Damn right, they find it 'useful'.
Since it's one of the chief weapons being used against us, wouldn't it make sense to make an effort to understand it as much as we can?
First, a point of order: The word 'psychosis' is - besides being pejorative - a technical diagnostic term used in psychiatry and psychology with a fairly specific meaning. For this reason, Desmet has been careful not to use it (indeed, pulling Malone up for it's use was the very first thing he said to him). Telling people they're 'psychotic' probably isn't going to get anyone anywhere.
For sure, 'Mass Formation' certainly isn't the most descriptive term, so I'd suggest 'Mass Hypnosis' serves us better. People instinctively understand what it means and understand that it is entirely possible ("I mean, we've all seen Derren Brown etc, so it's clear that people
can fall under hypnosis... just, well... maybe not
me, but
other people, sure... right?")
Second, I'd never deny the fact that
'a ruling class and its army of dutiful clerks and minions' planned, engineered, instigated and facilitated all of this, or that they continue to do so (and I'm fairly confident that neither would Desmet).
So... where to begin? Probably by saying that it's not an attempt to pathologise or excuse the behaviour of a large section society, just to understand it a little better.
Perhaps a description of just what it is we're looking at would help? A description of it's results? How about:
A narrow, myopic focus on one small source of potential risk, to the exclusion of almost all others, to the point where they are willing to inflict real, permanent physical and psychological harm on themselves and those around them - even their own children - in the pursuit of that risk mitigation.As you say above:
They *think* it is. That perception is faulty. They no longer have any peripheral vision for the wider harms their narrow focus causes.
Again:
Exactly. But they carry on as if they haven't noticed the damage - because
they haven't noticed the damage. They literally cannot see it.
So what's going on here, exactly?
Earlier I came across a
fairly decent write-up of the 'Mass Formation' concept. I can't improve on most of it, to I'll c&p a few chunks here;
[A Mass Formation] can form when you have a society that has become decoupled from each other; where people are atomized and socially isolated from one another and there is no common story.
It is a society under stress by this social atomization, a sense of meaninglessness, and a feeling that things don’t make sense. People feel as if they have no purpose. They don’t contribute, and their life is incoherant.
This is the precursor - the lack of a societal narrative, the lack of a sense of place in the world.
What they gain from covidianism is (at last!) a story. One in which they can quite literally save the world. A sense of place, of
common purpose, of belonging to a group of like-minded individuals. A taste of good old 'Blitz spirit'.
**Purely anecdotal, but I've noticed that the most fervent adherents to the creed of the covid cult tend to be more toward the Guardian-reading / university educated / professional-managerial side of the socio-economic divide, whereas the care assistants, bar staff, carpenters etc are more inclined to call bullshit, or just keep their head down and get on with the task of trying to feed the kids.
The thought occurred to me that this might be because the non-covidians already have a sense of place, a story, a narrative. OK, it might not be a 'good' place or a 'good' story, but still one that engenders social bonds, a sense of community. The sort of narrative that says 'she's my friend, she walked my dog and picked my kids up from school when I was self isolating...', or 'he's my mate, he helped repair my kids toy'. The glue that holds our societies or communities together.
On the other hand, I've had someone - now a small business owner - demand I perform an LFT on their doorstep while they wait in the kitchen, before admitting me into their house.
(I'm not just talking about some random dickhead, here. This was someone I've known over 30 years, stood shoulder to shoulder with at Twyford Down, someone who actually knows first hand what it's like to suddenly find yourself pinned to the floor of your own home by a cop in full riot gear with his knee on your neck and an HK MP-5 muzzle on your temple, whilst the same is done to your family and the rest of the gang merrily smash the house to bits. I would have trusted them with my life. Yet, they're fully bought-in to the covidphobia, no matter how many facts, stats and beautifully presented graphs I show him. It doesn't [or didn't] make sense).**I think perhaps that people who already have their own story have less of a *need* for the covidian hero-tale. Also, they'd have nothing to fear - or nothing to defend - from information that contradicts the covidian narrative.
