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


00:00
Welcome to De Nieuwe Wereld. My name is Marlies Dekkers and my guest today is Mattias DeSmet.
00:10
Mattias, welcome - more than welcome. [Mattias]: Thank you.
00:14
I read, with great enjoyment, your assuredly critical piece regarding Corona.
00:21
Ad, you're joining us to jump into the conversation every now and then, I think that'll be a
00:24
very pleasant addition. [to Mattias] You studied clinical psychology,
00:30
in Gent [Mattias]: Correct.
00:35
You've been questioning in articles published in, among other places, de Knack,
00:41
why we so easily allow all those things that are so precious to us,
00:46
pleasure, enjoyment, going out - essentially our lives - why we allow that to be taken away
00:55
with such ease. [Mattias]: That is indeed one of the questions I was
01:00
asking myself, yes. [Marlies]: We must start somewhere.
01:02
[Mattias]: Among a number of other questions. [Marlies]: [laughs] Exactly.
01:04
We must start somewhere. Let's go step by step.
01:08
That was one of them. So would you mind elaborating
01:12
what is happening in the psychological field right now? We've heard much from virologists,
01:17
they've explained, or tried to explain, much of why
01:21
we have to do all this - but from the perspective of your discipline: why do we so easily
01:25
go along with it? [Mattias]: Yes, that's a question I asked myself
01:31
very explicitly, or at least, it definitely immediately
01:35
caught my attention: that people, in a way that no one foresaw,
01:42
were prepared to give their freedom, their welfare, and so on and so forth,
01:46
their pleasure - to adhere to a series of measures that
01:51
have never before been seen. Never before have we,
01:55
due to an epidemic or a pandemic, taken measures that are so
02:00
far reaching. So that is something that did catch my attention from the start.
02:04
Along with, for example - I'll introduce an additional factor -
02:09
along with the fact that, from the start of the
02:13
Corona crisis, one key phenomenon was never given the attention it was due,
02:19
perhaps only in the margins -
02:24
and that was simply the fact that the measures that were being taken
02:31
would also claim many victims. That was in essence clear from the start.
02:35
So from, I believe, the first weeks of the crisis,
02:44
the VN, Oxfam, and 11.11.11 too, I unless I'm mistaken - they were a little later -
02:49
reported that the lockdown would cause famines that would almost certainly claim more victims
02:58
than the Coronavirus in its worst case scenario.
03:04
That disappeared in the margins. [Marlies]: Yes, perhaps also because that's in, you know,
03:07
'the land of Far Far Away', but this is our problem, now we're under threat.
03:12
[Mattias]: Yes, certainly, certainly. Those factors assuredly play a role.
03:16
[Marlies]: But of course, there are also the others - those that can no longer receive healthcare,
03:20
those that are becoming depressed, etcetera. [Mattias]: Those victims too, yes.
03:26
[Marlies]: And that's close to home. [Mattias]: That is close to home, indeed - and there were
03:32
many negative consequences, many serious negative consequences
03:37
of the measures that were reasonably close to home, that did directly affect us.
03:42
And those measures, too - they weren't
03:48
asserted in the media, or even amongst the populace.
03:53
And so essentially, the most elemental assessment that one
03:57
must make in such a situation, namely: is the remedy proportionate to the disease?
04:03
That supremely elementary assessment was virtually never made.
04:07
Regularly, scientific papers would be published that indeed made projections and indicated
04:11
the immense negative consequences of the measures, but they
04:16
were never given the weight to truly bring about
04:19
possible limitations,
04:22
or to inhibit, or sound the alarm, on the implemented measures. That was something that really
04:27
struck me at the beginning. There was much uncertainty, the taken measures were very drastic
04:32
And in essence, there was never truly a deliberation shown in the media saying, "OK,
04:37
let's think about this; this is the possible amount of victims that the Coronavirus can claim,
04:42
and this is the probable amount of victims that the
04:46
measures will claim." That really struck me.
04:50
[Marlies]: And you live in a different country than we do, but actually, all over the world,
04:55
politics went through the same
04:58
processes. There are experts that have more or less taken over
05:04
politics, it's a kind of take over. [Mattias]: Yes, absolutely. Essentially, at the least
05:11
temporarily, we've seen democracy lose out to technocracy.
05:17
It was clear from essentially the beginning of
05:20
the crisis that the politicans were no longer perceived as authority figures, but the experts were.
05:28
That was due to a very elementary line of reasoning - we have a problem
05:34
with a virus, so we'll consult a virologist. In Belgium there were headlines, the most
05:39
poignant of which I found the following: at a certain point in time, there was a Minister of Education
05:43
- in Belgium we have multiple, as you know -
05:46
but there was a Minister of Education that dared to say
05:52
he would open the schools again sooner than expected, because it was actually irresponsible
05:56
of us to keep the schools closed for so long. And the next day
06:00
an article in the paper said: "What do you know about viruses?" [chuckles] to a Secretary.
06:05
And indeed, that was that very rudimentary line of reasoning.
06:08
[Marlies]: So politics was shut down. [Mattias]: Politics was largely
06:11
shut down, yes. The psychological process that had gripped
06:15
society, shut down politics and put it in second place.
06:23
[Marlies]: Ad, you've also expressed your own bewilderment
06:28
about why politics isn't being conducted right now.
06:30
[Ad]: Yes. Yes, well, I recognised that analysis completely,
06:36
the narowwing of vision that's essentially taking place that is not wholly rational,
06:41
within which you can sense enormous emotionality or fear,
06:47
that seems impossible to break through. And I believe that
06:52
is the fascinating part, because every now and then, there'll be a message outside of that,
06:55
but it never hits home, it's like water off a duck's back. In the Netherlands,
07:00
we saw that, as opposed to Belgium, initially, politics
07:06
wanted to offer a kind of counterweight. There was also the idea of leaving schools open. Well -
07:12
[Marlies]: Yes, Mark Rutte's initial plan. [Ad]: Yes, it only lasted a brief moment. [Marlies]: He's forgotten it now.
