Totalitarian Hypnosis - Quareness Series 150th "Lecture".
Is there something in our materialistic mechanistic view of man in the world that leads on to destruction both of our social bonds/structures and of our feeling that life makes sense? Does our lack of understanding why we might increasingly feel anxious and depressed and socially isolated leave us susceptible to leaders who try to lure us into mass formation? Are specific conditions needed before totalitarian thinking emerges in society? These questions seem particularly pertinent today given our modern history (and our current situation) showing that the creation of a mass formation/phenomenon exerting a huge impact on individual intelligence and cognitive functioning on the scale we now see ain't likely without mass media endorsement.
The emergence of a large scale mass phenomenon is facilitated where there is (i) a lot of socially isolated people who experience a lack of social bonds, (ii) a lot of people who experience a lack of sense-making in life, (iii) a lot of free-floating anxiety, and (iv) a lot of free-floating psychological discontent. In effect such arises where there's much "unanchored" meaning, anxiety and discontent in a lot of people's minds without them being able to connect it to something tangible. It seems these four conditions were widely in situ shortly before our current corona crisis era with many folk experiencing their jobs as senseless and the massive use of psychopharmaceutical drugs masking so much discontent. What most people tend to want in such conditions is a tangible explanation for their distress and when the media in providing a narrative indicating an object of anxiety describes a strategy to deal with this object, they are primed to willingly follow the strategy no matter the cost. This is what happens in the beginning of mass formation.
In a collective battle with this object of anxiety, a new kind of social bond and sense-making emerges. Here we see the sudden switch of a negative state (= lack of social connection) to the massive social solidarity experienced in a crowd...leading to a kind of mental intoxication and mass hypnosis. It then doesn't matter whether the narrative is correct or not. What matters is that it leads to this intoxication...the central mechanism of mass formation. For most of the people seduced by the narrative all that matters now is that they don't want to go back to that painful state of free-floating anxiety.
Any mass formation can reasonably be regarded as a symptomatic solution for a real psychological problem and thereby the current corona crisis can perhaps be seen more as a social psychological than biological problem. The mental intoxication involved in the phenomenon of totalitarianism inevitably leads to a narrowing of the field of attention inducing people to see only what's indicated by the official narrative. For example people can easily see the victims of the corona virus but don't seem able to readily perceive the collateral damage for the lockdown victims or to really feel empathy for them. This is more an effect of the psychological phenomenon involved here rather than any inherent egotism. Indeed mass formation can focus attention so much on one point that people's psychological, physical and material wellbeing can be taken away without their noticing. And this is very much akin to the power of distraction displayed in hypnosis.
Typically totalitarian states become radically intolerant of dissonant voices. When someone questions the official story, the people get angry at being confronted with their initial anxiety and psychological discontent and then direct their aggression at the doubters. At the same time they grow more radically tolerant of those who pronounce the mainstream narrative whom they see as "fighting for them". This is also part of the mechanism of mass formation.
With both mass formation and totalitarianism the field of attention of the leaders is usually even narrower than that of the masses as they tend to really believe in the ideology under which they're trying to organise society. They are convinced that such will bring people into a kind of artificial paradise...a conviction common to all kinds of totalitarianism...thereby tending toward a fanaticism that almost everything can be sacrificed to make their ideological fiction real. And this is usually the type of mindset of those who lead in these matters.
As a counter balance to any leaning toward such mass formation, it would seem important for people with different opinions or on different sides to respectfully communicate with each other. Most people believing in a mainstream narrative and even supportive of those presenting as experts, may not be aware of bad intentions in themselves. But in discussing with those of other views and really trying to exchange ideas, we tend to open our minds...at least a little bit.
Whenever mass formation happens on a very large scale in a society, it’s very difficult to free up the mindset of the masses. History shows that they usually only wake up after a lot of destruction. However, the depth of the mass hypnosis can be lessened if open-minded discussion is maintained. In truth ongoing inter-communication avenues are needed both for the dissenters and for those caught up in a process of mass formation as history here again shows that when opposition is extinguished, a totalitarian state starts to show its most aggressive face and ultimately starts to destroy its own children. In the final analysis totalitarianism and mass formation are intrinsically self destructive...unlike in classical dictatorship where once the opposition is overwhelmed, the dictators start to get milder because they realise they need the population to be on their side. But because the totalitarian state is really based on a kind of mass hypnosis, it's unaware of reality and in that respect reacts in a radically different way.
