Crowd Hypnosis and the Church

This commentary is a clarion call to all Christians. From about 2016, we've seen an escalation in distrust and rage, across the political, social, and racial landscapes. It's been alarming, at best. The general theme has blamed Trump for just about everything, and in the last two years, we've suffered the ongoing repercussions of a global pandemic. However, I'm concerned about deeper reasons behind the current global unrest, reasons that centre on what I believe are the consequences of killing God. With no moral consensus, we’re left with a vacuum for those striving to free themselves of religious constraints. Now we face the ideological repercussions of no objectively shared principles that restrain social chaos. Humanity is suffering a moral crisis without consensus about why it happened, or how to resolve it.

It's somewhat ironic witnessing the spiritual poverty of those striving for solutions, and more than interesting that they invariably refer to biblical precepts to replace the death of the author. One has only to watch clips of intellectual heavyweight Jordan Peterson as he grapples with biblical concepts that underpin the current global psychosis. I've come to respect the intellectual gravitas of Peterson as he wrestles with the biblical narrative because it's done with integrity and precision, he clearly understands and conveys the severity of many social issues and their relationship to the existential truths within the Biblical narrative. However, as he expands on these from a psychological perspective, he carefully avoids the person about whom, the entire biblical corpus was written, the person in whom the solution exists. The death of God cannot be replaced with subjective morality, and provide an objective solution unless we believe an objective solution exists in the first place. It’s quite rational to suggest that any civil society requires a plumbline beyond itself, that everyone can agree to. Then we can decide what right and wrong are. Neither can it be resolved with psychological analysis, because we're not agreeable or clever.

And now to the mess that is Covid 19, and the global push toward state control and social dependency? My question is, where is the church in all this? Where is the Church standing up for right and wrong, or at the very least voicing an opinion or objection? At what point will it decide to stand against tyranny and secular ideologies that assume the moral high ground, and manipulate humanity towards some utopic vision of humanity without God? I do believe what we see happening is evil in real-time, politicized evil that takes advantage of impotent religious institutions and legislates its idolatries to control the human race. Ironically, the pandemic is the least of our concerns when compared to the political overreach of those moving us towards communist idealism. In general, the Church appears apathetic, cowing down to mandates of control, so at what point will it see the consequences of unbridled power and unite on moral principles, if nothing else? At what point will it stop the separating of believers into clean and unclean? It concerns me that the situation has become increasingly dark, and despite the autocratic approach to mandates the most common argument I hear from the Church, is that we should obey the laws of the land, and submit to those in authority, an interesting point of view. However, if this is the defining theological position for the Church to take in the current situation then no biblical argument is left for Christians to refuse a mark on their forehead or wrist because the same justifications will be made in the future. Covid will never be eliminated, any more than we can eliminate flu. We now know the vaccines do not work, with efficacy rates becoming more suspect as time goes by. Vaccines are not as we traditionally understand them and aren't preventing re-infection as we were led to believe, and the vaccinated are not protected. Therefore, in all likelihood, the risk of contracting some strain of Covid will always be with us, so when Church leaders continue to separate people and enforce the wearing of masks under the guise of caring and keeping everyone safe, the evidence of rampant infection rates among the fully vaccinated doesn't appear to support this. However, in time Churches will indeed stop these practices, but only when governments say they can. Ironically the dangers of Covid will still be present and the risks just as great, but those in authority will suggest, as if by magic, and one stroke of a pen, Covid has somehow changed, and our safety has been restored. This alone exposes the utter stupidity of low-resolution thinking in the first place.

If nothing else the Covid19 pandemic has exposed how evil will use crowd hypnosis to manipulate, subdue, and crush the Church. Our response today, at this time, might be seen as foreshadowing end-time events. It’s an opportunity to examine our response and the response of the Christian community in its reaction to the demands of dictatorial authority. At the same time I'm concerned about the conflating of fear and keeping people safe. Fear is not a legitimate biblical response, period. Fear should never be a reason to exercise mandates over the Body of Christ. The evidence of fear should be addressed if nothing else. This includes fear of the disease and the fear of financial penalties.  Ideally, the Body of Christ is a spiritual counter-culture, set apart, united in objective truth and moral imperatives, standing against measures that undermine the authority of God. The threat posed by Covid requires some degree of responsibility and choosing isolation is a personal decision but autocratic mandates are not how Jesus dealt with the issue of leprosy. Sadly, most are submitting, even openly supporting mandates that will harm people's lives, families, and security for years to come. They will destroy the social and economic foundations that support civil society. At best this is driven by naivety, at worst by religious pride, because consciously separating Christians in this manner more accurately resembles the authority of a political/religious institution, not servants of Christ. No matter how leaders spin and weaponise the rhetoric around caring for the vulnerable, these actions presume one section of those in Christ are so irresponsible, infectious, and conveniently uncaring, to prolong this intellectual absurdity.

