Mattias Desmet is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Ghent University in Belgium.
He focuses on mass crowd formation, totalitarianism, mass hypnosis, indoctrination and, basically, how the human mind works.
There has long been a steady increase in the number of depression and anxiety problems and the number of suicides.
Mattias Desmet
The year before the corona outbreak, you could feel this malaise growing exponentially.
Why did people go bonkers?
I’d like to know how it is that millions of people suddenly believed that permanently wearing a mask and standing far away from perfectly healthy people, was a good idea.
It’s as if a switch was flipped.
Neighbours reported one another for walking their dogs. Greetings changed from handshakes to elbow bumps. Fear campaigns dominated the media.
It was bonkers.
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Mattias believes that this ‘pandemic’ was less biological and more psychological.
Mass formation, as he calls it, is a phenomenon that occurs when a large group of people develop irrational beliefs or engage in collective behaviour that defies logic.
Akin to a cult.
Humans copy one another
One theory, apparently, is the power of social influence.
Humans are social creatures who seek guidance, validation and belonging from others. When many people around us believe or do something, we might feel compelled to follow, even if it goes against our own beliefs.
Principles fall away.
Hence the “sheeple” label.
And why, for the love of sanity, were hospital staff making choreographed TikTok videos during a ‘deadly pandemic’?
Conversation
During a crisis (or a ‘crisis’), people become anxious, confused, or powerless and, in search of stability and security, they latch onto simplistic explanations or adopt extreme beliefs that promise certainty and control.
Free-floating anxiety, says Mattias.
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche
