"You'll find individuals agreeing on this, but when they get into collective societies and larger groups they find it difficult to achieve group agreement"
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Walsch is pointing at a familiar social glitch: consensus shrinks as the room expands. In one-on-one conversation, agreement can be intimate, elastic, even polite. Add bodies, and suddenly every belief becomes a flag to defend. The line’s plainness is part of its strategy. It reads like a calm observation, but it smuggles in a critique of how we perform identity in public. “Individuals” are framed as capable of clarity; “collective societies and larger groups” as machines that grind clarity into stalemate.
The subtext is less about logic than incentives. People don’t just disagree in groups; they gain something from disagreement: status, belonging, moral purity, the comfort of a tribe. Group agreement is difficult not because truth is rare, but because unanimity can feel like surrender. Even when members privately share a view, the collective has to negotiate hierarchy, history, and the fear of being the one who “betrayed” the team.
Contextually, Walsch’s work often sits in the spiritual self-help lane: personal transformation as the engine for social change. So this isn’t merely sociology; it’s a gentle push toward inner responsibility. If groups can’t agree, the implied solution isn’t better debate technique. It’s better people: more self-aware, less ego-driven, less addicted to winning.
The rhetorical move is subtle: it flatters the reader’s private reasonableness while indicting the crowd. That’s persuasive because most of us feel saner in solitude and exasperated in committees. Walsch turns that everyday frustration into a moral diagnosis.
The subtext is less about logic than incentives. People don’t just disagree in groups; they gain something from disagreement: status, belonging, moral purity, the comfort of a tribe. Group agreement is difficult not because truth is rare, but because unanimity can feel like surrender. Even when members privately share a view, the collective has to negotiate hierarchy, history, and the fear of being the one who “betrayed” the team.
Contextually, Walsch’s work often sits in the spiritual self-help lane: personal transformation as the engine for social change. So this isn’t merely sociology; it’s a gentle push toward inner responsibility. If groups can’t agree, the implied solution isn’t better debate technique. It’s better people: more self-aware, less ego-driven, less addicted to winning.
The rhetorical move is subtle: it flatters the reader’s private reasonableness while indicting the crowd. That’s persuasive because most of us feel saner in solitude and exasperated in committees. Walsch turns that everyday frustration into a moral diagnosis.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
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