The purity spiral

 I saw a piece on YT explaining the concept of the "purity spiral" as an explanation for radical political group formation and radicalisation.  In this case it was talking about extreme political views in America.  

Its interesting as the speaker did charcterize the social dynamic fairly well but I thought it might be worth drilling into the pattern a little more. 

The basic idea is that the dynamic is formed when you have an "in group" whose members are competing to be "more pure" or "more virtuous", "better than" or "more correct".  The rewards for winning the competition is something meaningful within the group ideology.  More love, more respect, leadership, power etc.  

The reward system within the "in group" also has to be a zero sum game or worse.  So the awarding of that "thing of value" to one member also means its removal from another.  In the more vicious pattern, the loser does not just lose the value but gets a negative "punishment" or social black mark/scar/social credit score/isolation/demotion etc.  The addition of a punishment for losing creates a multiplier effect in the competition.  

In contrast "gentlemanly" competition is asymmetrical.  The winner gets applauded and the loser(s) also get celebrated for competing.  Basically, everyone gets some amount of positive outcome. 

While in toxic competition, the winner gets something of value transferred from the loser AND the loser gets additional punishment. This increases the cost of competing, which results in more spectators than competitors.  It also promotes competitors only getting into the competition when its un-equal as "fair fights" become much higher risk.  So tricks, antagonising, bullying and set-ups are the more frequent ways to initiate the conflict.  Ignorant competitors will get pushed or manipulated into the competition before they understand the odds are against them, while the senior/more experienced players have a low risk of losing and a consumate higher reward. 

This kind of toxic competition can be found in all sorts of places in popular and historical media. 

Now back to the "purity spiral".  The second essential dynamic of the purity spiral is the so called "Shaving off" of fallen former members of the "in group" and casting them out into the "out group" or other.

This reveals the various status levels within the group.  There is the powerful elite who are the center of the group. They are the ones who are vested with the power and authority and are usually the "winners" of all the competitions. These are the "rulers".  

The other part of the movement is the "flock".  These are the members who form the mob, but have no power.  So called "flying monkeys", they will exercise the will of the powerful, under fear of exclusion.  These are the "ruled".  If they can mount a successful competition with one of the rulers, they can move up the status hierarchy, but usually the power inequality between the rulers and the mob is so great that its impossible unless the ruling member becomes vulnerable through some accident or incident.  Then they can be torn apart by the mob and replaced. 

This keeps the ruling group focused as they know the mob is always ready to tear them down, but the thing that keeps the mob in discipline is the threat of being "cast out"/exiled/rejected etc.  The so called "shaving off" of anyone who wanders away from the mob or shows undesirable traits, such as independence or "wrongness".  These people are publicly destroyed and stripped of any possible virtues ("character assassination") as an exercise in both raising the fear level of the mob and removing any possible reason any of the mob might be tempted to separate and follow the cast out member into the wilderness.   

The interplay of these particular group behaviours works to keep the mob under the control of the vested authorities in the group and the vested authorities at the mercy of the mob.  

Its interesting to look at historical and current ideological movements and see these behaviours manifest.  The speaker I was listening to cited George Orwell's Animal Farm and a video of Iraqi dictator Sadam Hossain consolidating his power as examples.  

Its interesting that a number of the major religions have all these dynamics encoded into their practices as either historical or as current practice. Its probably pretty easy to find these dynamics in use in tribal societies and any number of historical kingdoms, current day political parties, current political movements, American "Business Culture" practices (Which were derived from East Asian business practices)... pretty much all over where people are forming groups and ruling each other. 

I think the key differences in the "Purity Spiral" dynamic is the nature of the ideological content that the group has formed around.  When the topic of the group is social virtue as is currently being manifest in the gender wars and social justice wars being fought in the American Media/Politics, the only thing that can be competed for is the ownership or authority over the debated "virtues", as expressed by the group members.  Finding new and more extreme ways to signal these virtues is the only effective means of "winning" a competition fought on these grounds.  The other aspect that ramps up the competition is the fact that the mob is so magnified by the social media platforms and recruited from a much larger audience than could otherwise be assembled in a physical "group".  An interesting aspect is also the currency of these groups is "attention". Power is quantifiable in "clicks", "shares", "likes", "followers", "retweets" and other metrics as expressed by the social media platforms.  These are the only way that the mob has to indicate judgement or effectively "vote" for winner of a "competition" between fragments of ideology (and thus the person who is projecting that fragment/thought/meme/action etc). 

 

I'm not sure that any of this is new.  I suspect the same dynamics have been played out since time began for control over groups and membership in groups.  They are all the same mechanisms we find littered through history.  You can observe them form in the school yard as children discover them and figure out how to use them.  The only difference here is the magnifying effect of technology as its being applied in conjunction with these group dynamics.