Thanks for this. I've seen Desmet give interviews several times, most recently on Colbert's podcast. He had a far deeper understanding, and covered far more ground, than I'd expected. Very few have the level of perspective Desmet does.
Speaking of podcasts, thanks for the shout-out on the last Mind Matters! It was weird (in a good way) listening to my essay being discussed so much!
Harrison, thanks for this helpful introduction to the conflicts and intersections in ideas of these two thinkers.
I will, of course, as usual, object that anyone who thinks that evolutionary biology ignores the psychological, symbolic, and ethical dimensions of human beings isn't doing it right. But that's a different discussion. ;-)
I am glad I have found your review from such a unique perspective! Particularly resonated with your quote, "I would argue that such ideologies are, ultimately, the product of a particular type of derangement: an emotionally detached, hyper-rational mind—the schizoidal (per Lobaczewski) or the schizo-autistic (per Sass and McGilchrist)."
There is so much that I agreed with when reading this book, it was an absolute pleasure to read. But it also unveiled a few pretty fundamental differences, which makes your reviews all the more thought-provoking if I do decide to pen a critique in the future. The psychology of evil running rampant in our institutional structures needs to be openly discussed, but epistemic considerations of testimony should have been treated with a lot more care than it is expressed by Desmet.
Fantastic piece, looking forward to the next one! Glad to see that Desmet goes so deep into the roots of what's wrong with our civilization. Regarding the number games, this is indeed a plague and the height of intellectual impoverishment. You see this in the business world too, with this whole cottage industry of pseudo-scientific "studies" that provide stupid numbers which then end up in headlines and board rooms. Reminds me of Haffner's description of the WWI obsession with numbers, which, of course, didn't provide any insights whatsoever.
Interesting interpretation of Desmet. My take is different.
Let me ask a simple question. Prior to Covid, does Desmet's description of society, below, apply to you or anyone you know?
"Humans have found themselves in a state of solitude, cut off from nature, and existing apart from social structures and connections, feeling powerless due to a deep sense of meaninglessness, living under clouds that are pregnant with an inconceivable, destructive potential, all while psychologically and materially depending on the happy few, whom he does not trust and with whom he cannot identify."
Or further, as Desmet states elsewhere, are you or is anyone you know "saturated with fear"?
Are you atomized? Are you or the people you know devoid of meaningful human relationships? Are you a mechanistic thinker? Do you and your friends long for a technocratic future wherein technology gives us meaning through the internet or virtual reality?
Have you and the people you know discarded all spirituality, all art and music and literature? You don't go to concerts? No movies, no plays? Simply atomized yearning for that technological utopia, and when you go to restaurants and bars, that's all you talk about? Technocratic utopia?
It seems to me that Desmet is describing a world prior to Covid that simply didn't exist. , Why does he do that? I think I know why, but first:
What's he talking about, exactly? Who exactly is he referring to?
I think Covid only brought these things to the surface. Lobaczewski made some similar observations about American society in the 80s. He was not impressed with the state of American "society."
That said, some of those descriptions do sound better when applied to post-Covid. Rather than saturated with fear, I would say saturated with stress, which is a type of fear - for several decades at least now. Then there was post 9/11 which was a fearful time. Atomization - yes. Remember when people knew their neighbors? Some still do - many do not. Spirituality? I see a lot of people doing yoga... Mechanistic thinking? Yep, been seeing that also for decades, and the trend goes back further. There are always exceptions, but on the whole, I don't disagree with this take, even pre-Covid. McGilchrist makes similar observations, and he was writing in the Before Times.
I found that the book , "A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic" by Laura Dodsworth -- published in the midst of COVID Mania -- was a good primer on how fear was purposely used here.
Desmet is making comparisons to Arendt. That's why he could say something along the lines of, "the ideal subject for totalitarian rule isn't the committed Nazi but the person for whom the distinction from fact and fiction no longer applies." I discussed this in my post. https://jimreagen.substack.com/p/on-the-psychology-of-totalitarianism Basically, the comparison Desmet is making between pre-Nazi totalitarianism and pre-Covid society is false.
I simply don't see the world Desmet says we lived in prior to Covid; I don't see it now in February, 2023, either. Perhaps in an academic way we can project our ideas about society onto society but to me this is akin to, "to a hammer everything looks like a nail."
Once again: are you, personally, a mechanistic thinker? Do you personally know anyone who is, as described by Desmet? I don't. I've never even met anyone like that, and I've lived all over the US and in rural areas and in very large cities. But maybe I live in another world?
