Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: have you ever been to a protest? Have you ever
Speaker 1: been part of the protest movement in any way, shape
Speaker 1: or form. M I have been in the cities before
Speaker 1: we're protests were going on, and I was sort of
Speaker 1: clueless and walking through them. Oh yeah, Well, I think
Speaker 1: we've all done that to a certain extent, Like when
Speaker 1: I when my wife and I went to Thailand several
Speaker 1: years back, there was some protesting going on at the time,
Speaker 1: and we just we were on the edges off and
Speaker 1: we we knew it was going going on, but that
Speaker 1: was about the extent of it. Yeah, And it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's it's difficult to when you're on vacation because
Speaker 1: you're not in protest you mind frame, So you might say, oh,
Speaker 1: I support that, but you know, you probably have things
Speaker 1: to do, You've got you know, the love to see,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, and I make light of it,
Speaker 1: but seriously, it's it's something that it So that has
Speaker 1: been happening a lot lately, is definitely on our minds,
Speaker 1: and we're recording this mid November, and as of mid November,
Speaker 1: we've seen a lot of protests unfolding over the summer
Speaker 1: in this fall. So yeah, like just the other day
Speaker 1: they cleared out the Occupy Wall Street. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: So that's sort of up in the air as to
Speaker 1: what the fate will be of Occupy Wall Street. Now.
Speaker 1: Protests as a whole have have been around for ages,
Speaker 1: like pretty much as as long as as human society
Speaker 1: has been advanced enough to have laws and customs and
Speaker 1: policies and cultural norms. Um, We've we've had reasons at
Speaker 1: times to rebel against those norms. It's human instinct, right,
Speaker 1: I mean you feel like some something has been uh,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of un injustice going on in the
Speaker 1: world that you need to write, right, and and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about this a little bit more too, but it's
Speaker 1: a little bit more complex. I mean obviously socio economic
Speaker 1: issues come into play as well. Yeah. I tend to
Speaker 1: think of it like a like a river. I think
Speaker 1: that's the analogy made in How Protests Work, which article
Speaker 1: which you can find on how stuff Works dot com. Uh,
Speaker 1: thinking of it in terms of of a river. And
Speaker 1: in the same way that yes, you can change the
Speaker 1: course of a river, and nature can change the course
Speaker 1: of a river, but it's gonna take something. It's gonna
Speaker 1: take a certain amount of will, or a certain amount
Speaker 1: of energy, a certain amount of power, because otherwise, rivers
Speaker 1: tend to just keep going the way they're going unless
Speaker 1: unless something comes along to change it. And that's the
Speaker 1: way it tends to go with with something, well, whether
Speaker 1: it is a law or a or a social norm
Speaker 1: or some sort of an idea that has become popular
Speaker 1: or or or has become the norm and a culture,
Speaker 1: that the river will continue to go down the course
Speaker 1: it's been going unless people rise up and change it,
Speaker 1: unless they step forward and and like, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna have the river run this way anymore.
Speaker 1: We're going to alter its course in a less destructive
Speaker 1: route or in a more wholesome route, etcetera. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: interesting you you use that analogy, because just yesterday on
Speaker 1: NPR one of the Occupy Wall Street protesters was making
Speaker 1: the analogy that they are like water, um that you know,
Speaker 1: they're a morpheus in the sense that they just can
Speaker 1: continue to sort of change course at will. So, yes,
Speaker 1: they've been whisked away from Zuccati Park in New York City,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that the protest has stopped the
Speaker 1: genies out of the bottle. And so they're just going
Speaker 1: to continue to to I suppose, run downstream in whatever
Speaker 1: manner they're like water. Um. So, in this podcast, we're
Speaker 1: going to we're going to talk about protests more along
Speaker 1: the lines how we approach it, like why do we protest,
Speaker 1: and and also some of the misconceptions about protesting and
Speaker 1: protesters and protesters. Uh, we're just gonna sort of jam
Speaker 1: here about about what the protest is and how it works.
Speaker 1: And then at the end, we're also going to run
Speaker 1: through some some quick ideas, some quick suggestions that we've
Speaker 1: run across that may help any of you out there
Speaker 1: who who are planning to be a part of a
Speaker 1: protest in the future, or just I mean, even if
Speaker 1: you're not planning to be a part of one, Uh,
Speaker 1: you may find yourself in the middle of one just
Speaker 1: by virtue of traveling around or going about your daily life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how you can better gauge a crowd and uh
Speaker 1: be safe in the crowd really, Yeah, I mean whether
Speaker 1: it's an occupy protest or a borderline revolution and in
Speaker 1: another country or something as simple. You remember the great
Speaker 1: coffee machine protests here at work of Oh yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to talk about the brand name of the
Speaker 1: coffee that was taken away, but I will say this.
