For many, the overly-authoritarian response by governments worldwide to COVID-19 pointed to some deeper, more sinister driving force. But it hasn’t just been the governments that seemed to be acting strange. Over the last two years, we’ve witnessed people across a broad spectrum of society meekly submit to draconian attacks on their freedoms, many even fiercely defending the assault. In the same way, we’ve seen politicians and parties who once ran on platforms of personal freedom and economic autonomy almost overnight turn into overbearing control freaks, intent on micromanaging every aspect of our lives. How has this happened?
Recently, the term ‘mass formation psychosis’
has been on everybody’s lips. It’s defined as a psychological phenomenon
whereby a mass of people voluntarily go through a process of
deindividuation, and a herd mentality forms. Due to their contagious
nature, the thoughtforms affecting these deindividuated people,
catalysed by the positive feedback loops of news programmes, social
media and peer interaction, spread like wildfire throughout the
population. In the past, this used to be called mob psychology, or more
plainly, the madness of crowds....<<<Read More>>>...