Anxiety and Mass-Psychology in the Corona Crisis. A Conversation with Mattias Desmet.
11 Oct 2020
De Nieuwe Wereld TV
https://youtu.be/YOLhF9fyjkk


 Welcome to De Nieuwe Wereld. My name is Marlies Dekkers and my guest today is Mattias DeSmet.
Mattias, welcome - more than welcome. [Mattias]: Thank you.
I read, with great enjoyment, your assuredly critical piece regarding Corona.
Ad, you're joining us to jump into the conversation every now and then, I think that'll be a
very pleasant addition. [to Mattias] You studied clinical psychology,
in Gent [Mattias]: Correct.
You've been questioning in articles published in, among other places, de Knack,
why we so easily allow all those things that are so precious to us,
pleasure, enjoyment, going out - essentially our lives - why we allow that to be taken away
with such ease. [Mattias]: That is indeed one of the questions I was
asking myself, yes. [Marlies]: We must start somewhere.
[Mattias]: Among a number of other questions. [Marlies]: [laughs] Exactly.
We must start somewhere. Let's go step by step.
That was one of them. So would you mind elaborating
what is happening in the psychological field right now? We've heard much from virologists,
they've explained, or tried to explain, much of why
we have to do all this - but from the perspective of your discipline: why do we so easily
go along with it? [Mattias]: Yes, that's a question I asked myself
very explicitly, or at least, it definitely immediately
caught my attention: that people, in a way that no one foresaw,
were prepared to give their freedom, their welfare, and so on and so forth,
their pleasure - to adhere to a series of measures that
have never before been seen. Never before have we,
due to an epidemic or a pandemic, taken measures that are so
far reaching. So that is something that did catch my attention from the start.
Along with, for example - I'll introduce an additional factor -
along with the fact that, from the start of the
Corona crisis, one key phenomenon was never given the attention it was due,
perhaps only in the margins -
and that was simply the fact that the measures that were being taken
would also claim many victims. That was in essence clear from the start.
So from, I believe, the first weeks of the crisis,
the VN, Oxfam, and 11.11.11 too, I unless I'm mistaken - they were a little later -
reported that the lockdown would cause famines that would almost certainly claim more victims
than the Coronavirus in its worst case scenario.
That disappeared in the margins. [Marlies]: Yes, perhaps also because that's in, you know,
'the land of Far Far Away', but this is our problem, now we're under threat.
[Mattias]: Yes, certainly, certainly. Those factors assuredly play a role.
[Marlies]: But of course, there are also the others - those that can no longer receive healthcare,
those that are becoming depressed, etcetera. [Mattias]: Those victims too, yes.
[Marlies]: And that's close to home. [Mattias]: That is close to home, indeed - and there were
many negative consequences, many serious negative consequences
of the measures that were reasonably close to home, that did directly affect us.
And those measures, too - they weren't
asserted in the media, or even amongst the populace.
And so essentially, the most elemental assessment that one
must make in such a situation, namely: is the remedy proportionate to the disease?
That supremely elementary assessment was virtually never made.
Regularly, scientific papers would be published that indeed made projections and indicated
the immense negative consequences of the measures, but they
were never given the weight to truly bring about
possible limitations,
or to inhibit, or sound the alarm, on the implemented measures. That was something that really
struck me at the beginning. There was much uncertainty, the taken measures were very drastic
And in essence, there was never truly a deliberation shown in the media saying, "OK,
let's think about this; this is the possible amount of victims that the Coronavirus can claim,
and this is the probable amount of victims that the
measures will claim." That really struck me.
[Marlies]: And you live in a different country than we do, but actually, all over the world,
politics went through the same
processes. There are experts that have more or less taken over
politics, it's a kind of take over. [Mattias]: Yes, absolutely. Essentially, at the least
temporarily, we've seen democracy lose out to technocracy.
It was clear from essentially the beginning of
the crisis that the politicans were no longer perceived as authority figures, but the experts were.
That was due to a very elementary line of reasoning - we have a problem
with a virus, so we'll consult a virologist. In Belgium there were headlines, the most
poignant of which I found the following: at a certain point in time, there was a Minister of Education
- in Belgium we have multiple, as you know -
but there was a Minister of Education that dared to say
he would open the schools again sooner than expected, because it was actually irresponsible
of us to keep the schools closed for so long. And the next day
an article in the paper said: "What do you know about viruses?" [chuckles] to a Secretary.
And indeed, that was that very rudimentary line of reasoning.
[Marlies]: So politics was shut down. [Mattias]: Politics was largely
shut down, yes. The psychological process that had gripped
society, shut down politics and put it in second place.
[Marlies]: Ad, you've also expressed your own bewilderment
about why politics isn't being conducted right now.
[Ad]: Yes. Yes, well, I recognised that analysis completely,
the narowwing of vision that's essentially taking place that is not wholly rational,
within which you can sense enormous emotionality or fear,
that seems impossible to break through. And I believe that
is the fascinating part, because every now and then, there'll be a message outside of that,
but it never hits home, it's like water off a duck's back. In the Netherlands,
we saw that, as opposed to Belgium, initially, politics
wanted to offer a kind of counterweight. There was also the idea of leaving schools open. Well -
[Marlies]: Yes, Mark Rutte's initial plan. [Ad]: Yes, it only lasted a brief moment. [Marlies]: He's forgotten it now.