Speaker 1: Everyone complained about that brand name coffee ceaselessly until it
Speaker 1: was taken away and another subpar brand was brought in,
Speaker 1: and I think everything just ground to a halt because
Speaker 1: we live and breathe off of coffee here. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I remember I was one of the early protesters in
Speaker 1: that particular movement. But no, but I was protesting before
Speaker 1: anybody else, I think, really noticed the change. And so
Speaker 1: then I was like, all right, I give up the
Speaker 1: new this is the new order with coffee. I spring
Speaker 1: my own coffee. And then everybody got up in arms
Speaker 1: and she changed everything. So yeah, yeah, and the Twitter
Speaker 1: feeds were just going nuts. They were. Luckily it didn't
Speaker 1: turn violent, um, and we were only tear gast ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just not too bad. Um. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: in a workplace, right. Yeah, But let's talk about one
Speaker 1: of the original protesters, or at least in American history
Speaker 1: that we think of Henry David Threau. Oh, yes, Henry
Speaker 1: David Threau um in nineteenth century American philosopher, and his
Speaker 1: big thing was civil disobedience. He was against slavery, which
Speaker 1: was legal at the time. He was against the US
Speaker 1: war with Mexico, and so he was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: you know, things the way they are. If this was
Speaker 1: a meal at a restaurant, I would refuse to pay
Speaker 1: for it, So I'm going to refuse to pay for
Speaker 1: it my taxes, taxes. He decided to just not gonna
Speaker 1: pay his taxes, and and he was not injuring into
Speaker 1: this situation thinking I'm going to stop paying my taxes.
Speaker 1: Good luck funding that war without Henry David's dough behind it.
Speaker 1: Now that that wasn't really his his approach, but he
Speaker 1: was making a statement that that as individuals, we can
Speaker 1: choose not to support the things that we disagree with, right,
Speaker 1: We don't have to accept the status quo. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So of course they came and arrested him eventually, because
Speaker 1: that's what happens when you don't pay your taxes, you
Speaker 1: get put in the pokey. Yes, at least, but this
Speaker 1: is really the birth of this idea of civil disobedience
Speaker 1: UM is a way to combat perceived ills in the
Speaker 1: world around you. Rosa Parks is another great example of
Speaker 1: civil disobedience. UM. Of course she she is famous for
Speaker 1: helping to uh begin the civil rights movement right with
Speaker 1: the Alabama bus boycott. Yeah, this was ve and at
Speaker 1: the time, Alabama state law required UM, black individuals to
Speaker 1: set at the back of the bus and relinquish their
Speaker 1: seat to white individuals if the vehicle was full. So
Speaker 1: Rosa Parks decided, you know, I'm not going to comply
Speaker 1: with this. I'm going to set where I want to
Speaker 1: set and uh and this and again this is not
Speaker 1: a situation. She was like, I'm going to change the
Speaker 1: world with one movement, No, with with with one decision
Speaker 1: to you know, to to disagree. But it ended up kickstarting.
Speaker 1: This was like the snowball down the hill. Right. Eventually
Speaker 1: you have a three d eighty one day boycott of
Speaker 1: the Montgomery bus system. In the following year, the US
Speaker 1: Supreme Court banded segregation on public transportation. Right. And this
Speaker 1: wasn't as improvised as as it sounds. Because she was
Speaker 1: a member of the Double A C p UM. There
Speaker 1: was UM Joanne Robinson. She was a black woman and
Speaker 1: a professor in all black Alabama State College, and she
Speaker 1: thought it was time to to test the law. And
Speaker 1: so Rosa Parks had completed a workshop on civil disobedience
Speaker 1: before she was arrested, and she knew very well what
Speaker 1: she was doing and what they were trying to accomplish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as as much as much as we may want to
Speaker 1: sometimes interpret that story is it's a lady on the
Speaker 1: bus and she finally just had too much and sat down. Um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't quite that, but still, Uh, well, that's what
Speaker 1: I love about that because I think that it shows
Speaker 1: that there was this network going on, a lot of
Speaker 1: fun being put into this, a lot of work being
Speaker 1: put into this. And there's a great article called How
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Movement Work by John Fuller that goes
Speaker 1: into this more detail if you're interested. Um, but this
Speaker 1: is the time obviously that's pre Facebook, Twitter, email, So
Speaker 1: it's really amazing that people were able to really get
Speaker 1: all of these details down and execute very well planned situations.
Speaker 1: And I mean we're talking about the situations that were
Speaker 1: years in the planning. Yeah. And of course, the other
Speaker 1: big name in protests, non violent protest is Mahatma Gandhi
Speaker 1: who in the eighteen and nineties, early eighteen Nini, who
Speaker 1: worked as a legal advisor to an Indian law from
Speaker 1: in South Africa. So he's he's you know, he starts
Speaker 1: off not like the Mohamma Gandhi we come to identify
Speaker 1: with and the iconic Gandhi that we we know. But
Speaker 1: while there he encountered rachel intolerance. He in sain he
Speaker 1: was reading the works of Thorow tolstoy Um, even the
Speaker 1: writings of Jesus uh and uh well, the writings of Jesus,
Speaker 1: the tales of us, you know, and he ends up
Speaker 1: he ends up campaigning for the rights of Indians in
Speaker 1: South Africa and then returns back home to India itself
Speaker 1: and rallies of support against British colonial rule and the
Speaker 1: cast system. So he ends up coming up with a
Speaker 1: strategy called Satya Graja, which is Sanskrit for truth and firmness.