Have we abandoned literature and the arts? Is what we watch on TV just utopian dreams of a technocracy? No one listens to music anymore? Our children are just automatons, mouths we resentfully and fearfully feed?
Stop and think about the empirical reality of what Desmet is saying. Look at the real world.
Desmet says, "saturated with fear." That was us, pre-Covid, and we selected the most fearful data about Covid because that's who we are: the fearful data confirmed our fearful being. Is that really what happened?
"Once again: are you, personally, a mechanistic thinker?"
No.
"Do you personally know anyone who is, as described by Desmet? I don't.
I do.
"I've never even met anyone like that, and I've lived all over the US and in rural areas and in very large cities. But maybe I live in another world?"
We must.
"Have we abandoned literature and the arts? Is what we watch on TV just utopian dreams of a technocracy? No one listens to music anymore?"
Where does he say this? I don't see it in my copy of the book.
"Our children are just automatons, mouths we resentfully and fearfully feed?"
Trans kids.
"Stop and think about the empirical reality of what Desmet is saying. Look at the real world."
I am, and I'm not impressed by what I see.
"Desmet says, "saturated with fear." That was us, pre-Covid, and we selected the most fearful data about Covid because that's who we are: the fearful data confirmed our fearful being. Is that really what happened?"
Yes, I did make a caricature of Desmet's characterization of society.
Regardless of how imperfect we are as a society-- and we are-- I see zero evidence of widespread anxiety and fear and social isolation. Go to any ballgame, any concert, play, restaurant, bar, college, etc., and you'll not see what Desmet says we are.
Desmet minimizes the role of censorship and propaganda and greatly exaggerates societal atomization, and makes a false comparison between pre-Covid society and pre-Nazi society as Arendt described it. Why does he do this? Because his entire program is to "prove" that fear and anxiety weren't induced during High Covid through a massive conspiracy of censorship and propaganda but rather arose naturally through our own saturated fear, and one would assume our saturated atomization as well. There was no conspiracy! This is the entire point of Desmet's book; this idea isn't peripheral, it's what his entire argument is leading toward.
In any case I find your take on things interesting and look forward to reading the other parts when I have some free time.
Exactly how many mechanistic thinkers do you know, in percentage terms, who fit exactly the profile that Desmet gives? Longing for technocratic utopia, unable to think in terms other than those of mechanistic thinking? Alienated because of their demand for certainty that can't be satisfied in mechanistic terms? I've met lots of people. No one fits the bill.
Regarding my question about the arts, Desmet by implication says that we've abandoned anything but mechanistic thinking and that meaning for us isn't given by the arts or by life or our children, but by our yearning for technocratic utopia, the frustration of which yearning leads to fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.
"Partially, but not the whole picture" is my point. Desmet dismisses completely any notion of decades-long, even centuries-long evil conspiracy, and instead says that the fear and anxiety during Covid were the end results of Enlightenment thinking. He downplays the role of massive censorship and propaganda and exaggerates the anxiety that any society might have as individuals figure out how to make their way in the world and answer challenges. Death, illness, poverty, and taxes have always been with us.
You are the first person writing about this (that I know of) who has connected the work of Desmet to the work of Lobaczewski, though anyone following this subject closely would be aware of the latter.
For me, what academic psychology misses is filled in by the work of Hubbard. Hubbard is considered a pariah and a fake by most of academia, yet if you read his first book, and perhaps a few of his later essays, you might perhaps come to a different conclusion. When he offered his work to academia, it turned its back on him. So he turned to publishing "popular" works. Not the first or last to do so.
With Hubbard's finding that the personality is actually an immortal spiritual being, we begin to get a fuller grasp of what we are up against and why it has been so difficult to conquer our “chronic avoidance of the crux of the matter.” Hubbard also writes about psychopaths (which he refers to as Suppressive Persons or Anti-Social Personalities) as such people almost destroyed several of his organizations in the early years.
I feel blessed to have found three different perspectives on the same basic phenomenon. I have concentrated on studying Hubbard. I downloaded Political Ponerology, but found it extremely difficult reading. With Desmet, I am familiar with his ideas mostly through his interviews. One key objective is to find an "antidote" or protective skill that can keep us sane when facing the insane. If we can face them, I am confident that we could, at some point, disarm them.
I connected the two as well. I already knew that totalitarianism arises from the Cluster-B disorders coupled with circumstances surrounding the targets. That was old hat to me.
