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Everyone Becomes Almost Equally Stupid, Part 1
One of the recurring thoughts amongst the Ricochetti is how the world has turned upside down. Logic seems to be inverted and words that previously meant one thing now mean the opposite. We listen, our mouths agape as seemingly rational people spew absolute nonsense without a hint of embarrassment. Our mental moorings are loosened and we begin to question our own sanity.
Reading the postings here, it is clear that many see the world in generally the same way, but in a manner at odds with the broader culture — or at least to that version of the culture broadcast through official government sources and allied legacy media. Many of us read 1984 or Brave New World or Atlas Shrugged decades ago and assumed that the publication of these books had somehow vaccinated our society from the worlds they described. They did not, and here we are.
So how did we get here and what does that portend for our future? The answer lies in an impressive-sounding phrase: Mass Formation Psychosis. The term was coined by Dr. Mattias Desmet in 2017 as he was contemplating trends he saw going on about him in Europe:
I was gripped by the palpable and acute awareness of a new totalitarianism that had left its seed and made the fabric of society stiffen. Even by 2017, it could no longer be denied: The grip of governments on private life was growing tremendously fast. We were experiencing an erosion of the right to privacy (especially since 9/11), alternative voices were increasingly censored and suppressed (particularly in the context of the climate debate), the number of intrusive actions by security forces was rising dramatically, and more. It was not only governments behind these developments, however. The rapid emergence of “woke” culture and the growing climate movement was giving rise to the call for a new, hyper-strict government that emerged from within the population itself. Terrorists, climate changes, heterosexual men, and, later, viruses were considered too dangerous to be tackled with old-fashioned means. The technological “tracking and tracing” of populations became increasingly acceptable and was even deemed necessary.
The dystopian vision of the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt loomed at society’s horizon: the emergence of a new totalitarianism, no longer led by flamboyant “mob leaders” such as Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler but by dull bureaucrats and technocrats.
He decided to make it a study that resulted in the book The Psychology of Totalitarianism. In contrast to James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, Mass Formation is a phenomenon where everyone becomes equally stupid —
Mass formation is, in essence, a kind of group hypnosis that destroys individuals’ ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically.
Unlike a market where a series of autonomous decisions make judgments and predictions with uncanny accuracy, mass formation coalesces thinking into a hive mind controlled by technocrats. But, as observed by Hannah Arendt, these technocrats, rather than bringing about the utopian society they imagined, bring their societies into surreality:
The undercurrent of totalitarianism consists of blind belief in a kind of statistical-numerical “scientific fiction” that shows “radical contempt for facts”: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”
How could this happen? The answer to that question was what Dr. Desmet sought to discover.
This post is the first in a series of posts as I read through The Psychology of Totalitarianism. I invite you to read along as well and add your observations to my summaries.
[Note: Dr. Desmet’s search pre-dated the Covid pandemic. And although “mass formation” has been recently popularized due to Dr. Robert Malone’s appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast discussing the pandemic and the government’s response, it will continue to be a phenomenon even as society shrugs off pandemic controls and government shifts its deprivation of liberty to other rationales.
Published in GeneralWhenever a new object of fear arises in society, there is only one response and one defense in our current way of thinking: increased control. The fact that the human being can tolerate only a certain amount of control is completely overlooked. Coercive control leads to fear and fear leads to more coercive control. Just like that, society falls victim to a vicious circle that inevitably leads to totalitarianism, which means to extreme government control, eventually resulting in the radical destruction of both the psychological and physical integrity of human beings.
We have to consider the current fear and psychological discomfort to be a problem in itself, a problem that cannot be reduced to a virus or any other “object of threat.” Our fear originates on a completely different level—that of the failure of the Grand Narrative of our society. This is the narrative of mechanistic science, in which man is reduced to a biological organism. A narrative that ignores the psychological, symbolic, and ethical dimensions of human beings and thereby has a devastating effect at the level of human relationships. Something in this narrative causes man to become isolated from his fellow man, and from nature; something in it causes man to stop resonating with the world around him; something in it turns the human being into an atomized subject. It is precisely this atomized subject that, according to Arendt, is the elementary building block of the totalitarian state.
Desmet, Mattias. The Psychology of Totalitarianism (p. 15). Chelsea Green Publishing. Kindle Edition.
The revolutionary war happened with much of the same divisions , British loyalists. freedom fighters, and those who didn’t want the boat rocked.
The collapse is well on its way.
Sounds like Inversion Therapy and critical theory are pretty much the same thing.
I am concerned about how many on “our side” are willing to let the left tell them what to think.
