Interview on Mass Formation theory with Professor Mattias Desmet
An explanation for the societal deception around Covid.
Recently I came across this very interesting video interview with Professor Mattias Desmet on Mass Formation and totalitarianism. Professor Desmet is a Professor in Clinical Psychology at Ghent University in Belgium who specializes in mass formation and totalitarian thinking. His theory has been getting a lot of attention because it seems highly relevant to the Covid crisis. He himself applies it this way, although it took him about six months to realize what was going on - despite the fact that it is his specialty.
I highly recommend watching the video, but I want to discuss a few of what to me were the most interesting points.
Professor Desmet states that four conditions are necessary for mass formation and totalitarian thinking to emerge in society:
Many socially isolated people - a lack of social bonds
Many people who experience a lack of meaning or sense-making in life
A lot of free-floating anxiety
A lot of free-floating discontent
The anxiety and discontent are not connected to anything in particular; they are simply present.
These conditions existed before the coronavirus “crisis” emerged. Prof Desmet cites a statistic that 40-70% of people experience their jobs as meaningless. There is huge use of psychopharmaceutical drugs - in his country, Belgium, 300 million doses are taken per year.
It’s not hard to see how our society fulfills these conditions, although I believe number 2 is actually number 1 and is the source of the rest. We have a lack of meaning because we have rejected ultimate meaning: the idea of a Creator God who made us, loves us, to whom we are responsible, and who has given us principles for how to relate to him and others. We no longer believe in life after death, and ironically, rather than giving this life more meaning, it removes it altogether.
Rejection of God leads to the dissolution of bonds with our fellow man. Think of societal trends over the last several decades such as high levels of divorce, people living farther from their families, much lower levels of marriage, marriage late in life if at all, people having fewer children if at all. People go to church less, volunteer less, and take part in fewer civic organizations. Technology has redirected us from social interaction to the shallow and addictive substitute of screen time, and made us less dependent on one another.
This lack of meaning and lack of social bonds in turn leads to anxiety and discontent.
Professor Desmet says that free-floating anxiety is the most painful psychological phenomenon someone can experience. People want an explanation they can connect their anxiety to: they are seeking to make sense of it.
If a lot of this anxiety is present in society and the media present a narrative which indicates an object of it, and at the same time describe a strategy to deal with it, all the anxiety connects to this object. People are willing to follow the strategy to deal with the object, no matter what the cost. This is the beginning of mass formation.
It’s easy to see this happening in the corona “crisis”: the media constantly presents a fearful narrative of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. At the same time, they promote lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and vaccines to “save” us.
In the second step, people start a heroic collective battle with the object of the anxiety. A new kind of social bond and sense-making emerge. Life is all directed at battling the object of anxiety and thus establishing a new kind of connection with other people. The switch from a radical lack of social contact to massive social connection with the crowd creates a kind of mental intoxication.
Again, it’s easy to see this playing out: “we’re all in this together”. If we follow the rules, get vaccinated, wear our masks, stay away from our fellow man, we are good people. We are socially-minded and responsible, doing our best for the collective. We put our vaccination status in our Twitter profiles and badges on our Facebook photos. Our profile photos are unrecognizable because they are half-obscured by masks. We stay home for months on end and order groceries in. We are not like those evil, selfish unvaccinated people who only care about themselves.
Professor Desmet states that this state is not just similar to hypnosis, it is hypnosis.
When people experience this mental intoxication, it doesn’t matter anymore if the narrative is correct or even blatantly wrong. What matters is that it leads to this mental intoxication. This is why it’s so difficult to destroy mass formation. We try to provide data to disprove the narrative, but for people that’s not what it’s about. They don’t want to go back to the painful state of free-floating anxiety.
We certainly see this playing out in the battle over Covid. It is completely impossible to convince the dedicated believers no matter how many facts and data you provide.
It’s important to understand that this is providing them with a sense of meaning, purpose, and social connection they previously lacked. This is far more akin to someone who has been coopted into a cult than people rationally making medical decisions.
So how do we change this? Professor Desmet believes we must acknowledge the painful state of anxiety and think about how we got into this state of social disconnect, lack of meaning, and free-floating anxiety. We have to look for other ways to deal with pre-existing psychological problems.
As a Christian, I believe the most effective way is providing people with the ultimate sense of meaning that will override the false sense they get from Covid - i.e., the Gospel. This is not simply because it is a better story, but because it is true.