And I realized a few weeks after mid-March 2020 that we were in a Psy Op. Mattias Desmet announcing a Mass Formation had me saying, "I read Gustave Le Bon long ago, and this is not the first Mass Formation I have witnessed. Seems a bit like stating the obvious. Now if you could explain exactly how to stop these from happening again... "
Thanks for sharing, Larry. I haven't read any Hubbard - just familiar with the stuff that has made it into mainstream culture. There are definitely some correspondences, and I think an intelligent person would be able to make good use of some of those concepts, like "suppressive persons" (and prevent turning it into a form of doublespeak).
As for PP, the new edition is much easier to read that the original. I recommend you check it out again!
I was excited to see that you had made a connection with Desmet's and Iain McGilchrist's work. I have also made such a connection, but perhaps even more strongly. I recently wrote:
Combining the ideas of Mattias Desmet and Iain McGilchrist, I propose the following hypothesis: the mechanism by which the mass psychosis works is via a form of societal level hypnosis that literally puts peoples right brain hemisphere to sleep or into a state of hibernation.
This model predicts, for example, that since the evolutionary role of the right hemisphere’s way of attending to the world is the open sustained vigilance needed to look out for threats and predators, those under the spell will be left totally exposed to predatory forces.
They will be completely blind to clear and present dangers and warning signs, and will be unable to heed the warnings of those around them, until it is too late, even when it comes to the children.
Since the left hemisphere is intrinsically disconnected, and without empathy, people under the spell will be highly to susceptible and willing to engage in dehumanization and othering.
They will “lack appropriate emotional depth, or concern, tending to be irritable or facetious, especially when challenged”, “disown problems, and pass the responsibility to others”, be overconfident about what they cannot in the nature of things know much about; fabricates (often improbable) stories to cover ignorance”, “see parts at the expense of wholes”, “have an affinity for the inanimate, and for technological solutions”.
Then the “waking up of the masses” becomes the task of literally waking up the right hemispheres of people under the spell of mass psychosis. This cannot be simply achieved by argumentation with facts and logic, because this just feeds the left hemisphere over-activation, but must be done by appealing to the right hemisphere via re-connection to love and common humanity, through metaphor, comedy, poetry, music, awe and beauty."
"This model predicts, for example, that since the evolutionary role of the right hemisphere’s way of attending to the world is the open sustained vigilance needed to look out for threats and predators, those under the spell will be left totally exposed to predatory forces."
Just want to highlight this. What a stunning connection.
Thanks, and thanks for covering these topics in so much depth. I am huge fan of Iain McGilchrist, his work literally changed my life. One starts to see the predictions of his model playing out everywhere in humans, and I had lots of "ah ha" moments when listening to Mattias's podcast interviews. [McGilchrist even helped me understand my Parkinson's diagnosis, and predicted the changes I needed to make to reduce my symptoms https://www.outthinkingparkinsons.com/articles/divided-brain-1 . I asked Mattias if he was aware of Iain, and he replied that Iain had recently been in touch, and that they may doing a podcast episode together. That would really be something!
"This model predicts, for example, that since the evolutionary role of the right hemisphere’s way of attending to the world is the open sustained vigilance needed to look out for threats and predators, those under the spell will be left totally exposed to predatory forces.
They will be completely blind to clear and present dangers and warning signs, and will be unable to heed the warnings of those around them, until it is too late, even when it comes to the children."
Excellent insights, Gary.
First of all, I see in this model the version of Family Totalitarianism existing in families where at least one parent is pushing the Trans-gen. agenda on a child. They are either evil, or they are blind to the predatory and destructive nature of this.
Children themselves can fall under this hypnotic spell, usually induced in one way or another by the very predators the children will then have no warning signs against. In fact, once under the spell, they are likely to fawn towards the predator and to serve them. You see this in Stockholm Syndrome, or the Manson Family story, or in the Patty Hearst saga of the 70s, or the more recent tragic situation of the Karrie Neurauter case. All serving predators, seemingly willingly.
A Cluster-B type who is a parent, once mind-snapped themselves, can and will mind-snap the children into serving them and dehumanizing the other parent. Even though the predator parent is sucking the child dry in attending to their own Narcissistic demands for attention and admiration; the children are blind to this.
"This cannot be simply achieved by argumentation with facts and logic, "
OK...two thoughts on that, Gary.