07:18
[Ad]: And that was, of course, also at the behest of the RIVM. Then, in the Netherlands,
07:23
there was the idea of working towards herd immunity, while -
07:27
[Marlies]: And we'll leave the schools open. [Ad]: We'll leave the schools open, yes. So that was
07:30
a very, well, assuredly political decision. But it was
07:34
noticeable - and I think that set us all to thinking about this, we'll speak about that in a moment -
07:38
but it was noticeable that the government had to give way very
07:42
quickly, as if - Plato speaks of the image of the charioteer
07:47
that must drive the horses. Here, it was as if the horses, the populace - it seemed
07:53
almost a kind of pact between medical science, virologists, physicians
07:59
and teachers that, in the span of a weekend, were able to
08:04
repurpose the whole agenda. And I think that politics, at that moment, faced
08:09
a dilemma: do we persist and present a measured response, and become a counteracting force,
08:14
or do we pivot along? And I think that the pressure, both
08:19
from abroad - Belgium, for example, was very critical of the Netherlands, saying
08:22
it was irresponsible and so on - that they didn't dare take the risk.
08:26
And from that moment onwards, our vision has similarly become
08:32
increasingly narrowed, indeed.
08:34
[Marlies]: And you brought up Solomon Asch - if I'm pronouncing that correctly -
08:41
he did research into
08:44
what psychological sphere, the sphere of crowd psychology,
08:49
we end up in. [Mattias]: Yes, Solomon Asch investigated the influence of
08:54
crowd formation, along with public opinion in general,
08:57
on an individual's ability to make judgements. And he came to the conclusion,
09:02
thanks to a number of beautiful experiments - one of which I described
09:06
in a recent opinion piece in Knack - that judgement is
09:12
spectacularly impeded by crowd formation. And from there -
09:16
[Marlies]: And crowd formation is, exactly? [Mattias]: Right, crowd formation is a specific phenomenon in
09:22
social psychology that occurs under very specific conditions.
09:27
It can't happen at any given moment. In history, for example, you can see that it's
09:31
always occurred in situations where there is great potential for relatively
09:37
unstable, indeterminate fear, depression and a lack of a general sense of meaning
09:43
in society. For example, in the state of affairs before the
09:47
Corona crisis, that was very apparent. A crisis such as
09:50
the Corona crisis robs people of their historical awareness. That's very remarkable.
09:54
People experienced the crisis as coming out of nowhere,
09:59
but actually, if you look closely at the period leading up to it,
10:04
you could see society heading towards a crisis.
10:07
[Marlies]: What crisis were we facing, then? [Mattias]: Well, the months, the year
10:11
before the crisis, for example, there was an extremely high
10:15
rate of antidepressant usage. In Belgium, it reached 300 million
10:21
doses a year. [Marlies]: Yes, it's immense. [Mattias]: 300 million doses a year.
10:26
[Marlies]: Do you happen to know the numbers for the Netherlands? [Mattias]: No, no - I tried to look it up yesterday
10:30
but I couldn't find it.
10:32
[Marlies]: I know, at least, that more than a million people in the Netherlands
10:36
take antidepressants. [Mattias]: Yes, and that'll be point prevalence,
10:40
meaning at a particular moment in time. That's a million people at the same time
10:44
taking antidepressants. Point prevalence. So the year-long
10:48
prevalence may be much higher. So there was the extremely high rate of antidepressant usage,
10:54
but also, for example, the rate of burn-out was increasing
11:01
drastically, to the extent that large institutions, such as universities,
11:05
could hardly keep operating. We like to forget these things, but last year, it took me
11:09
nine months to get a contract signed between
11:14
my research unit and a clinical biology lab, simply because
11:20
there were always one or more people with a burn-out. Over time, that honestly
11:24
started making you feel despondent. [Ad]: Even students, too. These last few years,
11:28
it's the first time I've really seen the same thing happening to students.
11:32
It's miraculous, in the past, I never came across it.
11:35
[Mattias]: No. Professors, too. In the past, it was rare. A couple of months
11:40
before the crisis, after a doctoral defence, I went out to dinner with the doctoral jury, and of the six
11:45
professors at the table, three had had a burn-out in the last six months.
11:50
That says something about the scope of the problem. Add on to that -
11:54
I don't know if you've read the book Bullshit Jobs, but I found it
11:59
a hugely informative book on this point. The man
12:04
starts with the observation that an enormous percentage of people, I believe around
12:09
70 percent, feel that their jobs are actually completely meaningless.
12:17
That shows to what extent our society was gripped by a sense
12:21
of meaninglessness and psychological malaise, which was actually quite vaguely dispersed.
12:28
That meant that most people actually couldn't say why they were fearful,
12:33
depressed or unhappy. There was a kind of free-floating
12:38
malaise in society. And that's the necessary condition and
12:41
window for large-scale crowd formation.
12:45
Crowd formation that typically emerges around a narrative. And typically, that narrative
12:52
is one that designates an object of fear. In the time of the rise of
12:57
the Nazi regime, the Jewish were designated as the source of societal problems.
13:03
They were easily put forward as an object of fear.
13:07
"Because of them, things are going wrong for us." But that can just as well be organised
13:13
around a virus, for example. The narrative of the Coronavirus
13:18
arrived in a society with an atmosphere of huge indeterminate
13:23
fear. And so that fear - I think there's hardly another way to
13:27
explain it - I think, overwhelmingly attached itself to that object.
13:32
To put it somewhat ironically, the story became a 'success' story unrivalled.
13:37
It managed to get the whole of society completely
13:41
under its spell, that narrative about the Coronavirus.
13:45
[Marlies]: But the crisis prior to that, that sense of meaningless
13:50
and large amounts of antidepressants - should we see that as the end of neoliberalism?
13:56
The failure of neoliberalism?
14:00
[Mattias]: You can - [Marlies]: Specialisation in all areas causing
14:04
people to lose sight of the whole, what role they
14:09
play in the bigger picture? [Mattias]: Certainly, that certainly plays a role.
