RTE Roundtable Talk #9: Propaganda and Mass Formation (Transcript)
Featuring Jessica Rose, PhD and Mattias Desmet in Absentia
"The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already." -George Orwell
For a list of Rounding the Earth Roundtables, go here.
This is a transcript of RTE RT#9
Propaganda and Mass Formation - Round Table w/ Jessica Rose and (almost) Mattias Desmet
[00:00:00] Liam Sturgess: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Rounding the Earth. Rounding the Earth is a popular newsletter series published on Substack written by applied statistician and educator, Mathew Crawford. Topics of discussion range from critical analysis of conventional wisdom, to Bitcoin, and everything in between.
[00:00:43] And of course, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and some of these psychological topics that have come out of it. Our goal is a careful examination of important topics and perspectives shaping the world that too few people talk about subscribe to [00:01:00] Rounding the Earth on Substack Rumble, YouTube, and now Rokfin to join a burgeoning research community and to help us unflatten the earth.
[00:01:09] My name is Liam Sturgess, and I am a musician, music producer, and writer/editor coming at you live from Vancouver, British Columbia, and I will be your host for today. And I'm going to now - we have a bit of a different show today. I'm going to introduce my co-host Mathew Crawford. Hello Mathew.
[00:01:30] Mathew Crawford: Hey Liam.
[00:01:31] Liam Sturgess: So what's what's well, should we introduce Jessica and then answer the question of what's thus far gonna be different today?
[00:01:37] Mathew Crawford: Sure.
[00:01:38] Liam Sturgess: Okay. Hi, Jessica.
[00:01:40] Jessica Rose: Hi.
[00:01:40] Liam Sturgess: How are you both doing?
[00:01:43] Mathew Crawford: I'm well.
[00:01:45] Jessica Rose: A okay.
[00:01:48] Liam Sturgess: And as far as we know, so is Mattias Desmet. Now, unfortunately we are having some technical difficulties and have not yet been able to get Mattias on into the [00:02:00] background.
[00:02:00] So we're hoping that that's still gonna work out as planned, but we want be totally upfront and say it's entirely possible that we're gonna have to reschedule. Mattias' appearance on the show. So I apologize in advance for that cuz we all very much are excited to talk to him and fingers crossed last week we had Charles Rixey who joined us slightly into the stream.
[00:02:20] We may wind up with a similar situation today.
[00:02:23] Mathew Crawford: Yeah. In the meantime, in the meantime, this totally random share I we've started doing our own cold brew at home. And I highly recommend, like, this is, this has been like the best summer drink because I don't do like, you know, sugar sodas.
[00:02:38] I don't do you know, like iced tea, that it was just never my thing, but this is like the greatest cold drink that I've had ever in my life. And, and we just put a little bit of white milk in there, little bit of white milk, a little bit of cream, and then pour the coffee in. And this has helped me handle the ridiculous Texas heat.
[00:02:58] This has been like the worst summer oh, in [00:03:00] terms of just like, Hey, you walk outside and you're just sweating with like 110 degrees. It's not, it's not that bad right now, actually, actually right now, it's, it's a very reasonable 82 degrees, but oh. But some of the summer was just brutal here. You know what, without Mattias here I took some notes from the book. And, and maybe, maybe we should begin with a discussion of some of the notes because we would just be getting ahead of the conversation if nothing else, but we may just, you know, have our own conversation about our, you know, our interpretations of some of his ideas in the meantime, that sounds like a good way to get started.
[00:03:38] Jessica Rose: Yep. You'll have to frame the the, like the the paragraphs or the sections of the book, because ashamedly, I admit I haven't been able to read it yet. So that be wonderful if you could do that for me, the Psychology of Totalitarianism.
[00:03:56] Mathew Crawford: Yeah. And and I feel like having, having, [00:04:00] it's a very easy to read book, in fact, it's pretty quick.