Speaker 1: And this in itself to is based in in even
Speaker 1: older ideas that the date back to the Vedic panishards
Speaker 1: of non violence against any living thing. Uh that that
Speaker 1: his whole ideas, it was, you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: protest and we're just going to we're gonna keep it
Speaker 1: as non violent as possible, and uh, it kind of
Speaker 1: it kind of bleeds over into some of the stuff
Speaker 1: we talked about in Martyrs, the idea that if you
Speaker 1: if you sit there and take it, eventually it shames
Speaker 1: the person dishing it out. And that's exactly what it did,
Speaker 1: and very similar to um, you know some of the
Speaker 1: things that happens. Civil rights movement people were absolutely aghast
Speaker 1: at how the government um or certain officials initially reacted
Speaker 1: and that put the pressure on those governments to make
Speaker 1: huge sweeping changes. Yeah, there was a nineteen nineteen the
Speaker 1: British troops open fire and demonstrators and then there's this
Speaker 1: enormous massacre, uh and estimated three hundred seventy nine killed,
Speaker 1: over a thousand injured, and Gandhi ends up calling for
Speaker 1: non compliance. Indian public officials resigned from the British government,
Speaker 1: parents withdrew their children from British schools, and virtually anything
Speaker 1: bearing the Royal seal was boycotted. So in India's struggle
Speaker 1: for independence ends up paying off like through this this
Speaker 1: measure and things things that could not have been one
Speaker 1: necessarily with violence or or violence have been used, you
Speaker 1: would have seen an entirely different unfolding of events and
Speaker 1: unfolding of the modern India. Yeah, the Satia Graja, I
Speaker 1: think was obviously key to this, right because it just said,
Speaker 1: you have to roomain passive, even if you're being kicked,
Speaker 1: even if you're being beaten. We must refuse to act.
Speaker 1: And of course this is this is the the the
Speaker 1: upper hand that Gandhi and the protesters had eventually using
Speaker 1: this tactic. But of course, sometimes protests do turn violent,
Speaker 1: and I mean you can pretty much search for the
Speaker 1: phrase protest turns violent on Google News any day and
Speaker 1: you'll find a pretty recent example. I mean, it happens.
Speaker 1: You get people in a in an area, everyone's kind
Speaker 1: of riled up, their tensions mounting. There's generally some sort
Speaker 1: of security police or military force keeping an eye on things. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a powder keg And I mean that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that Gandhi realized in his whole thing,
Speaker 1: was don't don't give them cause to set the powder
Speaker 1: keg off. And if they start setting the powder keg off,
Speaker 1: don't throw more powder on the fire. Right, And it
Speaker 1: doesn't it's not even just a protest, It could be
Speaker 1: a bunch of individuals congregating. Um. And I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: Laura Logan. She was the chief foreign news correspondent for CBS. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know during the Egyptian Revolution in Tahier Square, she
Speaker 1: was brutally desaulted, assaulted, sexual assaulted. And again, this is
Speaker 1: a crowd that was initially coming together to celebrate and
Speaker 1: turned very violent. Um. So we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that and how how and if you can
Speaker 1: actually read a crowd and try to avoid that. So
Speaker 1: what do we protest, Why do we do it? What's
Speaker 1: at the heart of it? Well, you can't really talk
Speaker 1: about about protests about talking about group think a little
Speaker 1: bit and the whole the idea of like the wisdom
Speaker 1: of the crowds or well, there's sort of two sides
Speaker 1: to the coin. On one hand, there's the idea of
Speaker 1: the wisdom of the crowd. You get you get a
Speaker 1: you go out in the street, you ask what the
Speaker 1: opinion is, and then the street is going to be right. Well,
Speaker 1: this is that idea of emergence. Right, And we've discussed
Speaker 1: this a little in the past, that if left to
Speaker 1: its own devices and within certain constraints, the crowd will
Speaker 1: do a better job at figuring things out than a
Speaker 1: single person. A really cool example of this this came
Speaker 1: up in an article I was writing for for How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works about the game Pandemic. This is a game
Speaker 1: where people collaborate to try and stop an outbreak on
Speaker 1: a game board that looks like a map. And I
Speaker 1: was reading some interviews with the Dinner and he and
Speaker 1: this is the guy who created the guy who sat
Speaker 1: down and wrote out this game, planned it out. And
Speaker 1: he pointed out that when he if he plays the
Speaker 1: game by himself, like controlling all say four players, And again,
Speaker 1: this is a game where part of it is people
Speaker 1: have to get along and collaborate and potentially fight with
Speaker 1: each other about what are the best moves to initiate.
Speaker 1: There's no leader per se, not an officially prescribed leader,
Speaker 1: so they have to kind of figure it out and
Speaker 1: decide what their group tactic is going to be, or
Speaker 1: or they're or if they're just going to fight about things.
Speaker 1: But even even with this situation in place, he pointed
Speaker 1: out that when he was playing a game controlling all
Speaker 1: four players, he generally did not do as good as
Speaker 1: four individual players because you're gonna have Each of these
Speaker 1: individuals is gonna bring like new uh us new data,
Speaker 1: and if if they can work those out, they're going
Speaker 1: to actually do better than the guy who created the game.
Speaker 1: Well see, and that's that's one of the things that
Speaker 1: uh I guess you could say one of the errors
Speaker 1: that people make when they talk about protests sometimes and
Speaker 1: then video they say that the crowd is irrational or
Speaker 1: full of irrational people. And what you're saying is is
Speaker 1: that there's you know, pointing to this sort of crowd
Speaker 1: intelligence that is happening, and that people aren't actually nuts,
Speaker 1: they're not being crazy. A lot of people who are
Speaker 1: involved in this crowd are actually pretty pragmatic people. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I think everyone has a rightful fear of mobs, I mean,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what plays into this. So so
Speaker 1: there's the idea that we know that a mob is
Speaker 1: a fearful thing when a when a crowd of people
Speaker 1: are out of control and and there's porks with pitchforks
Speaker 1: or fire or you know or whatever Frankenstein, right and
Speaker 1: Frankenstein in the movie and uh but but no, like
Speaker 1: a riot situation is not a good environment, and it
Speaker 1: is one that is rightfully feared by by many. So
Speaker 1: it's easy to extrapolate that and say, I mean it
Speaker 1: ties back into the basic evolution. You know, are you
Speaker 1: going to make a type one air or type two air? Right?
