Mass delusion
Has our technology disconnected us so much from Nature that we are destroyers of All?
Disaster’s original meaning is “to be disconnected from the stars”
A Parable of our Current World: A Summary of the Fairy Tale The Emperor has no Clothes
The Swindlers Arrive: Two con artists, posing as weavers, arrive in the emperor’s city, promising to make the most magnificent clothes from a special cloth that’s invisible to anyone unfit for their position or too stupid.
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The Emperor’s Test: The emperor, wanting to see who is worthy, sends his wise minister and then other officials to check on the progress. They see nothing but praise the cloth to appear competent, fearing they’d look foolish if they admitted it.
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The Grand Procession: The emperor himself inspects the looms and, seeing nothing, pretends to admire the “fabric.” He orders a suit for a grand parade, and the swindlers pretend to dress him in invisible garments.
The Child’s Truth: During the parade, the emperor struts naked. The townsfolk, also fearing ridicule, praise the “clothes” until a child shouts, “But the emperor has no clothes!”.
The Aftermath: The crowd repeats the child’s words, and the emperor realizes he’s been duped but continues the procession with as much dignity as possible.
What ideology is our Emperor? Who are the Swindlers today? In what way is our Ideology naked? Who is brave enough to shout out: “But unlimited economic growth is killing us & our world!” This fairy tale has me wondering today’s question:
If humans are so smart why are we so stupid? Why are we on the verge of destroying ourselves? Why is it that in spite of all our knowledge and wisdom we are entering a time of ecological collapse? Could it be that we suffering from a mass delusion?
Mass delusion, also known as mass formation or group psychosis, is when a group of people share a fixed false belief. The shared belief is irrational, and those who believe it are resistant, even hostile, to evidence that exposes the belief as untrue. Those who share a mass delusion often take irrational actions that are damaging to both themselves and others. Does this sound like the world we live in? It certainly helps explain why scientists and writers trying to help us change direction from our current suicidal trajectory have had little to no impact. It certainly explains why those who are the most sensative and aware of our insanity are the most emotionally traumatized: they are perceived as “extremists” or even mentally unstable because they are the only sane ones in the mental asylum we call our current “modern” civilization.
In 1949 Joost Abraham Maurits Meerloo, a Dutch Doctor of Medicine and psychoanalyst, published his book Delusion and Mass-delusion in which he tried to explain why Totalitarian regimes were so successful in brainwashing their populations and more importantly what could be done to prevent it from happening again. His conclusion: “hardly anyone can resist,” appeals to mechanisms undergirding human thought that these regimes employed and that it in the future brainwashing could easily become even more powerful and more effective… unless we keep our guards up.
Well, it looks like we have dropped our guard. We may not be living in 1984, but we are certainly living in a world like portrayed in Brave New World. This thesis is put forward by Yuval Noah Harari:, the historian who wrote Sapiens [I strongly recommend it!] and asked in a recent podcast: Why do advanced societies fall for mass delusion ? https://youtu.be/I4l1fr-t3ZE?si=9gHTdd0E9edOGlLf
More support for this hypothesis came in 2022 from Mattias Desmet, a Belgian clinical psychologist, wrote The Psychology of Totalitarianism. He claims that the world is in the grips of mass formation—a dangerous, collective type of hypnosis—as we bear witness to loneliness, free-floating anxiety, and fear giving way to censorship, loss of privacy, and surrendered freedoms. It is all spurred by a singular, focused crisis narrative that forbids dissident views and relies on destructive group think. However, he is slightly more optimistic than Meerlo in that he believes there are actions we can take to escape our society’s dangerous delusions. He sees the steps that lead to mass delusion as:
1. An overall sense of loneliness and lack of social connections and bonds
2. A lack of meaning—unsatisfying “bullsh*t jobs” that don’t offer purpose
3. Free-floating anxiety and discontent that arise from loneliness and lack of meaning which manifestation as frustration and aggression from anxiety
4. Emergence of a consistent narrative from government officials, mass media, etc., that exploits and channels frustration and anxiety
Just to bang the last nail into the coffin, here is a quote from our very own Bill Rees: “As for most ordinary citizens, they may be confused and there are pockets of resistance but, on the whole, people seem content to go along for the ride.” Gustave Le Bon described this situation well way back 1895:
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce[s] them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
So what can you do to avoid succumbing to our current mass delusion that life can continue as it is without end and without gut wrenching change? If we take the above 4 steps as our guide it’s clear:
1. strengthen your social connections
2. find meaning and purpose in your life, the more done with others the better
3. when you get anxious and negative find actions you can DO so we can see the cup 1/2 full instead of 1/2 empty and thus not become frustrated
4. buck the consistent narrative any government [especially those how have been in power a lot] or any billionaire – find alternative explanations that emphasize new ways of perceiving and new solutions to old problems, which may include acceptance that the old must pass away for the new to be born.
Now doing this is harder than we think – ESPECIALLY for many “well educated folks – a psychological fact that is a bitter pill for some of us to follow. According to recent research [1] we educated elitist types can suffer from:
Prestige Paradox
Which brings us to a question: Who is most susceptible to manipulation via peripheral persuasion? It might seem intuitive to believe that people with less education are more manipulable. But research suggests this may not be true. High-status people are more preoccupied with how others view them. The psychology professor Keith Stanovich, discussing his research on “myside bias,” has written, “if you are a person of high intelligence… you will be less likely than the average person to realize you have derived your beliefs from the social groups you belong to and because they fit with your temperament and your innate psychological propensities.” Students and graduates of top universities are more prone to my side bias. They are more likely to, “evaluate evidence, generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own prior beliefs, opinions, and attitudes.” [1]
So dear friends, let’s be careful not to suffer from mass delusion and by this I will also include the delusion that we KNOW what the future will bring. Being certain that things will remain as they are is one delusion most of us have avoided but there the alternate mistake of being certain that everything is going to collapse in a heap of rubble and that this is a “bad” thing is another error to avoid. Yes, the world will change, but humanity has almost gone extinct in the past [70,000 B.C., a volcano called Toba, on Sumatra, in Indonesia exploded and the human population decreased to only a few thousand]. The fact is, for all species life is up followed by down and then recovery or extinction. We seem to be on the chopping block to undergo that test – what we do NOW and in the near future will decide what the future will be. It is NOT set in stone. Nothing is certain – except what you do and think and feel today certainly matters.
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