14:13
The production model within our society, wherein the producer
14:17
becomes disconnected from the person that effectively
14:21
makes use of the product, that certainly contributes
14:26
to the experience of meaninglessness. Because the fulfilment work brings
14:31
is largely due to being able to see that what you're doing
14:37
has an effect on the other. That it makes them happy, that it means something to them,
14:40
that they're engaged with it. Assigning meaning to things - the experience of meaning in life
14:47
almost always stems from a kind of feedback from the
14:54
other acknowledging what is being done as effective and welcome. And that's precisely
14:59
what the book Bullshit Jobs points out, that most people feel
15:03
that what they do doesn't actually make a difference, and ask themselves:
15:08
"Who, in God's name, is better off because of my work?" For most people,
15:14
that's unclear. [Marlies]: Right, but Ad, something to do with the scale of
15:20
companies, of universities, of schools - the language, too, is always a point you like to bring up.
15:26
[Ad]: Certainly, certainly. I recognise a lot of this. In some ways, it touches on some things -
15:30
within Philosophy, the theme of alienation is a familiar one.
15:34
Going all the way back to Rousseau, involving life in large cities, he spoke of it -
15:41
somewhat romantic - but of course, later put forth by Marx, who
15:45
spoke of the kind of alienation caused by the industrial means of production.
15:49
But I think that, over the course of - what shall we say? -
15:56
the second half of the twentieth century, involving especially the technological revolution,
16:04
the proces of globalisation that it brings along with it, the distance that you also mentioned -
16:09
I think that's continually made it bigger and bigger. So someone like Castells,
16:16
who has conceptualised an information age, where he speaks of
16:21
the network society, that also addresses this theme - the loss of meaning. I wrote, once,
16:26
in 2004, a book - Tijd van Onbehagen. So that malaise,
16:32
that's been around for a while now. I do think that - and that may say something about
16:37
that global phenomenon, though I think science itself has
16:40
also played a role in that - I think that we're dealing with
16:44
a huge transformation of our lives.
16:49
Technology results in both labour and consumption
16:55
increasingly being seen simply as functions. So the idea of ownership,
17:02
of 'this is mine', of stability - the feeling that you're somewhat
17:09
in control of your life, the satisfaction you can get from creating
17:15
something that gives you fulfilment, I think that particularly
17:20
because of that large scale, of globalisation - because of that functionality approach, well,
17:26
we've been coming under increasing pressure. I think you're absolutely
17:30
correct, it seems as though there's a kind of lurking malaise,
17:36
but also anger, a kind of rage, wherein we're searching for
17:42
someone that did it, or something that did it. The whole debate in the Netherlands surrounding
17:48
identity - globally, actually - it's hugely hectic,
17:54
as if continual projections are needed to put a face to
17:59
that deeper problem of the loss of meaning. I indeed have the sensation,
18:03
just as you say, it seems as though we've now found a kind of
18:08
enemy, and that's why we're also hearing something close to war language -
18:14
"We need to defeat the virus!" "Mobilise!" As if that's the threat.
18:20
It almost gives us a sense of meaning again, or it's supposed to.
18:24
[Marlies]: Connects us again. [Ad]: Yes. [Mattias]: Yes, I think so too.
18:28
The first psychological benefit to a narrative
18:36
of fear, or a narrative that assigns an object of fear,
18:40
is that the fear becomes bound. It becomes bound to an object and because of that, mentally,
18:44
it becomes manageable. There's nothing more difficult for a human being to bear than fear that he cannot
18:50
place, fear that he cannot attach to anything. And a narrative is latched onto precisely because it offers
18:55
an object of fear. "That's the danger, the virus."
18:59
And then we implement a number of measures. [Ad]: It gives us a framework for action.
19:03
[Mattias]: Yes, we can control it a bit. And then the next step is that, within that narrative, one finds
19:07
a semblance of meaning, because there emerges a kind of battle, charged with pathos and heroics,
19:14
a shared battle against the object of fear.
19:17
So one somewhat repairs a piece of the bond, the societal bond,
19:20
that had been partially lost
19:24
with a shared battle against the object.
19:26
[Ad]: Yes, that's nicely put. You also have the heroes -
19:30
even the shelf stackers became heroes at one point - I don't know
19:34
if that happened in Flanders, too [laughs]. [Mattias]: Yes, yes, it did. It was remarkable, wasn't it,
19:40
the word 'hero' was used often - the heroes of health care, and so on and so forth. Indeed,
19:44
a new kind of heroism emerges.
19:47
And all that taken together results in a kind of transformation of fear into a sort of daze,
19:53
and that's what's so addictive about crowd formation. The fear is transformed
19:57
into a daze, and from there the step takes place to another well-known phenomenon:
20:01
hypnosis. [Ad]: Oh, that's very funny you say that, actually,
20:05
because that lines up with - I've mentioned it here before -
20:08
my first experience - you'll remember, we spoke about it -
20:12
in April, I was asked, "how are you experiencing this?"
20:16
And I said, well, it's like a dream.
20:19
As if we're in a kind of shared dream.
20:22
And because of that, yes, a narrowing of vision, there's all kinds of things we don't see.
20:27
But I'm really curious about that transition from daze to hypnosis,
20:31
because that's actually precisely how I experienced the atmosphere at that moment,
20:36
and that the media and everything else became part of a kind of dreamlike reality. [Mattias]: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
20:42
The link is very direct, here. Gustave Le Bon pointed that out in his book,
20:47
the Crowd, uh, La Foule.
20:49
[Marlies]: Extremely interesting. [Mattias]: Yes, a very interesting book. [Marlies]: From 1895, but still very relevant.
20:57
[Mattias]: Very relevant, yes. He pointed out that the narratives that lead to crowd formation,
21:04
just as hypnotic suggestion does, strongly focus the attention on one specific aspect
21:10
of reality, like a spotlight. It shines the light on
21:16
one element of the scene and leaves the rest in obfuscation.
