Bonding Actions

Team sports involving rules, hierarchies, teamwork, and controlled aggression ("Wars are won on the playing fields of Eton") may have a special importance in bonding. We even describe team supporters and boosters in intense terms of "fanatics" -- sports fans, avid fans, rabid fans, loyal fans, etc. During exciting sports events, observers can easily see the intensity of identification that individuals can have with their team or their group.

Music has a special importance in bonding. A group singing in unison is one of the most effective devices to increase morale and esprit de corps. In addition to the bonding to the immediate group, most music and songs have powerful memory associations which are triggered.

Every country, for example, has patriotic songs which arouse the emotions: stirring marches and military music (such as the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," "Dixie," "Stars and Stripes Forever"), and slower music which suggests reverence and respect (e.g., "Star Spangled Banner," "God Save the King") or sentiment and nostalgia for the homeland ("America the Beautiful," "Back Home Again in Indiana," "My Old Kentucky Home").

We know this music from our childhood years and it has a powerful emotional effect on us. Not only does the Establishment use this music for bonding purposes, but also most protest movements have songs with simple lyrics (usually: the verse describing the conflict, the chorus emphasizing unity) based on well-known patriotic and religious melodies (We Shall Overcome, Solidarity Forever).

Music is important in bonding religious groups and ethnic groups too. Negro Spirituals and gospel music, for example, have created a bonding in the black community that transcends any particular religious denomination. For centuries, the Catholic Church was bonded throughout the world with the use of Gregorian chant in Latin; recent reforms, whatever their other merits, have caused a serious break of this bonding.

Propaganda movies have traditionally placed a great emphasis on bonding scenes: unity and loyalty themes are usually expressed in scenes of camaraderie, friendship, often roughhouse fun and games, playing pranks, drinking together, and so on.

Examples range from the earliest classic propaganda films, such as the camaraderie of the sailors on the Russian battleship Potemkin and the scout-camp atmosphere of the Nazi youths filmed in Reifenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," to the WW2 John Wayne movies and the good-natured gang at M*A*S*H, in which the pride theme ("We're #1 ") is also developed, often as the climax of the stories, as these happy-go-lucky friends get together -- "when the chips are down" -- for a methodical and efficient performance of their duties (marching, fighting, doctoring, and so on),

Bonding actions within the group can include both the present and the past.

In the present, groups can give rewards to individuals, can give encouragement and approval in many ways: words of praise, cheers and applause, awards and medals, titles and prestige, money and power. To see how sophisticated, low-key conditioning is today, browse through www.dvidshub.net for a sampling of current "information" videos about the Iraq War, freely available to TV stations, presenting favorable images of our military. (Why not a .gov URL ?)

But, groups can also bond to the past by honoring the dead heroes and martyrs, by ceremonies and memorials, by re-telling "the lives of the saints" and "the tales of the heroes." Remembering the "good" of past glories and victories serves an important morale function in the present because individuals can hope that their heroic deeds will also be remembered in the future. Remembering the "bad" -- the "horror stories" -- the atrocities committed against the group, functions as part of the "threat" and as a stimulus for revenge and retribution, to rectify an injustice, to settle the score, to even it up.