"According to him, the mass hypnosis that took hold in 2020 was merely the climax of a development that has been ongoing for a long time, rooted in the Western tradition of thought that began with the Enlightenment."
Actually, the scamdemic was rooted in a massive propaganda campaign, the kind used to gain consent for needless wars. All mainstream media news outlets and most Independent social media platforms went along with this "great deception" terrifying billions into capitulating, first with the lockdowns and then with forfeiting bodily autonomy allowing their bloodstream to be contaminated with an experimental mRNA toxin.
If propaganda didn't work, the ghouls wouldn't spend billions on marketing nefarious products and insidious ideologies.
I agree. There's nothing at all wrong with Enlightenment thought, which thought is simply the investigation into causes, or "the logic of" how things work. It was that sort of thinking that gave rise to the notion of a self-governing people not beholden to overbearing state power in the founding of America: the logic of good government.
Desmet describes mass formation during Covid very well, and because of this people believe that he must also be describing the cause of mass formation accurately. But his theory is false: Covid hysteria was never caused by our own propensity for mechanistic thinking but by a deliberately planned conspiracy to frighten the hell out of people in order to induce mass formation, and hopefully install a police state great reset. So yes, a conspiracy, but "conspiracy" is what Desmet vigorously denies in chapter eight of his book. People either haven't read his book or else don't understand that in many ways chapter eight is the core of his book.
The mass formation was induced, deliberately. Desmet's theory is that it arose more-or-less spontaneously, due to our own propensity for mechanistic thinking. Is that really true? And are we really the mechanistic thinkers that Desmet says we are, we who have loves and children and friends and connections with people and care for things, and who might write computer programs but then go home and garden or play the piano?
Totalitarianism arises from massive censorship and propaganda. It does not arise from we, the people. Desmet says it does. This is why he's such a controversial figure.
Desmet is actually not the only one who claims totalitarianism or mass hypnosis arises from the people. Le Bon showed this in the 19th century and Arendt has discussed it also in relation with Nazism. The mechanistic worldview does not have to do with writing computer programs, it is the view that the world can be explained in mechanistic terms. We have an innate fear of invisible threats like diseases. This is a natural thing and exaggerated reaction to the threat of disease is nothing new. This is why the standard reaction of the authorities used to be trying to calm people. But that was not the case now. Why? One suggestion is that the authorities believed covid was a bioweapon out of China.
I'd argue that the proposed mechanistic worldview, relying on reason as its guide, is opposed to mass formation, which, as Le Bon states, throws reason aside and acts purely on blind group emotion. What Le Bon describes is the collective mind akin to what Hayek describes in the political realm.
When Desmet says "mechanistic thinking" he means a certain significant portion of the population that's devoid of spirituality and sees only in purely rational, cause-effect terms, and that's cut off from human relations. Yet the portion of the population like that is very small indeed, as I trust you can see for yourself by observing those around you who thrive on being with others and are in fact closely attached to at least a few people. After the Covid restrictions, we all yearned to be back to a "normal" society wherein we could be with others. We were overall happy to discard the fear.
The madness of crowds is of course real, but the question at the heart of Desmet's thinking is the cause of the madness that leads to totalitarianism. In particular in relation to Covid, what caused that madness? Desmet argues strenuously that the cause lay within the people themselves who naturally amplified the fear of Covid, and this fear was then taken advantage of in what he calls "manipulation." But this isn't what happened at all. What really happened is that the fear was generated deliberately to cause a mass formation. This is an important point, yet Desmet in chapter eight of his book takes great pains to show that there was no conspiracy to do any such thing: it only looked like a conspiracy but was akin to a Serpinski triangle.
How was the madness of crowds induced during Covid? By massive censorship of accurate information and by massive propaganda in the form of inescapable, 24/7 fear porn. This is completely in-line with Arendt's thinking when she says that totalitarianism arises when one single idea takes hold to the exclusion of all others and is used to dictate collective thought: in Germany, that idea was the purity of race, to which all had to assent under penalty of police conditions or arbitrary imprisonment; in Stalinism, the dictatorship of the proletariat and any minor deviation from the state dictates could result in a gun to the head; during Covid, "stay safe," or else the police would come to make sure you did, and they might tackle you for refusing to wear a mask. The conditions for fear were deliberately created in order to control the population through police state conditions.
