Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Day # 163 - Hidden Peer Pressure

I cut off these men's heads, that is the two standing on this side of the fence. I don't know which one did it first, cross his legs, put his right hand in the pocket and propped his left hand up by placing the elbow on the fence. But here is he evidence. I know the second guy did not knowingly think, "I am going to cross my legs, put my right hand in my pocket and hang the elbow over the fence because he is doing it." But it still happened.

I have been observing this for years and each time it makes me ponder what is the force behind this? More incidents are, some years ago I attended Charity Youth Bible School all week long, not as a student but just being there. Anyway always at about the end of the second day or beginning of the third day, all the boys regardless if there were 200-300 all handled themselves the self same way, especially from the backside. The few that kept their personal pace were the rebels.

Or going back thirty years ago when I lived at Aylmer Ontario, the most consistent Amish church in the world, at least according to my conclusion at that time. The same things happened in different forms. One such thing was the boys' vests. One group buttoned their vests except hooks and eyes were used instead of buttons. The other group hooked up only the bottom two hooks and eyes. Make a guess which group were the "in" ones.

Or when a self-appointed group leader makes a statement like, "Wasn't the moon a bit greenish last night?" And everybody says, "Yes" when in truth nobody thought it was. Half of the group never looked at the moon and the other half saw the moon and it shone it's normal color. But almost all of them agreed it was greenish. Why? I am just pondering tonight.      

2 comments:

  1. Katie, makes me think of the old children's song... Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to stand alone...... No one wants to be "different", someone may notice...

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  2. Interesting post. I once read that when people mirror each others body language like these men are doing, it means they are comfortable and like one another. But I don't know what psychological phenomena accounts for pretending the moon was greenish to other people. Craziness, maybe.

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