Mattias Desmet Quotes Page 3

“Solomon Asch was a psychologist who did some experiments shortly after the second World War, in which he showed two small groups of about eight people one line which was about 30 CM long, and then three other lines. The first of these three lines was about 10 CM long. The second was 60 CM long, and then the third one was about 30 CM long.

So it was clear in one glance of an eye that the third line was the line that was equal, that had the same length as the first one. And that was what Solomon Asch asked to these small groups of eight participants. He asked, what do you think, which lines have the same length?

And the first seven of the participants actually were collaborators of Solomon Asch. And they were all instructed to give the wrong answer. They were all instructed to say that line one and line two were equally long, which were absolutely not equally long. And upon hearing that the first seven participants all gave the wrong answer, of which a blind man could see that this was wrong, the 8th participant – in 75% of the cases – gave the same wrong answer. So it was really amazing to see.”

“Stalin switched it to the Kulaks, the farmers, actually. And then to the goldsmiths, then to the Jews, one group after the other. Until finally, he also killed 50% of his Communist Party members, who usually didn’t do anything wrong, who were not disloyal to him, not at all. But he killed them.

And the strangest thing about this was that these party members actually in a very strange way, which was also very nicely described by George Orwell in Animal Farm, for instance, but also by Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago and Hannah Arendt also describes it. These party members who were killed, who were condemned, all admitted that they had been disloyal, that they had been traitors and so on, which was very strange. Like people, observers from abroad, international observers were baffled. And they said, what is happening here? We can’t believe our eyes. These people didn’t do anything wrong. They did not go against the rules of Stalin. And then now they admit that they have done things wrong and that they deserve to die, which was extremely strange.

And that’s exactly what happens in a process of mass formation. Someone is grasped so much by a narrative that he accepts the most absurd consequences of the narrative, even if it costs him or her their own life. So that’s one of the strangest things I’ve heard.”

“Stalin was convinced that his historical materialistic ideal society would be realized and that in order to do that, it was justified to manipulate the population to move them in the direction he wanted.

Exactly the same was the case for Hitler, who felt that his race theory would turn society into a kind of a paradise. And exactly for that reason, it was justified to provoke some collateral damage.

And I think it’s the same now of course, there are some powerful institutions who have this ideal image of society and who want to use the crisis to move the society in the direction they think is optimal, and they use all their power that is at their means to make people go in the direction they want. That’s true.

But I think for 95%, what is happening is not the process of large scale manipulation, but for 95%, we are in a process of large scale unconscious mass formation in which almost everybody is grasped. We shouldn’t be naive, there have always been intentional manipulations. There are always institutions who want to benefit from all kinds of circumstances. All institutions have their own idea about how the future society should look like, and they always will use their power to move in that direction. So that’s definitely happening. But that doesn’t take away. I think that for 95%, it’s a phenomenon of mass formation that happens.”

“That’s also something typical for mass formation, all the free floating frustration and aggression that existed before the mass formation, is projected and channeled onto the people who are not into the process of mass formation. So that’s one major risk. And then also, of course, if the masses would succeed in silencing these people, then the masses will start to commit atrocities, also towards the members of the masses themselves.”

“The Covid measures, the lockdowns, the social distancing, the mask wearing, and so on actually have the function, unconsciously, of a ritual. A ritual – a kind of behavior – which only function is to create a social bond.

And the less practically meaningful such a behavior is, the better it serves its function as a ritual. The more absurd it is, the better it serves a function as a ritual. And the more sacrifices it demands, the better it functions as a ritual, because in this way, the individual that sacrifices something shows that the collective, the group, the cohesion among the group members, is more important than what is important to the individual.

So that’s exactly how rituals function. Rituals have to be pragmatically meaningless, useless. And they have to demand sacrifices of the individual. And that’s exactly what the Corona measures do. They are absurd without practical relevance, most of them. And they also imply huge losses for the individuals, which makes them very useful, very suitable as rituals for the new cohesion, the new collective, the new solidarity.”

“The large scale mass formations that we have seen, from the 20th century on, could never exist without mass media. So that’s clear, you need mass media who distribute the same narrative time and time again to make this large scale and long term mass formation happen. And usually I think it’s a mixture. And it’s for 90% an unconscious process. But there is also about 10% – could be more, could be less – of intentional manipulation of the masses. And usually the people who do it are convinced that they will bring paradise to society.”

“The larger the population, the worse the processes of mass formation are because mass formation always needs new victims.”

“The masses always long for a severe and cruel leader, Gustave Le Bon said, which is something very strange in the process of mass formation.”

“The most important thing we can do in this situation is to continue to speak out. I repeat this time and time again, mass formation is a kind of hypnosis. It’s an example of hypnosis, and hypnosis works through the voice in one way or another. People are grasped in the resonance of a voice.

That’s what totalitarian leaders know. They start each day with 30 minutes of propaganda, for instance, just to keep people into the narrative and to make sure that they continue to resonate with the voice of the leader, with the narrative that led up to the mass formation. And the opposite is also true. Like, if there are dissonant voices that continue to speak out, then the hypnosis will become less deep.

Gustave Le Bon, in the 19th century, said usually dissonant voices will not have the power to wake up the masses, but they will make the hypnosis less deep, and they will prevent that the masses start to commit atrocities. So that’s what we all have to realize. We all have to realize, in my opinion, that it is not an option to stop speaking. We should continue to speak out. That’s the most important thing we can do.”

“The predictions of Imperial College were completely off. And the strangest thing was for me that at that moment, the Corona measures, the people in charge, always claimed that they relied on mathematical modeling and science, actually. But when it was proven beyond doubt that the initial models were completely wrong, the measures continued. The Corona measures continued as if nothing was wrong, as if the models were right. So for me, it was a strong sign that there were things going on at a psychological level that were really powerful.”

