{"id":1612494,"date":"2022-08-18T08:39:40","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T12:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1612494"},"modified":"2022-08-18T08:39:45","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T12:39:45","slug":"was-the-covid-pandemic-a-needed-crisis-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/was-the-covid-pandemic-a-needed-crisis-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Was the COVID Pandemic a \u201cNeeded Crisis\u201d? (+ Video)"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwas-the-covid-pandemic-a-needed-crisis-video%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1612494&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>Prof. Dr. Mattias Desmet explains his theory of mass formation as it relates to the COVID pandemic and responds to criticism<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>In an Epoch Health podcast, Dr. Ann Corson spoke with Prof. Dr. Mattias Desmet, the world\u2019s leading expert on the theory of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-mass-formation\">mass formation<\/a> and its application on the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Desmet discussed the degeneration of modern science and explained the effects this has had on society, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and how this had led to a global mass formation. He goes into great detail on what exactly causes mass formation and how people can resist the mass.<\/p>\n<p>Prof. Dr. Desmet is a professor of clinical psychology in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University in Belgium and a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist. His work is widely discussed in Forbes, The Joe Rogan Experience, Fox News, The New York Post among hundreds of other media outlets and his interviews have millions of views. His previous works include \u201cThe Pursuit of Objectivity in Psychology\u201d and \u201cLacan\u2019s Logic of Subjectivity: A Walk on the Graph of Desire\u201d and over a hundred peer-reviewed academic papers. In 2018 he received the Evidence-Based Psychoanalytic Case Study Prize of the Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and in 2019 he received the Wim Trijsburg Prize of the Dutch Association of Psychotherapy. His latest book is the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/books\/the-psychology-of-totalitarianism\/9781645021728\">The Psychology of Totalitarianism<\/a>,\u201d a psychological analysis that builds on the seminal \u201cThe Origins of Totalitarianism\u201d by Hannah Arendt.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Corson has four decades of clinical practice. Her patient population includes people who are immunocompromised due to conditions such as Lyme disease and co-infections as well as mold-induced illness. She treats patients with an integrative approach and is known internationally for her success. Dr. Corson grew up in Southeastern Pennsylvania and obtained the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1982 from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, PA. She has been board certified in Family Medicine and in Integrative Holistic Medicine. Today, she has a solo integrative practice in Philadelphia and cares deeply about medical ethics and humanity. In 2008, she joined the non-profit organization Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of DAFOH\u2019s e-newsletter.<\/p>\n<h2>Science: From \u2018Truth Speech\u2019 to a Dogmatic Ideology<\/h2>\n<p>During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were many questionable methodologies used by the scientific community to justify their actions. However, in order for these actions to be taken in the first place, there needed to be a system in place to enable such things to happen. Dr. Desmet explained that science, once a form of truthful observation and thinking, devolved into a dogmatic ideology.<\/p>\n<p>In the beginning, around the 17th century, \u201cscience represented a discourse through which a minority went against an established discourse,\u201d namely established religion. In the beginning, science was a pragmatic form of truthful speaking, it was to listen to what nature had to say and observe the phenomena of nature, \u201cwithout being blinded or [deafened] because of the prejudices and the \u2026 dogmas of the mainstream discourse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor us, slowly, this minority became the dominant, and the more it became the dominant discourse itself, the more dogmatic [it became].\u201d It evolved from looking at the world in an open-minded way to an ideology or belief. Belief means prejudice, and people started to believe the universe was a machine, \u201cthat nothing existed except material particles,\u201d that everything was logically deductible, he explained. \u201cThat\u2019s what science, the scientific ideology, represents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen a certain theory, a certain view of the world, starts to become dominant, when the majority of the people start to believe in a certain discourse, that discourse becomes the privileged instrument\u2014to manipulate society, to be successful, for instance, to win money, to have a grip on society and so on. And that\u2019s what happened with scientific discourse,\u201d he said. This resulted in this perverted state of science, especially in the medical sciences.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Desmet said that, for him, it all began in 2005, when \u201cit became clear that for instance, in the medical sciences, up to 85 percent of the papers cannot be reproduced, which is dramatic, of course.\u201d A separate research group, for example, would repeat the same analysis on the same data and find radically different results than the first research group.<\/p>\n<p>It became clear that several factors played a role, such as massive errors in calculation and statistical analysis. \u201cMany scientists used [the] wrong methods to analyze data, [they used] sloppy, sloppy methods. And then also there was much more fraud than was ever\u2026 before. So for all kinds of reasons, a lot of the academic research proved to be unreliable and without much value.