Perhaps you will enjoy this passage, but perhaps you will find it disturbing. Here is one of my favorite passages on the fact that we are not ultimately (in any meaningful way) the conscious authors of what we do. The passage is from Johnson/Lakoff,Philosophy in the Flesh:
Consider, for example, all that is going on below the level of conscious awareness when you are in a conversation. Here is only a small part of what you are doing, second by second:
Accessing memories relevant to what is being said.
Comprehending a stream of sound as being language, dividing it into distinctive phonetic features and segments, identifying phonemes, and grouping them into morphemes
Assigning a structure to the sentence in accord with the vast number of grammatical constructions in your native language
Picking out words and giving them meanings appropriate the context
Making semantic and pragmatic sense of the sentences as a whole
Framing what is said in terms relevant to the discussion
Performing inferences relevant to what is being discussed
Constructing mental images where relevant and inspecting them
Filling in gaps in the discourse
Noticing and interpreting your interlocutor’s body language
Anticipating where the conversation is going
Planning what to say in response
Cognitive scientists have shown experimentally that to understand even the simplest utterance, we must perform these and other incredibly complex forms of thought automatically and without noticeable effort below the level of consciousness. It is not merely that we occasionally do not notice these processes; rather; they are inaccessible to conscious awareness and control.
The above passage should severely reduce our confidence in introspection as a tool for what is going inside of us, as part of "cognition." And, in fact, the work of Johnson and Lakoff requires us to expand the geography of "cognition" to include far more than the brain. It needs to include the entire human body:
As is the practice in cognitive science, we will use the term cognitive in the richest possible sense to describe any mental operations and structures that are involved in language, meaning, perception, conceptual systems, and reason. Because our conceptual systems and our reason arise from our bodies, we will also use the term cognitive for aspects of our sensory-motor system that contribute to our abilities to conceptualize and to reason, Since cognitive operations are largely unconscious, the term cognitive unconscious accurately describes all unconscious mental operations concerned with conceptual systems, meaning, inference, and language.
As Desmet describes at 14 min (and summarizes at 19:45), there are four conditions for MFP:
1. Lack of social bonds
2. Lack of meaning making
3. High levels of free floating anxiety. They don't know why they are anxious and it is very distressing/painful for humans to experience because of the lack of control, resulting in risk of developing panic attack. They actively look for something to which they can attach the free-floating anxiety, something they can control.
4. High levels of free floating frustration and aggression
What happens when these conditions exist? Desmet explains: A narrative is disseminated that A) indicates an object for the anxiety and B) offers a strategy/solution for this object of anxiety. As a result of this narrative, all of the free-floating anxiety attaches to the object of anxiety offered by the narrative, resulting in a over-willingness to participate in the strategy.
In present times, the object of the anxiety is the virus and the strategy is the lockdown, social distancing and other corona measures. MFH allows people to feel that they can control their anxiety by participating in the strategy. When large groups of people participate in the strategy, it leads to a new social bond, new connectedness, a new solidarity, and this leads to a new sense-making in life. In other words, life becomes meaningful through the heroic struggle with the object of anxiety (the virus). COVID led to a new solidarity because everyone participated in a heroic collective battle with the virus. As social beings, we switched from isolation to the new strong social bond (or solidarity) with large masses of other people. This is why people enthusiastically buy into the corona narrative even if it is utterly absurd. For those not caught up in MFH, they are amazed that others so often utter such absurdities.
Those caught up in the narrative don't do so because the narrative (the set of extreme COVID measures) is correct. Rather, they do so because they seek the new powerful social bonds. Many of the measures are not relevant or true, but they function as rituals in which people participate in order to connect to the masses of others caught up in the narrative. The more absurd and unscientific the COVID measures and the more that sacrifice is demanded, the better the measures function as rituals. This fits the general function of rituals: a behavior that you participate in not because it is functional to protect you from the virus, but to show to the tribe/collective that the collective is more important than the individual. You would be in error to think that as COVID measures become more absurd, more people will wake up to the insanity, but that is an illusion. The more absurd the measures become, the more blinded certain people will become.
Mass Formation is a type of hypnosis. In hypnosis, the attention of an individual is hyper-focused on a very small part of reality, making the rest of reality disappear into darkness. People caught up don't realize that in obsessing over the COVID measures, they are losing much else, meaning that they lose interest in cost/benefit analyses. Even substantial losses are a small price to pay in order for one to feel that one is part of the heroic struggle against COVID. This has led to an aggressive stance toward heterodox outsiders, people who question the narrative, such as Dr. Robert Malone. The masses always need a common enemy, which includes the virus as well as the people who don't fall completely in line.
