Mass Hysteria

My three months in Goa still seem to be having their effect. I feel no desire to go out and party, dance or stay out all night. For the time being I’m content reading, working and learning. The only real excitement that I’m permitting myself is the football – and with good reason, for this is the one European Cup where the Dutch actually have a chance to win.

Truth be told, that isn’t the only reasons. I must say that I find the up welling of nationalistic quite entertaining. Over the years I’ve been in many countries and I’ve seen the different ways that people celebrate their country’s victories in different competitions and I have to give that to the Dutch, they certainly celebrate in more style than most. When I was in India, for example, and they were playing their world cup cricket matches the resulting exuberance was frightening at times. It was a type of mass hysteria that threatened to get violent on occasion. I haven’t had that feeling over here.

What is funny though is what my girlfriend mentioned two days ago. She said that in anthropology they talked about an observed phenomenon during mass rituals where people can do things that they normally wouldn’t be permitted to do. When you look at the orange mob on the TV screens they are engaged in behaviour that in normal circumstances would be odd at best, but is now considered acceptable and actually encouraged.

I had never considered that that is what festivals allows us to do (and that I had actually engaged in a similar type of behaviour) and that festivals are a sort of venting mechanism where we get to give in to a kind of hysteria and have it not be frowned upon by the people around us. And that, in turn, explains the attraction of festivals. It is where you can safely go nuts or watch other people go nuts.

Which, in turn, shows us the attraction of all going to Switzerland and Austria (places that aren’t really that far away) without stadium tickets and just go along with the insanity. It’s a lot like Halloween – except then for grown ups.

The implications of this thought haven’t completely registered on me, but I almost directly see parallels in other areas in life. For instance one thing that has always struck me as funny, but that fits perfectly with this kind of exuberance is what I call ‘the bikini phenomenon’, whereby it is perfectly acceptable to walk around with only a little bit of fabric covering your ‘private bits’ (i.e. on the beach or at the swimming pool) while in other places it would draw some completely shocked reactions (i.e. on a busy shopping street or on a terrace). The amount of clothing doesn’t change, how hot it is doesn’t change, but somehow the social acceptability changes completely.

And don’t even think about arguing that it’s acceptable in the former because we go swimming there while it isn’t acceptable in the latter because there’s no water nearby. Lots and lots of people go to the swimming pool to sunbathe without even going into the water once! And only two days ago I went to a fake beach (where I discussed the mass hysteria mentioned above) in the middle of a city, without anywhere to swim or get wet (no dirty thoughts here please) and it was still perfectly acceptable for everybody to wear bikinis and swimming shorts.