Speaker 1: And so you look at a large group of people
Speaker 1: and you're like, I don't like to look at this.
Speaker 1: This is gonna they're out of control. Just look at
Speaker 1: the beard on that one guy, you know, like these
Speaker 1: dirty bumps. Speaking of this is this is another common
Speaker 1: claim that people make that the crowd is poor, right right, yeah,
Speaker 1: the it's going to be the masses teaming out there
Speaker 1: to tear down the golden palaces of the of the rulers,
Speaker 1: right yeah. And this is from an article from Psychology
Speaker 1: Today that's actually talking about the reasons why we protests,
Speaker 1: and it says people join mass protests to achieve personal
Speaker 1: goals that they are otherwise unable to realize, for example,
Speaker 1: getting jobs, affordable housing, or getting rid of their debts.
Speaker 1: But what counts in terms of people's motivations to protest
Speaker 1: is not so much their absolute poverty level, but their
Speaker 1: relative poverty that is compared to their peers. Sociologists have
Speaker 1: called this a relative deprivation and it is important predictor
Speaker 1: of social unrest. So the point is there is that
Speaker 1: you might have someone who's protesting at say occupied Wall Street,
Speaker 1: who's doing fine. Actually they can put some you know,
Speaker 1: fine being meaning they can eat, they have clothes, they
Speaker 1: have a place to live. So the point of it, though,
Speaker 1: is that the person that occupy Wall Street is saying, Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: I know that I'm doing better than this other person,
Speaker 1: this this other country. But the fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is I live here in this city with these people,
Speaker 1: and I should have the same access to opportunities and
Speaker 1: resources that this person next to me does, that my
Speaker 1: politician does, um, that the blue collar worker does, the
Speaker 1: white collar worker does. And it's it's really important that
Speaker 1: while we tend to think of the US is a
Speaker 1: rich country, the fact of the matter is that the
Speaker 1: income gap between the rich and poor is much greater
Speaker 1: than anywhere else in the Western world. Um. So statistical
Speaker 1: data bears out that the more unequal society is, the
Speaker 1: more stressed and unhappy people are, and the more chance
Speaker 1: again we have of social unrest. Now, two other ideas
Speaker 1: that are I think are pretty closely related that are
Speaker 1: brought up in the Psychology Today article one crowd members
Speaker 1: are all alike, and that the crowd has no face.
Speaker 1: Now the crowd members are all alike. This one is
Speaker 1: is one that I think tends to it. It tends
Speaker 1: to get be wound up in media coverage, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: in in noticing various media outlets covering Occupy Wall Street. Granted,
Speaker 1: you only have so many photos to choose from, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure a p getty all these places
Speaker 1: rolling out a lot of photos, but you tend to
Speaker 1: see people gravitating towards particular images, and like, there's just
Speaker 1: one of this dude that kind of looks like Andy
Speaker 1: and Parks and wreck Um with kind of like one
Speaker 1: of these beards I think, I know, yeah, yeah he
Speaker 1: and he has like one of these beards, except his
Speaker 1: his mustaches shave, so it's kind of looks like giant
Speaker 1: wolverine ciders and he's like kind of yelling, and so
Speaker 1: you see that picture enough and you're kind of like,
Speaker 1: that's the Occupy Wall Street movement. It's kind of burly
Speaker 1: dudes with the crazy sideburns, yelling that haven't maybe they
Speaker 1: haven't had a bath recently. Well, this is another thing
Speaker 1: that that comes up to This came up in the
Speaker 1: London riots as well, like how could so many people
Speaker 1: from so many different backgrounds, since you know, of all
Speaker 1: stripes of life, how could they all be together doing this?
Speaker 1: This is impossible, you know because not right next to
Speaker 1: Andy from parts of reck, you also have a guy
Speaker 1: in a business suit. Um. So it's funny because we've
Speaker 1: talked about this before. We like pattern recognition and we
Speaker 1: like to keep it simple and easy. But the fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is is that all these people are
Speaker 1: coming together for a common cause. Um, it's not weird
Speaker 1: that there are people from all different walks of life
Speaker 1: getting together and protesting right now. But the idea that
Speaker 1: the crowd has no face, that's another thing that came up.
Speaker 1: You know, this is frequently cited, well, the like the
Speaker 1: occupied movement has no leader, you know, so they can't
Speaker 1: just shut down this leader or arrest this leader because
Speaker 1: the movement is greater. That's true to sort of varying
Speaker 1: degrees with with movements, because even in something like Occupy
Speaker 1: Wall Street, during these occupied movements, you're going to have
Speaker 1: people that are more connected. You're gonna have I mean,
Speaker 1: just on a basic level, think of your own friend group. Um,
Speaker 1: there are people that are better organizers than others. I
Speaker 1: mean just like within you know, my own marriage, my
Speaker 1: wife is much better organizer than me. So well, just
Speaker 1: even in the personality tests that we all took here
Speaker 1: and how stuff works, and some of us were put
Speaker 1: in a group and made play with legos, which was
Speaker 1: perfectly fine. Us and another group were made to play
Speaker 1: with legos unbeknownst to us, and then a third group
Speaker 1: had to clean all the floors. That was really weird.