Cult-kid Savior of the 70s, Ted Patrick, claims in his book that his method to awaken them from their spell was to re-activate critical thinking in these cult recruits. Though his detail is not all that abundant. He did have a decent success rate, going by the information available. Later, so-called Exit Counselors then followed suit by presenting to them factual information about the cult or guru that was perhaps unknown to these kids. However, families were usually involved, expressing their love and care. Which did the trick? I don't know.
The normal parents in the Parental Alienation disaster-world express a great deal of love too. Over and over. But that does not seem to get through. There must be another dimension which has to be triggered somehow. There are two individuals working publicly in what they describe as recovery for these families, but they do not publish their techniques, and the services themselves are very expensive. Hard to tell whether they have the answers.
"...a form of societal level hypnosis that literally puts peoples right brain hemisphere to sleep or into a state of hibernation."
Conway/Siegelman in the late 70s referred to this as the Mind-Snap. They were witnessing it in scores of cult recruits at the time.
Besides seeing the COVID Maniacs fall into this hypnosis, or the Germans of the 1930s, you can also see the phenomenon in Narcissistic Collapse. This hypnosis appears, too, in the children who are weaponized under Parental Alienation.
"Since the left hemisphere is intrinsically disconnected, and without empathy, people under the spell will be highly to susceptible and willing to engage in dehumanization and othering."
I have seen this spell up close and personal in other human beings. Sends shivers down one's spine.
I don't know whether anyone here is aware of the version of this spell that is called "Parental Alienation". This involves a triggered Cluster-B personality weaponizing the children against the other parent, as the Cluster-B type has entered a paranoid delusion that the other parent is somehow the cause of their fears/fantasies. The other parent becomes the proxy, and the scapegoat, for whoever caused unresolved trauma in the early life of the Cluster-B type.
The children are pulled into a Shared Psychosis/Mass Formation. The mind-snap. It can be very sudden. They often enter a zombie-land which includes hatred, cruelty, spying, shunning towards the normal parent. Reminds me of cult followers in the extremist cults. Or Hamas followers spouting hatred against Jews. Or COVID Maniacs wanting to attack the un-vaxxed.
This is a form of family totalitarianism. But the Desmet work could shed no light on it.
Remarkably good analysis of an excellent book that contributes significantly to the conversation about human nature.
May I propose that our relatively recent discovery of concentrated energy in the form of fossil fuels laid the foundation for the latest round of totalitarianism? It provided human beings, and scientists in particular with the power and affluence to invent completely new tools to exploit nature's resources and human resources to the point of exhaustion while simultaneously toxifying our ecosphere and making ourselves profoundly sick physically, emotionally and spiritually. Collectively, we've lost our way.
We are not really an intelligent species because we could easily have seen this coming. Many Cassandras came forward, but we wanted our houses, cars, boats and devices more than our health, peace of mind and connection to our communities. Oh well. It will all be over soon and our Mother Earth will begin an entirely new cycle of death and rebirth. If we don't completely sterilize the planet or burn it up. So sad.
"Mass formation is, in essence, a kind of group hypnosis that destroys individuals’ ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically. "
Sometimes referred to as the mind-snap. Seen in cults and in Narcissistic Collapse. Also seen during COVID Mania when once-normal individuals suddenly had serious personality changes.
“...an exaggerated willingness of individuals to sacrifice their own personal interests out of solidarity with the collective (i.e., the masses),"
You see this self-sacrifice in a family with one or both parents who are alcoholics/addicts and parentify the children. One child will always give up their own life to try to save the family. They become precociously responsible, but always for the family, never for the goal of progressing in their own lives.
"Totalitarianism arises from evolutions and tendencies that take place in our day-to-day lives."
Yes. Several observers of the Cluster-B relationships would say that the target is involved psychologically as well as the predator. Just from opposite ends of the spectrum. A person with lack of Self who is "too good" will naturally attract like a magnet a person with equal lack of Self who is "too bad".
The account of the conjoined Russian twin sisters of the 1950s illustrates this as well as anything I have read -- "The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep" by Juliet Butler.
Thanks for this. I've seen Desmet give interviews several times, most recently on Colbert's podcast. He had a far deeper understanding, and covered far more ground, than I'd expected. Very few have the level of perspective Desmet does.
Speaking of podcasts, thanks for the shout-out on the last Mind Matters! It was weird (in a good way) listening to my essay being discussed so much!
Harrison, thanks for this helpful introduction to the conflicts and intersections in ideas of these two thinkers.
