Group Think and Double Think are two similar concepts. In the disturbing novel, “1984” by Orwell, he coined the term “doublethink”. It meant the way people carry on living with contradictory ideas, ideas they don’t believe in, in order to survive under a dictatorship.

Group Think is when people want to CONFORM and stay with the “group” to such a degree that they ignore different views and end up making poor and imperfect decisions.

With Group Think, independent thinking is suppressed. The “group” supposedly takes the moral high ground and everyone wants to conform, nobody wants to be the “bad” guy standing in the way.

I think Group Think has been responsible for government’s bad decisions in many areas. I will cite three examples:

1. The Migrant Crisis that is going on at the moment. Politicians, pressure groups, and privileged people are all jumping on the “group” bandwagon to open our borders to tens of thousands of refugees and immigrants. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do for the good of the UK or for the people involved!

The people who don’t agree with the “group” big wigs get denigrated. The leaders seem to NOT acknowledge the impact all these people coming in has on services, schools, health, housing, welfare and the country’s culture.

This opening borders decision, because of the “caring” group thinking, has the danger of encouraging many more people to risk their lives on excruciating and sometimes deadly journeys.

2. The Age of Intervention—Group Think is responsible for the way governments have intervened militarily in the affairs of other nations. These interventions have been dubbed “humanitarian wars”. But we’ve seen the evidence that this jumping on the bandwagon thinking just makes things worse!

When the Cold War ended, the West’s governments wanted to create a sense of purpose for themselves, so they became the world’s policemen.

Because of Group Think, the intervention hasn’t made the world safer, it’s made it more dangerous!

And now, we have the migrant crisis, a mass movement of people from countries that have been meddled with.

3. The Right to Die Debate—Group Think has continually overridden the

“right to die” advocates. Who would condemn terminally ill people or people who have no quality of life, to months or even years of pain and suffering? All they want is an end to their suffering. But the Group Thinkers push aside the people that want the right of choice to cry “enough” to constant pain.

I think we own our bodies and our life, so it is only human to crave death when there is no hope of a good quality of life. The right to die is a personal choice and has nothing to do with anyone else! But the government group thinkers still don’t express the will of the people in law! They don’t want to give us the choice to have dignity in the end.

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Because of this phenomenon of Group Think, rational debate is shouted down by people that want to show how “caring” they are!