Understanding Groupthink and Self-Silencing
Join author Jenara Nerenberg at the Commonwealth Club for a discussion on the psychology that produces groupthink.
I'm excited to invite you to a book talk on Monday, May 12th. I'll be having a conversation with journalist Jenara Nerenberg to discuss the launch of her new book, Trust Your Mind.
We’ll be speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California located at 110 The Embarcadero in San Francisco, CA
Doors Open & Check-In: 5:00 PM PDT
Program: 5:30 PM PDT
Book Signing: 6:30 PM PDT
General Admission is $22.00 and tickets with a copy of the book cost $50.00
Today's social and political climates feel clouded by fear, distance, polarization and loneliness; why is it that groupthink and conformity seem to rule our neighborhoods, pop culture, friend circles, workplaces and social media feeds? It's time for us to learn how to sit with disagreement, debate better, appreciate our differences, and revel in the diversity of ideas and opinions that reflect our world.
Nerenberg has not shied away from taking on complex ideas and opinions, first in her bestselling book Divergent Mind about neurological diversity, and now with her second groundbreaking book, Trust Your Mind, which examines viewpoint diversity and encourages us not to shy away from the deepest forms of connection and insight that can come from uncomfortable conversations, independent thinking, and sometimes even loud, productive and healthy arguing.
Thanks Lee. I'm hoping there'll be a transcript or recording. I'd love to hear this.
Self-silencing is silencing the voice, the own voice, suppressing the energy that wants to express the self, that what is a natural phenomenon. All in nature has a voice, from barking dogs, meowing cats, to screaming apes, singing birds, even the wind, thunderstorms and lightning have a voice,
When one discovers that the own voice is not welcome, because not parroting the language of the flock, and experiencing the pain of being publicly made ashamed, judged as the bad one, while having been honest, fair, angry yes, but for fair reasons, one starts to corrupt the self, by suppressing the own thoughts, and believing that black is white and vice versa.
One arrives in the land of lies, of fake people, and is so welcome, so beloved by singing their false melodies.
Till one becomes depressed, not understanding where tears are coming from, why there are no feelings anymore, why one feels like the dead must feel, and without energy, as if indeed dead.
Depression.
It took me many decades to get out of it, and that was just the start of a new life, because having to say finally again with the own voice what had to be said, because not willing to die again.
Loss of "friends", even family, being humiliated because of honesty, again, seen as the crazy one, the idiot.
It helped me to start writing, in blogs. The only place where I could share my thoughts, and to be who I am. Finding support in other human beings, who went through even much more than my hell. Like Mikis Theodorakis, the Greek who refused to listen to the military regime rules in Greece, and was sent in isolation in a distant place in Peloponnesos, Greece, after that sent to a Greek concentration camp, located on an island Makronissos, banned finally, to France. The deep felt power, born out of fury against all he went through, and where he puts musical notes to, verses from Greek poets, and was singing: I saw a human being who DARED to be angry, DARED to speak, and did not mind what others were thinking about him. He touched the hearts of many Greeks, who finally DARED to sing his music, and DARED to sense their own soul again, their fury. Their feelings of resistance against evil.
Against that what suppresses.
Families seem to be wonderful groups, but are too often worse than any sort of military regime.
I know.
I dreamed once that my lips were cut away from my mouth. So deep the silencing of my voice had gone deep inside my feelings, my soul. My family and other relations did this.
I came over it, and here to make this statement, to urge everyone who is doing the same as I did to listen to the discussion today, to read the book, to listen to Theodorakis' music, and to DARE to say what HAS to be said.