TrueLife - Mass Psychosis Formation: How Societies Descend into Collective Delusion

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Humans are wired for connection — but that same wiring can become a conduit for collective delusion. In this episode, George Monty examines the formation of mass psychosis, from historical panics to modern media-fueled hysteria. How do fear, conformity, and manipulation converge to reshape perception and behavior on a societal scale?In this episode:Historical and modern examples of mass psychosisPsychological mechanisms behind collective delusionThe role of media, propaganda, and social influenceHow fear and conformity amplify hysteriaStrategies to maintain awareness and resist collective manipulationSpeaker 0 (0s): Welcome everybody to the TrueLife podcast. Happy new year to everybody. Hope you don't have a great day. I am flying solo today, my cohost. And can it be here? So you just get, you just get George today. Hope everybody's having a great new year. I wanted to talk about a few topics that I find relatively interesting, and I think you'll find them interesting as well. First and foremost is what do you guys know about grasshoppers? You know, a lot about grasshoppers. I didn't know a lot about him either, but I've been reading up on him a little bit and I want to talk about how a grasshopper becomes a locust. I think you'll find this fascinating. I'm gonna have to look at my notes. So locus, like the ones that cause plagues and ravage the planet, they're actually a type of grasshopper and it's a type of grasshopper that undergoes a morphological change when it gets into large groups. So this transformation from a group of individual grasshoppers to a swarm of locusts, it results in plagues, famine, death, and just devastation. I want you to focus on a little bit, think about it like a regular grasshopper. Like how does it, it physically changes its form and to a group of locusts. And the reason that's important is because I think it dovetails nicely with what we as humans do. So I want to read to you a little bit about how the grasshopper becomes a locust and becomes a swarm. And it's going to get into how individuals think about like a Think about a big giant group of people like a mob, right at the mob mentality is a lot like the locust mentality. Let's figure out how a grasshopper becomes a locust, and then we can figure out how an individual person may succumb to kind of group think. So in specific climatic conditions, usually after heavy rains, causing a sudden flush of vegetation, followed in specific climatic conditions, when there's a heavy rain, all of a sudden there's plenty of vegetation out there and the grasshoppers are feeding, feeding, feeding, there's tons of vegetation and that particular condition, it leads to plentiful food. Plentiful food leads to rapid breeding, rapid breeding leads to and involved in a evolution and an increase in still more reproduction. And that is the catalyst that leads to the transformation from the grasshopper to the locus. So let's talk about the transformation for a minute. The transformation happens when the boom turns to bust when there's tons of vegetation and then all of a sudden there's no vegetation. So the grass opera starts scrambling. There's a ton of them and now there's no more food, right? And when those conditions caused the vegetation to die back, the food is, and then it restricts the feeding grounds. When this happens, the density of locusts increased further as they are forced into smaller and smaller areas of land. Once a critical mass is reached the grasshoppers begin to undergo a morphological change into that of the locus. It has been found that these changes are triggered by the individual grasshoppers. Having their back legs touched a certain number of times by other members of their species. This is generally caused because each locust is nipping at its neighbor in an effort to get enough food. The physical changes begin with a release of serotonin and other neurotransmitters. So, okay. Think about that particular example. And now think about us as humans. What happens to us when we run out of food? What happens to us when we're Cajun with tons of people, we kind of start nipping at each other's heels and we begin to change as a society. We begin to think different. We begin to see things different. You know, I had a friend that used to say, everything's, everything's fine until people stop making money. Right? Think about it in your neighborhood or where you grew up wet or what time you grew up. If you grew up in the eighties, like me in the nineties, when there's tons of money going around, you know, there's a lot more people that are willing to deal with problems, but when times get tough, people get pissed. And I think that that is kind of where we're at now. And the reason I bring that up is I really think that all the problems that we have in our life can be solved by looking at nature. And that's why I bring up the idea of the grasshopper turning into the locus, because I think that we right now are in this transition, we are in the transition of moving from like individual people into like this giant group thing. Like we're so polarized right now. And there's two big groups and the more polarized we get, the more hardcore the groups get the, the more stringent the ideology gets. And it seems now like there's just these two groups that don't even really want to talk to each other. Do they just want to reinforce one another's ideas about what's happening? And it brings up the point. I heard this new term called a mass formation psychosis. And if you just think about that for a minute, man, that's like a mouthful of words, right? Like mass formation, psychosis, like what the hell is that? Well, according to Dr. Malone on sub stack here, he looks at it like a crowd psychosis, the conditions to set up mass formation, psychosis include lack of social connectedness, which we are definitely feeling now a lack of social sense-making as well as large amounts of latent anxiety and passive aggression. Like that's all happening right now. Right? What, for me, I get stuck in because I want to, it seems to me like this is happening on purpose, but it matter if it's happening on purpose or if it's not happening on purpose, the fact is it's happening. We are in a position of a lack of social connectedness. We are being shown two different realities on TV. Or if you watch TV or wherever you consume your media at, there's two different sides of it. And whenever we set this up, you know, be it the locust or another example might be, if you look back at any of the world wars, there's usually two groups, globalism and nationalism, you know, no matter which example you want to look at, it seems like we're headed for some pretty tough times. And if you just take a cursory glance at history, you can see that, you know, people begin to change when they're subjected to stresses. And that's what we are right now. We are so subjected to some real, some real stressors. Lik...