[Ad]: And that was, of course, also at the behest of the RIVM. Then, in the Netherlands,
there was the idea of working towards herd immunity, while -
[Marlies]: And we'll leave the schools open. [Ad]: We'll leave the schools open, yes. So that was
a very, well, assuredly political decision. But it was
noticeable - and I think that set us all to thinking about this, we'll speak about that in a moment -
but it was noticeable that the government had to give way very
quickly, as if - Plato speaks of the image of the charioteer
that must drive the horses. Here, it was as if the horses, the populace - it seemed
almost a kind of pact between medical science, virologists, physicians
and teachers that, in the span of a weekend, were able to
repurpose the whole agenda. And I think that politics, at that moment, faced
a dilemma: do we persist and present a measured response, and become a counteracting force,
or do we pivot along? And I think that the pressure, both
from abroad - Belgium, for example, was very critical of the Netherlands, saying
it was irresponsible and so on - that they didn't dare take the risk.
And from that moment onwards, our vision has similarly become
increasingly narrowed, indeed.
[Marlies]: And you brought up Solomon Asch - if I'm pronouncing that correctly -
he did research into
what psychological sphere, the sphere of crowd psychology,
we end up in. [Mattias]: Yes, Solomon Asch investigated the influence of
crowd formation, along with public opinion in general,
on an individual's ability to make judgements. And he came to the conclusion,
thanks to a number of beautiful experiments - one of which I described
in a recent opinion piece in Knack - that judgement is
spectacularly impeded by crowd formation. And from there -
[Marlies]: And crowd formation is, exactly? [Mattias]: Right, crowd formation is a specific phenomenon in
social psychology that occurs under very specific conditions.
It can't happen at any given moment. In history, for example, you can see that it's
always occurred in situations where there is great potential for relatively
unstable, indeterminate fear, depression and a lack of a general sense of meaning
in society. For example, in the state of affairs before the
Corona crisis, that was very apparent. A crisis such as
the Corona crisis robs people of their historical awareness. That's very remarkable.
People experienced the crisis as coming out of nowhere,
but actually, if you look closely at the period leading up to it,
you could see society heading towards a crisis.
[Marlies]: What crisis were we facing, then? [Mattias]: Well, the months, the year
before the crisis, for example, there was an extremely high
rate of antidepressant usage. In Belgium, it reached 300 million
doses a year. [Marlies]: Yes, it's immense. [Mattias]: 300 million doses a year.
[Marlies]: Do you happen to know the numbers for the Netherlands? [Mattias]: No, no - I tried to look it up yesterday
but I couldn't find it.
[Marlies]: I know, at least, that more than a million people in the Netherlands
take antidepressants. [Mattias]: Yes, and that'll be point prevalence,
meaning at a particular moment in time. That's a million people at the same time
taking antidepressants. Point prevalence. So the year-long
prevalence may be much higher. So there was the extremely high rate of antidepressant usage,
but also, for example, the rate of burn-out was increasing
drastically, to the extent that large institutions, such as universities,
could hardly keep operating. We like to forget these things, but last year, it took me
nine months to get a contract signed between
my research unit and a clinical biology lab, simply because
there were always one or more people with a burn-out. Over time, that honestly
started making you feel despondent. [Ad]: Even students, too. These last few years,
it's the first time I've really seen the same thing happening to students.
It's miraculous, in the past, I never came across it.
[Mattias]: No. Professors, too. In the past, it was rare. A couple of months
before the crisis, after a doctoral defence, I went out to dinner with the doctoral jury, and of the six
professors at the table, three had had a burn-out in the last six months.
That says something about the scope of the problem. Add on to that -
I don't know if you've read the book Bullshit Jobs, but I found it
a hugely informative book on this point. The man
starts with the observation that an enormous percentage of people, I believe around
70 percent, feel that their jobs are actually completely meaningless.
That shows to what extent our society was gripped by a sense
of meaninglessness and psychological malaise, which was actually quite vaguely dispersed.
That meant that most people actually couldn't say why they were fearful,
depressed or unhappy. There was a kind of free-floating
malaise in society. And that's the necessary condition and
window for large-scale crowd formation.
Crowd formation that typically emerges around a narrative. And typically, that narrative
is one that designates an object of fear. In the time of the rise of
the Nazi regime, the Jewish were designated as the source of societal problems.
They were easily put forward as an object of fear.
"Because of them, things are going wrong for us." But that can just as well be organised
around a virus, for example. The narrative of the Coronavirus
arrived in a society with an atmosphere of huge indeterminate
fear. And so that fear - I think there's hardly another way to
explain it - I think, overwhelmingly attached itself to that object.
To put it somewhat ironically, the story became a 'success' story unrivalled.
It managed to get the whole of society completely
under its spell, that narrative about the Coronavirus.
[Marlies]: But the crisis prior to that, that sense of meaningless
and large amounts of antidepressants - should we see that as the end of neoliberalism?
The failure of neoliberalism?
