples of people drawn into cults. I met a man in Asia that had sold his home, and belongings in order to take his family to a deserted mountain to greet the Lord who had been predicted to return on a certain date.
It is obvious that Jesus did not return and the man had lost his church, friends, followers, money, and reputation. It had been several years since the prophesy failed and he was back in ministry as a much chastened and humbled Christian. That is a very tough way to grow up.
We are supposed to help our children grow up and leave home emotionally day by day until they are differentiated from us and can think independently. If we do, they are much less likely to get caught up in mass, emotional movements and lose our minds.
See our web for help growing up.
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