Does History Repeat Itself?
In this lengthy, thorough and fascinating conversation Bret Weinstein challenges, and applies the evolutionary biology perspective to, Mattias Desmet’s mass formation analysis.
Areas of agreement and disagreement emerge. Nonetheless respect pervades their interaction as they go deep into many areas including, (but not limited to):
- Isolation as both a foundational requirement and a characteristic of a mass
- Intelligent, educated people more susceptible to mass formation
- Mass formation is not a psychosis, but could perhaps be a kind of madness1… in that individuals within it willingly participate in their own harm or demise
- That madness may be sensible from a collective point of view
- Religions as evolutionarily-functional adaptive masses
- Why (and how) the masses and their leaders must keep the mass going or develop new ones2… the masses to avoid the pain of isolation and free-floating anxiety; the leaders to avoid being killed by an awakened, angry mob
- A mass typically destroys – including, inevitably, its own children and itself
- The importance of pressure-testing our views to avoid mass formation ourselves
- Humanitarian principles and the art of speech as means of resistance as well as sources of strength and personal evolution
- Enhancing rational, mechanistic understanding with resonating, empathic knowledge and values prevents science becoming an ideology and is essential to harmonious, collective living
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- 1… in that individuals within it willingly participate in their own harm or demise
- 2… the masses to avoid the pain of isolation and free-floating anxiety; the leaders to avoid being killed by an awakened, angry mob