What happens and why do we join groups of any sort? The simplest answer for this is because we see it as superior to other groups of its type in achieving the goals it aims for. Thus, the act of joining any sort of group or collective is a choice of superiority over other like groups. This leads to differing degrees of solidarity and conflict with groups with different ideologies or courses of action.
Take for example this article from Damn Interesting
"In the summer of 1954, twenty-two fifth-grade boys were taken out to a campground at Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma. Admittance had been quite selective. None of the boys knew each other. They were taken to the park in two separate groups of eleven. Ostensibly it was an unremarkable summer camp.
In fact, what the boys were heading to wasn’t that at all. They did have a very normal camp experience, certainly, but what they had really done for two and a half weeks was unwittingly take part in an elaborate and fascinating psychological experiment. Their parents had okayed it: the twenty-two boys of Robbers Cave were actually the basis of social psychologist Muzafer Sherif’s landmark study of group conflict.
There were two parts to Sherif’s hypothesis:
(1) When individuals having no established relationships are brought together to interact in group activities with common goals, they produce a group structure with hierarchical statuses and roles within it.
(2) If two in-groups thus formed are brought into a functional relationship under conditions of competition and group frustration, attitudes and appropriate hostile actions in relation to the out-group and its members will arise and will be standardized and shared in varying degrees by group members.
After conceiving of the experiment and working out the logistics of its program and setting– a Boy Scouts’ campground– Sherif and his colleagues had chosen their campers carefully. To decrease the potential impact of variables (other factors that could prompt hostility), Sherif and his colleagues had looked for boys of similar age and intelligence, all Caucasian and Protestant, all middle-class, none from insecure homes and none known to be troublemakers. They had aimed for a balance of different kinds of mental and physical strengths. It was also very deliberate that the boys had never met before; this was in accordance with the first part of Sherif’s hypothesis. Any preformed alliances would throw off the study.
The aim was to establish immediately a sense of group unity within each group of eleven boys. Taking the two groups to Robbers Cave separately was a major part of this; it also kept the other side wholly unknown. None of the boys were even aware yet that there was a second group. That would only be revealed once a strong sense of group identity had been forged.
Once at the park, the activities continued to encourage the groups to work together. These were typical aspects of camp: preparing food, putting up the tents, etc. They also played sports, went swimming, and performed for each other. This was all very successful – in fact, as the boys bonded each of the two groups chose to give itself a name, which was not an intentional part of the experiment. One became the Eagles, the other the Rattlers. Precisely as Sherif had hypothesized, there came to be a social order very quickly in each group. Clear leaders emerged from both. And, as the boys became vaguely aware that theirs was not the only group, they actually asked to be put into competition with them.
This, of course, was exactly what the psychologists had planned to happen. The two groups were brought together. They would be pitted against each other in a lengthy tournament of sports and other challenges; the winner would be awarded a medal and a pocketknife. The psychologists’ aim was to prompt each team to see the other as an ‘enemy’ of sorts, and test the second part of the hypothesis.
Again, the predictions were confirmed; this is exactly what happened. The boys began calling the other team names almost immediately, while glorifying the members of their own ’side’. They threatened to fight members of the opposing team. The Eagles snuck into the Rattlers’ camp, stole their flag, and burned it. The Rattlers returned the gesture. As this happened, the more aggressive boys became the more popular within their groups. After the Eagles won the competition, the Rattlers invaded their tents and took whatever knives and medals they could find. Although the park had been named for the suspicion that Wild West outlaws Jesse James and Belle Star had once hidden there, “Robbers Cave” was beginning to seem an apt name for the camp.
Then came the most interesting twist: the noncompetitive activities. Both groups were again brought together, just for meals and other such basic settings. The hostility did not die down; the groups remained locked in animosity. So the psychologists tried something a bit more assertive: forcing the boys to all work together in a cooperative effort, to achieve what are called superordinate goals.
They did this in several stages. First, the water supply to the camp was cut off (thereby necessitating as much help to check the pipes as necessary). Then, they were offered a movie that they were told the camp wasn’t quite able to pay for (and each team paid equally). Finally, a broken-down truck was deliberately left on the premises of the camp; nearby one of the organizers had left a tug-of-war rope to see whether any of the boys would suggest using it. Sure enough, one of them did – and all the boys, Eagle and Rattler alike, pulled on the rope together to help get the truck started again.