“The process totalitarian states go through is really different from the process of classical dictatorships. For instance, if in a classical dictatorship, the opposition stops to speak out. Like if the opposition, the dissonant voices, the dissident voices are silenced, then usually the dictator will become milder. He will become less aggressive because he realizes that he has to try to make the population sympathetic towards him to make them feel that he will be a good leader and stuff. So it’s important for him that at that moment he becomes milder and less aggressive because he is in power. He doesn’t need to be aggressive anymore.

But in totalitarianism, a totalitarian state, exactly the opposite happens. When the opposition is silent, when the opposition stops to speak out. At that moment, exactly, the totalitarian state starts to commit its most cruel atrocities. And that's what happened in 1930 in the Soviet Union, when Stalin started his 'large scale purification', which led to about 80 million people dying in less than ten years, according to Selsinchin. And then in Nazi Germany, the same happened around 1935. The opposition was silenced and then the real problem started in the totalitarian state.

So totalitarianism is something really different from classical dictatorships. And it’s the process of mass formation that is important.”

“The reason why people buy into the narrative is because it leads to this new social bond, this new solidarity. People are social beings and being socially isolated is really painful. And through the process of mass formation they switch from the very negative state of social isolation to the opposite state of maximal connectedness that exists in a crowd in a mass. And that in itself leads up to a kind of mental intoxication which is the real reason why people stick to the narrative, why people are willing to go along with the narrative, even as we said, if it is utterly wrong and even more important, even if they lose everything that is important to them personally.”

“The risk is that the people who don’t want to buy into the narrative become a scapegoat. The anti-vaccines, for instance, people who don’t want to take the vaccine, might become public enemy number one, and they might become the object of – this fourth condition that we mentioned at the beginning – all this free floating frustration and aggression.”

“The third condition in order for mass formation to emerge is that there should be a lot of – what psychologists call – free floating anxiety and free floating psychological discontent. If you’re anxious of a lion, you know what you’re anxious for. So the anxiety is connected to the mental representation or the mental image of a lion. But if people feel socially isolated and if they feel that their life has no meaning, then they are confronted with a kind of anxiety that is free floating. That means that it is not connected to a mental representation and with a lot of psychological discontent that is not connected with a mental representation.”

“There is a strong tendency to dehumanize on both sides, and that’s exactly what we should avoid. We should try to identify with being someone who tries to speak as sincere as possible and who gives everybody the right to speak out his own opinion. That’s being human.

What makes us human is that we have the right to speak in our own way and the way we prefer. If people could unify, if people could form a group because they all identify with this position, that would be the solution to the problem we are facing.”

“Usually people who are under hypnosis stick to the same ethical rules and ethical level as they do when they are not hypnotized. Being hypnotized is not an excuse to transgress ethical boundaries.”

“Usually when a process of mass formation emerges in a society and a population, only 30% of the people is really hypnotized. So that’s something very important, because it seems there are much more. But it’s not the case. There is only 30% of the people who are really hypnotized.

Then there is an additional 40% of the people who goes along with this first group because they never go against the current, and they feel that they don’t want to go against the current, that is too difficult and too dangerous to go against the crowd.

And then there is an additional 20% or 30% or something who is not hypnotized and who wants to speak out, who wants to do something. But it can be surprising, like even in totalitarian States such as Germany or the Soviet Union, uUsually not more than about 30% of the people is really totalitarian. And that’s something that is observed time and time again.”

“Usually, people commit suicide because they feel internally divided, because they feel that they lack unity, they lack coherence. And when there is a strong external danger, people usually will feel very coherent and they will not commit suicide. That’s something very striking.”

“We come from a very individualistic age in which people try to find meaning in their own lives in their own way, but actually in a strange way. Now we see how the opposite emerges. It is as if people want to lose themselves in the masses, in the crowd and as if they are looking for a leader who tells them what to do.

And that’s one of the most specific aspects of mass formation, that it makes people long for a harsh leader. Gustave Le Bon describes this already. And if the leaders of the masses understand this, they understand that they can be as absurd as they want, that they can be as harsh as they want, that they can impose the most absurd limitations to individuals' lives. It will only make mass formation stronger, and it will only make the leaders more popular.”

“What made that the attention of people was so narrowly focused on the coronavirus?”

“You can consider mass formation as a kind of a psychological symptom of a society. And as all symptoms do, they always create more of the conditions that made them emerge.

At the individual level, you see the same. If someone drinks too much alcohol, something in his system will change, which makes him long for more alcohol. And that’s exactly the same with all symptoms. Symptoms always recreate and reinforce the things they need to exist. And I think that mass formation is the same.”

“You see these three groups time and time again in each process of mass formation. A group that is really hypnotized and who becomes really totalitarian, then a second group who only just goes along with the first group and then a third group who does not want to buy into the story and who wants to speak out.

So in this situation, if the people who want to speak out – the dissident voices – in one way or another could unify and form one group, then it’s very probable the second group of about 40% of the people might switch direction and join them. And that would mean that the mass formation is over, so that’s one of the solutions to the problem.

But if all the people who want to speak out and who want to go against the current, who are not hypnotized and who want to do something against the crowd or against the mainstream narrative, if they would unify and become one group, they would be powerful enough to change the direction of the middle group, which would mean that the majority of the people would go in a different direction than the people who are really hypnotized.”

“If you look at the Covid-crisis and you listen to the mainstream narrative you will hear that everything is about solidarity. You have to participate. You have to accept the vaccine. You have to respect social distancing. Because if you don't, you lack citizenship.”

“The real reason why people buy into the story even if it is utterly absurd, is not because they believe in the narrative. It is because the narrative leads to the new social bond.”