But these ideas that controlled society didn't arise spontaneously for, as Arendt says, one of the first things Hitler did was initiate a massive wave of propaganda. In like manner, contrary to what Desmet says, had we been allowed accurate information on all aspects of Covid-- information that was offered from many quarters but was heavily censored-- Covid would have had very little affect on society, and no mass formation would've been induced. Desmet's view is that the censorship and propaganda came from within the people themselves. Many of us disagree: it was a massive conspiracy by people who had hoped to usher in a Great Reset through that censorship and propaganda by convincing people that there was no other way to live but in a Great Reset. Klaus Schwab famously wrote that we'd never go back to normal.
You say that one suggestion that the authorities didn't try to calm people during Covid was that they believed it was a bioweapon out of China. Even so, we very early on had studies that showed that its IFR was very low and mostly affected the elderly, and early on we had a viable early treatment protocol in the form of the Zelenko protocol, which was viciously attacked by the political and medical authorities (and not by "the masses.") The fear porn, then, was needed to induce the mass formation, and the mass formation, it was hoped, would carry through to a Great Reset world wherein individual self-determination would die.
I think we all know there was a massive conspiracy, and Desmet is very clear that there was not. Yet he weasels around this obvious conspiracy by saying that there was only natural "manipulation" of conditions. Thus he manages to confuse his audience, but his central point of "no conspiracy" is very clear in his book.
Yes, the "no conspiracy" point is very clear indeed. And I think the argument is strong. A conspiracy of such a magnitude without the knowledge of those who take part in it is pretty much unthinkable. It is interesting to think back to the very first days of the pandemic. The messages were confusing, some said this is no more lethal than the flu, then they changed the message, and the whole issue with China and the origin confused people even further. Uncertainty breeds fear, especially when it comes to diseases. Then we saw lockdowns, first China, then Italy and then they spread. In a situation like this it doesn't take much for action taken by one to spread like wildfire. Where, then does the mechanistic worldview come into this? It is pretty clear to me, it is this worldview (and then I'm not talking about rationality but simply the idea that the world can be managed somehow) that led people to the purely mad idea that the spread of a virus could be stopped. There is nothing rational about that idea, it is based on an utter disconnect with the way the world really works.
Well it wasn't such a mad idea at all, was it, that the virus could be stopped or at least mitigated to the extent that it was virtually harmless? Many doctors were advocating for measures that in their clinical experience were effective. They were all censored.
Censorship and propaganda lead to the political condition of totalitarianism. The mechanistic thinking of the population is a fiction.
It was a mad idea. The spread of a highly contagious respiratory virus cannot be stopped by lockdowns and masking, and it is even more mad considering the grave harm caused by the lockdowns. But as regards Desmet's theory, there is another possible explanation for why people mindlessly went along with this all and this is that they showed the same kind of behaviour as you see in an abusive relationship.
We need an economic system that uplifts everyone to higher states of consciousness rather than exploiting humans with meaningless labor. The poets, philosophers like yourself, and artists of all types need to be supported in their high endeavor. Earth Rights Democracy!
Potentially with AI starting to make decisions for us, society will become more mechanistic in a way that we no longer use certain parts of the brain for critical thinking, 🧐 like the scientists in the concentration camps we will loose our souls, our selfs and forget our heritage.
But only if we let it.
The sad thing is a lot of people won’t realise it’s happening.
I’ve been thinking of writing a piece on “How we used to think, what did we used to do between doing things”(the space that is now filled with a Quick Look on the phone )
Can you please unsubscribe me from your site. No offense but I don't want to subscribe anymore and I've tried to "unsubscribe" but Subtack is poorly programmed and won't let me do it - so will you please -= for th3e sake of effing iceland.
I'm trying to "unsubscribe" from you site - no offense meant Thorsteinn - I love my memories of Iceland - but seems I am unable to unsubscribe - if you can do it on your end - will you please - and fond memories of Iceland I have, but I have limits - my limit is 24 and I can't unsubscribe even though I have tried on several occosions and some volcanoes are starting to feel the pressure of magma rising - so help out on this please.
"It takes one standing man to glorify God."
~Saint-Irenée de Lyon
"According to him, the mass hypnosis that took hold in 2020 was merely the climax of a development that has been ongoing for a long time, rooted in the Western tradition of thought that began with the Enlightenment."
