Mob Mentality

by Michele Boy | May 30, 2024

Summer is well underway and busy as always. But I am surprised at the emotions coming from what seems like little changes.
  For someone who grew up in dramatic fashion like moving in the middle of the night, police at your door,  never seeing people again, you would think the slower simpler life woouldn’t get my heart. But it does.
  My daughter started her summer weight workouts with the school in preparation for the upcoming year of sports. 
 I simply dropped her off on Tuesday and picked her up an hour later. Yet something had changed. It is so small many would consider it silly, some may not even notice it. But it is a shift. This little life I held in my hands almost 13 years ago is slowly moving into her own life. 
 It is wonderful and hard all at once. In some ways, I am very proud that she is better than me in so many areas.
Other times, I am still mom and still have to correct her. 
But overall she is changing and so am I. 
I went from taking care of her twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to her now making many decisions on her own. 
 Beautiful and difficult. 
More freedom requires more responsibility. 
But I also look at the world in front of her. Some of the things I see terrify me and I have to remind myself that God has a plan. That He created her for this moment in time. 
 One of the things that concerns me is this mob mentality. Granted it has been around since the beginning of time but that doesn’t mean I am a fan.  In fact I hoped that by seeing so much history unfold, we would have learned by now.
  I watched a video recently of a woman about to cross the finish line of a half marathon when what appeared to be her husband sending her two daughters out to finish with her.  She steps around them, wins the race, and hugs another man. 
  The video went viral with the world up in arms that she should divorce this man - he sabotaged her, put his children in harms way. She should instead marry the man who hugged her and truly understood the beauty of what she had completed. All the sacrifice and time she put in was downplayed by her husband. The message is -We hate him! 
  Tens of thousands of people commented, shared, and collectively made a decision about these people’s lives, interjecting their own opinions, experiences, and feelings. 
  Eventually the woman made a statement. Everyone got it wrong. 
She had barely trained. The night before, she and the husband had decided together she should share the moment with their children, and finally the man the internet hoped would be her second husband was actually her brother. 
Everyone jumped to conclusions and tried to destroy this marriage, this family.  
  I have a lot of concerns over social media, videos that portray people in a certain light that is false. 
But a bigger concern is this mob mentality. 
  So many people are ready to jump on a bandwagon without fully understanding what is actually going on. 
  Recently, a teacher tried to destroy a school principal releasing audio of a call where the principal allegedly made racist comments. 
It was later discovered he never made those comments. The disgruntled teacher had it created  through AI.
  In a world that is moving faster and faster, where AI images and videos can destroy people in minutes, we would all be wise to slow down, not rush to judgment, and be prudent in deciding what wagon we are jumping on.
  Does anyone else remember the book, The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss?
He wrote the book to address how different groups of people didn’t like each other during World War II. 
The book focuses on that some have stars on their bellies and some don’t.  Someone decided stars were better than without. 
 The story is so sad until the end when they become enlightened. 
    “The Sneetches got really quite smart on that day. The day they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches. And no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches. That day, all the Sneetches forgot about stars and whether they had one, or not, upon thars.”
  Maybe someday we will be as smart as the Sneetches. 
So far, I am not seeing that.
I guess the question is why? Why do we need to have a hierarchy? 
 And while I can’t control the world, I can watch my own attitudes, opinions, and judgments. Maybe if enough of us start, we will get there?
 Matthew 7:1-3
Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"