I will, of course, as usual, object that anyone who thinks that evolutionary biology ignores the psychological, symbolic, and ethical dimensions of human beings isn't doing it right. But that's a different discussion. ;-)
A helpful distinction, Michael. Some of my best friends are evolutionary biologists! ;-D
Have you read Robert Cialdini's "Influence"? The author discusses how evolutionary shortcuts in cognition became the con-man's best friend.
I am glad I have found your review from such a unique perspective! Particularly resonated with your quote, "I would argue that such ideologies are, ultimately, the product of a particular type of derangement: an emotionally detached, hyper-rational mind—the schizoidal (per Lobaczewski) or the schizo-autistic (per Sass and McGilchrist)."
There is so much that I agreed with when reading this book, it was an absolute pleasure to read. But it also unveiled a few pretty fundamental differences, which makes your reviews all the more thought-provoking if I do decide to pen a critique in the future. The psychology of evil running rampant in our institutional structures needs to be openly discussed, but epistemic considerations of testimony should have been treated with a lot more care than it is expressed by Desmet.
Look forward to reading the rest. Thank you.
Thanks, Kim. Looking forward to reading your take on it. If you end up writing it, let me know!
Really interesting and informative write-uo, thank you.
You're very welcome! Part 3 will go up tomorrow.
Thanks for doing this Harrison and for making the links to Lobaczewski's work as well - very useful.
It will be a while before I get around to Desmet so really appreciating the summary.
Fantastic piece, looking forward to the next one! Glad to see that Desmet goes so deep into the roots of what's wrong with our civilization. Regarding the number games, this is indeed a plague and the height of intellectual impoverishment. You see this in the business world too, with this whole cottage industry of pseudo-scientific "studies" that provide stupid numbers which then end up in headlines and board rooms. Reminds me of Haffner's description of the WWI obsession with numbers, which, of course, didn't provide any insights whatsoever.
Interesting interpretation of Desmet. My take is different.
Let me ask a simple question. Prior to Covid, does Desmet's description of society, below, apply to you or anyone you know?
"Humans have found themselves in a state of solitude, cut off from nature, and existing apart from social structures and connections, feeling powerless due to a deep sense of meaninglessness, living under clouds that are pregnant with an inconceivable, destructive potential, all while psychologically and materially depending on the happy few, whom he does not trust and with whom he cannot identify."
Or further, as Desmet states elsewhere, are you or is anyone you know "saturated with fear"?
Are you atomized? Are you or the people you know devoid of meaningful human relationships? Are you a mechanistic thinker? Do you and your friends long for a technocratic future wherein technology gives us meaning through the internet or virtual reality?
Have you and the people you know discarded all spirituality, all art and music and literature? You don't go to concerts? No movies, no plays? Simply atomized yearning for that technological utopia, and when you go to restaurants and bars, that's all you talk about? Technocratic utopia?
It seems to me that Desmet is describing a world prior to Covid that simply didn't exist. , Why does he do that? I think I know why, but first:
What's he talking about, exactly? Who exactly is he referring to?
I think Covid only brought these things to the surface. Lobaczewski made some similar observations about American society in the 80s. He was not impressed with the state of American "society."
That said, some of those descriptions do sound better when applied to post-Covid. Rather than saturated with fear, I would say saturated with stress, which is a type of fear - for several decades at least now. Then there was post 9/11 which was a fearful time. Atomization - yes. Remember when people knew their neighbors? Some still do - many do not. Spirituality? I see a lot of people doing yoga... Mechanistic thinking? Yep, been seeing that also for decades, and the trend goes back further. There are always exceptions, but on the whole, I don't disagree with this take, even pre-Covid. McGilchrist makes similar observations, and he was writing in the Before Times.
I found that the book , "A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic" by Laura Dodsworth -- published in the midst of COVID Mania -- was a good primer on how fear was purposely used here.
Desmet is making comparisons to Arendt. That's why he could say something along the lines of, "the ideal subject for totalitarian rule isn't the committed Nazi but the person for whom the distinction from fact and fiction no longer applies." I discussed this in my post. https://jimreagen.substack.com/p/on-the-psychology-of-totalitarianism Basically, the comparison Desmet is making between pre-Nazi totalitarianism and pre-Covid society is false.
I simply don't see the world Desmet says we lived in prior to Covid; I don't see it now in February, 2023, either. Perhaps in an academic way we can project our ideas about society onto society but to me this is akin to, "to a hammer everything looks like a nail."