21:20
So both hypnosis and crowd formation have a very strong
21:25
attention-narrowing effect, they narrow the realm of consciousness.
21:30
[Ad]: In a sense it's like time shrinkage. Just like in a dream,
21:34
where you can neither hold on to the past nor think of the future. You gravitate towards the present.
21:38
[Mattias]: Yes, and only a part of the present. [Ad]: Right, a part of it.
21:41
[Marlies]: Right, but you're saying - I mean, people under hypnosis can even be operated on
21:46
and they truly don't experience the pain.
21:49
[Mattias]: Yes, that's right, that's right. So hypnosis, on the one hand, has a number of
21:52
mental, cognitive effects, namely that people are only able to take account of a limited
21:57
section of reality. That explains why even extremely
22:02
intelligent people cannot be brought to make the simple calculation of,
22:07
"There are this many victims of Corona and this many victims of the measures." What you're doing,
22:12
and I literally said this - what you're doing is the same as, should there be
22:16
one person on the tracks, you derail the entire train to save them.
22:20
That's what it often seems like.
22:24
But you simply cannot for the life of you make that clear, not even to intelligent people. Every time,
22:30
they say, "Wait a minute - what do you mean? You're just going to let them die?
22:34
Those that are suffering from Corona?" No! I simply mean
22:36
that you need to take more than that into account.
22:38
And that doesn't work. It's truly the same effect as
22:43
hypnosis, that it just shuts down intelligence.
22:46
The mental system may be as strong as an ox, but it has no grip on
22:51
what is not within its field of attention. And, indeed, as a second step,
22:56
on the other hand, there's other effects. There's the cognitive effect, there are a number of
23:00
affective effects - empathy is only afforded to that which
23:05
falls within the spotlight of that narrowed consciousness - and further,
23:09
the very remarkable fact that someone under hypnosis
23:17
or under the influence of crowd formation has the incredible
23:23
ability to put all their egotistical interests aside and completely
23:28
sacrifice themselves for the collective goal. That's extremely dangerous,
23:33
as we've often seen throughout history, and truly remarkable.
23:36
Under hypnosis it goes so far that, for example, at the University Hospital
23:39
of Luik, you can still see it, with your own eyes, every day, if
23:43
you'd like - and if you are admitted to the operation chamber - but you can
23:47
see that, after a relatively simple hypnotic procedure, someone can be made so insensitive
23:53
to their own pain that, without issue, you can make incisions in their body. There's a professor - Faymonville - who, yearly,
24:01
operates on, I believe, a couple hundred people under hypnosis.
24:06
[Marlies]: But actual - like, heart operations, right? [Mattias]: Sometimes very serious operations, yes.
24:10
[Marlies]: It's not just a little cut. [Mattias]: No, no, no, if someone is truly allergic to chemical or
24:17
biochemical sedatives, they can still perform very serious operations. I believe
24:22
that there have been open-heart operations where they cut right through
24:26
the sternum, under hypnosis. But - I once wrote an article
24:30
- someone doubted that. They thought that, at the least,
24:36
minimal local anaesthesia would be needed. I don't think so.
24:40
I've tried to reach Faymonville to ask her, but I wasn't able to.
24:42
But in any case, you can perform very serious operations
24:45
with nothing but hypnosis. [Ad]: It's indeed a known
24:48
phenomenon. I also read about soldiers - the day before
24:54
yesterday, coincidentally - in a book by James Hillman, I'm sure you've heard of him,
24:58
he's also a psychologist. He describes situations on
25:02
the battlefield where servicemen don't realise that they've been shot,
25:10
because they're so focused - there's also an element of auto-hypnosis there,
25:15
due to fear, but also arousal and focus. Only later do they
25:20
notice they've been wounded. Bullets that simply aren't felt.
25:24
So that means that,
25:28
when we're discussing this narrowing of vision - we had the strategic
25:31
image of the soul - thinking and feeling - there's interaction there -
25:36
but that apparently, in those conditions of fear and intense, dreamlike fixation, you cut off
25:44
elements of your own emotional experience. And that's why it
25:49
doesn't reach you. So something that's being said just does not reach you. Of course,
25:54
that's also partly that frustration we have surrounding Corona,
25:57
it just seems that, somehow, the message is extremely difficult
26:04
to get across to a larger audience. [Marlies]: Yes, and that, of course - just to bring it back
26:07
to that experiment by Asch - that a line is drawn...
26:14
Perhaps it's a good idea to explain how that works.
26:17
[Mattias]: Yes, yes. [Marlies]: Crowd formation, pressure.
26:19
[Mattias]: Indeed, Solomon Asch studies the effects of group pressure
26:23
on individual judgment, let's say, individual reasoning ability.
26:28
And he brought to attention that crowd formation and group pressure
26:34
can bring people to the most absurd kinds of judgements,
26:39
or at least buy into a narrative that accepts the most absurd kinds of judgements.
26:43
I believe that's crowd formation in particular, even more so, perhaps, than hypnosis,
26:52
it's actually a very peculiar process in that regard. But anyway, Solomon Asch invited
26:58
people - groups of eight participants - to enter a room
27:04
and then he showed them an image with a line
27:09
flanked by three more lines. And at first sight, even a blind man could see immediately
27:15
that the first line was equal in length to the third line.
27:19
But, in fact, in each of those eight-participant groups, Solomon Asch had planted
27:28
seven disguised confederates, his colleagues.
27:32
And he asked each of the eight participants,
27:38
"Please, tell me, which line, of the three lines on the right,
27:45
is equal in length to the first line?" and the first seven people that gave their answer
27:50
were the seven confederates, and they each gave a blatantly wrong answer.
27:53
But truly wrong, so wrong that, again, a blind man could see that the answer
27:57
was wrong. But, in fact, the result was that 75% of the eighth participants -
28:02
or rather, let me say it a different way: only 25% of them
28:07
consistently refused to go along with that absurd judgment
28:11
that the first seven pronounced. Only 25% of them.