[00:04:03] What I would describe it as is a conversation starter about You know, opening up like a next reality. It, it, this would be a very, very difficult topic to do, like, you know, full scientific analysis about and in a sense it, it, it would be almost, it, it would be almost, you know, maybe, maybe there's a sense in which it's a call for every human being to be doing that themselves.
[00:04:31] And, and I'll explain how I get there to that point, but I'm gonna kind of jump to the early chapters in the book are, are good discussion. You know, they kind of lay a groundwork for, you know, questioning reality and reasons that we, we question reality. Oh somebody you just mentioned by the way Liam they say we're not live on Rumble.
[00:04:49] Yeah. I'm looking into it. Okay. Chapter six is where you get sort of the, the, like most clear, like laid down definition of what mass formation is and what he is talking about. And [00:05:00] you know, mass formation, it, it is, it is what most people would think, which is that you know, you've got sort of group thing going on.
[00:05:06] You've got a bunch of people acting, you know, maybe a mass might be described as something which becomes its own game, theoretic unit, as opposed to individuals being, you know, their own game, theoretical units and, you know, playing you know, cooperative and defective games defection games you know, with others around them.
[00:05:24] But there are four conditions for mass formation. The first one is generalized loneliness and you know, he goes back to the enlightenment and says, you know, that, you know, we thought that we were getting, you know, Something great, perhaps without a cost, but enlightenments accelerated the generalized loneliness of people.
[00:05:48] And I'm gonna, I'm gonna question him on that one. I'm not, I'm not sure if he's right or if he's wrong there, but I I've got some questions about it, but I do believe that generalized loneliness absolutely makes people easier to [00:06:00] manipulate, makes it easier to control people's, you know, frames of reality.
[00:06:03] And that it is, you know, something that, that lots of people are experiencing. We can see that In data and surveys, if nothing else. Condition two...
[00:06:13] Jessica Rose: Can I, can I add to that before I forget? Cause I'm very forgetful. The, the loneliness thing really resonates in me because of the, of the, the, the it's not even a need.
[00:06:26] It's a, yeah, it's a requirement. I think within the human being. to to be together with other human beings. So it's, it's it's I don't know. I don't know if this makes sense, but if you're lonely and there's a crowd, it it's, it's almost going to be irrelevant. What they're standing for. If you really just hate being alone, you'll tend toward them anyway.
[00:06:56] So I'm not sure if that made sense, [00:07:00] but anyway.
[00:07:01] Mathew Crawford: Yeah, I think that's true for most people. And number two is lack of meaning in life. Number three is free floating anxiety. This is the one that that was the toughest for me to understand what he meant. The first time I heard him discussing. And so I I'm, I'm gonna stop here and explain what what free floating means.
[00:07:23] Free floating means that it's like, it's, it's it, there's no one general target and therefore it's unresolvable, you know, it's the lack of resolution, right? There's just anxiety. And it's like, it's not like, oh, this event happened. And therefore I'm an-, you know, anxious. It's not like, you know, somebody could work through it with therapy, you know, they can't even put a, a pin on what the problem is.
[00:07:51] Hmm. Perhaps, And it may be that there are other reasons why anxiety is unresolvable, but that's condition three free floating anxiety [00:08:00] condition. Four is frustration. And it sounds like, you know, free floating frustration. So again, you know, you don't necessarily have a target you're just frustrated and, and therefore you act aggressively, you know, or, or it's paired with aggression, you know, a generalized aggression that might be, you know, pushed anywhere.
[00:08:20] And I think that this is a pretty good list. I think that he's doing a good job of beginning to describe circumstances that are difficult. I don't know if we should consider it a complete list or if we should consider it the exact the exact, you know, maybe they're you know, we will continue to expand the list.
[00:08:41] Maybe mass formation happens with where most people have a, a majority of this, you know, of some subset. I don't know. I don't know what the arguments would be as to why this is a complete set. I think that there's less necessary science, but. I do think that it's, that it's reasonable [00:09:00] to, you know, have a list as a conversation starter, whether or not we can do something like scientifically validate whether or not it's true.