Once again: are you, personally, a mechanistic thinker? Do you personally know anyone who is, as described by Desmet? I don't. I've never even met anyone like that, and I've lived all over the US and in rural areas and in very large cities. But maybe I live in another world?
Have we abandoned literature and the arts? Is what we watch on TV just utopian dreams of a technocracy? No one listens to music anymore? Our children are just automatons, mouths we resentfully and fearfully feed?
Stop and think about the empirical reality of what Desmet is saying. Look at the real world.
Desmet says, "saturated with fear." That was us, pre-Covid, and we selected the most fearful data about Covid because that's who we are: the fearful data confirmed our fearful being. Is that really what happened?
"Once again: are you, personally, a mechanistic thinker?"
No.
"Do you personally know anyone who is, as described by Desmet? I don't.
I do.
"I've never even met anyone like that, and I've lived all over the US and in rural areas and in very large cities. But maybe I live in another world?"
We must.
"Have we abandoned literature and the arts? Is what we watch on TV just utopian dreams of a technocracy? No one listens to music anymore?"
Where does he say this? I don't see it in my copy of the book.
"Our children are just automatons, mouths we resentfully and fearfully feed?"
Trans kids.
"Stop and think about the empirical reality of what Desmet is saying. Look at the real world."
I am, and I'm not impressed by what I see.
"Desmet says, "saturated with fear." That was us, pre-Covid, and we selected the most fearful data about Covid because that's who we are: the fearful data confirmed our fearful being. Is that really what happened?"
Partially, but it's not the whole picture.
Yes, I did make a caricature of Desmet's characterization of society.
Regardless of how imperfect we are as a society-- and we are-- I see zero evidence of widespread anxiety and fear and social isolation. Go to any ballgame, any concert, play, restaurant, bar, college, etc., and you'll not see what Desmet says we are.
Desmet minimizes the role of censorship and propaganda and greatly exaggerates societal atomization, and makes a false comparison between pre-Covid society and pre-Nazi society as Arendt described it. Why does he do this? Because his entire program is to "prove" that fear and anxiety weren't induced during High Covid through a massive conspiracy of censorship and propaganda but rather arose naturally through our own saturated fear, and one would assume our saturated atomization as well. There was no conspiracy! This is the entire point of Desmet's book; this idea isn't peripheral, it's what his entire argument is leading toward.
In any case I find your take on things interesting and look forward to reading the other parts when I have some free time.
Exactly how many mechanistic thinkers do you know, in percentage terms, who fit exactly the profile that Desmet gives? Longing for technocratic utopia, unable to think in terms other than those of mechanistic thinking? Alienated because of their demand for certainty that can't be satisfied in mechanistic terms? I've met lots of people. No one fits the bill.
Regarding my question about the arts, Desmet by implication says that we've abandoned anything but mechanistic thinking and that meaning for us isn't given by the arts or by life or our children, but by our yearning for technocratic utopia, the frustration of which yearning leads to fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.
"Partially, but not the whole picture" is my point. Desmet dismisses completely any notion of decades-long, even centuries-long evil conspiracy, and instead says that the fear and anxiety during Covid were the end results of Enlightenment thinking. He downplays the role of massive censorship and propaganda and exaggerates the anxiety that any society might have as individuals figure out how to make their way in the world and answer challenges. Death, illness, poverty, and taxes have always been with us.
You are the first person writing about this (that I know of) who has connected the work of Desmet to the work of Lobaczewski, though anyone following this subject closely would be aware of the latter.
For me, what academic psychology misses is filled in by the work of Hubbard. Hubbard is considered a pariah and a fake by most of academia, yet if you read his first book, and perhaps a few of his later essays, you might perhaps come to a different conclusion. When he offered his work to academia, it turned its back on him. So he turned to publishing "popular" works. Not the first or last to do so.
With Hubbard's finding that the personality is actually an immortal spiritual being, we begin to get a fuller grasp of what we are up against and why it has been so difficult to conquer our “chronic avoidance of the crux of the matter.” Hubbard also writes about psychopaths (which he refers to as Suppressive Persons or Anti-Social Personalities) as such people almost destroyed several of his organizations in the early years.
I feel blessed to have found three different perspectives on the same basic phenomenon. I have concentrated on studying Hubbard. I downloaded Political Ponerology, but found it extremely difficult reading. With Desmet, I am familiar with his ideas mostly through his interviews. One key objective is to find an "antidote" or protective skill that can keep us sane when facing the insane. If we can face them, I am confident that we could, at some point, disarm them.