I agree @cm. Man hasn’t been reduced to a biological organism in this psychosis. If that were the case, the psychosis would acknowledge the prime directive of biological organisms: successful reproduction. But in this psychosis, they deny the biological reality of male and female and define carrying a child as nothing more than a medical condition that must be addressed. In the past, this destructive ideology would burn itself out, as they would be an isolated religious sect that without children could not continue. But this one goes after other people’s children through the schools, allowing it to grow at least for now. Eventually, though, it will either die out or take civilization with it. A civilization cannot survive without children, for they are both life and hope.
Time to re-read Childhood’s End
I think Donald Trump preventing Hillary Clinton from being elected POTUS in 2016 delayed, even gave us a temporary reprieve from, the mass formation psychosis, so that now we have very demonstrable stupidity in the Executive Branch to go along with the Congress and the Establishment Political Parties. Perhaps Trump’s win was just what we needed to have a chance to recover that we would have never gotten with Clinton.
No, it gave us a reprieve from the left’s long march through the institutions. That increased their mass psychosis.
I’m seeing the same thing everybody else participating in this post is. However, I’m not so sure that the underlying cause for our fast descent into insanity is “Mass Psychosis Formation”. I should note for the record that although I’ve heard of the term and of Desmet, I haven’t read much of anything by him or others on the subject and my knowledge of psychological terminology is limited. That said, I think what we’re witnessing is something else which I can’t fully explain.
I think what is going on is just the latest version of the Left’s ever present totalitarian nature in action. I doubt that more than 5-10% of the population actually agrees with the woke stupidity (men can become women and vice versa, the sexualization of young children in our schools, the neo-racism of CRT, etc) that is now the accepted view of our elites in education, media, Wall Street, the tech world, big business, the federal government. Instead, I believe it is simple moral cowardice of these institutions and every national Democrat to go along in order to avoid excommunication from the Church of the Left.
Here’s an example to illustrate my point. In 2019, Dennis Prager was on the Bill Maher show with several other guests and in the course of debate he pointed out a number of the lies the Left states every day including the idiotic claim that men can menstruate and anyone who says otherwise is transphobic. When he said this Maher, his other guests and the audience laughed at Prager and Maher asked where Prager came up with that. I couldn’t find a video clip of the exchange but you can read a description of the conversation here. In fairness to Maher, he is aware of this insanity of the Left now and has called it out. However, I would bet almost anything that his other guests and audience members who laughed at Prager now nod along when this sort of claim is made and most also denounce those who don’t bow at the woke altar.
So, again, I think we’re at this point mainly due to the coercion and force of a small minority and the cowardice of people who should know better.
Below is a 10 minute video of Prager discussing this incident earlier this year.
I finished the first interview of Desmet, by Zuby. I found a second, which I just started, with Bret Weinstein, which is a bit longer (about 2 hours):
Here’s my summary of Desmet’s ideas from the interview by Zuby:
In the early part of the Weinstein interview, Desmet says that mass formation causes people to act in ways contrary to their self-interest. Weinstein indicates a desire to follow up on this, but I haven’t yet reached that part of the Weinstein interview. My suspicion is that Weinstein will argue that mass formation can be adaptive — his word, viewing things in an evolutionary way. I had thought of the same thing, though I would say “useful” rather than necessarily “adaptive.”
I am a Christian believer, so I tend to view things in a Christian religious way. For me, Desmet’s observations fit with what the Apostle Paul wrote in the first chapter of Romans about the consequences of rejection of God.
The issue of mass formation being useful or adaptive is interesting to me. I’m anticipating what I think that Weinstein will say, but my suspicion is that he will point out that in times of crisis, it may be useful for individuals to prioritize the good of the group. Examples could include war or natural disaster.
My hypothesis along these lines is that in the event of a real threat to the community as a whole, such as war or plague or a severe natural disaster, the best response might involve collective action. This creates a free rider problem. In such circumstances, mass formation might be a useful mechanism for overcoming the free rider problem.
The proclivity toward mass formation could be manipulated, and perhaps modern mass media and propaganda are particularly effective ways of carrying out such manipulation.
Rodin, thank again for bringing Desmet to my attention.
Stina, great comment.
I’m not sure about the bolded part, though. Here is what I observe. Pro-abortion people seem to emphasize the importance of the mother-child relationship. They tend to be feminists, and to de-emphasize the importance of the father-child relationship.
It seems to me that where they depart from my view, and probably yours, is in granting the mother the right to “choose” that relationship, even after the baby has been conceived. Once the baby is born, they seem to claim that the mother-child relationship is sacrosanct, even to the point of requiring other people to financially support a mother who chooses to have her child. But they give the mother the power of life and death over the baby, prior to birth.