At Min 30, Blumenthal applies the theory to many political movements in sadomasochistic fashion. These phenomenon are always destructive and self-destructive. Desmet adds: The exclusive focus on one part of reality to the neglect of the rest of reality inevitably leads to self-destruction. George Orwell noticed that the masses, the crowd, exists because it has to channel/satisfy its frustration/aggression and it needs to attach its anxiety to a certain object--and once an object of anxiety is destroyed, the crowd seeks a new object of anxiety, which also must be destroyed. Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism. She noticed the in its effort to keep reattaching its aggression to new objects of anxiety, the masses become a monster and the system destroys itself.
Desmet fears that we are seeing the emergence of a new totalitarian state, exactly as Hannah Arendt predicted, not led by gang leaders but by dull bureaucrats and technocrats, pursuant to her concept of the banality of evil. We can see this by the extreme COVID response in Australia. These measure are palpably absurd to those not caught up in the narrative. Arendt warned: once you accept the starting point, there is no stopping. You feel compelled to accept all the rest.
This theory of Mass Formation Hypnosis would appear to have ubiquitous applications--wherever anxiety is widespread. This theory has screamingly obvious application to the formation of many religions, for example.
Relevant to the above: Joe Rogan's guest, Dr. Robert Malone was recently deplatformed by Twitter, a stunning development, given Malone's credentials:
Dr. Robert Malone is the inventor of the nine original mRNA vaccine patents, which were originally filed in 1989 (including both the idea of mRNA vaccines and the original proof of principle experiments) and RNA transfection. Dr. Malone, has close to 100 peer-reviewed publications which have been cited over 12,000 times. Since January 2020, Dr. Malone has been leading a large team focused on clinical research design, drug development, computer modeling and mechanisms of action of repurposed drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. Dr. Malone is the Medical Director of The Unity Project, a group of 300 organizations across the US standing against mandated COVID vaccines for children. He is also the President of the Global Covid Summit, an organization of over 16,000 doctors and scientists committed to speaking truth to power about COVID pandemic research and treatment.
I'm trying to work through this concept of "Identify." What does it mean to "identify" as something? I noticed Colin Wright asking the same question:
Colin Wright:
I've still yet to hear a coherent definition of "identity" in the "I identify as ____" sense. I'm not convinced anybody knows what they're talking about. I think we'd all be a lot better off if we just buried that term and used a few more words to communicate an actual thought.
--
I'm an atheist. I don't "identify" as an atheist, I simply am one because I don't believe in God. I'm a biologist. I don't "identify" as a biologist, I simply am one because that's what I studied. I am straight. I don't "identify" as straight, I am simply attracted to females.
Where does "identity" come into it? Is it just the sum total of my experiences, behavioral tendencies, personality, beliefs, likes & dislikes? Well that seems infinitely complex and impossible to label.
"Identity" seems entirely meaningless and unnecessary. What am I missing?
Erich Vieth: [This is a work in progress.]
My take. When someone "identities" as a X, they like to think of themselves as an X and they expect others to nod complete uncritical agreement and pretend that it always denotes real world accomplishment, though it's often faux heroism or a cheap signal of tribal membership.
"Do the Next Right Thing" is a phrase that has often focused me. Where did this phrase originate? The Marginalian explains that on December 15, 1933, Carl Jung responded to a woman who had asked his guidance on how to live. Jung wrote:
Dear Frau V.,
Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one. If that’s what you want you had best join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what’s what. Moreover this way fits in with the average way of mankind in general. But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious. Then it is naturally no help at all to speculate about how you ought to live. And then you know, too, that you cannot know it, but quietly do the next and most necessary thing. So long as you think you don’t yet know what this is, you still have too much money to spend in useless speculation. But if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate. With kind regards and wishes,
A New Trend in Psychotherapy: Encouraging Learned Helplessness. In this video by FAIR, Christine Sefein, a professor of clinical psychology discusses her resignation from Antioch College. She could no longer thrive in a department that now seeks to validate its patients' claims of learned helplessness and identitarian blaming. The new approach also intentionally overlooks maladaptive behaviors. According to Sefein, this new approach destructively locks people into a belief that they are powerless. This new approach endangers patients who are feeling desperate.
This new affirmation therapy taught by Antioch is a major change from traditional approaches to psychotherapy, which properly emphasized empowering therapy, adaptive coping skills, strong social support system, exercise, meditation and, when needed, medication.
Making this situation all-the-worse is the well documented rise in anxiety depression and self-harm among young adults.
For more on FAIR (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism) visit FAIR's extensive website and videos.
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