© Roger M Tagg 2009 revised 2010
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Many observers of the human condition have remarked on the periodic outbreaks of herd mania that have afflicted pre-Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment societies alike. I thought I would reveal some of my favourite examples, together with my suggested reasons why they eventually came to an end. In this context, "ramp" means any unsustainable process in which outdoing or outlasting one's rivals, or emphasizing one's superiority, becomes a dominant part of the process. The implication is that things gather momentum as they go down the slope, rather like a runaway train on a downhill gradient.
A famous book on this topic is Charles Mackay's book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, published in 1841.
I spent four happy years as a boarder at an English preparatory "prep" school - unlike in the USA, our ages ranged from 7 to 13. After that I also boarded at a "public" (i.e. private) secondary school. Some have said that part of the value of boarding at these schools was that they provided a microcosm of what real life would be like after we left - the school was our whole life for 3 months at a time. It was certainly a fertile ground for ramps - we called them "crazes" at the prep school. Some of this crept over into university life too. The common feature is that everyone tries to out-do everyone else, or another group, until the enterprise goes beyond all sense.
| Name of the ramp, etc | What eventually stopped it |
|---|---|
| Model aeroplanes (probably every boys school has this one): we wanted to build bigger and better than our fellows. Later, the serious modellers were joined by the masses who bought simple kits where the wings and tail simply slotted through the fuselage | Litter - of hundreds of plane wrecks in trees |
| Dinky games: areas of the school grounds were excavated and turned into model environments for running model cars and other vehicles; different groups tried to outdo each other | Complaints about the mess and damage to the grounds |
| Digging holes: two rival groups built shafts down into the gravel subsoil which was easily excavated to 2-3 metres using large jam tins | A gardener nearly fell into one late in the evening and the holes had to be filled in |
| Chimneying: following up some boy's book on mountaineering, we took to climbing more and more difficult doorways in the school, using back and hands on one side against feet on the other | Dirty marks on the paintwork caused the practice to be "banned" |
| DIY telephone system: anticipating the future, boys bought wires, mouthpieces and earpieces, crystal sets and batteries. The equipment was kept under pillows in dormitories, and used after lights-out (which was at the ridiculous hour of 8:15 pm). One enterprising boy even rigged up a trunk line between different boarding houses. | Only the end of term, when all the equipment had to be dismantled |
| Having progressively bigger and better afternoon teas (as a university student), while going through the lecture material with a "supervision partner" (buddy) | We couldn't finish the tea by the time for the compulsory college dinner in hall, for which we then had no appetite |
Since we were not allowed into the town from the prep school to shop for ourselves, we had to rely on the goodwill of the younger masters, who would be dispatched with orders for tens of items at a time. Another school in the same town had a much more sinister craze - that of shoplifting, in which boys tried to outdo each other in what they could steal.
Universities are (or were) well known for ramps, such as rag stunts (e.g. car on Senate House roof), binge drinking, arcane fraternity rituals etc.
One of organized religion's ongoing weaknesses is its susceptibility to "holier than thou" ramps. As religion is often seen as a means of controlling the masses, authorities or governments wanting to increase their power (or get elected in a democracy) want to present themselves as more God-fearing than their rivals. Because the world does not follow a single religion, there is also a temptation to claim one is "holier" by speaking out more strongly against the opposition, whether that opposition is another religion or a group of atheists - or worst of all, a group of liberal co-religionists.
| Name of the ramp, etc | What eventually stopped it |
|---|---|
| The Pharisees, and other "holier than thou" Jewish sects | Keep fading out but re-appearing in different guises |
| The Crusades - the threat of excommunication of rulers by the pope, or not being regarded as a Christian kingdom | Failure to make lasting gains, bad behaviour of crusaders |
| The Assassins - judicious assassination of key figures in hated governments, by young men lured by religious incentives | The Ottoman Turks |
| Mediaeval Monasticism - the only noble thing to do is to opt out of this world; each new order brought in more austere rules | In England, arbitrary seizure by a king; more generally, education of a much larger proportion of the population |
| Puritanism, from Calvin to the English iconoclasts, exclusive brethren, Amish; possibly a part replacement of the above - the principle is "holier than thou". | Originally, the Stuart restoration in England, under the Anglican - but sceptic - Charles the second. Recently, younger generations wanting to embrace wider thinking and escaping the clutches of sects |
| Tractarianism, a late 19th century "high" church movement in the Anglican church, towards ever more ritual - there were as many as 90 "tracts for the times" | Many converts to Catholicism; condemned by most bishops, objected to by many Anglican elements |
| Fundamentalist Islam, from Wahhabism to Jihadism; has ramped up from plain pure religious observance to legitimizing hate and mass murder; outdoing the assassins by the indiscriminateness of who is targeted | Still alive |
| American Christian Evangelicalism - ever more full of its own rightness | Still alive, and in some peoples' view, not much better than the above |
Boom and bust events seem to come round more or less regularly. The first three below date from the early days of worldwide trade, when accurate knowledge was scarce, and the mechanisms of stock markets not yet well established. The 1929 Wall Street crash should have made everyone aware, but since the 1980s fad for de-regulation we have seen a spate of stock market crashes, e.g. 1987, 2001 and 2008-9.
