    12

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    But if the stress response is such a marvelous tool for self defense,

    why is it so disabling?  Why do stress reactions shut down our thought

    processes, cripple our immune system, and occasionally turn us into

    stupefied blobs of jelly?  How do these impairments help us survive?

    The answer: they don't.  Men and animals do not merely struggle

    to maintain their individual existence.  They are members of larger social

    groups.  And all too often, it is the social unit, not the individual, whose

    survival comes first.

    At first glance, our dependence on our fellow human beings

    sounds encouragingly angelic.  But it is a blessing with a barb.  Harvard

    psychologist Daniel Goleman, paraphrasing Nietzsche, says

    "Madness...is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups."3   A

    study by social psychologist Bryan Mullen shows that the larger the

    lynch mob the more brutal the lynching.4  Freud declares that groups are

    "impulsive, changeable and irritable."  Those caught up within them, he

    asserts, can become infantile slaves to emotion, "led almost exclusively

    by the unconscious."5  Swept up by the emotions of a crowd, humans

    tend to lose their ethical restraints.  As a result, the greatest human evils

    are not those that individuals perform in private--the tiny transgressions

    against some arbitrary social standard we call sins.  The ultimate evils

    are the mass murders that occur in revolution and war, the large-scale

    savageries that arise when one agglomeration of humans tries to

    dominate another.  They are the deeds of the social group.

    The social pack, as we shall see, is a necessary nurturer.  It gives us

    love and sustenance.  Without its presence, our mind and body literally

    switch on an arsenal of interior devices for self-demolition.  If we ever

    save ourselves from the scourge of mass violence, it will be through the

    efforts of millions of minds, networked together in the collaborative

    processes of science, philosophy, and movements for social change.  In

    short, only a group effort can save us from the sporadic insanities of the

    group.

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