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Desmet had done plenty of research in this regard and even wrote his PhD about this phenomenon. When addressing his colleagues and telling them about this phenomenon, \u201cmost of [them] refused to see what I had\u2026 when I tried to show them [they] even became angry with me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had the impression that the group dynamics and mass psychology were responsible for this blindness and for their radical incapability to see the absurdity of the research they were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Science is however inherently flawed, Dr. Desmet claims. Scientists always had the ambition to validate the fact that only numerical or quantitative information is 100 percent accurate, so they began to separate things into one dimensional objects easy to quantify. \u201cSo they want to measure everything and they forget that most objects in nature can never be measured adequately.\u201d Data measured in a scientific process can never tell the full story.<\/p>\n<h2>Mass Psychology and COVID-19<\/h2>\n<p>At the beginning of the pandemic, Desmet immediately saw that the way the dangerousness of the virus was measured was flawed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI immediately had the impression that this research dramatically overrated the dangers, the dangers of the virus.\u201d Dr. Desmet said that people might be infected with COVID-19, but the deaths linked to COVID-19 were in fact mostly in those who already had serious comorbidities. There was plenty of \u201cdata, showing that most people who were registered as corona victims actually suffered from three or four major other medical conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey always make this measurement that confirms their own subjective preferences, meaning that in this case, all these\u2026 global institutions such as the WEF, the WHO, the UN, all these institutions actually selected counting methods that confirmed the narrative that they wanted to distribute, namely, we are dealing with an extremely dangerous virus.\u201d Yet when Dr. Desmet published opinions and papers detailing the empirical evidence, it was clear that people didn\u2019t want to hear it.<\/p>\n<p>So Dr. Desmet began focusing on the psychological processes in society and applied mass formation theory. But what is that exactly?<\/p>\n<h2>\u2018Mass Formation Is Extreme Collectivism\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cMass formation has existed for as long as mankind exists,\u201d Desmet said. The Crusades, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and many more phenomena were an example of mass formation. It will exist as long as mankind exists, and there are very specific conditions that need to be met for it to take place, he explained.<\/p>\n<p>The first condition is a sort of isolation, where people feel disconnected from their environment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve seen throughout the last few centuries that the number of people feeling isolated, feeling lonely, and disconnected from their environment is constantly increasing,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s a consequence of the industrialization of mechanization. It\u2019s clear that\u2026 loneliness almost perfectly correlated to the industrialization and mechanization of development and the use of technology, which might sound [paradoxical], but it isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Desmet said feeling disconnected will then lead to a lack of meaning that bridges over to anxiety, depression, and frustration, \u201cbecause as human beings experience meaning, we see that we have an effect on the other\u2014and if the connection with the other deteriorates or disappears then these spontaneous experiences will maybe not manifest anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce people feel disconnected and struggle with lack of meaning [they] may typically be confronted with anxiety, free-floating anxiety, frustration, and aggression \u2026 people feel anxious or aggressive but don\u2019t know what they\u2019re anxious, frustrated, or aggressive for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd that\u2019s an extremely precarious mental state, because if you\u2019re anxious, and you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re anxious for, you just feel completely out of control. You cannot protect yourself from something that makes you anxious if you don\u2019t know what makes you anxious. So in this state, people are\u2014if under these conditions, someone distributes a narrative, preferably through the mass media, indicating an object of anxiety and at the same time a strategy to deal with the object of anxiety, then all this free-floating anxiety latches onto the object of anxiety and there might be a huge willingness to execute this strategy to deal with the object of anxiety, even if the strategy is absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This strategy turns into a ritual, which doesn\u2019t \u201c have to be rational. They [the rituals] have a social function, a personal function, and an effective function,\u201d which is all they need.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Desmet says that \u201cmass formation is extreme collectivism.\u201d It \u201cdestroys individuals\u2019 ethical self awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA mass is a kind of group that emerges not because individuals connect to each other; the mass is a group that emerges because each individual separately connects to the collective. Meaning that this famous, typical \u2018solidarity\u2019 that exists in a mass is never a solidarity between individuals. It\u2019s a solidarity between all individuals, separately, and the collective. The longer the mass formation exists, the more all the love and all psychological energy is sucked away from the connections between the individuals who bond with other individuals, and is invested in bond between the individuals and the collective, meaning that in the end, people feel much more solidarity for the collective than for someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat explains, of course, why in the corona crisis, so many people were talking about \u2018solidarity,\u2019 but at the same time, they accepted that \u2026 if someone\u2019s parents were dying in a hospital\u2026[that the children] were not allowed to visit their father or their mother.\u201d As this phenomenon unfolds, it becomes a kind of hypnosis that leads people to commit atrocities, Desmet explained.<\/p>\n<h2>The \u2018Real Enemy\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>During the course of the pandemic crisis, some have pointed at the \u201celite\u201d as the true enemy and cause of the crisis. Desmet disagrees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom the French Revolution onwards, you can say, a new elite, which immediately understood that the new leaders, the politicians, were not really leaders anymore. They were followers because they had to be elected by the masses, they knew that they couldn\u2019t really lead the masses. They had to follow the masses. And that\u2019s where the leaders of society started to realize that they needed something else. They needed propaganda and indoctrination to constantly manipulate the masses, and to constantly try to steer them when they wanted to get them.