According to Prof. Mattias Desmet, the four conditions that allow mass formation – popularly referred to as crowd psychology – to emerge are: a lack of social bonds; people experiencing life as meaningless or senseless; free-floating anxiety; and free-floating frustration and aggression. In recent years, going back decades, these conditions have been building up within our modern societies.
As I mentioned in a previous essay, social
anxiety and psychological suffering were already growing exponentially
even before the pandemic outbreak of 2020. The foundations for
establishing a mass psychology were existent in many, if not most, of
our industrialized societies and cultures before the traumatic
experience of the current pandemic. At such junctures of psychological
vulnerability, a shift of attachment – that is, a transference of
identification – can be achieved rapidly. What has likely occurred
within the past 18 months has been a widescale process of reprogrammed
solidarity....<<<Read More>>>....