[Mattias]: You can - [Marlies]: Specialisation in all areas causing
people to lose sight of the whole, what role they
play in the bigger picture? [Mattias]: Certainly, that certainly plays a role.
The production model within our society, wherein the producer
becomes disconnected from the person that effectively
makes use of the product, that certainly contributes
to the experience of meaninglessness. Because the fulfilment work brings
is largely due to being able to see that what you're doing
has an effect on the other. That it makes them happy, that it means something to them,
that they're engaged with it. Assigning meaning to things - the experience of meaning in life
almost always stems from a kind of feedback from the
other acknowledging what is being done as effective and welcome. And that's precisely
what the book Bullshit Jobs points out, that most people feel
that what they do doesn't actually make a difference, and ask themselves:
"Who, in God's name, is better off because of my work?" For most people,
that's unclear. [Marlies]: Right, but Ad, something to do with the scale of
companies, of universities, of schools - the language, too, is always a point you like to bring up.
[Ad]: Certainly, certainly. I recognise a lot of this. In some ways, it touches on some things -
within Philosophy, the theme of alienation is a familiar one.
Going all the way back to Rousseau, involving life in large cities, he spoke of it -
somewhat romantic - but of course, later put forth by Marx, who
spoke of the kind of alienation caused by the industrial means of production.
But I think that, over the course of - what shall we say? -
the second half of the twentieth century, involving especially the technological revolution,
the proces of globalisation that it brings along with it, the distance that you also mentioned -
I think that's continually made it bigger and bigger. So someone like Castells,
who has conceptualised an information age, where he speaks of
the network society, that also addresses this theme - the loss of meaning. I wrote, once,
in 2004, a book - Tijd van Onbehagen. So that malaise,
that's been around for a while now. I do think that - and that may say something about
that global phenomenon, though I think science itself has
also played a role in that - I think that we're dealing with
a huge transformation of our lives.
Technology results in both labour and consumption
increasingly being seen simply as functions. So the idea of ownership,
of 'this is mine', of stability - the feeling that you're somewhat
in control of your life, the satisfaction you can get from creating
something that gives you fulfilment, I think that particularly
because of that large scale, of globalisation - because of that functionality approach, well,
we've been coming under increasing pressure. I think you're absolutely
correct, it seems as though there's a kind of lurking malaise,
but also anger, a kind of rage, wherein we're searching for
someone that did it, or something that did it. The whole debate in the Netherlands surrounding
identity - globally, actually - it's hugely hectic,
as if continual projections are needed to put a face to
that deeper problem of the loss of meaning. I indeed have the sensation,
just as you say, it seems as though we've now found a kind of
enemy, and that's why we're also hearing something close to war language -
"We need to defeat the virus!" "Mobilise!" As if that's the threat.
It almost gives us a sense of meaning again, or it's supposed to.
[Marlies]: Connects us again. [Ad]: Yes. [Mattias]: Yes, I think so too.
The first psychological benefit to a narrative
of fear, or a narrative that assigns an object of fear,
is that the fear becomes bound. It becomes bound to an object and because of that, mentally,
it becomes manageable. There's nothing more difficult for a human being to bear than fear that he cannot
place, fear that he cannot attach to anything. And a narrative is latched onto precisely because it offers
an object of fear. "That's the danger, the virus."
And then we implement a number of measures. [Ad]: It gives us a framework for action.
[Mattias]: Yes, we can control it a bit. And then the next step is that, within that narrative, one finds
a semblance of meaning, because there emerges a kind of battle, charged with pathos and heroics,
a shared battle against the object of fear.
So one somewhat repairs a piece of the bond, the societal bond,
that had been partially lost
with a shared battle against the object.
[Ad]: Yes, that's nicely put. You also have the heroes -
even the shelf stackers became heroes at one point - I don't know
if that happened in Flanders, too [laughs]. [Mattias]: Yes, yes, it did. It was remarkable, wasn't it,
the word 'hero' was used often - the heroes of health care, and so on and so forth. Indeed,
a new kind of heroism emerges.
And all that taken together results in a kind of transformation of fear into a sort of daze,
and that's what's so addictive about crowd formation. The fear is transformed
into a daze, and from there the step takes place to another well-known phenomenon:
hypnosis. [Ad]: Oh, that's very funny you say that, actually,
because that lines up with - I've mentioned it here before -
my first experience - you'll remember, we spoke about it -
in April, I was asked, "how are you experiencing this?"
And I said, well, it's like a dream.
As if we're in a kind of shared dream.
And because of that, yes, a narrowing of vision, there's all kinds of things we don't see.
But I'm really curious about that transition from daze to hypnosis,
because that's actually precisely how I experienced the atmosphere at that moment,
and that the media and everything else became part of a kind of dreamlike reality. [Mattias]: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
The link is very direct, here. Gustave Le Bon pointed that out in his book,
the Crowd, uh, La Foule.
[Marlies]: Extremely interesting. [Mattias]: Yes, a very interesting book. [Marlies]: From 1895, but still very relevant.
[Mattias]: Very relevant, yes. He pointed out that the narratives that lead to crowd formation,
just as hypnotic suggestion does, strongly focus the attention on one specific aspect
of reality, like a spotlight. It shines the light on
one element of the scene and leaves the rest in obfuscation.
