The combination of our 1.5 weeks of rehearsal for The Long Count and the variety of media I’ve been checking out (or re-checking out) explaining in great detail our current economic pit of despair has me thinking a lot about this idea of group mind.
This concept was first introduced to me in college during my brief time as an improvisor (and a proud member of Lincoln, Nebraska’s Huge Embarrassing Failures) by Timmy Horner, who I now sometimes see on television. We quickly learned that a strong group mind was the diference between life and death on stage. While we spent our Sunday mornings cultivating that state of being among the Failures, it seems to be something that we as humans seek whether we’re doing it conciously or not. When one investor ran from the 1% interest offered by the Fed, a whole herd of them followed. When one banker made a fortune from selling CDO’s (watch the video linked above. seriously.), they all did – even the ones who were pretty sure they knew better at the time. We are pack animals, afterall. And we can get ourselves into a lot of trouble by following the flock.
Or – as I witnessed wide-eyed in rehearsal last Saturday – sometimes we use our group mind to build one dragon out of seven people. Sometimes we build a forest out of them, too. Sometimes we turn the LPCC into a musical instrument. Sometimes we lift each other up – figuratively and literally. Sometimes we transform the mundane into the magical. That human brain – that group mind, man. It’ll wow me every time.