\u201d Indoctrination and propaganda it the subject of Desmet\u2019s next book, which he is currently working on.<\/p>\n<p>The elite is certainly powerful, and propaganda is real, Desmet said, but that is not what we are truly facing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe real enemy is a certain way of thinking, it\u2019s a certain view of man and the world, the mechanistic, rationalist view of man and the world. It\u2019s this delusional belief that we can understand everything on a rational basis, that we can control everything rationally, and that we should manipulate everything rationally.\u201d It\u2019s precisely this worldview that leads to an elite that would try to control society, he added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s this mechanistic thinking that is the real enemy, that leads to the development of this new elite and at the same time, that brings the population in this specific psychological state, where it is so sensitive for manipulation, where it is so sensitive for indoctrination propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHannah Arendt says totalitarianism is always a diabolic pact between the masses and the elite, and that\u2019s true. But it\u2019s wrong to say that it\u2019s all the fault and only the fault of the elite. If we would destroy the elite, the problem would not be solved. The same elite would be recreated again if the population continues to be in the grip of this rationalist, mechanist view of man and the world. That\u2019s why it is wrong to analyze everything in terms of one large conspiracy and nothing else. If that\u2019s the analysis you start from, then the logical, strategical conclusion, the tactical conclusion will be that we need a violent revolution against the elite\u2014and if we do that, we will destroy ourselves,\u201d he said. \u201cThe elite is also something that is created by the population.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs Solzhentisyn said, the dividing line between good and evil doesn\u2019t run between people, it runs through every heart,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<h2>Resisting the Mass<\/h2>\n<p>So how do we resist the mass? Dr. Desmet says \u201cthe most important principle is that we always have to continue to speak out. That\u2019s the most important principle. So mass formation is kind of [like] hypnosis, it\u2019s identical.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUsually dissonant voices won\u2019t succeed [in] waking up the masses. But \u2026 that doesn\u2019t mean that the dissonant voice doesn\u2019t have an effect, it has an effect. It has the effect that the mass formation doesn\u2019t become deeper.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a human being, I believe we have the ethical duty to always articulate the words that seem sincere and honest to us \u2026 and that in this pool of darkness, tries to represent a little bit of light, and gets more and more in touch with the ethical principles of humanity, and tries to live up to these principles.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those who do \u201cusually go through a fast process of evolution, they become stronger and stronger and stronger as human beings \u2026 That\u2019s the most profound reason, the ethical reason, why we have to choose to continue to speak out\u2026 also from a tactical point of view, this will be the best choice we can make.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you, this group who doesn\u2019t go along with the narrative, makes the right choice, you will start to see that this crisis was meant to be there. We need this crisis. It\u2019s a process in which a large organism, a dominant society, puts a large pressure on a small organism\u2014and pushes it on a path where it would not go wrong, if there was this large path who puts this pressure on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut if we choose to remain silent, or if we refuse to try to reinvent and rearticulate the ethical principles of humanity in this period, in these times, then the opposite will happen. The masses will probably first destroy the people who do not go along with them, and then they will start to destroy themselves, and in the end, it will be one pure, destructive process.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s absolutely critical that we do so peacefully and reasonably. \u201cWhile [the mass] probably will show the tendency to dehumanize us, we should not react in the same way, because if we react in the same way we will destroy ourselves and everything will become meaningless,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we are convinced that\u2026 that the elite is pure evil and the rest of us are merely victims, then, as I said, the only conclusion is violence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s vital that \u201cwe continue to speak in a sincere and honest way, not because we are convinced that we are the only ones who know the truth, and all the rest are liars and so on\u2026 if we feel that, to our own best understanding something is right, sincere and honest, then we have to articulate it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you know, we don\u2019t have to be blind\u2026 terrible things happened, wars were provoked, famine\u2026 millions of people were sent into debt by the elite. That\u2019s all true. That\u2019s all true. And I know that\u2019s true. But it\u2019s also true that the population is responsible, that the elite is also something that is created by the population that emerges from the population.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/submission-guidelines_4553495.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">our form here<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prof. Dr. Mattias Desmet explains his theory of mass formation as it relates to the COVID pandemic and responds to criticismIn an Epoch Health podcast, Dr. Ann Corson spoke with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1612736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1612494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1612494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1612736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1612494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1612494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1612494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}