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Welcome everybody to the True Life podcast. Happy New Year to everybody. I hope you're all having a great day. I am flying solo today. My co-host ain't going to be here.

So you just get George today. I hope everybody's having a great new year. I wanted to talk about a few topics that I find relatively interesting, and I think you'll find them interesting as well. First and foremost is, what do you guys know about grasshoppers? Do you know a lot about grasshoppers? I didn't know a lot about them either, but I've been reading up on them a little bit,

and I want to talk about how a grasshopper becomes a locust. I think you find this fascinating. I'm going to have to look at my notes. So locusts, like the ones that cause plagues and ravage the planet, they're actually a type of grasshopper. And it's a type of grasshopper that undergoes a morphological change when it gets into large groups. So this transformation from a group of individual grasshoppers to a swarm of locusts, it results in plagues, famine, death, and just devastation. I want you just to focus on a little bit. Think about it as like a regular grasshopper.

Like how does it physically changes its form into a group of locusts? And the reason that's important is because I think it dovetails nicely with what we as humans do. So I want to read to you a little bit about how the grasshopper becomes a locust and becomes a swarm. And it's going to get into how individuals think about like a big giant group of people, like a mob, right? Like the mob mentality is a lot like the locust mentality. So let's figure out how a grasshopper becomes a locust. And then we can figure out how an individual person may succumb to kind of groupthink. So in specific climatic conditions, usually after heavy rains, causing a sudden flush of vegetation followed in specific climatic conditions.

When there's a heavy rain, all of a sudden there's plenty of vegetation out there. And the grasshoppers are feeding, feeding, feeding. there's tons of vegetation. And that particular condition, it leads to plentiful food. Plentiful food leads to rapid breeding. Rapid breeding leads to an evolution and an increase in still more reproduction. And that is the catalyst that leads to the transformation from the grasshopper of the locust. So let's talk about the transformation for a minute.

The transformation happens when the boom turns to bust. when there's tons of vegetation and then all of a sudden there's no vegetation. So the grasshopper starts scrambling. There's a ton of them and now there's no more food. And when those conditions cause the vegetation to die back, the food is decreasing and then it restricts the feeding grounds. When this happens, the density of locusts increase further as they are forced into smaller and smaller areas of land. Once a critical mass is reached, the grasshoppers begin to undergo a morphological change into that of the locust. It has been found that these changes are triggered by the individual grasshoppers having their back legs touched a certain number of times by other members of their species.

This is generally caused because each locust is nipping at its neighbor in an effort to getting enough food. The physical changes begin with a release of serotonin and other neurotransmitters. So, okay, think about that particular example. Now, think about us as humans. what happens to us when we run out of food? What happens to us when we're caged in with tons of people? We kind of start nipping at each other's heels. And we begin to change as a society.

We begin to think different. We begin to see things different. You know, I had a friend that used to say, everything's fine until people stop making money. Right? Think about it in your neighborhood or where you grew up at or what time you grew up at. Maybe you grew up in the 80s like me in the 90s.

When there's tons of money going around, you know, there's a lot more people that are willing to deal with problems. But when times get tough, people get pissed. And I think that that is kind of where we're at now. And the reason I bring that up is I really think that all the problems that we have in our life can be solved by looking at nature. And that's why I bring up the idea of the grasshopper turning into the locust. because I think that we right now are in this transition. We are in the transition of moving from like individual people into like this giant group thing. Like we're so polarized right now and there's two big groups.