28:16
I believe this may correspond to the 25% of people that are
28:21
not inclined to go along with the Corona narrative.
28:24
[Ad]: And that example doesn't even involve a fearful situation.
28:27
That's just the group. Group pressure. [Marlies]: That's just as you're relaxing around a table, talking about lines.
28:31
[Mattias]: Yes, that's right. [Ad]: It's a fascinating experiment. It's about not wanting
28:35
to fall outside the group. "Oh, well, alright then, I - I see it, but
28:40
I surely must be wrong, then..." Or perhaps you may even start seeing it that way at a certain point,
28:44
that's taking it even further. But here, the situation is still
28:48
very clinical. [Marlies]: And that under group pressure alone, people will
28:52
already give an answer that they believe is socially desirable.
28:56
[Mattias]: Yes, and that was also very interesting in the experiment.
29:00
When Solomon Asch asked the participants, afterwards, "But why did you
29:06
go along with a judgement that was clearly completely absurd?"
29:10
a portion of the participants answered, "Well, I knew that
29:13
it was wrong, but I didn't dare say so."
29:16
But even more interesting: another portion, a relatively large one - I believe something like
29:21
a third - answered, "Well, I honestly began to doubt my own judgement."
29:26
Right? "I truly began to question what I originally thought,
29:30
and what was plainly obvious, I began to doubt its truth. And eventually I thought, well,
29:34
they must be right. They wouldn't all be saying the same thing, if there weren't
29:39
some truth to it." And that is exactly what you hear in discussions surrounding simple
29:44
matters of the Corona crisis that are blatantly wrong.
29:48
People refuse to react to the content of the arguments and eventually will say,
29:54
if you continue to confront them with clearly absurd
29:57
elements surrounding the disclosure of information to the public,
30:00
they will say, mark my words, almost always: "Well, surely, not everyone
30:05
would be saying it if it weren't true." They reference the fact that there is consensus
30:10
within the group - and that trumps every substantial argument.
30:14
[Marlies]: And as far as I'm understanding you, the experts
30:20
are also part of that process of narrowing and group pressure.
30:25
[Mattias]: Indeed. There are many comparisons between crowd formation and hypnosis, but there's also
30:31
one distinct and important difference: when a hypnotist
30:36
hypnotises someone, there's one person still 'awake'.
30:41
The field of attention, the consciousness of the hypnotist,
30:45
is not narrowed. The hypnotist is aware of the world outside of
30:50
that upon which he focuses the subject's attention. In crowd formation, that is often not the case.
30:56
[Marlies]: There's no one left awake. [Matties]: No, the experts - [Marlies]: A-woke.
31:02
[Mattias]: - the attentional fields of the experts are often even more narrowed.
31:06
In a sense, because of their education being unilaterally focused on viruses.
31:10
Additionally due to the benefits the story brings them. You're appointed as
31:14
an expert, get lots of attention, are given research funds, and so on and so forth,
31:21
And often, because of that, they go along with the narrative even more strongly, they're
31:25
enraptured by it even more strongly. That's not to say that no one is truly awake, perhaps -
31:31
I believe Le Bon makes note of that - sometimes there are those that are awake and use the
31:37
narrative, the situation, to their advantage. They realise that you can surf the wave of the narrative,
31:41
exploit it for profit. I would be amazed if that
31:44
were not the case in this crisis. But I believe that one can very easily
31:48
overestimate the roles of those people. You cannot make sense of the current
31:52
phenomenon we are experiencing primarily based on intentional, conscious,
31:58
waking manipulation, I think. It happens. But, most of the mechanisms that we see
32:03
I believe are the result of the largely subconscious mechanisms
32:08
of crowd formation. [Marlies]: Right, you're referring to that
32:10
gut feeling people have saying: who's behind all this?
32:14
[Mattias]: Who's behind it, indeed. [Marlies]: Who's behind this? Bill Gates, or China,
32:18
or whoever - who's behind it? And you're saying, well, maybe nothing. We've been
32:24
enraptured by it ourselves. [Mattias]: Yes, I believe that many of the people who
32:27
are suspected of consciously taking advantage of the situation
32:30
are, first and foremost, also, for a large part, gripped by the narrative. And that a part of them
32:34
believes, despite what our intuitions may say about them,
32:41
that, in the end, they're doing good with that narrative.
32:46
They're for a large part also blind. I truly believe that. I believe that
32:51
both those who fanatically believe in the narrative and those who are fanatically
32:55
against it, and have the tendency to suspect experts of being co-conspirators,
32:59
that they're both - [Marlies]: Almost caught by the same -
33:02
[Mattias]: Yes, and I think they may make the same mistake, that they
33:05
gravely overestimate the wakefulness, the omnipotence,
33:09
the omniscience of the experts.
33:12
[Marlies]: Right, so if you get very agitated towards them,
33:17
you're actually overestimating their knowledge. [Mattias]: Yes. I think that actually, humanity
33:20
has a general tendency to overestimate the role of conscious processes. For example in their own
33:25
functioning. Humans are very inclined to believe that they consciously direct their own lives,
33:29
and usually, that's not the case. Because the majority of what you do is also
33:32
unconsciously driven. [Marlies]: We're just faffing about. [laughs] [Mattias]: Yes, well, we're being driven by factors
33:38
and powers that we essentially have no awareness of. That refers to
33:42
Freud's famous quote, "The ego is not master in its own house." Our ego thinks
33:46
that it's master in its own house, but its actually continuously sidelined
33:50
and overruled by the unconscious, without it realising.
33:54
And I think we have the same tendency when we judge societal
33:58
processes: overestimating what is consciously organised and underestimating
34:03
which unconscious processes are all playing a role. May I just add one more thing?
34:08
I don't mean to say that there is no conscious manipulation taking place, because of course,
34:12
there are commercial interests, all kinds of things are in play. It would be foolish to deny that.
