How can we understand our own group character well enough to improve it?
How do we learn?
The earliest learning is experimental and original.
Even though everyone discovers the same things, it's still original research - fingers & toes, textures, tastes, sights, sounds, how to crawl & walk, etc.
Then at an early age, social learning starts to really add to our inner libraries at a remarkable pace with the acquisition of language and social skills.
Much of our advanced knowledge is gained by participation in relationships and groups, whether in actual classes or in virtual collective groups represented by books or the Internet.
Modern education is mostly accomplished in groups.
This has tremendous advantages.
Sharing resources is a major advantage of group activities.
Interchange and sharing of information is another major advantage.
People can teach each other very easily.
Try this exercise:
Imagine a world that works with a very different & strange psychological law ~
Whatever a person discovers can be known to others only while the original discoverer is still alive.
Now think of the person who discovered how to create fire at will.
Suppose that person taught others how to start fires, but everyone forgot how when the original discoverer died.
Where would we all be?
We would be very simple animals, indeed.
(Even birds, cats, dogs and apes teach their youngsters important skills.)
Now think of the great philosophers, teachers, scientists and poets who have shaped our civilization.
What if their contributions disappeared the day after they died, forgtten, erased?
What would any of us know?
We all know that Memory is fundamentally important.
Culture is a key characteristic of groups.
We live in a historical flow of ideas that can be increased and refined with each generation.
Whenever anyone has an idea or discovers something new, it has roots in the past, threads drawn from everything they learned from others.
The pathways that they were on that led to the new discovery were paved by others who came before.
This collection of ideas, experience, knowledge and inspiration has great value.
All of us understand this very well in a practical way and we rely everyday on our group affiliations and cultures.
Culture has given us the ability to maintain continuity from generation to generation.
The danger is that so many people accept group ideas, knowledge, sensibilities and directions without examination or discrimination.
Groups can help magnify individuals' capabilities.
But groups themselves don't learn.
Only individuals learn.
People who go looking for knowledge on their own are often said to be doing "original research".
Groups don't 'know' about knowledge until it is transmitted from one individual to others.
We need to learn and understand how to participate in groups with our individuality intact, strong and well developed.
We need to engage in groups with awareness and an uncompromising integrity about retaining our individuality.
This is necessary to help ensure that groups do what they are naturally designed to do in a positive healthy way.
These skills will help people in families and schools and larger groups to understand how to live together more peacefully.
A good partnership between individuality and group life will help us.
Groups are emulations of living things.
Groups may seem like they behave like primitive animals, but they are not alive.
They are emulations of life.
In order to improve, groups need to 'learn'.
They need to 'know' more about the ways that individuals live and thrive.
We need to accommodate the group activities to individual needs more effectively.
This process of helping the group to 'know more' is something like helping a computer to 'know more' about someone.
It is a process akin to programming, not real learning.
Even though a group isn't really learning, we can put into place processes that will guide the group functions toward effects that will be beneficial for all the individual members.
A group does not have an independent destiny. It can be compared to a machine.
Since the group is not organic, but a construct of our own making, we can engineer it and improve it like a machine without entering into a moral dilemma.
In order to do this, one step we can make is to learn about group functions.
The more we individuals understand, the better we can guide our groups for our own collective benefit.
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