So both hypnosis and crowd formation have a very strong
attention-narrowing effect, they narrow the realm of consciousness.
[Ad]: In a sense it's like time shrinkage. Just like in a dream,
where you can neither hold on to the past nor think of the future. You gravitate towards the present.
[Mattias]: Yes, and only a part of the present. [Ad]: Right, a part of it.
[Marlies]: Right, but you're saying - I mean, people under hypnosis can even be operated on
and they truly don't experience the pain.
[Mattias]: Yes, that's right, that's right. So hypnosis, on the one hand, has a number of
mental, cognitive effects, namely that people are only able to take account of a limited
section of reality. That explains why even extremely
intelligent people cannot be brought to make the simple calculation of,
"There are this many victims of Corona and this many victims of the measures." What you're doing,
and I literally said this - what you're doing is the same as, should there be
one person on the tracks, you derail the entire train to save them.
That's what it often seems like.
But you simply cannot for the life of you make that clear, not even to intelligent people. Every time,
they say, "Wait a minute - what do you mean? You're just going to let them die?
Those that are suffering from Corona?" No! I simply mean
that you need to take more than that into account.
And that doesn't work. It's truly the same effect as
hypnosis, that it just shuts down intelligence.
The mental system may be as strong as an ox, but it has no grip on
what is not within its field of attention. And, indeed, as a second step,
on the other hand, there's other effects. There's the cognitive effect, there are a number of
affective effects - empathy is only afforded to that which
falls within the spotlight of that narrowed consciousness - and further,
the very remarkable fact that someone under hypnosis
or under the influence of crowd formation has the incredible
ability to put all their egotistical interests aside and completely
sacrifice themselves for the collective goal. That's extremely dangerous,
as we've often seen throughout history, and truly remarkable.
Under hypnosis it goes so far that, for example, at the University Hospital
of Luik, you can still see it, with your own eyes, every day, if
you'd like - and if you are admitted to the operation chamber - but you can
see that, after a relatively simple hypnotic procedure, someone can be made so insensitive
to their own pain that, without issue, you can make incisions in their body. There's a professor - Faymonville - who, yearly,
operates on, I believe, a couple hundred people under hypnosis.
[Marlies]: But actual - like, heart operations, right? [Mattias]: Sometimes very serious operations, yes.
[Marlies]: It's not just a little cut. [Mattias]: No, no, no, if someone is truly allergic to chemical or
biochemical sedatives, they can still perform very serious operations. I believe
that there have been open-heart operations where they cut right through
the sternum, under hypnosis. But - I once wrote an article
- someone doubted that. They thought that, at the least,
minimal local anaesthesia would be needed. I don't think so.
I've tried to reach Faymonville to ask her, but I wasn't able to.
But in any case, you can perform very serious operations
with nothing but hypnosis. [Ad]: It's indeed a known
phenomenon. I also read about soldiers - the day before
yesterday, coincidentally - in a book by James Hillman, I'm sure you've heard of him,
he's also a psychologist. He describes situations on
the battlefield where servicemen don't realise that they've been shot,
because they're so focused - there's also an element of auto-hypnosis there,
due to fear, but also arousal and focus. Only later do they
notice they've been wounded. Bullets that simply aren't felt.
So that means that,
when we're discussing this narrowing of vision - we had the strategic
image of the soul - thinking and feeling - there's interaction there -
but that apparently, in those conditions of fear and intense, dreamlike fixation, you cut off
elements of your own emotional experience. And that's why it
doesn't reach you. So something that's being said just does not reach you. Of course,
that's also partly that frustration we have surrounding Corona,
it just seems that, somehow, the message is extremely difficult
to get across to a larger audience. [Marlies]: Yes, and that, of course - just to bring it back
to that experiment by Asch - that a line is drawn...
Perhaps it's a good idea to explain how that works.
[Mattias]: Yes, yes. [Marlies]: Crowd formation, pressure.
[Mattias]: Indeed, Solomon Asch studies the effects of group pressure
on individual judgment, let's say, individual reasoning ability.
And he brought to attention that crowd formation and group pressure
can bring people to the most absurd kinds of judgements,
or at least buy into a narrative that accepts the most absurd kinds of judgements.
I believe that's crowd formation in particular, even more so, perhaps, than hypnosis,
it's actually a very peculiar process in that regard. But anyway, Solomon Asch invited
people - groups of eight participants - to enter a room
and then he showed them an image with a line
flanked by three more lines. And at first sight, even a blind man could see immediately
that the first line was equal in length to the third line.
But, in fact, in each of those eight-participant groups, Solomon Asch had planted
seven disguised confederates, his colleagues.
And he asked each of the eight participants,
"Please, tell me, which line, of the three lines on the right,
is equal in length to the first line?" and the first seven people that gave their answer
were the seven confederates, and they each gave a blatantly wrong answer.
But truly wrong, so wrong that, again, a blind man could see that the answer
was wrong. But, in fact, the result was that 75% of the eighth participants -
or rather, let me say it a different way: only 25% of them
consistently refused to go along with that absurd judgment
that the first seven pronounced. Only 25% of them.
I believe this may correspond to the 25% of people that are
not inclined to go along with the Corona narrative.