34:15
That's also a problem in the current societal debate:
34:19
if you don't accept or agree with the dominant narrative,
34:22
you're so easily written off as a conspiracy theorist. While, actually, often,
34:27
in the discourse of the other narratives, there is no reason whatsoever to say that
34:32
they have the structure of a conspiracy theory. Just because you mention
34:35
conscious manipulation, doesn't mean that you're unveiling a conspiracy.
34:38
To be able to call something a conspiracy, you need conscious, planned, secret
34:43
and malevolent interventions. Those need to be present. Only then
34:47
can you call it a conspiracy theory. And even then - of course, such things as conspiracies
34:51
do actually exist. [Ad]: History is full of conspiracies.
34:55
[Mattias]: Unless you think that Caesar was coincidentally stabbed by 23 people simultaneously,
34:59
you believe in conspiracies. [Ad]: But perhaps one more element as an addition -
35:03
there's a kind of interplay, a dialectic, between
35:08
crowd and expert, in which fear plays, I think, a key role.
35:15
Because when you're fearful, you seek refuge. Yesterday,
35:19
I experienced it with someone I know well, they said:
35:23
"Yes, I am fearful, and at a moment like this it's important that I give those
35:30
figures of authority the reigns." I think that's what
35:35
is happening here, too. There are all kinds of uncertainties - we need to do something,
35:41
you know, together. That already creates a kind of community -
35:47
we're all in the same boat. And then there comes the captain. So that desire
35:52
to just go in that direction, to say, "Well, they ought to know.
35:57
They studied for this." - that's what said - "They studied for this. And so who are you
36:00
to offer criticism?" So it's sort of
36:05
a freeing moment, too, that you can appoint someone. [Marlies]: It gives certainty within the uncertainty.
36:10
[Ad]: It gives certainty and an element of calm, "OK, well now, at least
36:14
this is better than a cacophony of voices."
36:19
So people - and Le Bon brings this up, too - people have a desire for
36:25
unity. They can't tolerate contradictions.
36:30
[Marlies]: It makes them fearful. [Mattias]: Yes, of course, of course - the narrative... [Ad]: Of course, because then it becomes uncertain again.
36:35
So the expert is the one that embodies the narrative. [Marlies]: That's the shaman.
36:39
The one who must...? [Ad]: They get a kind of shamanistic -
36:41
a shamanistic role. "They'll lead us." And I think that's
36:47
what's gone wrong in politics, that the specialist has been put on too much on the forefront.
36:51
While at its core, going back to what you said at the start, this is of course
36:56
a political issue. You need to weigh different interests and values.
37:01
Calmly say - this should certainly have happened this summer, at first it was
37:05
understandable, lots of uncertainties, but it should have
37:08
happened - calmly say: "Right, and now we need to broaden our scope
37:11
and work towards a narrative where we adjust some of
37:18
what we said earlier." And I think there's an angle there, too, because that means
37:23
that the expert who had taken the reigns needed to say, "Well, actually, I may
37:28
have been a bit mistaken..." [Mattias]: Which has now become impossible.
37:31
[Ad]: Yes, you can't, you just can't. [Mattias]: It's now become impossible. Because the
37:33
consequences are now so extreme that the expert almost literally puts his life at risk. [Ad]: He'll be taken hostage.
37:39
[Mattias]: If he can't convince the people now that something much worse on the horizon,
37:45
then one comes to the inevitable conclusion that if this was all there was to it,
37:50
this does not weigh up against the consequences we'll face for the next fifty years.
37:53
So, in other words: there are people who are literally - and to a certain extent I
37:58
can understand it - are literally fighting for their lives, to convince people that,
38:02
if we don't continue with all kinds of measures, something much worse
38:08
is on the horizon. [Marlies]: Right, because if it turns out, just like in Sweden -
38:11
so, we approach it more reservedly,
38:16
and in Sweden, the ICU's are not
38:20
overflowing. In fact, they were empty for a little while. Perhaps the consequences wouldn't be
38:25
so disastrous. A whole field would then have failed.
38:31
[Ad]: And the scale of it, of course. [Marlies]: The scale. [Ad]: Lives. Life's work.
38:37
[Mattias]: Right, because it's only just beginning, isn't it? [Marlies]: So, essentially,
38:41
the virus needs to get us. Because otherwise it's... [Mattias]: Right, indeed, and that's where
38:46
there's enormous danger, right? Because the victims of
38:51
the measures, they're now going to start to fall. They'll drive up the excess mortality rate.
38:57
And there's a very real risk, I think a nearly unavoidable one, that the victims of the
39:04
measures will be attributed to the Coronavirus.
39:09
And that they'll then be used to justify the measures and further
39:13
assert them. And that traps us in a vicious circle. Severe measures cause more victims,
39:18
more victims result in more severe measures. That's an
39:22
extremely dangerous vicious circle that, in time, may result in a practically unrestricted
39:27
platform in our society, for more and more severe measures.
39:31
Even for measures that we now consider absurd. At a certain point,
39:36
in Belgium, there was a virologist who said that it may be best to isolate infected
39:39
people in camps and offer them treatment there.
39:45
It was soon dismissed as infeasible and inhuman, [Marlies]: Here, too.
39:52
but if the fear keeps rising, we'll cross that boundary. The foundation for such measures
39:59
will emerge. So combined with the problematic validity of tests -
40:04
[Ad]: How do you view... I've spoken to a number of people
40:09
who are involved in policy making about
40:15
perspective, in politics and outside of it. It's noticeable
40:20
that the perspective is getting increasingly diffused. The certainty that we'll be getting a vaccine -
40:27
originally they were saying the end of the year, the beginning of next year -
40:31
they're letting go of that. I'm already hearing things like, "Well, it'll be the end of 2021."
40:37
Some say, "Well, maybe even longer," there are voices saying
40:41
that vaccines - take the flu, for example - will never be protective enough,
40:47
and in the mean time we're still in that narrative. [Mattias]: Absolutely. [Ad]: Right. So we've got a technological
40:52
solution - problem, vaccine - and that expectation isn't
40:56
fulfilled. [Mattias]: No.
40:58
[Ad]: How do you see that, if that expectation doesn't, in fact, get fulfilled?
41:02
[Mattias]: I've said from the start of the crisis: you'll see. Once the vaccine
41:06
is here, that doesn't mean that the measures will stop. In other words:
41:11
the narrative will not relinquish its grip. The ideology that will have seized its power,
41:15
that will already have become somewhat institutionalised,
41:19
it will no longer let go. And that's what we're hearing more and more virologists say -
41:24
"The vaccine won't mean that we no longer have to wear masks."
41:28
"The vaccine won't mean that the virus has disappeared." "We must learn to
41:32
live with the virus." Read: we will continue writing the narrative that decides society.
41:37
So, we can be angry about that, we can find it inhuman,
41:41
and so on and so forth, but in a sense, it's also
41:44
a manifestation of a very simple principle: whoever has power
41:48
will attempt to consolidate it. That's a very simple principle.
41:52
[Marlies]: And, in this case, the virologists have the power?
41:55
[Mattias]: Right, so actually, I believe we're seeing the breakthrough of a certain
41:58
ideology, a kind of vision on humanity and the world, that has been gaining ground
42:03
from the beginning of the Enlightenment. A kind of mechanistic,
42:06
biological reductionist vision on humanity and the world, that has slowly
42:10
taken over the spirit. Eventually, everyone was truly convinced that
42:15
a human being is reducible, in body and soul, to a biochemical process,
42:19
meaning: the mechanistic interactions between elemental particles.
42:24
In fact, that idea has already been completely surpassed by the sciences themselves,
42:28
the mechanistic sciences have completely surpassed that. They've completely surpassed this idea
42:32
of absolute predictability, of mechanistic determination,
42:38
even the idea that you can reduce consciousness to matter -
42:42
they're totally past that. But, that's the case
42:48
for the very peak of the sciences. It's a number of scientists that long ago
42:52
crossed that boundary. But the rest is still completely -
42:56
the vision on humanity and the world that most people have, is still completely captured
42:59
by that mechanistic thinking. And actually, it makes sense. If the level of fear
43:05
rises high enough in a society, that's where one looks for authority. In that narrative,
43:09
and in the representatives of that narrative. And those that represent
43:12
that narrative are the biomedical sciences, the sciences
43:16
that think mechanistically. What we're now experiencing is the logical result
43:21
of the unsuspecting cultivation of the bioreductionist vision on humanity and the world
43:28
over the last number of centuries. It was a branch of the Enlightenment -
43:31
certainly not the entire Enlightenment - but a branch of it,
43:35
a simple one, that presented everything as being simple and reducible.
43:39
That always appeals the most to the largest group.
43:42
[Ad]: I've said in different contexts that
43:45
what we're experiencing is a crisis surrounding modernity itself. You could say,
43:52
we've seen the collapse of communism, which had its own truth -
43:56
with the driving ideal of organising the world such as to
44:01
achieve an absolutely just society,
44:05
in the course of history; you could say
44:09
that was exposed, it collapsed. Now, we have the attack on neoliberalism -
44:15
take Gabriël van denk Brink's book,
44:21
Ruw Ontwaken uit de Neoliberale Droom. It's possible that there's one underlying force -
44:26
which matches with what you said - that is left from both liberal society
44:30
and communist society, namely technicism.
44:36
So, what was visible in both communism and liberal capitalism.
44:40
And now, in this phase, we're seeing that the difference between China
44:45
and the West isn't even that big anymore. [Mattias]: No, of course not. [Ad]: So, we're seeing that
44:49
the technical, a kind of technical ideology, is now
44:54
gaining the upperhand. [Marlies]: And who's seized power? [Ad]: And politics - politics -
44:59
[Marlies]: They've been put on a pedestal. [Ad]: Yes, absolutely. It's no coincidence
45:02
that Big Tech is currently flourishing. And that in the crisis - [Marlies]: Right, that's tech, but you also said
45:07
the biological sciences. [Ad]: Yes, but they belong together.
45:10
[Mattias]: Those, I think, are two representatives of mechanistic thinking.
45:15
The idea that you can see humanity and the world as a mechanistic, interactive set of
45:20
molecules and atoms and subatomic particles. And I believe
45:25
it is always accompanied by the delusion that humanity can understand everything and can
45:30
control everything. That's essentially a property of that.
45:32
In essence, you can trace back the current crisis to the problem of humanity's
45:38
mental hubris. Humanity thinks they can understand all,
45:41
predict all, control all. I believe it's that kind of vision
45:45
on humanity and the world that lead to the sense of meaninglessness. Because within that vision,
45:52
your life is meaningless. Right? The mechanistic vision is
45:56
by definition a world view that states your existence is a purely mechanistic effect
46:03
of particles interacting with one another. There's no direction in that. There's only,
46:07
to put it in Aristotelian terms, a material cause;
46:11
material particles that interact with on another that formed
46:15
minerals, plants, animals, and eventually humanity, but there is no direction in it.
46:19
Your existence is reducible to a purely mechanistic process.
46:24
If you start from a world view like that, then it's no surprise you end up
46:27
deciding to think, "What's my life good for? What's the point? Why do I work?"
46:31
That's no mystery. And in that sense, it's nearly unavoidable,
46:35
if you follow the line of reasoning long enough - a sense of meaninglessness, then fear, then depression,
46:42
to eventually being susceptible to crowd formation, which causes you to do what?
46:46
Cling even more desperately to the ideology -
46:50
[Ad]: That's actually the cause. [Mattias]: - that caused it all, yes.
46:52
That's always how it goes - someone who is addicted to alcohol
46:56
has a terrible headache because of his drinking the night before and what does he do
47:01
to ease it? [Marlies]: He drinks more. [Mattias]: He drinks more. And it's the exact same with ideologies.
47:05
When an ideology is on the brink of failure, that's when one
47:09
clings to it even harder. [Ad]: In that sense, it's also quite suspenseful.
