The Normal Group Delusion

Chronic Gossips Keeping “Secrets”
By Patricia Lefave, Labelled, D.D. (P)

That’s right. Quite the oxymoron isn’t it? It is all true.
I think the most bizarre trait of chronic gossips is their collective belief that they are keeping ‘secrets’ while they gossip all day. It is mind boggling. Gossip is their ‘fix.’ They are every bit as addicted to malicious gossip as the alcoholic is to his whiskey or the junkie is to her heroine. Their ‘fix’ is also every bit as destructive as either of the others. They have no idea how to talk to each other without doing it. This though, is an important part of understanding the ‘splitting’ which is then projected onto those who see and hear what the ‘splitters’ want to believe is a ‘secret.’
That idea creates an infinite loop of GROUP irrationality which they then deny, as a group, and then continue to project onto the one who has the unmitigated gall to point it out to them.
To add to the entertainment value, those who claim they are not gossiping and who are keeping ‘secrets’ then proceed to gossip further about those who are gossiping with them, and once again, they deny that too. For that is another layer of the secrets which must be kept well hidden behind the façade of a postured ‘sanity’ with reality 'hidden' behind a set of nice normal manners.
To those of us who are actually saner, watching this performance is like looking through a veneer of clear plastic at people who obviously believe the truth about them and what they are doing , has been successfully hidden behind a solid brick wall. It is sort of like watching idiots make faces at people whom they believe are blind when in fact the people they are making faces at are fully sighted. It has the same sort of startling and confusing effect on the individual.

The feeling experienced by those of us who are observing the group ego is that of having stepped directly into the Twilight Zone where collective madness is presumed to be the norm and anyone who does not see madness as the norm is considered to be the ‘real’ mad one. The same thing is presented in “ Alice in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass.”
It is absolutely surreal from the individual target’s point of view. It is nothing short of crazy making.
Now if you are paying attention to the loop of thinking, you will see in that last statement I just made, the tentative ‘agreement’ between the two sides of the same surreal experience. ‘We’ feel they are trying to drive us crazy, fully aware of what they are doing and they think we ARE crazy for being fully aware of what they are doing, which they are certain we cannot see. IN other words, we give them too much credit for brains and awareness at the same time they don’t give us any credit at all for either. That is how ‘reality’ gets turned around backwards, or as some describe it upside down or inside out. The perception of that switch in identities is REAL.
In order to reconnect to my own sanity, I had to become able to see and hear , from the centre of the contrived chaos, created for me by a group of others, what those ‘others’ did not ever want me to see or hear. In fact, they worked very hard to prevent me from seeing and hearing even what they already understood themselves. They did that, and continue to try to do that, so that none of THEM will be caught, or blamed, for their very real participation in all of this.

I also had to get beyond that to see what none of THEM can see about the entire event, including their own behaviour and motivations for acting it all this out in just the way that they have done it.
It is stating the OBVIOUS to people who can’t and/or won’t hear it, or see it, which has proved to be a monumental task almost beyond the ability to believe such blindness could be possible or such effort necessary.
Still, they harp at me and to each other as well, about my ‘failure’ to let go of MY ‘false beliefs’ and ‘unreasonable expectations.’ Mind boggling.

Theatre of the absurd is right.

For the next while, I am going to focus most of my posts on the revelation of the details of my own personal experience of this, both for, and about, the actual people involved in my own city. If you are interested they can be found on my other more personal blog, Alleged Reality: The Group Phenomenon

Feel free to tune in.