From these first two conditions a third condition arises; a form of free-floating anxiety and free-floating psychological discontent...
The final condition is a lot of free-floating frustration and aggression. Like the third condition, this is a consequence of the first two conditions.
'Free-floating' in that there is no immediate or identifiable cause - and if you can't identify the cause of your anxiety, you can hardly do anything about it (other than temporarily escape into intoxication, video games or 'social' media).
“If under these conditions a story is distributed through the mass media, indicating an object of anxiety, and at the same time providing a strategy to deal with it, then the following might happen.”
“All the free-floating anxiety is attached to the object of the anxiety in the narrative, and there is a huge willingness to participate in the strategy to deal with this object of anxiety.”
“People suddenly feel connected again in an heroic struggle, and a new kind of solidarity; a new kind of social bond; a new kind of meaning making; and sense making emerges in society.”
In this situation then, their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small thing; just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere.
So all that carefully cultivated free-floating anxiety (the fruits of such divisive factors as cancel culture, climate change, BLM, gender issues, social interaction mediated by or replaced with 'social media', unattainable aspirations, inability to get on the property ladder, bullshit job, debt, no friends, unknown neighbours, blah, blah, both shaken and stirred...) suddenly has a mooring post, something to focus on: the (apparently) universal, existential threat of a 'global pandemic'.
One of the aspects of that phenomenon is that the people that they identify as their leaders; the ones typically that come in and say “you have this pain and I, and I alone, can solve it for you” get their unquestioned allegiance. They will follow that person through anything. It doesn’t matter whether they lie to them demonstrably and repeatedly. The data and facts become irrelevant.
The reason people buy into the narrative is that it leads to this new social bond. Prof. Desmut says “People are social beings, and being socially isolated is painful, and through the process of Mass Formation they switch from the very negative state of social isolation to the opposite state of the maximal connectedness that exists in a crowd or a mass, and that leads up to a kind of mental intoxication.
So now, you can signal your absolute virtue whilst simultaneously demonstrating total fealty and group belonging by engaging in any number of performative rituals, be it covering your face or standing on the doorstep banging saucepan lids together like a clockwork monkey.
'Painful'.
To abandon the covidian cult would cause real
pain. It would be opening the door and ushering in all that free-floating anxiety again. No wonder they
don't even want to return to the 'old normal'. It was a world of pain for them.
Remember this if you're deprogramming cult members. Try, at least, to be kind.
“This is the real reason that people stick to the narrative, even if it is utterly wrong and even if they lose everything that is important to them personally. Mass formation is a kind of hypnosis.”
“Just like in hypnosis, the attention is focused on this very small part of reality, and just like in hypnosis people are completely unaware of everything that is happening outside of this small area of their attention.”
Furthermore, anybody who questions that narrative is to be immediately purged. They are the other; the interloper; the saboteur; the enemy. This particular pathology is central to Mass Formation
..And thus ends the gospel according to Desmet.
I'm not sure I really understand your apparent hostility to the *idea* of 'Mass Formation' as a descriptive framework for what's happening, but I totally get - and share - a certain distaste and concern for the way it's being presented and interpreted by the likes of Malone. But I feel it contains some powerful, possibly useful, perspectives. Please, just don't 'throw the baby out with the bathwater'.
If you're interested, there's (yet) another decent interview (Desmet and Dr Mike Yeadon) here:
https://jermwarfare.com/blog/mattias-desmet-mike-yeadon - ranging a bit further than the subject at hand, touching on the spiritual.
But, Mac, you should have the last word here, as you so eloquently describe perhaps the darkest, most insidious aspect of all this...
MacCruiskeen » Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:00 pm wrote:They did this by engaging in a relentless campaign of terror & disinformation that played on people's fears, exploited and exacerbated their screen-addiction, relied on their ignorance of actual science and their naive reverence for TheScience™,
and (nastiest of all) perverted their normal and natural human solidarity, their desire to protect others from harm.