| Name of the ramp, etc | What eventually stopped it |
|---|---|
| Dutch Tulip mania (1636-7) | Speculative prices were unsustainable and crashed |
| The Mississippi Company (1719-21) and later (John Law) | Initially, boom and bust, then the Seven Years War, and French ancien régime improvidence |
| The South Sea Bubble | Financial mismanagement, imaginary assets |
| The British East India Company - the first multinational - continually trying to extend its influence | Local resentment, e.g. Boston Tea Party; the 1857 Indian Mutiny, leading to British Government take-over |
| Wall Street before the crash of 1929 | Speculative investment and over-highly geared investing (borrowing to invest), plus falling house prices |
| Pyramid schemes and chain letters | They eventually run out of willing sub-contractors or participants - but they keep re-appearing |
| Enron - a company trading in privatized energy companies - taking progressively more advantage of de-regulation and "devil take the hindmost" mentality | Enough people pointed out that the assets didn't support the share price, and that there were dodgy accounting practices going on - failed 2001 |
| Sub-prime mortgages - lending more and more money to bad risk customers | World economic crisis 2008-10 |
There will probably continue to be ramps in stock markets, because the urge to "get rich quick" by a few is irresistible. One can only succeed if one can find another mug to sell on to (at a higher price, or at less likely value).
This is a very mixed bag.
| Name of the ramp, etc | What eventually stopped it |
|---|---|
| Slavery - from ancient times until the 1800s - and still going in some places | The enlightenment, religious and social reformers |
| The Feudal system | Rise of the bourgeois middle class, traders and merchants |
| Thuggee - a cult in India, but taken up by gangs since, e.g. Chicago, Glasgow | Heavy policing, but always liable to reappear |
| Lysenkoism - anti-scientific, idealist approach to rescuing the USSR from disastrous harvests | Continued failure of these ideas in practice, the fall of Krushchev, an expert commission report on his farm |
| A-list gossip - ever more intrusive | Alive and well, punctuated by personal disasters, e.g. death of Princess Di, Jacko etc |
| Pop music - continually trying to be different | No sign of dying out, but quality nowhere near as good as it used to be |
| Mini-skirts - got shorter and shorter | The logical conclusion was something no-one wanted to wear - or see |
| The permissive society - always pushing against boundaries | Not completely stopped yet, but there have been reactions |
| Computer games | Not stopped yet, but some former addicts have switched to micro-blogging |
| Mobile phones | Almost past the "craze" stage in many societies - just a useful thing |
| Micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter etc) | Still in the growth stage - a great opportunity to waste time and talk about what one is doing, instead of doing it. Definitely a ramp when boasting how many friends or followers one has. |
Most of these are historical; many were caused by the paranoia of those in power, trying to pre-empt anyone opposing their position.
| Name of the ramp, etc | What eventually stopped it |
|---|---|
| The Spanish Inquisition - a form of "holier than thou" | The Napoleonic wars and subsequent liberal interludes |
| The French Reign of Terror - conspiracy paranoia | Coup of 9 Thermidor - association of Robespierre with mass bloodshed |
| Stalin's purges - conspiracy paranoia again | Even Stalin realized they had gone too far, but eventually officially condemned by Krushchev |
| Anti-semitism, from mediaeval Europe to the present | The occurrence, and the shame of the holocaust |
| Totalitarian Communism - dictatorship of the proletariat - represented by a self-perpetuating oligarchy | Mass marching in city streets |
| Fascism and Naziism - the blame game | A war costing over 30 million lives |
| McCarthyism - conspiracy paranoia | He accused an army chief, antagonized President Eisenhower and was censured by the US Senate |
| Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution (and Great Leap Forward) | Widespread murder and destruction, famine, economic chaos, ping pong diplomacy and death of Mao |
| Neo-con (Reagan - Thatcher) - reprised by Bush junior, Blair | Reagan, Bush junior - voted out, policies having failed economically. Thatcher - hubris, always thinking she was right - but failing to spot that the poll tax was a step too far |
| AIDS denialism and quack cures, especially in South Africa | Mbeki's anti-science policy was eventually overruled by the ANC, courts and trade unions |
These are also historical, the ramp being caused by the need to snuff out opposition along an always increasing length of empire borders.
