Crowds

I do not like crowded places. Even as a youngster, when my elder sisters who liked to go bargain hunting at places and markets such as Quiapo, Avenida or Divisoria, Manila; I would beg off, not to go with them. I hated the idea of keeping alert all the time, watching over my shoulder, holding tightly onto my purse or shoulder bag, lest I get robbed, pickpocketed or what not. I had very limited money, I could not afford to lose any. Hehehe.

Instances like:
1. When I was a college student in Manila and I went shopping one day with my cousin Adele and my high school classmate Corazon Te. We went shopping at Good Earth Emporium. Unfortunately, my friend Corazon was pickpocketed inside. It so happened that she lost fifty pesos of shopping money when she and my cousin Adele joined a crowded group looking for bargain t-shirts. As they were curiously browsing with the crowd, I distanced myself away to look at other things. When Corazon decided to buy the shirt, she put her hand inside her dress pocket to draw the cash, but alas the money was no longer there. How she cried about losing that 50 pesos because it belonged to her sister Annabelle who requested her to go shopping in her behalf.

2. Also my sister Jeannette, she lost a packet of jewelry from her hand bag while inside the National Bookstore, Harrison Plaza. There was some kind of promotional sale and my sister was attracted by the big crowd of people going inside the store. (Jeannette was always attracted to sale because she was always reselling them items too.) Together with sis Imelda and some of my siblings, they entered that crowded place, but I decided to stay outside and window shopped elsewhere instead. There was a big commotion when she lost her costly jewelry. Alas, that foray to the crowded National Book Store spoiled our supposed to be happy family time.

These were 1 and 2 instances where I verily trusted my instinct to not join the crowded melee.

Also, even during the pre-martial law demonstration era when I was still studying at UST, I had never joined students protests nor marches. I would always go straight home from school even when classes were suspended for students to supposedly participate. I was afraid of commotion, of things getting out of hand and of getting hurt. I heard enough stories where some students who joined demonstration out of curiosity and suddenly caught in a frenzy of danger. You just never knew when things would go awry.

And mass hysteria in any form such as shrieking for movie idols, singers or celebrities, I wasn’t much into it either.

It takes a crowd to create mass hysteria. For me mass hysteria is always scary. Some rationality is always lost there. It’s like a spell of some kind. It is usually accompanied by shouts or chants and violence. I had seen small gang members during high school possessed by the power of the group. When separated individually, they were as meek as can be. Historically, Hitler made use of mass hysteria to carry out his atrocities. The ideology of Communism was also spread through the hysteria of the common cause. So too with regards to many other forms of cultism or extremism. And surely, if anybody has ever forgotten, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was carried out by mass hysteria too.