Even shunning within your group, though, has got to wreak havoc with your neurochemistry. I’m quite sure there are shame hormones, which may be expressed negatively, as I think I have suggested, by the withholding of dopamine.
But here is the point: when you are dealing with a blank mass of people, who are shouting and acting in unison, they have been trained to secrete dopamine on those occasions. People who “virtue signal” always get a dopamine hit when they do. This reinforces it.
To the extent parents default to letting mass media acculturate their children, this is what you get. The JOB of parents is to teach their children 1) how to feel good, how to feel pride, how to feel worthy of inclusion; 2) WHEN to feel good. If they do this, and if surrounding parents do the same, you have a distributed set of reinforcing habits, which we call a culture.
As I have pointed out, the internet and mass media generally are more or less engineered to deliver “hits” of various emotions and the neurotransmitters that go with them. But we all crave the DEEP hit, which we call a sense of meaning, and social participation.
Who owns this domain, in this country, more than any other? Who has convinced tens of millions of people to engage in categorically contradictory and nonsensical behavior? There are multiple correct answers, but the Left is the answer I am going for at the moment.
Do you want to feel good about yourself? Can it get any easier than doing what all the other people who seem to feel good are doing? Does it take thought? Introspection? Of course not.
I will return to this, I’m sure. That will do for today.