“It is a question of degree. But are generalities useful at this point? This dangerous and crucial point? Very well then, let me put it like this. When what the populace believes falls too far behind what is really going on, then rulers do well to be afraid. It is because a mind, individual or collective, can be regarded as a machine. From this point of view. Feed in information too fast and it jams. This jam manifests in rage—riots, uprisings, rebellions.”
“Which we are seeing now throughout our Empire. All kinds of new ideas fight for acceptance.”
“But how many more are there that are not yet seen at all? But you don’t want to talk about the particular. Very well then, though in my view we—you—are making a mistake. We ought to be talking about the Sirian situation. And about our situation. We ought to be thinking of ways our populations can be told: you Sirians, you, the Sirian Empire, have been ruled by an Oligarchy of Five, and this fact does not fit in at all with what you have been taught… oh very well then, let us stick to Rohanda. I shall make a very general observation. We all know that the central fact in a situation is often, and in fact most usually, the one that is not seen. We may say even that there is always a tendency to look for distant or complicated explanations for something that is simple or at hand. I shall say that as a result of watching the mental processes on Rohanda, I have concluded that they do not understand an extremely simple and basic fact. It is that every person everywhere sees itself, thinks of itself, as a unique and extraordinary individual, and never suspects to what an extent it is a tiny unit that can exist only as part of a whole.”
“And that is a really new idea for you, Ambien? Ambien of the Five?”
“Wholes. A whole. It is not possible for an individual to think differently from the whole he or she is part of… no, wait. Let us take an example from Rohanda. There is a large ocean vessel of new and advanced design. It is struck by a lump of floating ice and sinks, though it has been advertised as unsinkable. They appoint a committee of experts—individuals, that is, of the highest probity and public admiration, with the longest and most efficient training possible in that field. This committee produces a report that whitewashes everyone concerned. But this same report, studied only a few years later strikes a new generation as either mendacious or incompetent… well?”
“You occupy your mind with the minuscule! It isn’t we expect of you!”
“It seems to me that the minuscule, the petty, the humble example is exactly where we can study best this particular problem. What happened in the interval between the first report and the reassessment of it?”
“Change of viewpoint.”
“Exactly. An assortment of individuals, identically trained, all members of a certain class, dame together on a problem. They were members of a group mind—together concentrated into a smaller one of the same kind. They produced a report that could not have been different, since they could not think differently. Not then. That is why one generation swears black, and the next white.”
“But you, Ambien, are surely proof that a group mind is hardly inviolable—or permanent!”
“Ah, but here is another mechanism… what we are seeing are only mechanisms, machineries, that is all… let us consider these group minds… these little individuals making up wholes. Sets of ideas making up a whole can be very large, for instance, when they are occupying a national area, and millions will go to war for opinions that may very well be different or even opposite only a decade later—and die in their millions. Each is part of this vast group mind and cannot think differently, not without risking madness, or exile, or…”
Here there was a moment of consciousness, discomfort, sorrow—which I dissipated at once by going on.
“Yes, you said I have been at odds with you and for a long time, and that this fact proves I am wrong. But what is the mechanism, the machinery, that creates a group, a whole, and then develops a dissident member—develops thoughts that are different from those of the whole?”
“Perhaps this individual may been suborned? Influenced by some alien and unfriendly power?”
“If we are going to allow ourselves to think like that, then—”
“Then what, Ambien? Tell me. Tell us. We are ready to understand, don’t you believe that?”
“It is a mechanism for social change. After a time… and it can be a very long time indeed; or after only a short time… as we see now on Rohanda, where everything is speeded up and sets of ideas that have been considered unchallengeable can be dispersed almost overnight—after a period of time, short or long, during which the group mind has held these sacred and right ideas, it is challenged. Often by an extremely small deviance of opinion. It is characteristic of these group minds, these wholes, to describe an individual thinking only slightly differently as quite remarkably and even dangerously different. Yet this difference may very shortly seem ludicrously minor…”
“And so we all hope, Ambien.”
“But there is a question here, it torments me, for we do not know how to answer it. This deviant individual in this group—he or she has been unquestioningly and happily and conformingly part of this group, and then new ideas creep in. Where do they come from?”
“Well, obviously, from new social developments.”
“Thank you. Oh, thank you so much! That’s settled then, and we need think no more about it! May I go on? When such a deviant individual becomes too uncomfortable for the group mind to tolerate, various things can happen. Commonly, expulsion. Labelled seditious, mad, and in any case wrongheaded, he or she is thrown out… yes, yes, we all agree that in our case this would be a pity. Talking generally though, this individual may start an opposing group having attracted enough people with similar ideas—no, I am not threatening you. Can we not talk about this with less personal reference? Can we not? Yes, indeed, I concerned about our ancient association, indeed I am anxious for my personal safety—but can you not believe that brooding about these questions I am still Ambien II, who has with you administered an Empire for so long? This deviant individual may influence others of this group, this mind, to think differently, when the entity will split into two—and I do not expect this to happen in this case. No. What has caused me to think differently from you has affected, I believe, only myself… no? We shall see! No, I am not threatening! How can it be a threat? We are not in control of these processes. We like to think we are. But they control us. You like that thought! We of the Five don’t like to think that all this long time we have never been more than straws in a current… but may I go on to suggest another possibility for this deviant and so irritating individual? If he or she is not expelled, or does not expel herself, but remains, contemplating her position, then a certain train of thought is inevitable. She has been part of a group mind, thinking the same thoughts as her peers. But now her mind holds other ideas. Of what whole is she now a part? Of what invisible whole? It is surely not without interest to speculate, when feeling isolated, apparently alone, on the other little items or atoms who with her are making up this other whole… this line of thought doesn’t interest you? And yet surely I have been seeing indications that it does, it interests you very much—and in fact perhaps your speculations in this realm are why you are here, visiting me, just as the others have done… did you not know that the others have all been? Odd, that! Once we would all have known, we did all know what the others did, and thought. What is happening to us? We don’t know! That is the point! Are we going to be like the Rohandans, quite happy to use social machinery without being prepared to examine the mechanisms that rule them? Are we quarrelling? Does our disagreement have to be seen as such a threat?”