Sociology looks at how people behave in groups: family, work, politics, and religion. A quote: People in a crowd will do or say something that they would hesitate to do or say as an individual.

     In 2004, a writer named James Surowiecki published a book he entitled “The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations.”

     In it, Surowiecki argues that “a diverse collection of deciding individuals is likely to make certain types of decisions and predictions better than single individuals or even experts. In some cases, groups are remarkably intelligent and often smarter than the smartest people in them.”

     Yet, Surowiecki admits that crowds do make mistakes, due to: “homogeneity, a lack of diversity; imitation, following others; and emotions, such as peer pressure, or the herd instinct.”

     His book’s title, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” is an allusion to Charles Mackay’s 1841 book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.”

     Which is it? Are crowds wise, or are they prone to seasons of madness?

     Mackay’s book is a 702-page tome, a doorstop. Yet, within its pages, he explores a series of mania’s that in past centuries engulfed entire groups of people.

     In his third chapter, “Tulipmania,” Mackay describes how the citizens of Holland drove up the price on “a rare species of tulips in the year 1636, so that regular markets for their sale were established on the Stock Exchange of Amsterdam, in Rotterdam, and other towns.”

     “At last, however, the more prudent began to see that this folly could not last forever. Rich people no longer bought the flowers to plant in their gardens.” Prices dropped as did the mania. 

     In addition to economic manias, Mackay describes social and religious hysterias: the pursuit of witches across central Europe; the Crusades to the Holy Land; alchemists, who tried to turn lead into gold; haunted houses; and the search for relics of famous people. 

     Then, Mackay reveals a true counterfeit, a mountebank, an illusionist named Franz Mesmer, a German who arrived in Paris in 1778. “It is impossible,” said M. Dupotet, “to conceive the sensations which Mesmer’s experiments created in Paris.”

     These experiments, or healing sessions, called animal magnetism, produced group hysteria.

     “The cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations became inflamed; and off they went, one after the other in convulsive fits. Some sobbed and tore their hair, others laughed till the tears ran from their eyes. Mesmer would then wave a wand, and they would calm down.” 

     The English word “mesmerize,”  is derived from Franz Anton Mesmer’s trickery, and means “to put someone into a trance or a hypnotic state.”

     Delusion is defined as “a fixed, false belief that a person holds, despite clear proof or logical evidence that it is wrong.” An illusion though is a trick, like an optical illusion, or a magic trick.

     A favorite essay of mine is entitled “Illusions,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. At its end, he says,   

     “Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament; there is he alone with them alone.

     “On the instant, fall snowstorms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way and that, and whose movement and doings he must obey; the mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now that. 

     “What is he that he should resist their will, and think or act for himself?

     “And when for an instant, the air clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting around him on their thrones—they alone with him alone.”

     Within any given age, a mania, a madness, or a popular delusion can and will emerge. It is extraordinary, and it is then that crowds fail to display much, if any, wisdom.

 Music. Two Neil’s. The first is Neil Sadaka. 

     In 1974, Sadaka recorded a haunting song entitled “The Immigrant.” “Harbors opened their arms to the young searching foreigner, come to the light of the beacon of liberty. Was it anything like that when you arrived? A legend that spoke of a mystical magical land called America.

     “It was a time when strangers were welcome here. Music would play. They tell me the days were sweet and clear. It was a sweeter tune, and there was so much room that people could come from everywhere. . . . To find they’ve closed the door, they don’t want him anymore.”

     Sadaka dedicated the song to John Lennon, who was fighting deportation back to England.

     The second Neil is Neil Diamond. In 1980, for his movie “The Jazz Singer,” Diamond recorded the song “America.” 

     “Far, we’ve been traveling far, without a home, but not without a star. Free. Only want to be free. We huddle close, hang on to a dream. On the boats and on the planes, they’re coming to America, never looking back again. They’re coming to America today!”

     At certain concerts, Neil would introduce his song by projecting a picture of his grandmother, Molly Rapaport, then a Jewish girl, and explain.

     “It was almost a hundred years ago. A little girl, twelve years old and alone, was put on a train in Kiev, then in Russia, and made the journey 1200 miles to Rotterdam in Holland. She then boarded a ship to make the great voyage to freedom in a place called America.

     “That little girl was my grandmother. She and her daughter, Rose, inspired me to achieve everything that I have achieved in my life. Her courage will never be forgotten.”

     Literature. In 1894, writing in Yiddish, Sholem Aleichem published a series of eight stories under the title, “Tevye the Dairyman.” The fictional Tevye tells stories about his seven trouble-prone daughters, his wife Golde, his poor life in Tsarist Russia, and his duty to his Jewish faith.

     In a final story, entitled, “Lekh-Lekho,” (Get Thee Out), a Tsarist decree expels the family. 

     Theater. The musical, “Fiddler on the Roof,” is an adaptation of “Tevye the Dairyman,” In the final scene, Tevye, Golde, and the two youngest daughters leave for America.

     History. In 1901, a family of Germans by the last name of Ament, or Amen, then living in Franken Cuter, or Frank, in Russia near the Volga River, prepared to migrate to America. 

     In Russia, “They lived in villages protected by a high fence, fearing Russian intrusion or the wolf packs that ran wild on the Russian steppes. The wolves were hungry in the winter’s snow.”

     Conrad was the dad, Catherine the mother. Six of their nine children tagged along. The seventh child was David Amen, then 14 years old. The family settled in Culbertson, Nebraska, near McCook. They gravitated to farming, the work they knew best. They searched for land

     In 1904 or 1905, two sisters, in their teens, also from Frank, Russia, migrated to America, fed up with a brutal step-mother’s abuse. Their names: Anna Mary and Anna Margaret Lebsack.

      They too came to Nebraska. The older sister married David Strasheim, and settled in Lincoln, but Anna Margaret traveled west to McCook, and there, in 1907, she married David Amen. David and Anna Amen were my maternal great-grandparents. 

     In the fall of 1911, in Frank, Russia, the brother of the two Lebsack sisters, a farmer named Jacob, plus his wife Katherine, and their four children migrated to America. They settled in Hastings, Nebraska. In 1917, they too moved north of Proctor, Colorado.

     There, the two families, the Amen’s and the Lebsack’s, farmed corn and hay. 

     Like other Volga Germans from Russia, the families became German Congregationalists.

     Katherine Lebsack told her kids, “Be glad we are in America, or we might not be living.”