“A student working under the direction of anthropologist Edward T. Hall hid in an abandoned car and filmed children romping in a school playground at lunch hour. Screaming, laughing, running and jumping, each seemed superficially to be doing his or her own thing. But careful analysis revealed that the group was moving to a unified rhythm.”
I ventured out of my apartment today for a rare night-time sortie into the city. And I found a proper summer evening outside:
Teenagers stood around on curbs in groups, giggling to themselves.
Couples strolled down the street and talked in a self-absorbed world.
An occasional single person, just getting out of work at 7:30pm, walked alone, staring at the ground and looking beaten.
All this reminded me of an article that I read years ago, just when I was starting to learn about copywriting. I want to share it with you tonight.
Let me warn you first that this article has no copywriting tactics in it, and nothing about marketing.
But it does talk about human psychology on a really fundamental level, which I haven’t seen discussed much elsewhere.
The article affected me very much. It’s stuck with me for years. It’s colored how I approach marketing, and how I see the world.
It was written by one Howard Bloom. Originally a music publicist for big names like Prince and Billy Joel, Bloom also wrote about group behavior in his spare time.
The quote up top is from one such article of Bloom’s, titled “Reality is a shared hallucination.” That’s the article I read many years ago, and the one I think you might find interesting.
In case you’re curious, here’s the link:
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Reality-is-a-shared-hallucination-3412882.html