I agree with you about a lack of common premises. The fundamental difference of opinion may not be about abortion itself, but about family and sexual morality. Most pro-abortion people seem to reject the traditional family as a model. This leads to increased fornication and higher levels of unwanted pregnancy, for which abortion is their solution.
And I think you are being far too literal and completely missing the forest for the trees.
This mass formation psychosis is exactly what you describe, a complete break from reality. But it’s not the same kind of break with reality that is the result of some break brain development where you can’t even trust your immediate 5 senses.
This is a spiritual psychosis- a break from all the abstract or complex realities realities that exist beyond our immediate senses and we have relied on to build our civilization.
Just because it doesn’t fit exactly into your limited definition of the word for mental illness categories does not mean the word is inappropriately used for this particular phenomenon. It is an adequate word to describe something people alive today have likely never seen and not had a word for it.
Jerry,
This is just one more thing we’ve lost the underlying structure for. One of the last conversations I had with a Ricochetti before he disappeared was that he was not convinced it was morally necessary to care for your own family.
I was floored!
In the post-Friends world, family is what you choose. But there is a skill or way of looking at the world that takes shape when we are faced with the problem of loving and caring for people we don’t really like very much simply because we are connected biologically. The current world rejects that, and that’s just one other part of the multi-legged stool that abortion sits on.
Yes, that’s kind of backwards. If we take care of family that should encompass a lot, then we can look to help others who are not quite up to the tasks.
This is my problem with Mass Formation Psychosis. I object to the meaning of all three words.
Remember, delusion is not just being wrong, but a fixed belief that clearly does not comport with reality which one cannot be reasoned out of.
Mass and Formation are only adjectives describing the “Psychosis”. Psychosis involves actually sensing (seeing, hearing, feeling) things that are not there. It’s not stupidity.
No, not at all.
Yes! It’s more like Emperor’s New Clothes Disorder.
I agree with you that whatever is happening today is fundamentally spiritual in nature, but (for example) I view all human beings as spiritual psychopaths (some being highly functional, but psychopathic nonetheless). But in that context, though I tend to consider it to be true, it is almost by definition a play on words. But I do not equate the spiritual use of a term with the psychiatric manifestation of medical psychopathy.
The same applies to “psychosis”: the spiritual form is completely different from the physical manifestation of it.
Hard to find but not impossible.
Item One: Both Bill Gates& Anthony Fauci have been proponents of our society not returning to normal until there is zero COV virus particulates anywhere in the USA.
Item Two: Gates is a proponent of humanity pledging itself to reduce CO2 down to zero percent of earth’s atmosphere. He has no regard for how much cost to the economy or global societies would be required to achieve this pointless goal.
Neither concept is worth considering.
There are numerous viruses surrounding all of us. Our natural immunity protects us from most of these most of the time.
When I was growing up in the 50’s, adults around me, from teachers to relatives who worked in the health field, would chatter on about the Spanish flu. At the end of 3 years or so, the infection had lost its virulence, children born to women who had survived it were believed to pass on their immunity to their children.
It was well known that older people suffered fewer experiences of seasonal influenza, as they had already survived enough flu seasons that their bodies had developed immunity to similar viral contagions.
Now our “health experts” want all that knowledge erased. Since they are blind to how many risks people deal with are coming at us from the very vaccines which supposedly protect us, the view of existing bacterial and virus contagions held by the experts has them on perpetual high alert.
With regard to Item Two: CO2 is required for plants to undergo photosynthesis of this waste product of life, and then have it converted to O2, so life can breathe.
Recently Gate has made the rounds of various news outlets to explain his recent COVID epidemic mistakes. As far as I can determine, his statements are all lies. “We now realize children were set back developmentally and in terms of education by wearing masks and by remote learning. But at the time, we just didn’t have the necessary information to realize those choices of our society were not the correct ones.”
Oh gag me with a spoon, Gates. You knew, Fauci knew & the next Dem candidate for the Oval Office, Gavin Newsom knew, that masking kids up & keeping them from school/social interactions were extremely damaging programs. Which is why so many of the Elite had open private schooling going on. and s far as people needed to mask up, I have four words: “Sweden, Florida, & “French Laundry.”
But how many years of persistently avoiding rational thoughts and instead embracing immoral, dangerous and stupid behaviors would it take to transform a functionally sound human being into a mentally ill criminal?
Link not working, goes to startpage.com. I found a PDF somewhere but can’t find the site now. I’d upload it but I’m wary of copyright issues and don’t want to take even a slim chance of implicating R>.
Musil’s lecture worth the trouble to find, if only for the juxtaposition of the topic of stupidity with the overly sophisticated intellect of the speaker. It’s not an easy read; I wonder whether that’s due to being conceived in the German language.