My remark about the Stockholm Syndrome was, of course, a play on the idea which you have brought up in the past, and which you developed so well.
I love the subject. Dynamics of collective unconscious are a lot of fun, and that's what makes Elliott Waves work, and I use EW analysis as my main tool for trading markets.
It is important to remember that the psychology around a phenomenon does not explain the phenomenon itself. It may happen that due to certain constellations of psychological reasons a fellow may be inclined to become a jihad warrior -- but that does not explain very much of anything with regard to the philosophy and theology of Jihad.
Reptilian brain plays a part in having people join different sides of political divides, but that does not mean in any way that those divides have no standing or reality of their own -- which may be independent of the personal and - or - collective psychologies of people involved.
The experience of the last 100 or so years proved that free markets work better than top down deterministic collectivist structures. We also know that politicians are funny people - you can't trust them with power. They get caught up in it. They become irrationally exuberant, and they begin to think they are so smart that they can solve all the problems in the world, and that the combined wisdom of individuals can't hold a candle to their ability to find solutions which are best for EVERYONE.... or at least for the majority. They are wrong, but you can't prove it to them -- it is their groupthink to believe this.
People are hard wired to think and act in groups - that's how life is... if it makes us feel any better, all other species are no different. No use in getting upset about that. What does make sense, is to determine which one of the groupthinker crowds happens to be on the right side of the issue - and most of the time that is not all that difficult.
Incidentally, when one looks individually at participants in groups, many of them are fully capable of doing independent analysis.
I'll end with a quote which I have in my SI profile for some years now -- 'a collection of a hundred good intellects produces collectively one idiot'... (Carl Gustav Jung)
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