Speaker 1: They like doing that. That's what their personality test said. Um,
Speaker 1: but you saw one group I'm gonna says, we were
Speaker 1: all grouped in like UM dispositions. So in my group
Speaker 1: where the creative crazies, and so we made some sort
Speaker 1: of toy that made no sense and was inoperable. The
Speaker 1: other group made this was amazing to watch. The other
Speaker 1: group made this completely streamlined, UM, some sort of vehicle
Speaker 1: like with little people, and it was of course it
Speaker 1: was in running condition. So yes, you do have people
Speaker 1: who are you know, automatically going to start organizing and
Speaker 1: helping UM in a protest group situation. And then this
Speaker 1: is another one that I found. It the idea that
Speaker 1: protests correlate to weather, and this one turns out to
Speaker 1: be true, or at least there's some there's some strong
Speaker 1: evidence to support the idea. Yeah, there's a Columbia University
Speaker 1: study and they used data from nineteen fifties two thousand four,
Speaker 1: and the researchers concluded that the likelihood of new conflicts
Speaker 1: arising in affected countries, mostly mostly located in the tropics
Speaker 1: double during alminio years is compared with wetter, cooler years. Right,
Speaker 1: so the hot, dry weather was driving people nuts, raising
Speaker 1: their hackles. The the the theory goes right, and uh,
Speaker 1: this they say, we believe this finding represents the first
Speaker 1: major evidence that global climate is a major factor in
Speaker 1: organized violence around the world. This was said by Solomon
Speaker 1: his Young, the leader, the lead author of the study,
Speaker 1: who conducted all the research at Columba University. And then
Speaker 1: another thing too, the Psychology Today article. I can't remember
Speaker 1: if it actually went into this, but you know, the
Speaker 1: recent upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa really
Speaker 1: can be traced to the region's youth, because we're talking
Speaker 1: about millions of young people facing widespread unemployment and seeing
Speaker 1: an earth of opportunities ahead of them. So you know,
Speaker 1: again we're seeing a lot of these sort of themes
Speaker 1: coming up, opportunities lack of them. You know, you look
Speaker 1: at Occupy Wall Street and you know, some people have
Speaker 1: sort of made light of that because there's some there's
Speaker 1: some yoga going on, there's some hacky sack playing. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: some of the people that are in that group, Um,
Speaker 1: you might point to and say, but you've got it,
Speaker 1: You've got it. Fine, Well I think we should we
Speaker 1: should see more yoga practice. Actually we should. It's a
Speaker 1: really good idea on both sides. Yeah. Um, but again,
Speaker 1: there is this this sense that that there is injustice
Speaker 1: going on that needs to be right it. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss crowd psychology a little more and
Speaker 1: get into what you can do to protect yourself when
Speaker 1: you encounter a protests with This podcast is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel.
Speaker 1: At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation.
Speaker 1: Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers
Speaker 1: to life's questions. All right, we're back crowd psychology the
Speaker 1: group think in action. UM. We mentioned a little earlier
Speaker 1: the idea that four people playing a game are going
Speaker 1: to do better than one person playing a game. That
Speaker 1: if you that the street is wiser than the individual,
Speaker 1: and that and that if you were to pull a
Speaker 1: number of individuals in a group about a particular topic, UM,
Speaker 1: on average, they would get it right. This is the
Speaker 1: classic like, I guess how many jelly beans are are
Speaker 1: in that bottle? Right? But if you want to kill
Speaker 1: this jelly being phenomenon, the one thing that will do
Speaker 1: it really well, aside from I guess like putting a
Speaker 1: hall of cylinder in the middle of the jelly beans
Speaker 1: or something, would be uh to aggregate the information when
Speaker 1: the When the information is aggregated amongst the people being pulled,
Speaker 1: drastic fall off and crowd wisdoms. So is that when
Speaker 1: people become informed of others decisions? Yeah, or I think, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's like, for instance, when you can if you
Speaker 1: all everybody and you ask him a question such as, um,
Speaker 1: do you think the President of the United States as
Speaker 1: a US citizen? And then but but then if you
Speaker 1: expose them to poll data shows that a large number
Speaker 1: of people are in question about it or or say
Speaker 1: global warming is another one where if you're exposed people
Speaker 1: to enough polls and enough data that represents the idea
Speaker 1: that hey, lots of people think this is uh, this
Speaker 1: is bunk, then people's uh wisdom on the data on
Speaker 1: the matter will be affected. Well see. And I think
Speaker 1: that's really important when you're talking about crowd psychology, right,
Speaker 1: because yes, there there's a self organizing aspect to it, um.
Speaker 1: But when you are sharing data and you know you
Speaker 1: do hear everybody else's opinions, I mean, that's when you
Speaker 1: can start to go a bit awry and logic. So, yes,
Speaker 1: they're they're the crowd. The most part is rational, but
Speaker 1: we've seen it turned irrationally, especially if it if it
Speaker 1: is being controlled and people are being told what to
Speaker 1: what to think. I mean, one thing to keep in
Speaker 1: mind with protests. As much as we we like to
Speaker 1: discuss the really good examples of protests, UM, one of
Speaker 1: the most successful protests in the twentieth century was, in
Speaker 1: some respects the Nazi Party. I remember the rise of
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party in Germany. H A lot of that
Speaker 1: began as protests, and then the protests were successful enough
Speaker 1: that they ended up becoming the government. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: interesting to think of it that way and how that
Speaker 1: that error in logic rose to to really just yeah,
Speaker 1: and for every great example of civil rights protests out there,
Speaker 1: you can find another equally disturbing um say, klan klu
Speaker 1: klux klan group thing going on as well. So that's
Speaker 1: just something to keep in mind about the free market
Speaker 1: of ideas and the use of protests to try and
Speaker 1: turn the tide of public sentiment. This is interesting too.
