New Thinking on ‘Mass Formation Psychosis’

 In his book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, professor of clinical psychology Matthias Desmet talks about'mass formation psychosis,' a phenomenon historically given the moniker 'crowd formation.'

• Desmet claims that most of the world population coalesced into a crowd in the early part of 2020
• The narrative of that crowd came to dominate the public sphere, the political sphere, and the private sphere, making it classically 'totalitarian'

Crowds formed in early 2020

• Desmet's central thesis is nearly identical to what appears in our own writings: the populations of many countries became crowds in February-March 2020, obsessed with seeking protection from a new virus
• The elites responded to the call for sacrifice and safety by issuing propaganda and ordering health rituals that were eagerly embraced by their populations
• People abandoned their individuality and critical thinking

The population led the government, not the other way around

• There is no single culprit, no head of the snake, no enemy that planned the covid saga ages ago
• In crowds, both the population and its leaders get caught in the maelstrom of the adopted narrative, dragging them all into a wild ride that, unlike a ride in an amusement park, has no predictable pathway or ending
• Yes, the elites take on the roles of jailers and autocrats, but these are roles demanded of them by their own populations. Should they refuse to play as requested, they would quickly be cast aside and replaced by others who are prepared to do the business

Did too much 'enlightenment' prime populations for crowd formation?

• Desmet argues that populations had become psychologically primed for crowds in recent decades
• Rationalism, mechanistic thinking and atomization in modern society jointly having caused a high ambient level of loneliness and anxiety
• The rise in these phenomena created a large group of people eager to adopt a common cause, so as to fill the void in their lives
• However, the international pattern of crowd formation seen in 2020 does not fit the argument that modernity created the 'dry tinder' allegedly required for the covid crowds to form
• Why did some countries escape the madness, if not because they had escaped the corrosive elements of modernity?

Should we turn our back on 'enlightenment?'

• Desmet explicitly opposes the ideals of the Enlightenment, following the same line of thought as the Frankfurt School
• The process of reasoning about others creates an 'othering,' by virtue of making others an object of analysis and thus something that is placed slightly out of reach of more immediate empathy
• Humans have used tools to influence nature for millennia, changing their environment purposefully and constantly
• Mechanistic and rationalist thinking have also brought humanity huge benefits that we cannot imagine our species giving up
• In the long run, the name of the game is not moral appeals but institutional evolution
• Learning from our current mistakes will similarly have its long-term effect via change to our institutions

Are crowds really mad?

• Crowds may lead to destruction, but they are merely more intense, faster to act, and more aggressive towards non-believers than'regular' groups.
• They are mad from the point of view of those not going along with them, but do they emerge or survive due to a dysfunctionality - a psychosis?

Whither the stampede?

• The stampede is not over yet, even though in several places the covid madness is coming to a clear end. Dark times nonetheless lie ahead, for years at least.
• In many Western countries and regions, the political, administrative, and corporate elites have now become used to totalitarian control
• They use propaganda to overwhelm independent thinking in the population and keep the crowd alive

What to do?

• Truth Speak
• Team Sanity should turn its mental energies to designing different or amended institutions for the whole of society to adopt when the madness has come crashing down
• We need to act on the assumption that we will eventually win and that we are not that small or downtrodden anymore

https://brownstone.org/articles/new-thinking-on-mass-formation-psychosis/