Last year, after listening to three interviews with Mattias Desmet, I introduced his idea to my Arabic audience as ”The most important thing you can read on my website”. By now I have read his amazing book “The Psychology of Totalitarianism”, listened to many more interviews with Him, and I still think that his ideas are the most important ideas I have came across since 2009.
These are my reader questions to the Mattias Desmet. I am publishing them here hoping they will be picked up and discussed with Mattias in his interviews.
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I totally agree with your view on science and its role in the current mass formation, however, I wonder about your ideas about feudalism. This social/economical system ruled the world for centuries, and millions of people believed in the divine right to own and rule other people. Millions sacrificed their lives in battles between rulers. Was that a mass formation? And was science the key driver behind it, or something else, possibly religion?
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Some traces of feudalism still exists in some areas of the world. However, now we see multiple new social hierarchical systems like socialism, capitalism, and democracy. Nowadays millions of people believe in democracy and wars are being fought to spread it. Is the belief in democracy, or a dictatorship of a apparent voting majority, a type of mass formation? And does science play a role in it?
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I also agree with your views about Technocracy, however, I did not read your definition of Technocracy. Is Technocracy in your view the same movement we read about in “Technocracy Rising” by Patrick Wood, or some other concept promoted by the likes of Yuval Noah Harari?
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The book says in Chapter 5: “The comparison between religious, indigenous, and modern systems of law is far beyond the scope of this book, but there’s no doubt that differences exists.” I wonder whether you think a superior set of laws exists in nature regardless of our recognition? (chapter 9 has an indication that the answer is Yes) And whether our recognition of these laws has a psychological effect on every one of us, and can play a role in preventing mass formation?
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Chapter 11 starts by “Totalitarianism is the belief that human intellect can be the guiding principle in life and society” Do you consider that those who believe that their human intellect can guide them in their life and social interactions are totalitarians? What would be a good guiding principle for life and society in your view? And what is your guiding principle in life and society?
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You clearly describe the difference between a totalitarian state and dictatorship, and I agree with your ideas, however, I see that most governments behaved like dictatorships in the COVID mass formation. They used the voices of Fauci and Van Ranst and others to hypnotize their public into obedience, and once they secured their grip on the masses, they relaxed their measures, and abolished their ritualistic mandates, even though the hypnotized masses wanted even more stricter rituals. Where have I gone wrong here?
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Although I love your book and agree with most of your ideas, I would like to challenge your narrative using Nassim Taleb’s idea about “the cemetery of silent evidence”. The crusaders and witch hunters, and Ayatollah followers were not hypnotized by a mechanistic narrative, but by a spiritual view of the world. Bismarck, Napoleon, Luis IV, and other monarchs did not use the scientific mechanistic view of the world to hypnotize their “citizens” into offering their lives for artificial constructs as “France” or “Prussia”, but used a secular nationalistic view, or what we now call “geopolitical view”. Therefore, I think there is enough historical evidence that the spiritual view of the world, and possibly other concepts or ideologies, can lead to mass formations just like the mechanistic view. Your narrative focuses the reader’s attention on a single cause of mass formation, while trying to help us broaden our view. Did I misunderstand your point here?
Al Saleh
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