Speaker 1: This is from psychologist Clifford Stock at the University of
Speaker 1: Liverpool in England. He has a theory of crowd behavior
Speaker 1: called the elaborated social identity model. This holds that individuals
Speaker 1: and crowd do keep thinking for themselves, um on top
Speaker 1: but their individual identities, though they also develop a makeshift
Speaker 1: social identity which includes everyone else in the group. When
Speaker 1: the group faces oppositions such as police indiscriminately bashing it's
Speaker 1: the members of the group with batons. The social identity
Speaker 1: congeals members of the group began to work together to
Speaker 1: fight with it sees as common oppressors. So that's that
Speaker 1: maybe some sort of insight, uh, particularly into the Nazi
Speaker 1: example that you're talking about that if someone, if the
Speaker 1: group feels on some level that there in danger, then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, your your individualism will seed to
Speaker 1: group think. Yeah, which explains a lot of why a
Speaker 1: protest can be successful and also why it can potentially
Speaker 1: collapse into violence. Okay, let's say it all goes to poo.
Speaker 1: What do we do? Well? Um, it depends exactly how
Speaker 1: it goes to poo. Actually, UM, I'll tell you one
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind. We reference this earlier when
Speaker 1: we brought up the idea of our bosses tear gassing
Speaker 1: us tear gas. I just wrote an article about this
Speaker 1: for Housta Works, How tear gas Works, which should be
Speaker 1: on the site by the time this episode airs. And uh,
Speaker 1: there are a number of things to do if you
Speaker 1: get tear gas. First of all, tear gas is it's
Speaker 1: commonly used as actually cs gas, and it is generally
Speaker 1: not lethal. It is less lethal if you want to
Speaker 1: get technical, though. It is also technically a chemical weapon,
Speaker 1: and it's used just around the world no matter what
Speaker 1: country you're talking about, because it is an effective riot
Speaker 1: control agent. And the reason is because if you were
Speaker 1: hit with tear gas, you pretty much are only concerned
Speaker 1: with the horrendous burning in your eyes, in your mouth,
Speaker 1: possibly in your lungs, and on your skin. It really
Speaker 1: tends to simplify a situation what starts off as you know,
Speaker 1: I believe that people of my generation don't have a
Speaker 1: proper say and government blah blah blah. It ends up
Speaker 1: devolving into, oh, my goodness, I need to get some
Speaker 1: water on my face now. And so people tend to scatter,
Speaker 1: and certainly, if you were tear gas, scattering is a
Speaker 1: good idea provided you can see where you're going and
Speaker 1: there's not a danger in running, because you want to
Speaker 1: get away from the source of the tear gas. And
Speaker 1: then you're gonna want to if you have if you
Speaker 1: have contacts in you're gonna want to get those out,
Speaker 1: preferably with hands that have not been and so clean
Speaker 1: hands beings like you know, if you can find somebody
Speaker 1: who can jab them out of your eyes for you,
Speaker 1: or or preferably medical relief. A lot of protests, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have some people on hand to provide medical support
Speaker 1: afterwards for individuals who have who have been pure gas.
Speaker 1: So ideally, like you would have safety goggles on, you
Speaker 1: would have some sort of surgical gloves on, you might
Speaker 1: look odd. But you also see individuals attending protest with
Speaker 1: gas mass with be they you know, commercially available gas
Speaker 1: mask or improvised gas masks. I'm not saying do that,
Speaker 1: but some people. If you don't have it, you know,
Speaker 1: try a scarf. That's not as effective. But obviously there
Speaker 1: are things that you can do to prepare if you
Speaker 1: if you think that you will be in the middle
Speaker 1: of a protest. Yeah, the big thing with tear gas
Speaker 1: is you want to get away from it. You want
Speaker 1: to get it off of you, and then you'll probably
Speaker 1: be okay. Prolonged exposure that's where things get dangerous. And
Speaker 1: this is kind of a observation, but it probably bears
Speaker 1: mentioning that if you don't want to get hit with
Speaker 1: tear gas, if you don't want uh the police to
Speaker 1: uh maybe aggravate you a bit, do not be in
Speaker 1: the front lines. Try to be on the periphery of
Speaker 1: the crowd. Um. Of course, that would make a really
Speaker 1: crappy protest if everybody did that, but if this is
Speaker 1: what you're trying to avoid, then it makes sense that
Speaker 1: you would back off a little bit. Yeah. Oh and
Speaker 1: then the other thing too, if you get it on
Speaker 1: your clothing, you're gonna take that. Take those clothing items
Speaker 1: off as soon as possible. You're gonna want to shower.
Speaker 1: And if you have it on your your shirt, you
Speaker 1: might want to consider cutting the shirt off if it
Speaker 1: has to be removed over your head, because otherwise you're
Speaker 1: going to be dragging a tear gas coat shirt across
Speaker 1: your face. So just another small thing to worry about there.
