I recently came across the phenomenon called mass formation and that’s a crazy and scary thing. But it also explained two things for me, so, I am sharing with you.
I recommend listening to this podcast episode with a Belgian professor of clinical psychology. He studied that thing and can explain it better than me. It’s time well spent.
This phenomenon gave me 2 aha-moments. A plausible answer why my ancestors could breed something like the nazis and what I am seeing right now in the world.
In short, a Mass formation is a mass hypnosis, meaning a whole group or society is affected and not a single individual. And those affected will start to act and introduce rituals that look strangely from the outside but are totally normal for the affected.
And it can turn worse quickly because it needs an enemy which then can be hunted relentlessly. And end in things like the 2nd world war before the phenomenon finally kills itself. If nobody prevents it.
But there need to be a few conditions met for that thing to breed. A critical mass of people needs to:
- feel a lack of social bonds
- feel a lack of meaning-making / sense-making in life
- have free-floating anxiety (anxiety not connected to a mental representation (e.g. see lion = feel anxiety = connected))
- have free-floating aggression & frustration
And now someone comes up with a story and connects those free-floating feelings to something and introduces rituals, etc, it creates a chance to breed this mass formation.
Then it will go nuts if any opposition is lost and finally destroys itself. Or there’s enough opposition and people can get out of it before shit hits the fan.
So, if many people feel lonely, lose their social bonds, work in life-sucking jobs, feeling anxiety all over the place without being able to pinpoint it to something particular, and feel frustrated with life, society or whatever, they become open to your story.
If you tell them now, red socks are the cause of their anxiety, and spraying citrus oil on your arm helps, and dancing naked under a plan tree too, and enough join and some really start believing it…
And then you see people spraying citrus oil on their arms and you wonder wtf are they doing. Or you might join in because it affects you and the pre-conditions are met.
As the professor mentions, as long as there’s an opposition, the masses can wake up again and the thing can end without turning to the worst.
But if there’s no opposition left or too powerless, there’s no limit anymore. Now wearers of red socks become the evil and must be eliminated at all cost, you know just because. And at some point, the whole thing turns against itself and finally dies.
And the survivors wake up and wonder wtf just happened.
Crazy, isn’t it?
What shit our mind can do.
Now, your turn to watch the video too and reflect on the topic.