[Ad]: And that example doesn't even involve a fearful situation.
That's just the group. Group pressure. [Marlies]: That's just as you're relaxing around a table, talking about lines.
[Mattias]: Yes, that's right. [Ad]: It's a fascinating experiment. It's about not wanting
to fall outside the group. "Oh, well, alright then, I - I see it, but
I surely must be wrong, then..." Or perhaps you may even start seeing it that way at a certain point,
that's taking it even further. But here, the situation is still
very clinical. [Marlies]: And that under group pressure alone, people will
already give an answer that they believe is socially desirable.
[Mattias]: Yes, and that was also very interesting in the experiment.
When Solomon Asch asked the participants, afterwards, "But why did you
go along with a judgement that was clearly completely absurd?"
a portion of the participants answered, "Well, I knew that
it was wrong, but I didn't dare say so."
But even more interesting: another portion, a relatively large one - I believe something like
a third - answered, "Well, I honestly began to doubt my own judgement."
Right? "I truly began to question what I originally thought,
and what was plainly obvious, I began to doubt its truth. And eventually I thought, well,
they must be right. They wouldn't all be saying the same thing, if there weren't
some truth to it." And that is exactly what you hear in discussions surrounding simple
matters of the Corona crisis that are blatantly wrong.
People refuse to react to the content of the arguments and eventually will say,
if you continue to confront them with clearly absurd
elements surrounding the disclosure of information to the public,
they will say, mark my words, almost always: "Well, surely, not everyone
would be saying it if it weren't true." They reference the fact that there is consensus
within the group - and that trumps every substantial argument.
[Marlies]: And as far as I'm understanding you, the experts
are also part of that process of narrowing and group pressure.
[Mattias]: Indeed. There are many comparisons between crowd formation and hypnosis, but there's also
one distinct and important difference: when a hypnotist
hypnotises someone, there's one person still 'awake'.
The field of attention, the consciousness of the hypnotist,
is not narrowed. The hypnotist is aware of the world outside of
that upon which he focuses the subject's attention. In crowd formation, that is often not the case.
[Marlies]: There's no one left awake. [Matties]: No, the experts - [Marlies]: A-woke.
[Mattias]: - the attentional fields of the experts are often even more narrowed.
In a sense, because of their education being unilaterally focused on viruses.
Additionally due to the benefits the story brings them. You're appointed as
an expert, get lots of attention, are given research funds, and so on and so forth,
And often, because of that, they go along with the narrative even more strongly, they're
enraptured by it even more strongly. That's not to say that no one is truly awake, perhaps -
I believe Le Bon makes note of that - sometimes there are those that are awake and use the
narrative, the situation, to their advantage. They realise that you can surf the wave of the narrative,
exploit it for profit. I would be amazed if that
were not the case in this crisis. But I believe that one can very easily
overestimate the roles of those people. You cannot make sense of the current
phenomenon we are experiencing primarily based on intentional, conscious,
waking manipulation, I think. It happens. But, most of the mechanisms that we see
I believe are the result of the largely subconscious mechanisms
of crowd formation. [Marlies]: Right, you're referring to that
gut feeling people have saying: who's behind all this?
[Mattias]: Who's behind it, indeed. [Marlies]: Who's behind this? Bill Gates, or China,
or whoever - who's behind it? And you're saying, well, maybe nothing. We've been
enraptured by it ourselves. [Mattias]: Yes, I believe that many of the people who
are suspected of consciously taking advantage of the situation
are, first and foremost, also, for a large part, gripped by the narrative. And that a part of them
believes, despite what our intuitions may say about them,
that, in the end, they're doing good with that narrative.
They're for a large part also blind. I truly believe that. I believe that
both those who fanatically believe in the narrative and those who are fanatically
against it, and have the tendency to suspect experts of being co-conspirators,
that they're both - [Marlies]: Almost caught by the same -
[Mattias]: Yes, and I think they may make the same mistake, that they
gravely overestimate the wakefulness, the omnipotence,
the omniscience of the experts.
[Marlies]: Right, so if you get very agitated towards them,
you're actually overestimating their knowledge. [Mattias]: Yes. I think that actually, humanity
has a general tendency to overestimate the role of conscious processes. For example in their own
functioning. Humans are very inclined to believe that they consciously direct their own lives,
and usually, that's not the case. Because the majority of what you do is also
unconsciously driven. [Marlies]: We're just faffing about. [laughs] [Mattias]: Yes, well, we're being driven by factors
and powers that we essentially have no awareness of. That refers to
Freud's famous quote, "The ego is not master in its own house." Our ego thinks
that it's master in its own house, but its actually continuously sidelined
and overruled by the unconscious, without it realising.
And I think we have the same tendency when we judge societal
processes: overestimating what is consciously organised and underestimating
which unconscious processes are all playing a role. May I just add one more thing?
I don't mean to say that there is no conscious manipulation taking place, because of course,
there are commercial interests, all kinds of things are in play. It would be foolish to deny that.
That's also a problem in the current societal debate:
if you don't accept or agree with the dominant narrative,
you're so easily written off as a conspiracy theorist. While, actually, often,
in the discourse of the other narratives, there is no reason whatsoever to say that
they have the structure of a conspiracy theory. Just because you mention
conscious manipulation, doesn't mean that you're unveiling a conspiracy.