Speaker 1: But then also it's worth knowing that some individuals are
Speaker 1: are going to be hyper sensitive to tear gas, and
Speaker 1: that's certainly a situation to be aware of. But then
Speaker 1: also some people have a surprising immunity to to your gas. Right,
Speaker 1: so there's no way to know unless you have been gassed, really,
Speaker 1: but you know, well, I mean you can know if
Speaker 1: you have a heightened the immunity. You mean, you may
Speaker 1: have like a compromised immune system. If you were a child,
Speaker 1: if you weren't an elderly individual, then that's a pretty
Speaker 1: good sign that to your gas is going to have
Speaker 1: a rougher effect on you. Yeah, let's talk about policing too,
Speaker 1: because obviously the police are there, they're not trying to
Speaker 1: be the bad guys. Sometimes things happen and they inadvertently
Speaker 1: end up being the bad guys. They didn't set out
Speaker 1: to be the bad guys. That's a very difficult position
Speaker 1: for someone to be in, stressful, it's potentially dangerous for
Speaker 1: them and for you. So, you know, how do you
Speaker 1: behave if if you are confronted by a police officer, Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of it. I mean it lines up basically
Speaker 1: what Gandhi was saying, right, I mean, if if some
Speaker 1: if some dude is is clubbing people in front of you,
Speaker 1: or I mean not even clubbing, if they're just say, right,
Speaker 1: you know, resting everybody inside. If you were passive, if
Speaker 1: you are visibly not a threat, then you're you're going
Speaker 1: to be better off. You're less likely to to probably
Speaker 1: be beat with a a baton or um, to be
Speaker 1: put in a position of aggression by a police officer.
Speaker 1: That of course, we have seen examples before where that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily true. But if this is something that you're
Speaker 1: doing again, you've got to keep that in mind. Um,
Speaker 1: And what do you do if a police officer or
Speaker 1: someone else in the crowd becomes very aggressive with you?
Speaker 1: I mean, there are actually a couple of things that
Speaker 1: you can think about doing. It takes foresight and it
Speaker 1: takes all a lot of concentration, but you can help
Speaker 1: to diffuse a situation. Well, um, one of the this
Speaker 1: comes from the book How to Want to Fight that
Speaker 1: we're looking at and then certainly we're not we're certainly
Speaker 1: not advocating getting in a fight with anybody. You're not
Speaker 1: advocating this this book, per se. We're just there's some
Speaker 1: information in it that was helpful. Yeah, And one of
Speaker 1: one of these was that if you were in a
Speaker 1: situation where where someone is acting aggressively towards you, and
Speaker 1: in a protest environment, this could be even one of
Speaker 1: your fellow protesters, that things get out of hand. Um,
Speaker 1: they say, if you were to say something confusing or
Speaker 1: perplexing that that is, that is out of character with
Speaker 1: the situation, that can help if only providing like one
Speaker 1: brief moment to slip away or to or to distill
Speaker 1: the aggression of the other. End. Right, So if someone
Speaker 1: were about it seemed like someone was about to attack you,
Speaker 1: then you could calmly say to them something like do
Speaker 1: you know what time it is? Which sounds ridiculous, but
Speaker 1: really what's happening is that it's creating this this mental
Speaker 1: sort of flicker in their brains, and it's cognitive dissonance, right,
Speaker 1: because they're like what, who cares what? Because they would
Speaker 1: expect someone to say, like occupy this or back off pig, right.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the kind of that's kind of the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that that someone in an aggressive mindset
Speaker 1: in that situation might expect them to say. And if
Speaker 1: you don't play along with that, with that transcript, right,
Speaker 1: with a social role that you're playing right right, then
Speaker 1: that that can potentially help diffuse the situation. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: another effective thing to do is to calmly, again, calmly
Speaker 1: say something along the lines of, you know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of surveillance cameras around here, or there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people with video surveillance UM or you know,
Speaker 1: cell phone video, so that you can get that person
Speaker 1: to back out of their heads a little bit and
Speaker 1: and sort of see the big picture of the situation
Speaker 1: and maybe even think, okay, this is you know, someone's
Speaker 1: about to record, um, some sort of transgression on my part. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you manage to make it away from a
Speaker 1: protest that has fallen apart into some sort of violent situation,
Speaker 1: take it an indirect route home, don't don't go the
Speaker 1: direct route necessarily. Yeah, I read that, and I wondered
Speaker 1: about that. Um, is this I wondered if this was
Speaker 1: a sort of extension of police going after people. Um,
Speaker 1: although I'm assuming that if you're on your way home,
Speaker 1: you're probably out of nabbing distance, I think that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this one just basically it's kind of like
Speaker 1: you're being herded into arrest kind of a situation. It's about,
Speaker 1: you know, arrest avoidance. And that's the other thing. If
Speaker 1: someone is trying to arrest you at a protest, you
Speaker 1: should probably just comply and be arrested. Really, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly we're not to advocate that anyone try
Speaker 1: to avoid arrest lawful arrest, but I mean, if it's
Speaker 1: a situation between being chased down or hit with the
Speaker 1: rupper bullet versus giving yourself up to the authorities that
Speaker 1: are cracking down in the protests, you know, and if
Speaker 1: you're about to get caught to this is sort of interesting. Again,
Speaker 1: it's from from the book, but they were basically saying
Speaker 1: that it sounds querintuitive, but if you're about to get struck,
Speaker 1: you should try to relax your muscles. Yeah. The reason
Speaker 1: is because your reaction time is going to be a
Speaker 1: lot slower if you lock up all your muscles in
Speaker 1: anticipation of a blow. So if you're going to try
Speaker 1: to avoid it, then that's what you'd want to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very kind of kung fu, right, because
Speaker 1: you know it looks like a batter on the mound, right.