One interviewer asks Professor Desmet why he thinks some people are immune to mass formation? He suggests that some are more prone to achieving psychological stability by going along with the crowd, others do it by sticking to reason and have a tendency toward independent thinking. Still, he doesn’t think that’s a sufficient explanation.
He then said something very profound: “You have to refer to the concept of truth.” Unfortunately, another interviewer cuts him off here, because I really would have liked to hear him expound on this.
I personally believe an utter commitment to truth - in all realms, including the spiritual - is the answer, which I discuss in a previous post.
Toward the end of the interview, he says something very important. The following is a rough quote:
But even if we succeed in waking up the masses now, they will fall prey to a different story in a few years and they will be hypnotized again, if we do not succeed in solving the real problem of this crisis, namely, the question of why did we as a society get into this state in which such a large part of the population feels anxious, depressed, experiences a lack of sense, feels socially isolated? That is the real problem. If we don’t succeed in finding out where this problem comes from, then the masses will always be susceptible to leaders who try to lead them into a mass formation.
What is there in our view of man and the world and how we look on life that makes us experience this lack of sensemaking? My opinion: we must conclude that it is something in our materialistic, mechanistic view of man and the world that leads up to a radical destruction of the real social structures and social bonds, and of the feeling that life makes sense. If you believe that human beings are a biological machine, then by definition this implies that life is senseless. What would the sense be of a life for a human being that is reduced to a little mechanistic part in the larger universe. If you look at the universe and the human being like that then you always end up concluding that life is meaningless and that you don’t really have to invest energy in social relations, that you don’t have to follow real ethical principles, and in this way you destroy your psychological energy and your connectedness. And you end up in a free-floating anxiety.
Important to the question of the difference between those who are taken up in the mass formation and those who are not: a lot of the people who do not go along with the mainstream narrative are those who object to the mechanistic view of life. It’s an important characteristic that maybe distinguishes a little bit between the two groups. Not entirely, but to a certain extent.
We cannot escape the fact that we are not simply physical beings, no matter how hard we try. We have a soul. We are spiritual beings. Evolution teaches us that there is nothing beyond the physical, that despite every appearance of design in our bodies and the world, every yearning we have for something beyond this material world, it’s all an illusion. But the human spirit knows better. We know we were made for something more. We seek to fill that vacuum inside us and find something that provides us with answers for our longings, even if we make terrible choices of what that something is.
As the church Father, Augustine, famously said:
You have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
There is no way to conclude that we are not simply material beings without arriving at the conclusion that the spiritual world is real, that Someone greater than ourselves made us, and that we will only find meaning when we find him and get to know him. No psychological therapy or strategy will be able to achieve that, as useful as they are to describe what is happening.
This was a great read, thanks. I haven't seen the particular interview you shared and will watch it, but I have viewed this one with Professor Desmet and Aubrey Marcus, which was so good I watched it twice. https://youtu.be/IqPJiM5Ir3A
Thanks! God keeps bringing me around. He’s given me a brain so I want to understand all this stuff (ie the science behind the current chaos). But ultimately He just basically says “Look to Me.”
I was out on a walk today thinking about all that I’d like to say to people in key positions (because of Steve Kirsch’s push to have us call our reps in Congress). But I just ended up on my knees out in the middle of no where. Just asking Him to help me keep my eyes on Him. If there’s anyone who reads this and says “well you need to act too”, I agree, fully agree. But this situation is a mess.
First, without His being our compass point, moral authority means very little. There is no absolute truth without Him. America’s founders seemed to understand this, no matter they were also fallible men. Two, our actions will go nowhere without His strength and wisdom. “You can do nothing apart from Me.” (John 15). But as Paul the Apostle said “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Phil 4:13). And of course James 1 (he gives us wisdom). Our confidence and authority needs to be in Him, in our identity in Him when we place our trust in what He’s done for us on the Cross (death FOR us, we IN Him). Third, a lot of the problem is people don’t know the incredible overreaching intense love of God in Christ as demonstrated by the Cross and His rising back up to life. And what that can mean when we place our trust in Him. True acceptance, true significance, true security. All three things that the world cannot offer in truth, only partial, incomplete facsimiles.
I didn’t set out to preach when I first started typing this. I’m really preaching to myself.....