The changes after this point were striking indeed. The exchange of insults abruptly ended, for the most part. Neither side seemed to bear much of a grudge for the earlier thefts and enmity. Several pairs of boys from opposite teams made friends. But it didn’t stop there; at the end of the two and a half weeks, the campers insisted that the camp leaders allow them all to travel home on the same bus, instead of the divided way in which they had arrived. On this bus, they did not sit according to their earlier groups. Furthermore, at one point the bus stopped at a café. The Rattlers, who had won money in a contest during the ‘competitive’ stage, spent their money not only on themselves but on the Eagles as well.
Overall, the experiment was seen as a success. Not only had both aspects of Sherif’s hypothesis been verified, but several further conclusions had been reached. One was the observation that removing the boys from the competitive settings was not enough to reverse intergroup hostility. Another was that major differences in background are not necessary for conflict to emerge."
My belief is that when one chooses to align with any group, collective, country, or union it is inevitable that conflict will arise with other groups because of this be that conflict necessary or unnecessary, and also planned or unplanned. This would be a large problem if all groups, unions, and organizations had voluntary membership but only becomes more destructive because we are all assigned roles the moment we are born.
Because, at the moment we first exist on this planet we are assigned positions to many different groups varying from race, nationality, family, religion,and the political structure of our country of origin we are born into conflict with everything that we are not. Any man who claims to be walking this earth with no connections to any group or organization is a liar and a hypocrite as that is simply not possible at any place on this planet at the given time.
Those that are born into religious families believe, because they have been told by the organizations they submit to, that they (or at least the organization they represent) are superior to any other organization of that type. That is to say that all christians must believe that christianity is the true faith of god, democrats must believe that democracy is the truest path to peace and freedom, and members of any family bloodline WILL at least feel that they're family name is somehow more that others as they are a part of it. The point I am wanting to make here is that the conflicts that an organization faces are most often the product of the existence of the organization itself or the results of the organization having to coexist with other, different, schools of thought.
The simplest way I can put this is that race is the cause of racism, nationalism is the cause of all war and political strife, and the existence of organized religion WILL inevitably lead to religious conflict and inter-group confrontation. This belief is most clearly evident in the fields of political structure and and religion due to the deep seated indoctrination of those who lead these causes and of the causes themselves. Put simply, those born in communist China belive in communism and "the nation" as much as those born in capitalist america believe in capitalism and the republic.
This hypothesis is pushed to its logical end by the teachings of religious factions and belief systems, all of which claim to have the singular path to spiritual and morale freedom and transcendence of the flaws of the human condition. Because thousands of religious orders have and will continue to exist each is, wether consciously or not, in conflict with all other existing religious systems passively or through blatant conflict.
As long as we have separation of any type, be it social, moral, economic, national, or evangelical we will have conflict, suffering, injustice, and war. By making connections within smaller groups we must first cast off the things that connect and unite us all. The existence and pride that we feel from being connected to any group is directly proportional to the other people who are excluded from the same group. And that is why the most elite and powerful groups are often times the smallest and hardest to enter. By entering these elite groups, be it of high religious or political structure or biased on skill and what you can provide that others cant, the joiner becomes more elite as they have gained acceptance which is rare.
The very things that we do to connect us all and bring "progress" to our lives inadvertently and absolutely result in separation, strife, and conflict. Only after we have abolished the belief that one man is more free, superior, and powerful than another will we find real and lasting peace on this planet. This will only be done by destroying all of the needless institution that bring wealth and power to there elite's by locking others outside there walls. In the end, only one group will remain and we will all be a part of it, with no one left to fight.
"The general only has 80 men, and the enemy five thousand. In his tent the general curses and weeps. Then he writes a proclamation and homing pigeons shower copies over the enemy camp. Two hundred desert on foot to the general. There follows a skirmish which the general easily wins, and two regimes come over to the generals side. Three days later, the enemy has only 80 men and the general five thousand. The general weeps and writes another proclamation and 79 men join him. Only one enemy is left surrounded by the army of the general, who waits in silence. The night passes and the enemy has not come over to his side. The general curses and weeps in his tent. At dawn the enemy slowly unsheathes his sword and advances on the generals tent. He goes in and looks at him. The army of the general disbands. The sun rises."
-"Days of War, Nights of Love", CrimethINC. Second to last page.
rmation.
