Crowds
Individuals are not bad, crowds are simply mad – because, in a crowd, nobody feels responsible. You can commit murders in a crowd easily, because you know the crowd is doing it and you are just a wave in it, you are not the deciding factor, so you are not responsible. Individual, alone, you feel a responsibility. You will feel guilty if you commit something. It is my observation that sin exists through crowds, no individual is ever a sinner. And individuals, even if they commit something wrong, can be taken out of it very easily; but crowds are impossible, because crowds have no souls no centers. To whom to appeal?
And in all that goes on in the world – the devil, the evil forces – the crowd is in fact responsible. Nations are the devil; religious communities are the evil forces. Belief makes you a part of a bigger crowd than you, and there is a feeling of elation when you are a part of something bigger, a nation – India, or America, or England. Then you are not a tiny human being. A great energy comes to you and you feel elated. A euphoria is felt. That’s why, whenever a country is at war, people feel very euphoric, ecstatic. Suddenly their life has a meaning – they exist for the country, for the religion, for the civilization; now they have a certain goal to be achieved, and a certain treasure to be protected. Now they are no longer ordinary people, they have a great mission. Belief is the bridge from the individual to the crowd.
-Osho, “The Grass Grows By Itself, #5“