The past two years have made me think about herd behaviour and humanity, and how a dominant narrative can suppress normal, rational debate.
There are four commonly known survival strategies: Fight. Flight. Freeze. Appease.
These are switched-on if you see a snake for instance, or for appease; you’re confronted with a stronger, more aggressive human.

However, if the hominin tribe of our ancestors was confronted not as individuals, but as a tribal group by an outside threat, then the main survival strategy is to ‘act as one’, and to ‘follow the leader’.

It is to “follow the narrative” of the tribal alpha male chimp or caveman chief, etc.

Instinctually, humans then have built into us, an aversion to listening to alternative narratives whilst the threat remains, and will respond with hostility to tribal members who go against the narrative.

The conformity experiments of Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram—both Jewish psychologists in America in the aftermath of World War II, ...