What creates the radical mind to kill people in society that some individuals in the world are trying to do? Where does this level of thinking come from? Who is influencing this kind of behavior?
To answer this, I was exploring the word “gang” to better understand if there is any difference to the word “group” or “community.” According to Merriam Webster the word “gang” as a noun has several definitions, it means either of the following:
- A group of criminals
- A group of young people who do illegal things together and who often fight against other gangs
- A group of people who are friends and who do things together
Wikipedia indicates that a gang is a “group of recurrently associating individuals or close friends with identifiable leadership and internal organization, identifying with or claiming control over territory in a community, and engaging either individually or collectively in violent or other forms of illegal behavior.”
Now, there are several takeaways that I see from these descriptions if we look at this collectively:
- There is an element of defined togetherness or group-think that brings people together repeatedly
- There is an element of negative actions or actions of violence against others
- There is an element of family or friendship that brings people together and defines them as one
- There is some establishment of group-control or group-power
- There is an association bred through the group which could be, for example, criminals, young people or even friends
- There is some form of territorial control established by the group
So what is the opposite of a gang?
I decided to Google this and couldn’t really come up with anything. If a gang is a group of individuals, as defined by society, creating violence by doing harm to others – then there must be some “goodie-group,” as defined by society, creating non-violence or kindness to others. Shouldn’t there? But then again, maybe there isn’t!
Why is this the case? Could it be then that any group that spews either physical or non-physical violence to another group or another individual could be labeled as a gang? Could it be further explored that we are blind to the gangs that really exist in society because we label them, for example, as jocks, tribes, state-centric communities, teams, councils –and not to apply too much circular logic – society in general?
Remember, gangs are groups defined by the types of negative output they put forth – violence. It’s group thinking about creating violence that leads the individual mind to act violently according to the laws of the group. Hence, it is not the social aspect of the group coming together that is as important – but the movement created by the group.
One definition of a movement is a group of people working together to advance their shared political, social, or artistic ideas. Movements can be negative or positive. I see movements created by gangs to maintain or extend territorial rights over an urban area or resist social change using violence as a negative movement. These negative movements lead to continued greed and power that are never-ending. These are typically executed by individuals in the group traditionally called gangsters.
Peaceful movements such as the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s or the Non-cooperation movement against British rule in India in the 1920-1940’s are examples of positive movements. They lead to good and do have an end goal in many instances that leads to good for all individuals in society. In many cases, individuals leading social change movements are just called Social Leaders or a Leader of Social Change or something along this line. Whatever you call this person, it is a sharp contrast from the word “Gangster. “
In life, either explicitly or implicitly, we associate ourselves with many groups or in many cases movements that provided some sort affiliation with these groups even if they are very small.
For example, if we are female we belong to the female group and make affiliations with those things in common and in recognition of factors that make people female. If we like football we belong to the football group and enjoy all elements of the sport from fantasy games to keeping stats to keeping our Sunday’s preoccupied watching games and being proud of this.
It’s only when one individual takes charge of defining the group better than another group that radical thinking at the individual mind starts to form and the movement starts to take a new spin. This is why there is a pool of women who despise their husbands for watching football all day and the nagging nature is common from one wife to another.
The most important thing to take away from gangs and other groups is the impact group-think has on your mind. The most dangerous output of gangs and groups is a shift from the calm mind that you really are, to a radical mind that is defined by laws of the group.
Families, tribes, councils are all guilty of this. My thinking from this is that gangs don’t just exist in urban settings as we label them as. They don’t just exist in prisons. They are everywhere. Any community or group that influences individual behavior to think radically against another group, community or individual, could essentially be labeled as a gang. Many of you reading this may disagree, but it’s all about the negative output of creating violence that is common.
Be cognizant of the groups you are associating yourselves with.
In life you are parts of lots of groups – families, friends, co-workers, marching bands, etc. Be cognizant of which groups are doing good for society and which are doing bad. Be cognizant of one or two leaders going against principles of society to do harm to society and let your gut reaction lead you out of those groups. In some cases you may need to split from a group such as leaving a sports organization, job, or to the extreme – your family.
A mind bred to do harm to society in any form, particular through physical violence, developed through group-think is a dangerous place to be. Your mind is better off peacefully helping others than radically doing harm. This is much better use of your mind in the long run.