The current narrative from the pulpit of truth about keeping the people safe is a red herring to cover political, financial, and hospital inadequacies, not some Christian ethic about caring. This is about political expediency and our inability to cope with subjective possibilities. Many Churches are reacting under the fear of financial penalties, and it's somewhat ironic that by submitting and taking the same punitive response on its own, it becomes complicit in the tyranny of those who seek to expand authoritarian control, the same tyranny that seeks to destroy the very existence of God.

The following is an academic summary of the methodology that evil uses to institute control over social, political, and religious institutions. Professor Mattias Desmet is a leading psychological expert on tyranny, totalitarianism, and “crowd hypnosis or formation”. Below is a summary from Professor Desmet about how crowd hypnosis forms.

Mattias Desmet is a lecturer in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at the Department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Consulting, Ghent University, Belgium. Research at the department has a strong clinical and practice-oriented focus. Matthias works as a clinical psychologist in private practice himself. In his research program, he focuses on the process and outcome of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

In my last post “Victims of Social Engineering”, I stated somewhat crudely, “Lockdowns have become safe places for those who revel in isolation dysphoria, and the denial of freedoms a type of righteous self-flagellation, that provides security to those with little else to live for. Unfortunately, it also exposes the worst elements of the human condition, as the mob is consumed with self-preservation and rallies around the source of all truth to pimp and tell”. Dr. Desmet expands on the implications of mass psychosis in the following link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLDpZ8daIVM.

Parents who are currently vaccinating their kids, so eagerly, are stepping into the crowd consciousness called ‘mass formation’. This social change happens when there is, or has been a period of free-floating anxiety - and it is a step on the road to a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism always starts with a mass formation inside the population - it is not the same as a dictatorship. In a dictatorship, people obey out of basic fear of the dictator at the top. Totalitarianism is the opposite ...... people are hypnotized into obedience ‘for the good of the collective’.

We see this mass formation finding newfound solidarity together as a collective. It helps to provide a solution for their anxiety. The narrative and the ideology around the pandemic and vaccinations has become ‘the object of anxiety where the free-floating anxiety has found a target, an object. All they know is their anxiety is gone and they now have an answer to their anxiety and have new meaning and a new sense of solidarity.

They are changed when this happens. They’re not rational anymore, and not thinking critically like they once did. This is why we all know once intelligent and compassionate friends that are now dumbed down and won’t listen to any different voices. They’re intolerant and even cruel. In hypnotism, the focus narrows and narrows until the subject cannot see outside their very narrow view of what is real.

Mass formation needs four conditions to take place. This has now happened. The anxiety and lonely isolation many felt before the pandemic, and during the pandemic, found their perfect ‘object of anxiety and is solidly locked onto the pandemic and vaccination narrative. They cannot be tolerant or allow dissent or different voices and don't want to even hear any questioning. If they wake up their ‘terrible anxiety’ will return. The leaders of the mass formation cannot allow the mass to wake up either because when the mass wakes up and sees the true damage and loss, they will be angry at those that did the damage.” This is currently a social crisis and we do have a part to play.

Professor Desmet explains: “30% of people are deeply hypnotized. 40% are not, but go along with the crowd. If this 40% stop hearing dissenting voices of reason, they will unite with the hypnotized to go along with the plan. The last section, the 30% that cannot be hypnotized, must keep speaking out. In totalitarianism when the last voices of dissent give up and become silent - the mass then starts committing atrocities for the sake of solidarity, and of the collective.

The unhypnotized 30% are a mixed band of different groups and varied religions and politics. If we don't find common ground to unite, we lose. And without the brave and continued voices of dissent those 40% fall. Professor Desmet says the hypnotism and mass formation he now sees is a condition clearly leading to totalitarianism. In a totalitarian state, once normal people begin to commit atrocities, they think they are righteous. 

If we unite the 30% who are awake and we stand together speaking every day to everyone we meet against the mass formation - against the narrative - the mass formation dissolves and the crisis is ended. You don't have to say a lot, just little things like: “none of this makes sense”, or “the figures tell a different story”. We must go out of our way to say it, or we will indeed reap the consequences of our inactivity.