Actually, the scamdemic was rooted in a massive propaganda campaign, the kind used to gain consent for needless wars. All mainstream media news outlets and most Independent social media platforms went along with this "great deception" terrifying billions into capitulating, first with the lockdowns and then with forfeiting bodily autonomy allowing their bloodstream to be contaminated with an experimental mRNA toxin.
If propaganda didn't work, the ghouls wouldn't spend billions on marketing nefarious products and insidious ideologies.
I agree. There's nothing at all wrong with Enlightenment thought, which thought is simply the investigation into causes, or "the logic of" how things work. It was that sort of thinking that gave rise to the notion of a self-governing people not beholden to overbearing state power in the founding of America: the logic of good government.
Desmet describes mass formation during Covid very well, and because of this people believe that he must also be describing the cause of mass formation accurately. But his theory is false: Covid hysteria was never caused by our own propensity for mechanistic thinking but by a deliberately planned conspiracy to frighten the hell out of people in order to induce mass formation, and hopefully install a police state great reset. So yes, a conspiracy, but "conspiracy" is what Desmet vigorously denies in chapter eight of his book. People either haven't read his book or else don't understand that in many ways chapter eight is the core of his book.
The mass formation was induced, deliberately. Desmet's theory is that it arose more-or-less spontaneously, due to our own propensity for mechanistic thinking. Is that really true? And are we really the mechanistic thinkers that Desmet says we are, we who have loves and children and friends and connections with people and care for things, and who might write computer programs but then go home and garden or play the piano?
Totalitarianism arises from massive censorship and propaganda. It does not arise from we, the people. Desmet says it does. This is why he's such a controversial figure.
Desmet is actually not the only one who claims totalitarianism or mass hypnosis arises from the people. Le Bon showed this in the 19th century and Arendt has discussed it also in relation with Nazism. The mechanistic worldview does not have to do with writing computer programs, it is the view that the world can be explained in mechanistic terms. We have an innate fear of invisible threats like diseases. This is a natural thing and exaggerated reaction to the threat of disease is nothing new. This is why the standard reaction of the authorities used to be trying to calm people. But that was not the case now. Why? One suggestion is that the authorities believed covid was a bioweapon out of China.
I'd argue that the proposed mechanistic worldview, relying on reason as its guide, is opposed to mass formation, which, as Le Bon states, throws reason aside and acts purely on blind group emotion. What Le Bon describes is the collective mind akin to what Hayek describes in the political realm.
When Desmet says "mechanistic thinking" he means a certain significant portion of the population that's devoid of spirituality and sees only in purely rational, cause-effect terms, and that's cut off from human relations. Yet the portion of the population like that is very small indeed, as I trust you can see for yourself by observing those around you who thrive on being with others and are in fact closely attached to at least a few people. After the Covid restrictions, we all yearned to be back to a "normal" society wherein we could be with others. We were overall happy to discard the fear.
The madness of crowds is of course real, but the question at the heart of Desmet's thinking is the cause of the madness that leads to totalitarianism. In particular in relation to Covid, what caused that madness? Desmet argues strenuously that the cause lay within the people themselves who naturally amplified the fear of Covid, and this fear was then taken advantage of in what he calls "manipulation." But this isn't what happened at all. What really happened is that the fear was generated deliberately to cause a mass formation. This is an important point, yet Desmet in chapter eight of his book takes great pains to show that there was no conspiracy to do any such thing: it only looked like a conspiracy but was akin to a Serpinski triangle.
How was the madness of crowds induced during Covid? By massive censorship of accurate information and by massive propaganda in the form of inescapable, 24/7 fear porn. This is completely in-line with Arendt's thinking when she says that totalitarianism arises when one single idea takes hold to the exclusion of all others and is used to dictate collective thought: in Germany, that idea was the purity of race, to which all had to assent under penalty of police conditions or arbitrary imprisonment; in Stalinism, the dictatorship of the proletariat and any minor deviation from the state dictates could result in a gun to the head; during Covid, "stay safe," or else the police would come to make sure you did, and they might tackle you for refusing to wear a mask. The conditions for fear were deliberately created in order to control the population through police state conditions.
