- Jul 20, 2016
- 6,572
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How many times have we said - I don't understand how (insert name here) can believe that? How many times have we quietly asked - Am I going insane? So, it turns out there is a term for what we are observing. This explanation came via the Joe Rogan interview with Dr. Robert Malone (January 2022). Dr. Malone brought up Dr. Mattias and his theory in the last 45 minutes of the interview. Today, I've found several posts on Gettr about it, and in case you want the meme explanation, here it is.
Want to know how fast this info is taking off? I wanted a citation for Dr. Mattias Desmet, who came up the term and explanation. Last night I had to type in his name, and today I only wrote "mass f" on Duck,Duck, Go and got a long list. Hmm, seems like the info from that podcast is going viral.
Dr. Desmet is a Professor in Clinical Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium. He holds a PhD in Psychology and a Masters in Statistics. He became interested in how large groups of people somehow became part of atrocities, such as cult suicides. He outlines four main stages of manipulation.
We've known for some years that our society has become more fractured. Some say the election of Trump in 2016 set it off, while others say his presidency woke up enough of the population to keep us out of a war. Regardless of your leanings, there was much turmoil in the US, as well as other places in the world. Then came the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 when the virus exploded into our consciousness. Now the stage was set for the great manipulation.
Tracking my own experiences tells the tale. First there was extreme fear with images of people dropping dead in the street. People cleaned out the grocery stores (the great toilet paper shortage), limited numbers of people were allowed in stores at a time, we made do with any kind of mask we could find, and older people were kept at a far distance for their well-being. It was chaotic and fearful. Then something happened, and I began to look around and read everything I could find - hey, people are not dropping dead in the streets. Some adults were having quiet conversations about how to handle things, but others still were full bore crazy.
I did not find speaking out particularly effective - maybe a few people, but most were entrenched in the narrative.
The disruption of the narrative is something that has been discussed in terms of Devolution. Has the military been in control behind the scenes? Will it become obvious that we are under martial law? OR, is there an energetic element that has been building that will produce a complete change in perspective? It seems to me that we are on a collision course of people who hold these different beliefs. For me, I go with my dreams and visions. We are fine in the outcome, but not sure about the tipping point that affects everyone.
Want to know how fast this info is taking off? I wanted a citation for Dr. Mattias Desmet, who came up the term and explanation. Last night I had to type in his name, and today I only wrote "mass f" on Duck,Duck, Go and got a long list. Hmm, seems like the info from that podcast is going viral.
Dr. Desmet is a Professor in Clinical Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium. He holds a PhD in Psychology and a Masters in Statistics. He became interested in how large groups of people somehow became part of atrocities, such as cult suicides. He outlines four main stages of manipulation.
We've known for some years that our society has become more fractured. Some say the election of Trump in 2016 set it off, while others say his presidency woke up enough of the population to keep us out of a war. Regardless of your leanings, there was much turmoil in the US, as well as other places in the world. Then came the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 when the virus exploded into our consciousness. Now the stage was set for the great manipulation.
1) Social isolation (people with lack of social bonding)
2) Enough people who don't see sense in life.
3) Lots of free floating fear
4) Lots of free floating dissatisfaction
The conditions to set up mass formation psychosis include lack of social connectedness and sensemaking as well as large amounts of latent anxiety and passive aggression. When people are inundated with a narrative that presents a plausible "object of anxiety" and strategy for coping with it, then many individuals group together to battle the object with a collective single-mindedness This allows people to stop focusing on their own problems, avoiding personal mental anguish. Instead, they focus all their thought and energy on this new object.
As mass formation progresses, the group becomes increasingly bonded and connected. Their field of attention is narrowed and they become unable to consider alternative points of view. Leaders of the movement are revered, unable to do no wrong.
Left unabated, a society under the spell of mass formation will support a totalitarian governance structure capable of otherwise unthinkable atrocities in order to maintain compliance. A note: mass formation is different from group think. There are easy ways to fix group think by just bringing in dissenting voices and making sure you give them platforms. It isn’t so easy with mass formation. Even when the narrative falls apart, cracks in the strategy clearly aren’t solving the issue, the hypnotized crowd can’t break free of the narrative. This is what appears to be happening now with COVID-19. The solution for those in control of the narrative is to produce bigger and bigger lies to prop up the solution. Those being controlled by mass formation no longer are able to use reason to break free of the group narrative.
Tracking my own experiences tells the tale. First there was extreme fear with images of people dropping dead in the street. People cleaned out the grocery stores (the great toilet paper shortage), limited numbers of people were allowed in stores at a time, we made do with any kind of mask we could find, and older people were kept at a far distance for their well-being. It was chaotic and fearful. Then something happened, and I began to look around and read everything I could find - hey, people are not dropping dead in the streets. Some adults were having quiet conversations about how to handle things, but others still were full bore crazy.
A leader of a mass formation movement will use the platform to continue to pump the group with new information to focus on. In the case of COVID-19, I like to use the term “fear porn.” Leaders, through main stream media and government channels continuously feed the “beast” with more messaging that focus and further hypnotize their adherents.
Studies suggest that mass formation follows a general distribution:
- 30% are brainwashed, hypnotized, indoctrinated by the group narrative
- 40% in the middle are persuadable and may follow if no worthy alternative is perceived
- 30% fight against the narrative.
Those that rebel and fight against the narrative, become the enemy of the brainwashed and a primary target of aggression.
One of the the best ways to counter mass formation is for those against the narrative to continue to speak out against it, which serves to help break the hypnosis of some in the brainwashed group as well as persuade the persuadable middle to choose reason over mindlessness.
I did not find speaking out particularly effective - maybe a few people, but most were entrenched in the narrative.
Dr. Desmet suggests that for something as big as COVID-19, the only way to break the mass formation psychosis is to give the crowd something bigger to focus on. He believes that totalitarianism may be that bigger issue. Of course, after COVID-19, global totalitarianism may be the biggest issue of our time.
The disruption of the narrative is something that has been discussed in terms of Devolution. Has the military been in control behind the scenes? Will it become obvious that we are under martial law? OR, is there an energetic element that has been building that will produce a complete change in perspective? It seems to me that we are on a collision course of people who hold these different beliefs. For me, I go with my dreams and visions. We are fine in the outcome, but not sure about the tipping point that affects everyone.
