This column, cribbing from EvKL’s book of a similar title, should be up on Social Matter:

You’re supposed to feel warm inside when you see a big crowd of people demonstrating for ‘unity’ and ‘tolerance’ carrying candles and signs, speaking soothing words of peace. The images are intended to reassure you, just as the mass of the herd reassures animals like deer, gazelle, kangaroos, sheep, and cows that they are safe from predators.

But the herd is as much of a target of predators as it is a form of protection. And humans are not, ultimately, herd animals — we are pack hunters with a sophisticated social structure. The herd is not a form of social organization that is natural to us, even if we make use of herds, even if we sometimes march together in herd-like formations. Herding is a survival mechanism for defenseless creatures, and to see crowds of our fellow-men walking together in the night, decrying violence, it comes to mind that the people marching believe themselves to be largely defenseless.