Why do NTs Need to do things in Unison?

Post Reply New Topic

Yes. The list of complex things that can be accomplished without logistics is a lot shorter than the list of things that require it. Any accomplishment which requires things to happen at specific times and in specific places in order to work requires logistics.

Big example; running an airport and having the planes land quickly but without crashing into each other

Small example: cooking


When there are large groups of people, doing things in unison does make them easier to accomplish. Gettiing a group of 5 year old kids to rest simultaneously is an example. For the majority of them, their body clocks will adjust to a scheduled naptime and they will get sleepy on that schedule. But they are so young that they can't read mental and physical exhaustion as the need to go to sleep as older people do. Instead they just get irritable (as League Girl discovered). But if given a cue they will go to sleep because their body needs it. There will be outliers, as you and others were, but lots of kids will adapt to the cue and so will their body clocks.

A fire drill is another example of the utility of unison. In a fire drill you learn to go to the exits in orderly unison. Ingraining this can help prevent a fatal stampede for the exits if a real fire ever happens because the habit of orderly unison has already been established.

Being allowed to participate in a group behavior is a form of social acceptance.
In my NT model, social acceptance results in their brains releasing a chemical reward for the proper behavior.
They get a chemical "feel good".

Or like in 911, they tell you to stay where you are, and you die because you trusted authority.

To me, the "fatal stampede" is a prime example of group behavior.

Is it impossible to envision a world where you don't have to have either hive control or the mob dynamic?

It's best to sacrifice a few for the appearance of order, if order fails authority fails as well. That's the reason Giuliani got high marks from society during 911: he didn't actually do anything but walk around with video cameras in his face, ala Kim Kardashian, but his presence asserted authority and kept everyone in line. If authority tells you to do something that's against your own health and well-being you better do it for the sake of the society as a whole or you're branded a "loser", "coward", etc. No single hive member's life is as important as order and control of the hive itself.

I respect others, but not that much. They've only hurt me.

Carl Jung had a lot to say about this and how science and the industrial revolution changed man.

I've only studied a small amount of psychology and aside from collective unconscious I know very little of Jung. I am always up for a thinker's opinion though and when I have time will read up on the subject. Is there anything in particular you would recommend reading first?

As others have said, sometimes NTs do things together because it's efficient or convenient, or even fun. Even an unpleasant task might become less burdensome if you're doing it with friends because you can distract yourself a bit or at least laugh about some aspect of it together to lighten the mood. Military organizations practice doing things in unison for many reasons--developing precision, timing, unity, efficiency (an army can march farther/faster if everyone's trained to move at the same pace), and it can be intimidating to the enemy.

Other times, NTs do it for fun--I was in the color guard in marching band while I was in high school and college, and it was a usually-pleasant mental and physical challenge to practice together, to coordinate our movements so we might create a ripple effect, patterns, words, and so on to accompany the music, for our own entertainment and the audience's. To this day, I get a rush when I hear a good drum line!

Since the Industrial Revolution, though, some people in the Western world have forgotten that doing things together--whether in small groups or large--was actually critical to survival. Our bodies evolved to work along with the natural rhythms of nature. Hunting, growing and harvesting crops, and so on were almost impossible to do well if people didn't take advantage of working in unison with a lot of it. Reproductive cycles, circadian rhythms, migrations, the changing of seasons...despite some people's assumptions of human superiority, we're still animals navigating to survive/thrive, and even with all our technological advances, our best health often comes from aligning with ancient, natural patterns.

"Breaking bread together" is an important part of most--if not all--societies because it demonstrates an alliance--sharing the work, sharing the rewards. In times of great hardship, such as famine, if someone had to go without, it was likely to be those who'd been less cooperative because they hadn't really contributed to the group's most basic needs.

Though I totally understand and cherish the desire and ability to act on my own (if that's actually possible), I also know that I wouldn't be here today if all our ancestors had not behaved as "sheeple" to some degree.

Last edited by KimD on 18 May 2015, 10:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Like it or not, NTs are a hivemind, and they thrive on groupthink. That's just the way they're wired, much like how we're wired to "do our own thing", so to speak. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, we just have a hard time understanding it because we don't fit into it. And us not fitting into it is OK too; sometimes someone needs to come along and say "we're doing this all wrong, I have a solution that works better". That's our job as aspies, to be innovators, to be inventors, to think outside the box.

The hive crushes things that think outside the box, it's a threat to the hive-mind itself. If everyone is doing it, it is by de facto the right way to do it. It's not about the results, it's about the method used to achieve results. If everyone uses different methods there is no control, this is not allowed. Examples:

When I was in high school I worked at Burger King. I noticed in the food prep that we always had four workers: one loading the broiler, one assembling the burgers, one manning the fryer, one loading bags. As the fryer operator I was right next to food assembly which was always the bottle neck-- generally three times as much work as I was doing loading and unloading the fryer. I started to help the food assembly person to improve workflow while my food was frying. I was disciplined because that wasn't my job. I explained the efficiency of the method and how I could also watch the fryer at the same time. Result: fired.

