Herd mentality or group psychology is formed when a large number of people in a society form some collective ideas and behaviors. People who agree on and comply with the group psychology prevalent in the society can live in comfort, but those who do not experience discomfort and difficulties. The specifics of group psychology vary and change in different societies and in different times.
At present, the psychology of voyeurism and exhibitionism seems to spread and deepen in many modern societies affecting more and more people including even minors. The society seems to be polarized more and more between people who conform to the psychology of voyeurism and exhibitionism and people who do not. Voyeurism and exhibitionism usually involve sensualism and it being manifested as group psychology indicates that sensualism has also become accepted in the society as something to be shared openly and publicly.
The society is formed by members in the society forming relationships. Members who live in relationships in the society must maintain harmony and order as well as enjoy individual freedom and equality. Individual freedom and equality may be restricted to a certain degree to achieve balance with social harmony and order and not to inflict damage on other people.
There are components of human nature that must be contained exclusively within individuals' privacy. They include basic human desires such as eating, sleeping, and having sex. We all know that they are essential components of every individual's life but they are not to be publicly or casually shared with other people in maintaining social harmony and order in healthy relationships. Especially, human sexuality is a component of human nature that can have highly detrimental adverse effects on individuals' psychology and on the society when exploited carelessly.
As more and more people claim and exploit their right for publicizing private components of human nature, and the society develops the group psychology that not only accepts but also promotes such ideas and behaviors, social harmony and order are to be breached and people who think and act differently are marginalized.
As components that are supposed to remain private by human nature become publicized and such distorted ideas and behaviors spread to be formed into a type of group psychology, conventional social restrictions on the matter are challenged and people get confused between their right as individuals and responsibility as a person in relationships in the society. The development of technology such as internet and social media expedites the process of aggravating such distorted group psychology. These days, people can actually view other regular people's private lives and they can also expose their own private lives to other people easily and casually, and the media contribute to promoting such phenomena.
The reason people view and expose the private components of human nature publicly is that they find it fun and pleasurable. In a society that mistakes pleasure for happiness and accepts pleasure seeking as not only being legitimate but also desirable, human sexuality, which is supposed to belong to one's privacy and to be dealt with great care as a source of generating positive energy within human mind, becomes a mere object of pleasure for everyone to play with anytime anywhere. Indeed, we are seeing the popularization of human sexuality in the modern era and we don't realize that it is damaging and destroying individuals' psychology, human relationships, and eventually the whole society.
It is a high time that we accurately understood the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology, and tried to establish healthy and balanced group psychology. We must stop aggravating the current phenomenon of widely spread voyeurism and exhibitionism. We must also stop aggravating the general trend that equates pleasure with happiness, and justifies the pursuit of individual freedom and equality at the expense of social harmony and order.
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