Opinion Writing and Groupthink

Opinion writing is one of the most rewarding and simultaneously difficult things I've ever chosen to do. It's also one of the things I've been most successful at, which probably says more about me than I'd care to admit. The rewarding part is having people tell you, either in person or through e-mail and comments, that they enjoy or agree with what you wrote. As a guy who's been convinced most of my adult life that I've had something valuable to say, I can say it feels pretty good to have other people think I have something valuable to say too. I haven't gotten tired of that rewarding feeling of vindication yet, and I hope I never do.

There's another truth I've found through opinion writing though, and while in some ways that truth is something I'd expected, in other ways I've been blindsided by it. People are more predictable than you think.

A lot of this has to do with “groupthink” mentality that permeates practically every aspect of our lives. We cleave to people we share some sort of ideological or social kinship with. It's a normal human response I'm sure. The idea of group reinforcement is surely written somewhere in our DNA, but it's also fundamentally destructive to the individual's critical thinking skills.

It's not as though I just fell off the turnip truck though. I've known about groupthink for a long time. In fact, I've pointed it out many many times when I've noticed it in political opponents. Teeming masses all foaming at the mouth about abortion or gay rights because their ideological leaders have moved the group in that direction have always been quick to draw my ire. Either through my own naivete, or because of my insistence on looking at things through my own dogmatic prism I've really failed to see it on the other side of the political divide.

Maybe it's because I never really interacted with many people who were part of what I'd call a clique or scene before, but as incredibly dumb as it sounds to me now, I never really thought of progressive people as groupthinkers. I did notice, while living in California, that come election time most people voted for the candidate with a “D” beside his or her name more out of habit than out of any real clearly articulated reason. At the time though, I attributed it to a larger cultural influence that manifested itself at the ballot box, much the same way I rationalized the reason so many South Carolinians walk seemingly in ideological sync with each other.

I guess what I'm getting at, is that I knew about and understood the concept of groupthink, but I always thought of it as something that the majority of any particular culture engaged in. I'd always assumed that the minority opinions of a place—whether those minority opinions were liberal or conservative—were held exclusively by people not subject to groupthink. In other words, if you're liberal in Spartanburg or conservative in the San Francisco Bay Area, you're probably a rational, freethinker whose ideas come from your own critical examination of facts. At least, that's what I thought at the time.

It turns out, people who hold opinions in the minority are every bit as subject to groupthink as those in the majority. How that fact ever escaped me before, I'll never know.

As anyone who's bothered to read my writing can tell you, I'm a pretty progressive guy. I like to pride myself on the idea that I came to my opinions from my own careful reading of a particular issue, and for the most part I think I have. As I wrote earlier, I've never been a part of any clique or group of like-minded people who would've reinforced my thinking and perhaps influenced me to move in one direction or another; no churches, no civic groups, no political organizations or parties, not even an ideologically driven group of fiends, nothing. I'm just not what you'd call a “joiner”.

Far from seeking out the comfort of dovetailing opinions, in the past I've actually sought out dissenting ideas. It pains me to admit this, but once upon a time I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh on a fairly regular basis. It made sense to know the arguments of one's enemies, I reasoned. Later, I stopped because if you listen to Rush—or any other talk radio blowhard for that matter—for too long he starts repeating himself. After a while, you can read a news story and predict not just what his opinion on it will be, but the exact way he'll tailor his argument for or against it. If you've got a couple of months to kill, it's not a bad rhetorical exercise actually.

I've discovered though, that most people don't go to nearly this length to examine their own ideas. Most people, rather than think, choose to adhere to the opinions of their particular peer group. It's much easier to recite someone else's reasons for believing something than to come up with your own, and having a gaggle of people behind you echoing your same sentiments is very reassuring. Agreement is easy. Dissent—especially when you're alone—is much more difficult.

Groups all have their leaders of course, and those group opinions all originate somewhere. The thing I've noticed though—and what may be the most disturbing aspect of all this—is that the opinions reverberate around the group till everyone believes almost the exact same things. Rather than form individual opinions, the group members assimilate each other's opinions to the point where no one can even seem to remember where the original ideas even came from.

Any opinion writer whose words are worth the disk space they're saved on, can never be afraid of slaughtering sacred cows. That's what I've learned in all this. The job of an opinion writer—or any writer for that matter—is to say what must be said, and to hell with the consequences. The only loyalty a good writer should have is to the truth.

I don't think it's really possible to be immune to the allure of groupthink. Even I've caught myself talking about issues that, while I may not have disagreed with them, may have been issues that I honestly didn't care that much about. More than once I've defended a group of people who I thought deserved defending even though I didn't care much for the issue being defended. That was a rookie mistake, and I don't intend to make it again

What I do intend to do from here on out is the same thing I set out to do in the beginning and not be distracted by the game that inevitably ensues when a group decides to call you friend or foe. Just because they've decided to line up with you on this issue or the last ten issues or the last hundred issues, doesn't mean you should be any more loyal to them than you were before. Loyalty is for dogs and people incapable of reasoning for themselves.

I enjoy writing my columns and blogs more than anything else I do most of the time, and these last six months have been eye-opening and exhilarating. Still, I don't ever want to lose sight of the anger than led me here in the first place. There's never been a person who started opinion writing who didn't have a chip on his or her shoulder. It's the nature of the beast. My goal when I started was the same as it is now, to be—in the words of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Lester Bangs in the movie Almost Famous—“honest and unmerciful”. If I continue to do that, then I've done my job as I see it.