To be able to call something a conspiracy, you need conscious, planned, secret
and malevolent interventions. Those need to be present. Only then
can you call it a conspiracy theory. And even then - of course, such things as conspiracies
do actually exist. [Ad]: History is full of conspiracies.
[Mattias]: Unless you think that Caesar was coincidentally stabbed by 23 people simultaneously,
you believe in conspiracies. [Ad]: But perhaps one more element as an addition -
there's a kind of interplay, a dialectic, between
crowd and expert, in which fear plays, I think, a key role.
Because when you're fearful, you seek refuge. Yesterday,
I experienced it with someone I know well, they said:
"Yes, I am fearful, and at a moment like this it's important that I give those
figures of authority the reigns." I think that's what
is happening here, too. There are all kinds of uncertainties - we need to do something,
you know, together. That already creates a kind of community -
we're all in the same boat. And then there comes the captain. So that desire
to just go in that direction, to say, "Well, they ought to know.
They studied for this." - that's what said - "They studied for this. And so who are you
to offer criticism?" So it's sort of
a freeing moment, too, that you can appoint someone. [Marlies]: It gives certainty within the uncertainty.
[Ad]: It gives certainty and an element of calm, "OK, well now, at least
this is better than a cacophony of voices."
So people - and Le Bon brings this up, too - people have a desire for
unity. They can't tolerate contradictions.
[Marlies]: It makes them fearful. [Mattias]: Yes, of course, of course - the narrative... [Ad]: Of course, because then it becomes uncertain again.
So the expert is the one that embodies the narrative. [Marlies]: That's the shaman.
The one who must...? [Ad]: They get a kind of shamanistic -
a shamanistic role. "They'll lead us." And I think that's
what's gone wrong in politics, that the specialist has been put on too much on the forefront.
While at its core, going back to what you said at the start, this is of course
a political issue. You need to weigh different interests and values.
Calmly say - this should certainly have happened this summer, at first it was
understandable, lots of uncertainties, but it should have
happened - calmly say: "Right, and now we need to broaden our scope
and work towards a narrative where we adjust some of
what we said earlier." And I think there's an angle there, too, because that means
that the expert who had taken the reigns needed to say, "Well, actually, I may
have been a bit mistaken..." [Mattias]: Which has now become impossible.
[Ad]: Yes, you can't, you just can't. [Mattias]: It's now become impossible. Because the
consequences are now so extreme that the expert almost literally puts his life at risk. [Ad]: He'll be taken hostage.
[Mattias]: If he can't convince the people now that something much worse on the horizon,
then one comes to the inevitable conclusion that if this was all there was to it,
this does not weigh up against the consequences we'll face for the next fifty years.
So, in other words: there are people who are literally - and to a certain extent I
can understand it - are literally fighting for their lives, to convince people that,
if we don't continue with all kinds of measures, something much worse
is on the horizon. [Marlies]: Right, because if it turns out, just like in Sweden -
so, we approach it more reservedly,
and in Sweden, the ICU's are not
overflowing. In fact, they were empty for a little while. Perhaps the consequences wouldn't be
so disastrous. A whole field would then have failed.
[Ad]: And the scale of it, of course. [Marlies]: The scale. [Ad]: Lives. Life's work.
[Mattias]: Right, because it's only just beginning, isn't it? [Marlies]: So, essentially,
the virus needs to get us. Because otherwise it's... [Mattias]: Right, indeed, and that's where
there's enormous danger, right? Because the victims of
the measures, they're now going to start to fall. They'll drive up the excess mortality rate.
And there's a very real risk, I think a nearly unavoidable one, that the victims of the
measures will be attributed to the Coronavirus.
And that they'll then be used to justify the measures and further
assert them. And that traps us in a vicious circle. Severe measures cause more victims,
more victims result in more severe measures. That's an
extremely dangerous vicious circle that, in time, may result in a practically unrestricted
platform in our society, for more and more severe measures.
Even for measures that we now consider absurd. At a certain point,
in Belgium, there was a virologist who said that it may be best to isolate infected
people in camps and offer them treatment there.
It was soon dismissed as infeasible and inhuman, [Marlies]: Here, too.
but if the fear keeps rising, we'll cross that boundary. The foundation for such measures
will emerge. So combined with the problematic validity of tests -
[Ad]: How do you view... I've spoken to a number of people
who are involved in policy making about
perspective, in politics and outside of it. It's noticeable
that the perspective is getting increasingly diffused. The certainty that we'll be getting a vaccine -
originally they were saying the end of the year, the beginning of next year -
they're letting go of that. I'm already hearing things like, "Well, it'll be the end of 2021."
Some say, "Well, maybe even longer," there are voices saying
that vaccines - take the flu, for example - will never be protective enough,
and in the mean time we're still in that narrative. [Mattias]: Absolutely. [Ad]: Right. So we've got a technological
solution - problem, vaccine - and that expectation isn't
fulfilled. [Mattias]: No.
[Ad]: How do you see that, if that expectation doesn't, in fact, get fulfilled?
