I started a giggle thread about herding videos.

Then I started thinking about the word "herd" and it's myriad applications among different species. Collective nouns and all that. I mean when we see shoals of fish and flocks of birds swoop and dive as if they are one organism, what is that but herd instinct? What of cross species herds? A stampede of African savannah animals might loosely be called "a herd" because one thing is driving all in the same direction. Fear!

And I got to thinking about humans as a herd. How only a few lead and most follow on religion, politics, traditions, lifestyles, acquistiveness, etc.

Found myself googling the idea and discovered marketing consultancies discussing how to exploit it. That human race is like a single consumer orgnism and marketing is the mechanism by which a company can sell it's product/service disease. How to get it to spread throughout the organism.

Alarming as this sounds, we all know that as a whole we tend to be subject to the influences that plague our every waking moment. The terrifying thing is most people don't think about it. They are not cognizant of the fact that some one or group is pressuring them to buy this or believe that.

They just follow blithely along, believing that if everyone else thinks so, it must be good.

more in next post