But these ideas that controlled society didn't arise spontaneously for, as Arendt says, one of the first things Hitler did was initiate a massive wave of propaganda. In like manner, contrary to what Desmet says, had we been allowed accurate information on all aspects of Covid-- information that was offered from many quarters but was heavily censored-- Covid would have had very little affect on society, and no mass formation would've been induced. Desmet's view is that the censorship and propaganda came from within the people themselves. Many of us disagree: it was a massive conspiracy by people who had hoped to usher in a Great Reset through that censorship and propaganda by convincing people that there was no other way to live but in a Great Reset. Klaus Schwab famously wrote that we'd never go back to normal.
You say that one suggestion that the authorities didn't try to calm people during Covid was that they believed it was a bioweapon out of China. Even so, we very early on had studies that showed that its IFR was very low and mostly affected the elderly, and early on we had a viable early treatment protocol in the form of the Zelenko protocol, which was viciously attacked by the political and medical authorities (and not by "the masses.") The fear porn, then, was needed to induce the mass formation, and the mass formation, it was hoped, would carry through to a Great Reset world wherein individual self-determination would die.
I think we all know there was a massive conspiracy, and Desmet is very clear that there was not. Yet he weasels around this obvious conspiracy by saying that there was only natural "manipulation" of conditions. Thus he manages to confuse his audience, but his central point of "no conspiracy" is very clear in his book.
Yes, the "no conspiracy" point is very clear indeed. And I think the argument is strong. A conspiracy of such a magnitude without the knowledge of those who take part in it is pretty much unthinkable. It is interesting to think back to the very first days of the pandemic. The messages were confusing, some said this is no more lethal than the flu, then they changed the message, and the whole issue with China and the origin confused people even further. Uncertainty breeds fear, especially when it comes to diseases. Then we saw lockdowns, first China, then Italy and then they spread. In a situation like this it doesn't take much for action taken by one to spread like wildfire. Where, then does the mechanistic worldview come into this? It is pretty clear to me, it is this worldview (and then I'm not talking about rationality but simply the idea that the world can be managed somehow) that led people to the purely mad idea that the spread of a virus could be stopped. There is nothing rational about that idea, it is based on an utter disconnect with the way the world really works.
Well it wasn't such a mad idea at all, was it, that the virus could be stopped or at least mitigated to the extent that it was virtually harmless? Many doctors were advocating for measures that in their clinical experience were effective. They were all censored.
Censorship and propaganda lead to the political condition of totalitarianism. The mechanistic thinking of the population is a fiction.
Desmet is confused. https://jimreagen.substack.com/p/on-the-psychology-of-totalitarianism
It was a mad idea. The spread of a highly contagious respiratory virus cannot be stopped by lockdowns and masking, and it is even more mad considering the grave harm caused by the lockdowns. But as regards Desmet's theory, there is another possible explanation for why people mindlessly went along with this all and this is that they showed the same kind of behaviour as you see in an abusive relationship.
We need an economic system that uplifts everyone to higher states of consciousness rather than exploiting humans with meaningless labor. The poets, philosophers like yourself, and artists of all types need to be supported in their high endeavor. Earth Rights Democracy!
Potentially with AI starting to make decisions for us, society will become more mechanistic in a way that we no longer use certain parts of the brain for critical thinking, 🧐 like the scientists in the concentration camps we will loose our souls, our selfs and forget our heritage.
But only if we let it.
The sad thing is a lot of people won’t realise it’s happening.
I’ve been thinking of writing a piece on “How we used to think, what did we used to do between doing things”(the space that is now filled with a Quick Look on the phone )
Feel free to write on this as-well.
Keep up the good work.
Craig.
Yes, the greatest threat from AI is not what AI does, but what we let it do. We are lazy by nature. That's what will kill us eventually.
Can you please unsubscribe me from your site. No offense but I don't want to subscribe anymore and I've tried to "unsubscribe" but Subtack is poorly programmed and won't let me do it - so will you please -= for th3e sake of effing iceland.
I'm trying to "unsubscribe" from you site - no offense meant Thorsteinn - I love my memories of Iceland - but seems I am unable to unsubscribe - if you can do it on your end - will you please - and fond memories of Iceland I have, but I have limits - my limit is 24 and I can't unsubscribe even though I have tried on several occosions and some volcanoes are starting to feel the pressure of magma rising - so help out on this please.