[Mattias]: I've said from the start of the crisis: you'll see. Once the vaccine
is here, that doesn't mean that the measures will stop. In other words:
the narrative will not relinquish its grip. The ideology that will have seized its power,
that will already have become somewhat institutionalised,
it will no longer let go. And that's what we're hearing more and more virologists say -
"The vaccine won't mean that we no longer have to wear masks."
"The vaccine won't mean that the virus has disappeared." "We must learn to
live with the virus." Read: we will continue writing the narrative that decides society.
So, we can be angry about that, we can find it inhuman,
and so on and so forth, but in a sense, it's also
a manifestation of a very simple principle: whoever has power
will attempt to consolidate it. That's a very simple principle.
[Marlies]: And, in this case, the virologists have the power?
[Mattias]: Right, so actually, I believe we're seeing the breakthrough of a certain
ideology, a kind of vision on humanity and the world, that has been gaining ground
from the beginning of the Enlightenment. A kind of mechanistic,
biological reductionist vision on humanity and the world, that has slowly
taken over the spirit. Eventually, everyone was truly convinced that
a human being is reducible, in body and soul, to a biochemical process,
meaning: the mechanistic interactions between elemental particles.
In fact, that idea has already been completely surpassed by the sciences themselves,
the mechanistic sciences have completely surpassed that. They've completely surpassed this idea
of absolute predictability, of mechanistic determination,
even the idea that you can reduce consciousness to matter -
they're totally past that. But, that's the case
for the very peak of the sciences. It's a number of scientists that long ago
crossed that boundary. But the rest is still completely -
the vision on humanity and the world that most people have, is still completely captured
by that mechanistic thinking. And actually, it makes sense. If the level of fear
rises high enough in a society, that's where one looks for authority. In that narrative,
and in the representatives of that narrative. And those that represent
that narrative are the biomedical sciences, the sciences
that think mechanistically. What we're now experiencing is the logical result
of the unsuspecting cultivation of the bioreductionist vision on humanity and the world
over the last number of centuries. It was a branch of the Enlightenment -
certainly not the entire Enlightenment - but a branch of it,
a simple one, that presented everything as being simple and reducible.
That always appeals the most to the largest group.
[Ad]: I've said in different contexts that
what we're experiencing is a crisis surrounding modernity itself. You could say,
we've seen the collapse of communism, which had its own truth -
with the driving ideal of organising the world such as to
achieve an absolutely just society,
in the course of history; you could say
that was exposed, it collapsed. Now, we have the attack on neoliberalism -
take Gabriël van denk Brink's book,
Ruw Ontwaken uit de Neoliberale Droom. It's possible that there's one underlying force -
which matches with what you said - that is left from both liberal society
and communist society, namely technicism.
So, what was visible in both communism and liberal capitalism.
And now, in this phase, we're seeing that the difference between China
and the West isn't even that big anymore. [Mattias]: No, of course not. [Ad]: So, we're seeing that
the technical, a kind of technical ideology, is now
gaining the upperhand. [Marlies]: And who's seized power? [Ad]: And politics - politics -
[Marlies]: They've been put on a pedestal. [Ad]: Yes, absolutely. It's no coincidence
that Big Tech is currently flourishing. And that in the crisis - [Marlies]: Right, that's tech, but you also said
the biological sciences. [Ad]: Yes, but they belong together.
[Mattias]: Those, I think, are two representatives of mechanistic thinking.
The idea that you can see humanity and the world as a mechanistic, interactive set of
molecules and atoms and subatomic particles. And I believe
it is always accompanied by the delusion that humanity can understand everything and can
control everything. That's essentially a property of that.
In essence, you can trace back the current crisis to the problem of humanity's
mental hubris. Humanity thinks they can understand all,
predict all, control all. I believe it's that kind of vision
on humanity and the world that lead to the sense of meaninglessness. Because within that vision,
your life is meaningless. Right? The mechanistic vision is
by definition a world view that states your existence is a purely mechanistic effect
of particles interacting with one another. There's no direction in that. There's only,
to put it in Aristotelian terms, a material cause;
material particles that interact with on another that formed
minerals, plants, animals, and eventually humanity, but there is no direction in it.
Your existence is reducible to a purely mechanistic process.
If you start from a world view like that, then it's no surprise you end up
deciding to think, "What's my life good for? What's the point? Why do I work?"
That's no mystery. And in that sense, it's nearly unavoidable,
if you follow the line of reasoning long enough - a sense of meaninglessness, then fear, then depression,
to eventually being susceptible to crowd formation, which causes you to do what?
Cling even more desperately to the ideology -
[Ad]: That's actually the cause. [Mattias]: - that caused it all, yes.
That's always how it goes - someone who is addicted to alcohol
has a terrible headache because of his drinking the night before and what does he do
to ease it? [Marlies]: He drinks more. [Mattias]: He drinks more. And it's the exact same with ideologies.
When an ideology is on the brink of failure, that's when one
clings to it even harder. [Ad]: In that sense, it's also quite suspenseful.
I don't know where this is heading. Myself,
in Tijd van Onbehagen, I made the comparison to the Matrix.
And, fascinatingly, I find that film is becoming more and more relevant.