I connected the two as well. I already knew that totalitarianism arises from the Cluster-B disorders coupled with circumstances surrounding the targets. That was old hat to me.
And I realized a few weeks after mid-March 2020 that we were in a Psy Op. Mattias Desmet announcing a Mass Formation had me saying, "I read Gustave Le Bon long ago, and this is not the first Mass Formation I have witnessed. Seems a bit like stating the obvious. Now if you could explain exactly how to stop these from happening again... "
Thanks for sharing, Larry. I haven't read any Hubbard - just familiar with the stuff that has made it into mainstream culture. There are definitely some correspondences, and I think an intelligent person would be able to make good use of some of those concepts, like "suppressive persons" (and prevent turning it into a form of doublespeak).
As for PP, the new edition is much easier to read that the original. I recommend you check it out again!
I was excited to see that you had made a connection with Desmet's and Iain McGilchrist's work. I have also made such a connection, but perhaps even more strongly. I recently wrote:
Combining the ideas of Mattias Desmet and Iain McGilchrist, I propose the following hypothesis: the mechanism by which the mass psychosis works is via a form of societal level hypnosis that literally puts peoples right brain hemisphere to sleep or into a state of hibernation.
This model predicts, for example, that since the evolutionary role of the right hemisphere’s way of attending to the world is the open sustained vigilance needed to look out for threats and predators, those under the spell will be left totally exposed to predatory forces.
They will be completely blind to clear and present dangers and warning signs, and will be unable to heed the warnings of those around them, until it is too late, even when it comes to the children.
Since the left hemisphere is intrinsically disconnected, and without empathy, people under the spell will be highly to susceptible and willing to engage in dehumanization and othering.
They will “lack appropriate emotional depth, or concern, tending to be irritable or facetious, especially when challenged”, “disown problems, and pass the responsibility to others”, be overconfident about what they cannot in the nature of things know much about; fabricates (often improbable) stories to cover ignorance”, “see parts at the expense of wholes”, “have an affinity for the inanimate, and for technological solutions”.
Then the “waking up of the masses” becomes the task of literally waking up the right hemispheres of people under the spell of mass psychosis. This cannot be simply achieved by argumentation with facts and logic, because this just feeds the left hemisphere over-activation, but must be done by appealing to the right hemisphere via re-connection to love and common humanity, through metaphor, comedy, poetry, music, awe and beauty."
"This model predicts, for example, that since the evolutionary role of the right hemisphere’s way of attending to the world is the open sustained vigilance needed to look out for threats and predators, those under the spell will be left totally exposed to predatory forces."
Just want to highlight this. What a stunning connection.
Thanks, and thanks for covering these topics in so much depth. I am huge fan of Iain McGilchrist, his work literally changed my life. One starts to see the predictions of his model playing out everywhere in humans, and I had lots of "ah ha" moments when listening to Mattias's podcast interviews. [McGilchrist even helped me understand my Parkinson's diagnosis, and predicted the changes I needed to make to reduce my symptoms https://www.outthinkingparkinsons.com/articles/divided-brain-1 . I asked Mattias if he was aware of Iain, and he replied that Iain had recently been in touch, and that they may doing a podcast episode together. That would really be something!
I agree it is a terriby insightful connection by Gary.
In fact, if this is true, it answers a whole set of questions.
Beautifully put, Gary. Thank you!
"This model predicts, for example, that since the evolutionary role of the right hemisphere’s way of attending to the world is the open sustained vigilance needed to look out for threats and predators, those under the spell will be left totally exposed to predatory forces.
They will be completely blind to clear and present dangers and warning signs, and will be unable to heed the warnings of those around them, until it is too late, even when it comes to the children."
Excellent insights, Gary.
First of all, I see in this model the version of Family Totalitarianism existing in families where at least one parent is pushing the Trans-gen. agenda on a child. They are either evil, or they are blind to the predatory and destructive nature of this.
Children themselves can fall under this hypnotic spell, usually induced in one way or another by the very predators the children will then have no warning signs against. In fact, once under the spell, they are likely to fawn towards the predator and to serve them. You see this in Stockholm Syndrome, or the Manson Family story, or in the Patty Hearst saga of the 70s, or the more recent tragic situation of the Karrie Neurauter case. All serving predators, seemingly willingly.
