Group Instinct

Groups come with obvious perks.
For one, you can’t take a group photo without a group.
For another, a group can be either a shelter against attackers or a mob of attackers itself—depending on the masks being worn.
In the animal kingdom, we call that a herd.

But how exactly do groups form?
Do you need an ad, a social-media post, or just a chance encounter between like-minded souls who decide, “Let’s make this official”?
The peculiar thing about groups is their often unspoken sense of exclusivity.
"You’re not getting in here."—that could be the tagline of most of them.

Once a group is born, the rulebook magically appears.
Patterns of behaviour and unspoken expectations are quietly agreed upon,
and new members get the rules burned into their souls like a membership tattoo.
Soon after, someone inevitably asks:
"So, what’s the purpose of this group?"
And that’s how it starts—the mission statement, the goals, and the noble justification for existing at all.

Goals, however, don’t hold a group together for long.
Roles and status must evolve too, to keep the machinery from rattling apart.
Status quickly replaces the old carrot-and-stick system.
Members climb, flatter, or surrender—whatever keeps them in good standing and within the rules.

Up to this point, most groups function—more or less—voluntarily.

Things get darker when people are grouped against their will, or worse, without even knowing it.
That’s what modern lingo calls profiling.
When skin colour, origin, or appearance decide which “group” you belong to, you’re not a member—you’re a target.
Soon enough, headlines appear:
"Group XY—criminals, all of them."
Really?

It’s astonishing how easily such nonsense passes unchallenged.
Nothing new, of course—entire populations have been labelled for millennia.
What’s new is how fast and wide the labels now travel.
Once glued to the mind, they stick like duct tape.

Spend enough time in the anti-social media swamp and you’ll see the same poison circulate again and again:
"They’re eating the dogs."
Even statements like “Algorithms are evil!” fit the pattern.
Algorithms aren’t evil—they’re just lazy mirrors that repeat whatever bias you feed them.
And before you know it, the repetition has hardened into certainty.
Ouch.

Now, back to the good kinds of groups—
the helpers, the volunteers, the do-gooders.
Without them, the social fabric of many nations would have unravelled long ago.
Without them, disasters would hit even harder.

And then there are the communities—the most magical groups of all.
They appear out of nowhere, built by people who simply decide to work together for something that matters.
These communities remind us what humanity can still do when it wants to.

In our unpredictable, shifting world—politically and socially—
we need them more than ever.

Anyway, I’ve got to run.
Time to start a new group.
See you there.