Our interaction with other human beings is governed by two distinctively different mental modes. One is older, organic, non-hierachical and personal, and the other is newer, abstract, hierachical and impersonal. I call the former "the band mode" because I believe this is the predominant mode when we lived in band units in a prehistoric time. I call the latter "large group mode" because this emerged as human beings started to form groups much larger than bands. The band mode kicks in when you are with family or old friends for example. What you do with them depends on who they are and how you feel about them. The large group mode is more dominant when you are with strangers and have to perform some task with them. For example, when you go to the bank to deposit checks, you are with a teller who doesn't know you and you have to accomplish the task of depositing the checks. The interaction here is not based on who you are or who the teller is, but rather on the task you have to perform together. A harmonious balance between the two modes is vital to our wellbeing since we would feel alienated and unhappy if the band mode is suppressed too much and we wouldn"t function in the society without the large group mode. As the large group mode increased its influence on our mind over the course of the human history, we struggled to find a new balance, and we still do.
When human beings used hunting and collecting for primary means to obtain food, it was the most preferable to live in a band unit of several tens of members. A larger size would have made it hard to obtain enough food and a small group like a nuclear family would not have enjoyed a full advantage of protection by numbers. This mode of life probably lasted for hundreds of thousands of years. Considering the fact that most apes, who are our close relatives, live in a group of several dozen individuals, human being would have been well adapted genetically to such a way of life.
Several thousand years ago, large group societies with a significantly larger size compared with these bands emerged and since then the large group society has been the dominant form of human organizations in many parts of the world throughout the history. Shortage of hunting games, development of agriculture, wars, etc. may have contributed to this shift from bands to big groups. The most important point here is that this shift initiated a profound change in how we organized ourselves as a functional group and that it occurred relatively recently compared with the preceding period when we lived in bands.
The mentality required to form and operate such a large group is different from the band mentality. In a band, members have common experience and know each other very well. The integrity of the band is held by a sum of relationships between each member. Most of the times they have the same feeling about whatever situation they encounter and act accordingly. In a large group, however, a member has to take orders from a stranger and often times he has to suppress his feelings about what he is ordered to do. Whereas the relationship between band members is forged through interactions with each other, the relationship between members of a large group is given by an authority outside of them, such as an emperor and written law.
Since it is unlikely that human beings had such a large group mentality from the beginning, it is most likely that we diverted some existent instincts which had been using to bond members of a band to the new objective of forming a large group. Amphibians developed legs out of fins, but in their early evolutional stages they must have used fins to walk, rather awkwardly. Our ancestors made similar diversions, not physically perhaps but mentally.
One of the most important instincts which were diverted for organizing a large group is the leadership during hunting. At the time of hunting, men are genetically programmed to follow the leader and also become a leader in certain conditions. A war, which is one of plausible reasons why we formed larger groups than bands, is similar to hunting a large mammal with a group of men. Therefore, this diversion is a fairly reasonable one.
Another powerful instinct which would have been utilized was sex. Some apes use sex as a means to alleviate stress between individuals and it is likely that sex played a role in adjustment of social relationships even in the age of bands. In the large group society, sexual attraction can make it easier to cooperate with strangers. Also, a king can keep a good relationship with many tribes by having a wife from each of them.
Bonding between parent and child was utilized for this purpose, too. Children obey their parents and parents care for them. Same was assumed in the relationship between the leader of the big group and its members. Whereas the leadership in hunting is suited for war operations, this pseudo parent-child bonding is more suited for governing diurnal life of the group.
These diversions are the reason why even modern people often see a parent figure or a hero in their leader. For example, Japanese people were called "babies of the Emperor" before the world war II. Also, Japanese company employees are encouraged to regard the company as his family, with the president being the father. We tend to forget the fact that our leader doesn't even know us personally and probably doesn't care about us much either, because these diversions, or illusions, make us feel more at ease in a large group society.
These diversions, however, are not always easy. For example, the size difference between a hunting group and a large military troop is very significant. In the band life, a leader can naturally win respect from members by showing his physical power, skill and wisdom in daily life. In a large group however, members would not know the leader very well and therefore the leader-member relationship is harder to forge.
This problem was solved by planting an image of an very powerful, wise and caring leader in members" mind. For example, a huge statue of the leader would help evoke awe in members" mind. A story of how the leader fought monsters and killed them would help, too. This image was most likely far from how the leader really was, but the distance between members and the leader helped him cover the reality. Also, in a large group, the image of the leader was more important than what he really was for the purpose of keeping the group together.
A significant problem with this type of leadership which is supported by diversion of instincts in band mentality is the confusion between a band and a large group in leader's mind. History is filled with leaders failing to keep the large group together because they favored their own family or lover over the whole large group they were in charge of. History is also filled with unnecessary wars which can be suspected to be the result of confusion between wars and hunting, which is routine activity in band life. Every time our instinct told us its time to hunt, we waged a war instead.
This confusion has been slowly cleared as the large group mentality became more and more independent from the band mentality in our mind. Today we don't believe the president of the U.S. is a superman but we still respect him as our leader. Today president's family doesn't appropriate half of our GNP. We trust the system rather than the individual. Charisma is a less of requirement for a leader than it was just a few hundred years ago. It's not that the confusion doesn't occur now, but it occurs much less frequently and in a much smaller scale.
The large group mentality established itself at different rates in different areas of human activities. It was prominent in a war situation from the earliest time. In other areas, however, people continued to live like band people. People ate food which was produced within their own band, used tools which were made by their fellow band members, and for the most part only talked to their band members. As time went on, more areas of human activities became permeated with the large group mentality. People began inter-band exchange of food, tools, weapons, etc. Today, everything we can buy with money has a mark of the large group mentality, because money is a symbol of this mentality in being logical, abstract and exchangeable. Even today, there are some areas in the world where the large group mentality is not fully established yet.
The area of human activities which has been most resistant to the large group mentality is child raising. This was probably because children were born with instincts primarily from the age of the bands and therefore not conducive to activities in large groups. At least for the first few years, they had to be somewhat separated from the society and then slowly adapted to the reality of the large group. It is only recent in this country that many infants spend a significant portion of a day with professional care takers other than their own parents.
Whenever there is a rapid increase in the magnitude of the large group mentality in an area of human activities, that area becomes a focus of our attention. This is because we have to balance ourselves between the band mentality and the large group mentality and the sudden growth of the large group mentality demands a new balance, a new fulcrum.
To put it very simply, there is a balance between the band mentality and the large group mentaliy in each area of human activity, and the human history is a process of increase in a share of the large group mentality in each area. I believe it will be fruitful to examine historical events and current events in this light. Such examination will help us make sense of our history and current society.
e-mail to author (for English speakers)