Mass formation mania
Seems to be a sudden mania about mass formation psychosis
Seems of late everyone is jumping on the “mass formation psychosis” bandwagon and touting it as some sort of brand new revelation about human nature and the current situation. Since Malone was on the Joe Rogan show, it’s now skyrocketed into the stratosphere!
The truth is we’ve been talking about and researching this phenomenon for a long time - intensely since WWII. It seems Mattias Desmet was in the right place at the right time and caught the social media viral wave when it comes to this topic - a quick look at his profile on research gate does not suggest he’s been the academic expert in this area of mass psychosis, psych-ops, and propaganda - nevertheless he’s got some helpful things to say about human nature. Would be nice, however, to hear from a broad range of experts on this topic - but social media has a way of propelling just a few to the foreground and the rest into obscurity.
As useful as this current description of mass formation psychosis is (not sure exactly where the term came from or if it’s something coined by Desmet), we have to be careful not to overly simplify a matter that is a highly complex and non-linear system. There are many factors in play1, not the least of which is the power structure, which is the horse that comes before the cart…
Now I agree with what CJ Hopkins says about power structure here, but I don’t think #MassFormationPsychosis (mass hysteria, mass delusional psychosis, whatever you want to call it) is a red herring2 (unless you think that mass formation psychosis is the causal factor of this totalitarianism and not the outcome of power structure and it’s propaganda - then, indeed, you are chasing a red herring). I think we should be learning as much as possible about the “madness of the crowd” as we can, because awareness of our own psychological tendencies is part of the answer. We probably could end totalitarianism by curing the masses of their delusions, but I’m guessing what Hopkins is saying is that we have to decouple the horse from the cart first - dismantle the power structure that is holding the people under a hypnotic trance. And that can begin, has begun, with a small portion of society engaging in a counter-subversion, if you like, against the façade of lies erected by the technocrats. We are seeing it in part I believe - cracks in the wall. Many are now seeing that Emperor Safety has no clothes.
A delusional state is not a natural healthy state and there seems to be a propensity for us to come back to a natural state (the pendulum swings only so far before its return). Nor is the delusional state functional in the broad sense - it may be functional in a limited way to satisfy an anxiety but broadly dysfunctional (think of how dysfunctional schizophrenia can be). Dysfunction doesn’t go the distance - it may wreak havoc for a time but ultimately isn’t sustainable. Once the hypnotist has ceased his parlour tricks most will come back to reality, back to a functional state of being.
So let’s continue to learn more, and counter, mass delusional phenomenon (it’s certainly my main area of interest) but not forget that it is the deliberate construction of a political/social environment that places the masses into such a hypnotic state in the first place. Pull the curtain to reveal the Wizard of Oz and the game is over.
Over generations in a society that is increasingly becoming more narcissistic and left-brained (as I’ve been writing about) in both the leadership and the masses - both feeding into one another and creating a deadly stall mid-air, close to mountains!
You make great points. I'd been wondering about Desmet for months when I saw his research CV and couldn't find anything close to this topic in his background. He hasn't published the word 'mass formation' anywhere yet he talks about it as "my research into". The 1930s Germany comparison falls short to what we're living today. Nobody mentions the geopolitical and economic origins at Versailles, the poverty, economic blockade, the bitterness, resentment, beer hall, false flags, so much happened that set the stage for that mass psychosis, analog methods of propaganda for one made it easy to control the message and unite the masses. The unifier of people/race/nation doesn't exist now either on the global terms they're operating from. We can do better Winston. We must do better. über alles!
Read this article today. Is it possible we were always, and always have been pathetically easy to manipulate?
“The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief.”
~ Aristotle
What Aristotle understood about tyrants and the weakness and pathetic nature of man over 2,400 years ago, still holds true today. What this means is that with all that time passed, all that history, all the benefit of the great thinker’s minds over thousands of years, modern ‘education,’ modern technology, and every opportunity for a human awakening, the common man has not advanced intellectually, nor has he succeeded concerning any quest to affirm his own freedom. Reality suggests, in fact, that humanity has not actually progressed at all, but has descended deeper into a state of chaotic ignorance.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/01/gary-d-barnett/humanity-as-it-exists-today-is-facing-extinction-an-inevitable-threat/
It would naive to believe that the Oligarchic rulers of the world, with hundreds of trillions of dollars at their disposal, do not have psychologists on staff. Thought control is their stock and trade. The foundation of all wealth is the labors of other people, the control of other people. Social media is a laboratory for the perfection of control techniques. Does this excuse those who were manipulated? Does it even mater? It is what it is, an escalation of the Oligarchic war on humanity.
I’m beginning to wonder if Trump wasn’t actually part of the whole plan, he played the role of troll perfectly. I think Americans and others who were most deeply affected by the Trump trolling efforts, or derangement syndrome, were the most vulnerable to the mass formation.
What really broke the spell for me was empathy I had for the forgotten and discarded working people who had turned to Trump, and the demonization of these people with no regard for their plight by the American left. Credit to Chris Hedges.
Not to get too cosmic, but I believe the morphic fields of our collective unconscious, where fundamental moralities and archetypes will always reside, may be the only hope. I think the Oligarchs understand this too and are taking active measures to suppress.