| Name of the ramp, etc | What eventually stopped it |
|---|---|
| The Roman Empire | Corruption at home, unsustainability of borders, barbarian invasions |
| The Holy Roman Empire | Inherent contradictions of the Pope-Emperor duality; independence from it of France, Britain |
| The Ottoman Empire | Failure to maintain impetus, stagnation, emergence of nationalist feelings |
| Napoleon's new Europe | Attempt to invade Russia, and subsequent defeats |
| The British Empire | The cost of two world wars, and the loss of manufacturing markets |
| International communism led by the USSR | Lack of achievement of aspirations of subjects,
possibly due in part to more pervasive communications (news etc) of what things were really like outside; also financial crises |
| US-led World Trade | Not stopped yet - but Al Qaeda, old leftists and greenies are doing their best |
Philosophical schools appear to have a dynamic all of their own. Followers of the original proponents seem to feel a need to "take things further", partly to justify their own individuality and partly to maintain a publication rate acceptable to the university system.
| Name of the ramp, etc | What eventually stopped it |
|---|---|
| The Sophists in ancient Greece | Socrates initially, Aristotle finally |
| Idealism - the idea that ultimate reality is all in the mind, and that the external world doesn't have prior existence | Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, GE Moore, Russell, Stove, Searle, Musgrave |
| Logical positivism - "opposition to all metaphysics, especially ontology" | Wittgenstein, Quine, Hilary Puttnam (see section on Decline) |
| Existentialism - "the first media craze of the postwar era" (Simone de Beauvoir). "Do your own thing" | Probably still going, despite some arcane concepts, ties with Marxism and the theatre of the absurd. |
| Post-modernism - see also the essay PoMoBuzz | In some respects it's still going, despite Alan Sokal's hoax. |
Probably because IT has come upon us so quickly, there are great opportunities for hyping up new methods - these are sometimes called "silver bullets". Some of the ramps, stripped of their hype, have in fact become just a normal part of everyday IT. But at the time of their emergence, pots of money were there to be made by hardware and software sellers, not to mention consultants (as I was myself).
| Name of the ramp, etc | What eventually stopped it |
|---|---|
| Management Information Systems - the idea that all the data the boss of an organization needs can be summarized and piped to him so that he can make decisions, without middle managers | Difficulties of data collection, poor data quality |
| Databases - as a craze of the 1980s - everyone wanted to outdo their competitors with the number they had and the sophistication of their tools | It just became part of normal computing |
| Business Process Re-engineering - cutting out unnecessary work procedures | It gained a bad reputation as just an excuse for firing staff, but is still not quite dead |
| Expert Systems - embedding all an expert's knowledge in a computer | The idea never really took off. But it morphed into Artificial Intelligence, which has continued, at a more steady rate |
| Online learning - the idea that we can move more and more of the practice of education to a mode where students just access everything on a computer | It is still current, in spite of most studies on it showing that it is not by itself a substitute for teacher to student learning, and that every student asking for clarification by email is less satisfactory and less efficient than doing it in a workshop or tutorial |
| Electronic commerce and the dot-com bubble - hyped up as a massive opportunity for many IT people to make money | There was no large pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but all the same, the ideas have became part of normal computing |
| Email - getting more and more messages - see article | It is being partly overtaken by social networking (see below). It's also in danger of dying a slow death, because of overload - people don't have time to answer it all, and there are problems like spam, people attaching 4 Mb photos, viruses etc |
| Social networking (Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc) | This ramp is still very much current. But maybe people will eventually come to realize that they don't want to spend so much of their life communicating through machines |
I find ramps fascinating. They seem to happen out of peoples' natural human tendencies. Commonest examples are the opportunity to make a "fast buck"; the need to protect one's position at any cost; and the urge of humans to either keep up with, or sometimes outdo, the other people around them.
I think that there is also a ramp that tends to lead us towards a "nanny state". Certain individuals always want to push back the boundaries (like exceeding the speed limit by progressively larger amounts, because everyone does it). Other individuals complain about things, and may suggest that "there ought to be a law against it"; maybe they resent what they see as the "pushy" people who are taking advantage of the current laws and shortage of resources to police them. Finally, government and managers want to gain credit for "appearing to have done something" (even if it is not a good solution) - or maybe just avoiding criticism for not having done anything.
Index to more of these diatribes
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 22nd May 2010
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .