Desmet

I just finished The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet. And what a brilliant book this is. It is about Covid-19 for sure, but it is also about so much more.

I just finished The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet. And what a brilliant book this is. It is about Covid-19 for sure, but it is also about so much more.

Desmet became famous (to some, notorious) for his explanations of the otherwise unexplainable way the world population succumbed to a narrative that turned a virus, certainly dangerous to a small proportion, but in general a mild disease, into an existential threat to all of humanity. In his new book he provides an in-depth analysis of the societal and psychological prerequisites at play; increasing isolation, a lack of meaning, unbound anxiety and aggression.

Desmet traces the prevalence of those conditions to the mechanistic worldview that started to take hold in the 17th century, where the world is seen as nothing but a complex machine, subjective experience is of no importance and man’s need for purpose is all but ignored.

He explains how totalitarianism, not so much the totalitarian state as the totalitarian view of the world, where human existence can be optimized through a perfect science-based society, is the logical consequence of the mechanistic view, and how its logical endpoint is a de facto elimination of humanity.

Desmet then moves on to 20th century physics and how, along with chaos theory and systems thinking, the view of the world changed from the mechanistic predictability to a realization of the importance of subjectivity and the unexplainable and illogical nature of the building blocks of matter.

In the final part, Desmet attempts to give us some indications of the way out of the current situation. As science has evolved, away from the mechanistic towards appreciation of the complex and chaotic nature of reality, we are for the most part still stuck at the mechanistic stage, just like a child who still hasn’t understood the ambiguity of language. Moving on to this stage in our development is therefore crucial; we must not go back to the old “normal” characterized by the mechanistic view; instead we need a shift of paradigm, for else we will slowly but surely move along towards a fully totalitarian society, forever losing our humanity.