Loss of Social Bonds Leads to Mass Formation, Rise of Totalitarian State

When many people feel disconnected from their social environment they become prone to fanatical belief in an unreasonable narrative, creating favorable conditions for the emergence of a totalitarian state

• Mattias Desmet, a professor of clinical psychology
• told EpochTV's "American Thought Leaders" program on June 16.

Totalitarian State and Classical Dictatorship

• A totalitarian state is always based on a segment of the society-usually 20 to 30% of the population-which becomes fanatically convinced of a certain narrative and/or ideology.
• In a classical dictatorship, a small elite group-a dictatorial regime-that incites fear in the population through its aggressive potential to the point that the populace accepts a social contract unilaterally imposed by the regime.

Mass Formation Prerequisites

• The root cause of mass formation is that many people in society have to feel disconnected from their natural and social environment
• Once people are in this disconnected state, they will typically start to experience purposelessness of or lack of meaning-making in life
• Free-floating anxiety, frustration, and aggression
• This is when people develop so-called floating anxiety, and do not know what they feel anxious, frustrated, and aggressive about

How Mass Formation Evolves

• If under these conditions, a narrative is distributed through the mass media indicating an object of anxiety and providing a strategy to deal with this object, then there might be a huge willingness to participate in the strategy and direct the aggression and frustration at that object
• Mass formation is exactly the same as hypnosis
• Hypnosis occurs when someone can withdraw their attention from reality and focus all their attention and psychological energy on one small aspect of reality

Mass Formation During COVID-19 Pandemic

• The number of people who felt lonely or disconnected from their natural and social environment was huge and it had never been so high before
• Before the pandemic, over 60 percent of people worldwide considered their job as not having any meaning at all and only 15 percent reported that their job was meaningful
• This increased negative psychological parameters such as stress and depression, anxiety, burnouts, and so on, have all started to increase exponentially

Solution to Mass Formation

• The solution to a totalitarian state that emerged through mass formation is not through destroying the elite, as some may think
• We should focus on trying to live up to the principles of humanity, trying to rediscover them, and trying to speak out in a world that is increasingly becoming inhumane
• All these conditions that create social isolation, lack of meaning in life, free-floating anxiety, frustration, and aggression should be avoided

 

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