Speaker 1: If the batter is stressed out, they're not going to
Speaker 1: have as they may be as powerful as all get out,
Speaker 1: but they're not gonna have as much control over this swing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and this is this is kind of funny. From
Speaker 1: the book, they said when a drillin hits your system,
Speaker 1: you become tougher and more resilient. But the downside is
Speaker 1: that you become a one task, knuckle dragging troglodyte. So
Speaker 1: the more stressed you are, the more your body shuts down.
Speaker 1: And we're talking from fine motor skills like finger dexterity
Speaker 1: and I hand coordination to the loss of depth perception
Speaker 1: and then of course irrational thinking. So there's just some
Speaker 1: ideas about how you might respond to a protest environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and this again, this is sort of timely. This
Speaker 1: piece of information to um in the final hours of
Speaker 1: protest um. But you know, when the permits are about
Speaker 1: to expire, this is usually when the police make most
Speaker 1: of their arrests because now they can kind of charge
Speaker 1: in and do that. So so go early and leave
Speaker 1: while they're wanting you to stay right exactly like basically,
Speaker 1: like with any party, leave on a high note. So
Speaker 1: let's leave on a high note on this one then, UM.
Speaker 1: And though certainly we invite any ideas and opinions related
Speaker 1: to this topic, because because this is more than than
Speaker 1: than a lot of them, there's some aspects of it
Speaker 1: that are that are open to interpretation in terms of
Speaker 1: like what, for instance, what the best response is. I
Speaker 1: mean these right, Yeah, I would love to hear from
Speaker 1: people who have perhaps been in many protests before, what
Speaker 1: have your experiences been like? And then what has it
Speaker 1: been like when people like try to keep it cool
Speaker 1: and try to you know, try to engage in non
Speaker 1: violence and uh and and passive responses to all of
Speaker 1: this be honesty to hear a new tails. I'd love
Speaker 1: to leave off with a quote from Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: about his take on the psychology of the disenfranchised. There
Speaker 1: is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with
Speaker 1: a large segment of people in that society who feel
Speaker 1: that they have no stake in it, who feel that
Speaker 1: they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake
Speaker 1: in their society protect that society, but when they don't
Speaker 1: have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty stage. Words from Martin Luther King. Well, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna reach into the listener mail folder if the robot
Speaker 1: will hand it to me. Thank you, robot. So this
Speaker 1: one here is from Hannah Hannah wrightesin and says, Dear
Speaker 1: Robert and Julie, I recently listened to your podcast on
Speaker 1: sports and was intrigued by a passing bit event from Nation.
Speaker 1: When you were talking about the brain simulating throwing a
Speaker 1: baseball when watching baseball being baseball being thrown, Robert mentioned
Speaker 1: the brain doing the same while reading. As the family's
Speaker 1: resident bookworm, it has been pointed out to me that
Speaker 1: while reading, I make a lot of facial expressions. My
Speaker 1: parents and sister tease me for this, but I have
Speaker 1: found that these expressions are not of my reaction to
Speaker 1: the book, but reflect the emotions of the characters. For example,
Speaker 1: of a character's browse for a mine will be as well.
Speaker 1: I always attributed this to general quirkiness, but it was
Speaker 1: fascinating to hear that, hear what might be going on
Speaker 1: in my head. I love the podcast You guys make
Speaker 1: College Apps season a lot less stressful, Oh college application, Susan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as opposed to like something on your phone? Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah, that's that's interesting. I mean her her mirror
Speaker 1: neurons were definitely at work there. And I was just
Speaker 1: thinking too about the Imaginary Friends podcast that we did
Speaker 1: and which we talked about the authors sometimes engaging with
Speaker 1: the characters are creating as imaginary friends, in fact thinking
Speaker 1: of them as imaginary friend and so a lot of
Speaker 1: that plays into it, the empathy part um. I have
Speaker 1: one quick email from a listener named Savar, and Savar said,
Speaker 1: I just heard your last podcast and heard Julie say
Speaker 1: that adrenaline fledgs your body. I'm a biology student. I
Speaker 1: just recently found out that the amount of adrenaline needed
Speaker 1: to trigger the fight or flight response is actually minuscule.
Speaker 1: Adrenaline has roughly the same concentration in your body as
Speaker 1: an aspirin tablet dissolved an Olympic sized swimming pool. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that was kind of that's pretty fascinating, right, like
Speaker 1: that that that amount could make you feel as that
Speaker 1: you were having adrenaline rush, like you as if you
Speaker 1: were being flooded with adrenaline that you're not, so thank you, savar. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: if you guys have any tidbits to share with us, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, especially about protests, your own experiences with them,
Speaker 1: your own thoughts about them, uh, and about I mean
Speaker 1: just the the idea of protests is this social thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what fascinates me the most, um and
Speaker 1: certainly just what engaged me the most, and writing that
Speaker 1: article about protests. Share them with We are on Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter, We're blow the Mind on both of those
Speaker 1: and you can always share your thoughts by sending us
Speaker 1: an email at blow the Mind at how stuff works
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