47:13
I don't know where this is heading. Myself,
47:17
in Tijd van Onbehagen, I made the comparison to the Matrix.
47:22
And, fascinatingly, I find that film is becoming more and more relevant.
47:28
Now, we're actually being pushed behind screens, we're getting trapped, and the fact that
47:34
it's almost taken for granted - it's a shield. Just like in
47:40
Houellebecq's The Elemental Particles. Social distancing. We're becoming
47:45
elemental particles. Physical togetherness is dangerous. You need to put up shields,
47:50
mouth masks. And the strange thing is that reflecting on that, thinking about
47:57
what we're doing, and why, and what is life? What is disease? What is health?
48:02
That's all disappearing because of a fear that deprives us of seeing
48:10
what is important. I'm very intrigued about whether
48:16
this is a sustainable scenario. [Marlies]: No, of course it's completely unsustainable.
48:20
Sadly, I'm going to have to start wrapping up, but I would really like to, with you, for a moment,
48:24
talk about - recently, you spoke about, in crowd formation, the power of thought,
48:34
but also the placebo effect, the power of the placebo effect.
48:39
You had the title, "Can a person die of fear?"
48:45
[Mattias]: Yes, that's another article. [Marlies]: Another article.
48:48
[Marlies]: And your answer is: yes. [Mattias]: Yes, a person can die of fear.
48:52
Absolutely. That's been documented most directly by
48:56
a number of anthropologists who observed that in so-called
49:02
'primitive societies' - we're equally primitive in this regard -
49:04
but in so-called primitive societies, they frequently observed that
49:10
when a shaman, for example, pointed at someone with a magic wand,
49:14
or a magic bone, and uttered a curse - they'd point at someone,
49:19
speak a curse and that person would die within hours. Of fear.
49:25
And always in the same way. Their complexion would pale, their eyes would become sunken, and eventually
49:30
their breath would come in gasps and they would die. Unless they could, within that time, find another shaman
49:35
that could utter a counter curse.
49:40
So that's the most direct evidence.
49:44
But also, the enormous influence of psychological factors
49:49
on our bodies, that's at the very least equally present in our society.
49:52
For example, if you look at most medical procedures -
49:57
I could talk for hours about this - but they -
50:00
[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.
50:07
Placebo operations often have
50:11
effects similar to heart operations. [Marlies]: The real operations.
50:14
[Mattias]: Placebos appear capable of - [Ad]: Like a kind of ritualistic practices.
50:18
[Mattias]: In essence, they are, just like the procedures of the shaman,
50:22
first and foremost symbolic actions. We believe in a mechanistic vision on humanity
50:26
and the world, we go to a doctor that is an authority to us
50:30
within that world view, and, for a large part, we're cured
50:34
by the actions of that physician, that authority figure.
50:37
So, placebos work approximately the same as hypnosis. Hypnosis focuses the
50:44
attention on a certain suggestion, and a placebo similarly focuses the attention
50:50
on a certain suggestion, namely the suggestion of healing, and because of that
50:53
your body, so to say, melts into this suggestion and heals,
50:57
in the most spectacular ways. So the working mechanism of crowd formation,
51:03
hypnosis and placebos is the same, one being negative and the other positive.
51:07
A nocebo is the equivalent of a placebo, but
51:12
in a negative sense. For example, a wrongful negative verdict by a physician
51:15
can easily make you ill, if you're not careful.
51:20
Your body will melt into that negative suggestion given by the physician
51:25
and you'll get sick. There's a domain in which there's
51:32
a lot to say about this. You can also refer to animal experiments,
51:35
that have illustrated in the most fascinating way,
51:39
what the influence is of suggestion on the body, in animals, too.
51:42
[Ad]: It goes to show, once more, how important it is to pay attention to the words
51:47
that you use. Whether it's medical scientists or in
51:52
the media. Because stories can bring about their own effects.
51:58
[Marlies]: Because of the stories. [Ad]: Well, because of an excess of fear, we start making
52:04
ourselves ill. [Mattias]: Absolutely. Fear isn't just a result of the Corona
52:08
crisis, it's also a cause.
52:11
The mortality rate of lung infections, in particular,
52:15
rises by 40% in mice populations if they're experimentally induced with fear.
52:22
In humans, they can't do that experimentally -
52:25
that's unethical, to subject humans to so much fear that they perish,
52:30
or perish more quickly due to a lung condition - but naturalistic
52:33
studies show effects of similar sizes, namely: stress
52:37
results in an immensely larger sensitivity. [Ad]: And that means that that sensible narrative surrounding
52:42
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."
52:46
You can simply demonstrate it with the numbers. I had a meeting with
52:52
a group of eight, nine people. Two of them had, no less, been sick in the last six months,
53:03
very sick, seriously sick. [Marlies]: With Covid, or...? [Ad]: Flu.
53:10
Both of them ended up in the ICU with a lung infection, had months of recuperation,
53:16
etcetera. And I said, well, it's important for us to realise
53:20
that we're not even talking about Corona, now. We need to move towards a narrative
53:24
where that also happens with the flu. What's more, to quite
53:27
a large number of people. [Marlies]: It happens.
53:29
[Ad]: It simply happens. And with Corona - [Marlies]: You can get sick.
53:31
[Ad]: You can get sick. And Corona, again,
53:34
it's an awful disease. That's not what this is about.
53:37
And if your immune system is bad, then it happens. But we need to - that narrative -
53:43
We need to snap out of that hypnosis. [Mattias]: Yes, of course. Yes. [Ad]: And towards that sensible story.
53:51
[Marlies]: Right, absolutely. Mattias, Ad, thank you very much. For those that are interested -
53:56
I myself have read it as well, I found it very informative.
53:59
[Ad]: The nineteenth century. End of the nineteenth century. Still relevant. [Marlies]: Yes, unbelievable. 1895. To understand
54:04
what we're going through at the moment, someone from a 120, 130 years ago can help guide us.
54:13
Thank you for the beautiful conversation. [Mattias]: My pleasure. [Ad]: Yes.