From India to Wal-Mart: May All Your Mobs Have a Hero

The story of the guy getting trampled at the New York Wal-Mart lasted about 48 hours in the news cycle.

There are a few "ongoing investigation" clean-up pieces, but the big media wave, like the crush of shoppers busting down the doors for bargains one store employee was anonymously quoted as saying "weren't that good," flowed and ebbed pretty fast.

David Carr in today's NY (City) Times blames the press for wanting it both ways: Go ahead! Pump up shopping hysteria with endless preening and breathless stories about slashed costs and shopping frenzy, then express horror when the worst nightmare of the shopping dreamscape happens and some guy gets flattened to death. Not just any guy, by the way. Temp security guard Jdimytai Damour was reportedly 270 pounds, so there was some major human barometric pressure in that storm of consumers.

We can shake our heads earnestly and blather on about greed and heartlessness and, of course, blame it on the media and/or big business. Press coverage was "deeply cynical," David Carr claims, "an attempt to indoctrinate consumers into believing they are what they buy.." Whew! That's a lot of hyperbolic power he's giving us. Doesn't he know our ad dollars fell again?

Maybe if Wal-Mart had taken a cue from the Rolling Stones and hired the Hells Angels to do security, the shopping inside might have been more peaceful. Though there probably would have been a few bodies in the parking lot.

But let's get a cultural grip here. The police are saying they probably can't ID actual suspects, so no one may get charged. And really, the media isn't responsible; this season's stories weren't any more provocative than last year's, when no one was flattened to death. Wal-Mart? They're just doing what they do: selling as much stuff as they can.

What's going on here is only the ugly reality of herd mentality. It's why governments are so nervous about mass demonstrations and why "crowd control" is a fundamental concept in maintaining public security (and also sometimes private interests.)

In India, which was also in the news over the holiday, 145 mostly women and children were trampled at a Hindu Temple last August. That was one of about a half dozen human subcontinent stampedes in the last year.

So people have that crazy, clawing, mob gene, whether it's religious or acquisitive devotion that triggers it.

A couple of days ago, in Markle, Indiana, a real herd of five deer jumped to their deaths onto the Interstate from a highway overpass, reminding us a) we're still not all that far up on the evolutionary scale; and b) terms like "stampede" didn't originate as descriptions of human behavior.

The antidote for all of this also comes to us, conveniently, from India. If you haven't read the story of Aussie pilot and ex-soldier Steve Smith saving 30 people in a Mumbai restaurant during the shooting - here's another one of those words - rampage, you should. (Perhaps this Down Under mention might get me out of trouble with the Qantas fans.) Mr. Smith did an "aw, shucks" about the whole thing, demonstrating another great people-trait: humility. But he was, in real life, the guy Bruce Willis and all those action heroes play in the movies.

For every nasty act of hordes, herds, throngs, mobs and barbarian rabble, there's usually some instance of personal courage out there that provides some balance.

For more, read Bronstein at Large.

Follow Phil Bronstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PhilBronstein

Comments

[roger3815]

Note that in both cases religion is involved.

[WilliePilgrim]

Great perspective in both the literal and figurative sense. Appreciate your views, Phil. Please post more often. Cheers.

[1849]

Mr. Bronstein why is so difficult to locate a book review on the SFGATE? I was reading the post, left to think about what I wanted to say, returned today, did a search, and nada. Searching isn't that difficult but the SFGATE/Chroncile makes it so rigorous. I wanted to comment on Annette Gordon-Reed's book, The Hemingses of Monticello.

[zitlight73]

A couple of years before the infamous Who concert in Cincinnati I was at a concert, it was December in Billings Montana, it was cold. When those doors were opened and a crowd of thousands of people started moving and brother you had to move with it. I had the fleeting thought of what would have happened it somebody would have tripped in that narrow concerete corridor. I wrote some harsh maybe unjust words against the people who trampled that man at Walmart because in a situation like that it is about survival, you could be Hulk Hogan but if you try to fight the flow you're a grease spot. Stores and stadiums and concerts should have mulitple entrances open, and maybe some sort of shoots like they use for cattle or something.

[anonimost]

There are also tramplings at football stadiums around the world as well as at concert arenas, so this is not unusual but it does speak to a lack of civility we are all suffering from. Aren't we supposed to be BETTER than them - those countries that have frequent tramplings? Doesn't USA pride itself on being a moral barometer? - as silly as that is.

And I disagree about government's not wanting a herd mentality. Bush and Palin, et al certainly want a herd mentality with regard to their idealogy and the herd pushing them to the White House.