I worked at a family run internet toy store writing web code. I noticed that every page was static over 1000's of product pages, they weren't using server side processing to slim down the work required for updates and maintenance. I explained that if they gave me 60 hours I could write a php program to autoload most of the data and if we update the site I'd only have to change one block of code for every update as opposed to thousands of pages each time. This would save literally 100's of man hours in just a single year. Result: fired.

If the hive you're in doesn't understand your "out of the box" thinking they will not accept it. To a hive "out of the box" means slight variation that everyone understands immediately because it's barely different than what was done before. The hive doesn't want you to be unique or exceptional, they want you to be a machine. They would rather have slow or stagnant progress than the disruption that can come with massive progress since disruption itself is loss of control.

This not the same thing.
Making authority look bad or stupid is almost always an automatic grounds for firing.

Breaking the rules/protocol also will get you into trouble, as people of all sorts get into trouble because management makes stupid protocol and rules all the time.

When it comes to classrooms, you cannot allow kids to do their own thing, not even in preschool, because if one kid gets exempted all the other kids will refuse to do the activity including nap time.

If the teacher doesn't follow the rules, they get fired at the drop of a hate and can be sued along with the school

Most little kids need to take naps or they become cranky.

You say it's not the same thing and then prove my point. There was no intention of making anyone look stupid or bad, the intention was to make the workplace as efficient as possible which as I understand current business practices is a major goal. The problem is that the solutions were too "outside the box" to be understood by management. Management saw the changes, didn't understand the changes and punished accordingly. The fact that efficiency was increased and thus their bottom line strengthened was irrelevant, the fact that I acted outside the process is all that matters. Outside the process is viewed as a threat. Results don't matter following the process does. The hive can't tolerate difference because it does not understand it and thus view it as potentially harmful.


....And this is an early part of the hive-mind training: exceptional students that can last all day must go to sleep, weaker students that need extra nap time must wake when required regardless of their needs. The fact that they are capable or incapable of such things is irrelevant, they must comply. Structure and order above all else.

My premise is that "outside the box" is not allowed, how is any example you or I gave an example of "outside the box" actually being accepted? The topic of the thread is "Why Do NTs Need To Do Things In Unison?" and the answer is "they've been systematically trained to do things in unison." Most autistics have problems with this training, our brains don't process it the same.

"The Undiscovered Self". It's a short book, but not necessarily a quick read.

I really wish Jung were alive to talk to today. He was a pioneer in observing the collective effects of memetics, -> the growth of the hive-mind. He describes how the collective used memetics to devalue and basically destroy the concept of the true individual, while at the same time forcing dissociation into our psychology. What he describes is the construction of identity, and the separation from nature which is our true selves.

The doing things in unison is a product of what happens when a "superorganism" is created. Individual units (us) are stratified into castes that generally all mimic each other so that they operate as a larger structure for efficiency.
This schema was a key part of the "industrial revolution", which Jung witnessed. This schema was also adopted by many other structures as well as he explains, such as government, science, and religion.
It was already present in smaller amounts in all of these structures, but what Jung witnessed was a key turning point in the self-organization of the smaller memes that supported this larger schema. It's a bit like fungus colonies coming together to form the larger slime mold.

I pretend that I understand a lot about how this all works, but I'm pretty sure that I would sleep better at night If I didn't understand any of it.

even modern varients on the Prussian system tend to be fairly sick and twisted, so I wouldn't suggest using anything school-related as an example of normal NT behavior. Although I guess that the fact so many people worship school is a good example of cultural brain washing.

Otherwise, this seemingly obsessive togetherness is more of an extrovert thing than an NT thing. (Introversion is like 50% of the general population; autism does have some kind of monopoly on it.)

poopies.
Authority make themselves look stupid. If you refuse to ignore that, then you're punished.

What you describe here is correct and outlines the logic for a self-organizing and self-supporting system.
If the system actually solved real problems then people, especially middle management, would lose jobs. Increased efficiency very often means less need for employees, and especially managers.
On the other hand, if the managers fuel the system by creating more problems instead of less, then the monster grows, and they increase their own job security.

Studies have also shown that within many group dynamics, creativity is either ignored or punished.

The reason a lot of this doesn't seem to make reasonable sense is because these decisions are based primarily on things happening in the subconscious, and not within conscious thought.

Anyway, a system that doesn't have these kinds of features would likely be a stagnant or even self-destructive system. As far as the logic involved it would be like a flu virus that didn't make you cough, and did not spread itself efficiently.