Now, we're actually being pushed behind screens, we're getting trapped, and the fact that
it's almost taken for granted - it's a shield. Just like in
Houellebecq's The Elemental Particles. Social distancing. We're becoming
elemental particles. Physical togetherness is dangerous. You need to put up shields,
mouth masks. And the strange thing is that reflecting on that, thinking about
what we're doing, and why, and what is life? What is disease? What is health?
That's all disappearing because of a fear that deprives us of seeing
what is important. I'm very intrigued about whether
this is a sustainable scenario. [Marlies]: No, of course it's completely unsustainable.
Sadly, I'm going to have to start wrapping up, but I would really like to, with you, for a moment,
talk about - recently, you spoke about, in crowd formation, the power of thought,
but also the placebo effect, the power of the placebo effect.
You had the title, "Can a person die of fear?"
[Mattias]: Yes, that's another article. [Marlies]: Another article.
[Marlies]: And your answer is: yes. [Mattias]: Yes, a person can die of fear.
Absolutely. That's been documented most directly by
a number of anthropologists who observed that in so-called
'primitive societies' - we're equally primitive in this regard -
but in so-called primitive societies, they frequently observed that
when a shaman, for example, pointed at someone with a magic wand,
or a magic bone, and uttered a curse - they'd point at someone,
speak a curse and that person would die within hours. Of fear.
And always in the same way. Their complexion would pale, their eyes would become sunken, and eventually
their breath would come in gasps and they would die. Unless they could, within that time, find another shaman
that could utter a counter curse.
So that's the most direct evidence.
But also, the enormous influence of psychological factors
on our bodies, that's at the very least equally present in our society.
For example, if you look at most medical procedures -
I could talk for hours about this - but they -
[Marlies]: I've read quite a bit about it myself, it's astounding. That's why I'd love for you to tell us. [Mattias]: Yes, even operations.
Placebo operations often have
effects similar to heart operations. [Marlies]: The real operations.
[Mattias]: Placebos appear capable of - [Ad]: Like a kind of ritualistic practices.
[Mattias]: In essence, they are, just like the procedures of the shaman,
first and foremost symbolic actions. We believe in a mechanistic vision on humanity
and the world, we go to a doctor that is an authority to us
within that world view, and, for a large part, we're cured
by the actions of that physician, that authority figure.
So, placebos work approximately the same as hypnosis. Hypnosis focuses the
attention on a certain suggestion, and a placebo similarly focuses the attention
on a certain suggestion, namely the suggestion of healing, and because of that
your body, so to say, melts into this suggestion and heals,
in the most spectacular ways. So the working mechanism of crowd formation,
hypnosis and placebos is the same, one being negative and the other positive.
A nocebo is the equivalent of a placebo, but
in a negative sense. For example, a wrongful negative verdict by a physician
can easily make you ill, if you're not careful.
Your body will melt into that negative suggestion given by the physician
and you'll get sick. There's a domain in which there's
a lot to say about this. You can also refer to animal experiments,
that have illustrated in the most fascinating way,
what the influence is of suggestion on the body, in animals, too.
[Ad]: It goes to show, once more, how important it is to pay attention to the words
that you use. Whether it's medical scientists or in
the media. Because stories can bring about their own effects.
[Marlies]: Because of the stories. [Ad]: Well, because of an excess of fear, we start making
ourselves ill. [Mattias]: Absolutely. Fear isn't just a result of the Corona
crisis, it's also a cause.
The mortality rate of lung infections, in particular,
rises by 40% in mice populations if they're experimentally induced with fear.
In humans, they can't do that experimentally -
that's unethical, to subject humans to so much fear that they perish,
or perish more quickly due to a lung condition - but naturalistic
studies show effects of similar sizes, namely: stress
results in an immensely larger sensitivity. [Ad]: And that means that that sensible narrative surrounding
Corona is hugely important. So you don't start thinking, "Oh God, I'm going to die, I'm going to end up in the ICU."
You can simply demonstrate it with the numbers. I had a meeting with
a group of eight, nine people. Two of them had, no less, been sick in the last six months,
very sick, seriously sick. [Marlies]: With Covid, or...? [Ad]: Flu.
Both of them ended up in the ICU with a lung infection, had months of recuperation,
etcetera. And I said, well, it's important for us to realise
that we're not even talking about Corona, now. We need to move towards a narrative
where that also happens with the flu. What's more, to quite
a large number of people. [Marlies]: It happens.
[Ad]: It simply happens. And with Corona - [Marlies]: You can get sick.
[Ad]: You can get sick. And Corona, again,
it's an awful disease. That's not what this is about.
And if your immune system is bad, then it happens. But we need to - that narrative -
We need to snap out of that hypnosis. [Mattias]: Yes, of course. Yes. [Ad]: And towards that sensible story.
[Marlies]: Right, absolutely. Mattias, Ad, thank you very much. For those that are interested -
I myself have read it as well, I found it very informative.
[Ad]: The nineteenth century. End of the nineteenth century. Still relevant. [Marlies]: Yes, unbelievable. 1895. To understand
what we're going through at the moment, someone from a 120, 130 years ago can help guide us.
Thank you for the beautiful conversation. [Mattias]: My pleasure. [Ad]: Yes.