A Cluster-B type who is a parent, once mind-snapped themselves, can and will mind-snap the children into serving them and dehumanizing the other parent. Even though the predator parent is sucking the child dry in attending to their own Narcissistic demands for attention and admiration; the children are blind to this.
"This cannot be simply achieved by argumentation with facts and logic, "
OK...two thoughts on that, Gary.
Cult-kid Savior of the 70s, Ted Patrick, claims in his book that his method to awaken them from their spell was to re-activate critical thinking in these cult recruits. Though his detail is not all that abundant. He did have a decent success rate, going by the information available. Later, so-called Exit Counselors then followed suit by presenting to them factual information about the cult or guru that was perhaps unknown to these kids. However, families were usually involved, expressing their love and care. Which did the trick? I don't know.
The normal parents in the Parental Alienation disaster-world express a great deal of love too. Over and over. But that does not seem to get through. There must be another dimension which has to be triggered somehow. There are two individuals working publicly in what they describe as recovery for these families, but they do not publish their techniques, and the services themselves are very expensive. Hard to tell whether they have the answers.
"...a form of societal level hypnosis that literally puts peoples right brain hemisphere to sleep or into a state of hibernation."
Conway/Siegelman in the late 70s referred to this as the Mind-Snap. They were witnessing it in scores of cult recruits at the time.
Besides seeing the COVID Maniacs fall into this hypnosis, or the Germans of the 1930s, you can also see the phenomenon in Narcissistic Collapse. This hypnosis appears, too, in the children who are weaponized under Parental Alienation.
"Since the left hemisphere is intrinsically disconnected, and without empathy, people under the spell will be highly to susceptible and willing to engage in dehumanization and othering."
I have seen this spell up close and personal in other human beings. Sends shivers down one's spine.
I don't know whether anyone here is aware of the version of this spell that is called "Parental Alienation". This involves a triggered Cluster-B personality weaponizing the children against the other parent, as the Cluster-B type has entered a paranoid delusion that the other parent is somehow the cause of their fears/fantasies. The other parent becomes the proxy, and the scapegoat, for whoever caused unresolved trauma in the early life of the Cluster-B type.
The children are pulled into a Shared Psychosis/Mass Formation. The mind-snap. It can be very sudden. They often enter a zombie-land which includes hatred, cruelty, spying, shunning towards the normal parent. Reminds me of cult followers in the extremist cults. Or Hamas followers spouting hatred against Jews. Or COVID Maniacs wanting to attack the un-vaxxed.
This is a form of family totalitarianism. But the Desmet work could shed no light on it.
Remarkably good analysis of an excellent book that contributes significantly to the conversation about human nature.
May I propose that our relatively recent discovery of concentrated energy in the form of fossil fuels laid the foundation for the latest round of totalitarianism? It provided human beings, and scientists in particular with the power and affluence to invent completely new tools to exploit nature's resources and human resources to the point of exhaustion while simultaneously toxifying our ecosphere and making ourselves profoundly sick physically, emotionally and spiritually. Collectively, we've lost our way.
We are not really an intelligent species because we could easily have seen this coming. Many Cassandras came forward, but we wanted our houses, cars, boats and devices more than our health, peace of mind and connection to our communities. Oh well. It will all be over soon and our Mother Earth will begin an entirely new cycle of death and rebirth. If we don't completely sterilize the planet or burn it up. So sad.
"Mass formation is, in essence, a kind of group hypnosis that destroys individuals’ ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically. "
Sometimes referred to as the mind-snap. Seen in cults and in Narcissistic Collapse. Also seen during COVID Mania when once-normal individuals suddenly had serious personality changes.
“...an exaggerated willingness of individuals to sacrifice their own personal interests out of solidarity with the collective (i.e., the masses),"
You see this self-sacrifice in a family with one or both parents who are alcoholics/addicts and parentify the children. One child will always give up their own life to try to save the family. They become precociously responsible, but always for the family, never for the goal of progressing in their own lives.
"Totalitarianism arises from evolutions and tendencies that take place in our day-to-day lives."
Yes. Several observers of the Cluster-B relationships would say that the target is involved psychologically as well as the predator. Just from opposite ends of the spectrum. A person with lack of Self who is "too good" will naturally attract like a magnet a person with equal lack of Self who is "too bad".
The account of the conjoined Russian twin sisters of the 1950s illustrates this as well as anything I have read -- "The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep" by Juliet Butler.