Of course what can make totalitarian states quite alluring (at least in the short term) is that they create very orderly societies through strict imposing of rules. However, the rules tend to frequently change and sometimes be overridden by a larger requirement e.g. a law that supercedes where there is a big risk of some newly designated danger (say a pandemic) and all kinds of other rules apply, or indeed a law that erases all the other laws and says that from now on we must live by rules that are changed no matter how the situation evolves.
Usually it's only about 30% who are really ensconced in the hypnosis of a mass phenomenon and convinced of the mainstream narrative, with an additional 40% or so who don't wish to be openly dissident (maybe with some fearing of the consequences). And then there is the remaining 30% odd public dissenters in respect of whom we might well wonder why they are apparently immune to the group pressure. The only thing we can say for sure here is that the "out group" is usually a highly diverse one and this suggests that the answer is likely sited in individual psychology. Some people try to establish psychological stability by going along with the group whilst others do it more by staying close to what they think is reasonable. And both of these approaches give a specific kind of mental stability and psychological strength.
Perhaps a tendency toward independent thinking is characteristic of those who are more or less immune to mass formation? Maybe there's also a desire to help others understand a fuller picture but such could easily apply also on the "other side of the fence" e.g. it's usually the case that those more supportive of mass formation are convinced they're doing everything to help others out of a sense of good citizenship and collective community loyalty.
Many people who have been betrayed in the past may still want to trust but will have an ongoing tendency to find out whether their trust is justified. Ongoing justified trust seems to rest on a basis of transparency in one's relationship with others and within the possibility of each retaining control. We need societies in which people can have a trust which is easily justified and which welcomes questioning (even from those who are not very agreeable). Sadly with those mired in mass formation, we see a tendency to label questioners as not only wrong but having some sort of psychopathology for disagreeing with the mainstream...not only an unprofessional retort but a potentially dangerous one to boot (as history again shows). It's an odd thing that people of seemingly above average intelligence can appear to be more susceptible to engaging in this type of manipulation...unlike the more "ordinary" folk with whom a tolerant "exchange of views" conversation and agreement to disagree consensus is usually more possible. Maybe those without an academic background are generally more open to discussion and being convinced and perhaps the higher the degree of formal education, the more susceptible to mass formation? You could view such education as a process in which either you learn to think for yourself or you learn to think like everybody else i.e. to obey.
Like every type of hypnosis, mass formation relies upon the attribution of authority. The more authority people attribute to someone, the more susceptible they are to being hypnotised by this person. And a gentle and polite refined humour could be very efficacious as a kind of antidote against any hypnotic mass formation. However, the underlying problem of why large numbers of people become anxious and depressed experiencing a lack of sense and feeling socially isolated would still need resolution in order to counter the susceptibility to follow leaders who try to lure us into mass formation.
Viewing a human being as just a little mechanistic part of the larger machine of the universe, we are more likely than not to conclude that life is meaningless and that we don't really have to invest energy in social relations or to follow real ethical principles. And this could be the high road to destruction of our psychological energy and connectedness ending with a senseless free-floating anxiety born of feeling like a burden for the large machine. On the other hand when we view each of us individually as "the large machine" we can appreciate why we hold human dignity as a fundamental principle...all different and all equal. This is an image of ourselves we need to foster/recover as opposed to that of being a small wheel in a big machine which tends to get us downbeat.
Part of not going along with the mainstream narrative can perhaps be attributed to objecting against this mechanistic view of life. Such an outlook sits well with the convictions of many of our 20th century seminal scientists (e.g. Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, etc.) who concluded that we cannot completely rationally understand the reality and definitely not in mechanistic terms. In a way we are each our own narrative and we can but exchange narratives.
One way or another it appears the masses and totalitarian systems are ultimately only capable of destruction, never of construction. No matter what totalitarian leaders of the past have done, it has always ended in failure and destruction. There seems to be something (psychological?) in these systems that make such endings inevitable. And when any mainstream ideology or societal intervention forms part of a mass phenomenon, it's perhaps predictable that the final outcome will be dramatic failure...because of the self-destructiveness of the totalitarianism. It's also just as likely of course that any society in which an immense division/rift is created is not a sustainable one...something has to give.
Historically the masses have always had a preference for harsh and strict leaders who are cruel to their own people. This is an uncomfortable truth in that the harsher those experts or people who come to the fore behave, the more short term success they'll likely have. Nevertheless they always run the risk of being ridiculous and being laughed at. And it's this humourous aspect that can readily open the human space for a little bit of freedom to look back and see the whole picture ...and that we are not fixed tight in the hypnosis.
Keep smiling mes amis.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
September, 2021.