The Siren Songs of Simplicity

In Greek mythology, the Sirens were believed to be beautiful women who attracted ships with their singing to the coastline. Once the sailors got fascinated by the Sirens, they could not resist steering their ship onto the deadly cliffs. The Sirens constitute an appropriate cultural metaphor for the ease with which people can be tempted to listen to simple messages and choose for their own destruction. Masses tend to behave in a very simplistic way. Anyone who has been giving speeches on festive occasions, knows that crowds of people only react on simple basic jokes (crude subjects like alcohol and sex) and very rarely on delicate intellectual jokes. The same preference for basic simplicity explains recent voting behaviour in a number of countries.

Why are masses so attracted to simplicity? Essentially because it liberates them from the painful duty to think and to doubt. In the midst of dangerous ship manoeuvres, the easy shortcut is always more attractive than the long, difficult route, which raises unbearable tensions among the crew. Sometimes the certainty of destruction is more attractive than the agony of continuous debate. Populist politicians know this instinctively. On the other hand, I hesitate using the word populist here, because the word is losing its meaning due to the overuse by politically correct writers.

In times of chaos, humble and patient leaders often give the impression of being weak leaders. They think a lot about consequences and ethics. They negotiate and talk. Pretentious impatient leaders can then easily lead the people astray with simple, basic slogans or messages, nowadays mostly packed as tweets, less than 140 characters long. Black or white messages are easier to understand than grey, nuanced messages, which require more time to generate and to digest. But the black and white messages may lead us to the cliffs.

Good captains don’t listen to Sirens, even if the crew starts listening to them. Ulysses ordered his men to tie him to the mast of his ship, so that he could not be seduced to act according to the godly sound of the Sirens. Good captains are often wrong in the short term; they may get right in the long term. The problem with our democracy is that the election terms are too short; the long term never happens without coalition change. Our political system kicks out the good captains and replaces them regularly by simplistic ones. Let us blame it on the Sirens.

Other blogs related to group behaviour are: “Tulip Mania”, "Mainstream versus Democracy" and “Senatores boni viri”.