The Madness of Crowds revisited, 5 years post-Covid.
Retaining immunity to mind viruses isn't easy.
“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, one by one.”
— Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841)
According to Mattias Desmet’s theory of mass formation (discussed during Covid), roughly 30% of the population does not fall under the spell or "hypnotized" state of mass hysteria.
Sounds tidy, right?
However, since Covid the "dissident" community from the Covid era has fractured into opposing camps on a range of issues as fresh mass hysterias have emerged to infect the impassioned crowd.
If some people are naturally more resistant to mass hysteria, it would always be the same people who manage to avoid getting infected by the latest mind virus. All the same dissidents would find themselves standing together on the same side of every issue, time and time again. And all the same people who got caught up in the last hysteria would invariably get caught up in the next one.
But clearly that has not been the case. Not even close.
Immunity to one bout of mass hysteria is no guarantee that you will have immunity to the next.
So, resistance to mass hysteria obviously does not come from some genetic predisposition, nor is there some kind of lifetime psychological immunity.
It changes from issue to issue.
Most likely, personal circumstances play the biggest role. In some cases, being away from the crowd gives people time to reflect. Or personal familiarity with an issue or the people involved might create the disconnect needed to recognize the mass hysteria. Or the luck of seeing some comment or post that makes you think about something differently than what the crowd is discussing. Or how many in your close tribe fall prey and sweep you along.
And some people simply have a habit of verifying original sources and thus are in the habit of testing and retesting their own ideas -- it's not that they are immune to propaganda and conspiracy theories and mass hysteria, but rather that their habits provide a mechanism to lead them back out. But, considering how the Covid dissident community has fractured since then, this category of people seems to be vanishingly small indeed.
It's also worth noting that mass hysteria can arise from different places (i.e. government propaganda vs crowd-sourced), which also either sets you up to be more or less likely to fall prey to either type of mass hysteria depending on your psychological state.
For example, if, due to a prior experience, you have completely lost your trust in government institutions or legacy media, that would make you more resistant to official propaganda. Whereas if you have high trust in those institutions because you've never had a transformative run-in with how flawed they are, you're likely more easily misled by government and media propaganda.
By contrast, the inverse is also true. If you don't trust government institutions or legacy media, that might actually make you more susceptible to falling into some crowd-sourced conspiracy theory because you extend greater trust to "dissident voices" that provide alternate explanations for how the world works -- after all, in order to make sense of the world, if you don't trust the government and the media, you're probably already receptive to alternate explanations, some of which lead directly down the rabbit hole.
Whereas those who have a high degree of trust in government and media institutions are likely relatively immune to crowd-sourced conspiracy theories because they're not out there looking for alternate ways of making sense of the world and aren't likely to extend their trust to someone who isn't some media-approved institutional expert.
Furthermore, if someone you trusted as a reliable source of information during the last mass hysteria falls for the next one, your trust in them might easily lead you down the same rabbit hole.
In short, while there may be some validity to Desmet's idea that 30% are immune, it's a little more complicated than that. Clearly it's not the same 30% every time. Not even close.
If anything, if you're busy congratulating yourself that you managed to avoid getting caught up in the mass hypnosis the last time, you may actually be overconfident in your ability to resist the next one and thus not have enough self-doubt to question your most strongly held opinions, which might just turn out to be dead wrong this time around.
That's why, no matter how confident you are in what you believe, the only safeguard to prevent you from deceiving yourself is the habit of continually putting all your beliefs to the test, verifying original sources, and giving consideration to what those you don't agree with are saying.
As Richard Feynman so famously said:
~ ~ ~
I posted this commentary on X over the weekend. As I write this, it already has over 70k views, and the comments have been extremely thought-provoking.
~ ~ ~
I’ll have an update for you all soon as to why I’ve been so quiet over these past months. In the meantime, if you enjoyed this piece please consider leaving a little something in my tipjar — every penny will go towards the setup of our farm (more on that soon 😀)...
Best regards,
Julius
testing and retesting their own ideas - that, and avoid crowds. Avoid all mass media, go into the woods with the dog and ask her what she thinks! Usually they think fun, food, and sleep. Be very flexible with ideas, nothing is settled. As the old Greek (Heraclitos I think) said, nothing is more certain than that nothing is for certain. You can not step in the same river twice. So checking the water is crucial, and also checking yourself! Great piece. And yes, the 30% is fluctuating constantly, too.
It has been one of my greatest disappointments to witness the fracture of the "freedom community" after the Covid nonsense died down. Julius, you have been one of the few who (I believe) have remained consistent throughout. I really hope I'm not fooling myself!