And the more polarized we get, the more hardcore the groups get, the more stringent the ideology gets. And it seems now like there's just these two groups that don't even want to talk to each other. They just want to reinforce one another's ideas about. what's happening. And it brings up the point. I heard this new term called mass formation psychosis. And if you just think about that for a minute, man, that's like a mouthful of words, right? Like mass formation psychosis. Like, what the hell is that? Well, according to Dr. Malone on substack here, he looks at it like a crowd psychosis. The conditions to set up mass formation psychosis include lack of social connectedness, which we are definitely feeling now.

a lack of social sense making as well as large amounts of latent anxiety and passive aggression. Like that's all happening right now, right? What for me, I get stuck in because I want to, it seems to me like this is happening on purpose. But it doesn't matter if it's happening on purpose or if it's not happening on purpose. The fact is it's happening. We are in a position of a lack of social connectedness. We are being shown two different. realities on TV or if you watch TV or wherever you consume your media at, there's two different

sides of it. And whenever we set this up, you know, be it the locust or another example might be if you look back in any of the world wars, there's usually two groups, globalism and nationalism. No matter which example you want to look at, it seems like we're headed for some pretty tough times. And if you just take a cursory glance at history, you can see that, you know, people begin to change when they're subjected to stresses. And that's what we are right now. We are so subjected to some real stressors. What do you guys think? Like, what do you think are the long-term consequences of our kids wearing masks at school? I had a recent conversation with my kids, teachers, and we were speaking about how much communication this happens right here.

You know, think about when you were in class and your teacher could just look at you and kind of give you like the eyes to make it be quiet. Or think about maybe a girl or a guy you liked in school or they would smile at you. Like, there's so much communication that happens right here. And it seems to me that we are fundamentally denying our kids that opportunity to learn that area. Well, what happens in 20 years when those kids haven't learned that? You know, one of the biggest problems we have communicate is communication, right? So when we restrict our children's ability to communicate or even teach them how to communicate, that's definitely going to have a lot of negative repercussions in five, 10, or 15 years from that. So bringing it back to the

crowd psychosis. Can you guys think of a time that you were in a crowd and it changed the way you think of some more examples. How about, have you ever been to like a baseball game? That is my cat, Freddie. Come on, Freddy, get in. Have you been to like a baseball game or a football game and you get so locked into the game that you forget your by yourself? You just feel like part of this crowd, right? Let's think about like, what about a, have some of you seen some of these riots going on in areas that are, you know, probably a lot poorer than the area that you live in, hopefully? Like, what's going on there? At what point in time to people just say, you know what, I'm going to start crushing this window or I'm going to break into this place or I'm going to go

rob this place? Well, usually that happens when you realize that the consequences for you are not actually going to be held up, right? When there's a big group of people and your chances of getting caught are less, you're more willing to take chances like that. And it's like when we're in that group, we're that grasshopper becoming the locust. All of a sudden, the way we communicate changes, the way we act changes, the way we think about consequences change. And, you know, I really like the idea of the locust because when it reaches a critical mask, there's no stopping it. These grasshoppers change and they become the locust and they swarm. And that's when you get pulled. And that's when you get famine and that's when you get devastation.

And if you look at the people around the world right now, whether it's in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, there's giant groups, mobs of people. And they are becoming the locust. Like we are becoming the locust. We are physically changing our ideas of what government, education and the world means. And whether it's a conscious effort or an unconscionation. effort, it's happening around the world. Like we are changing as people around the world. And when that happens, devastation follows. It may be necessary. It may be that we as a society,

that we as people, as we as human beings, have to change in order for us to move forward. Let's take another example. What happens when an animal gets sick? Think about an animal that is out in the wild and maybe it gets rabies or it gets a virus. Like say it gets rabies and it gets in their brain. Everybody remembers that movie, Kujo. Remember that movie with that dog that got all nuts because he got rabies and he started attacking his owner,

sort of acting all violent? Well, that dog was sick. That dog began getting aggressive. He was sick and he started, he wanted to kill everybody. We as a society, we as people are like Kujo right now. You know, that would be,

and it's not just American. It's everybody. Human beings are Kujo right now. And we're sick. We're sick as a society. And no one knows how to fix it. Could it be COVID? Could it be the virus?

Could COVID be made up? Yeah, those are all possible things. But it doesn't matter what COVID is, if it's a man-made, if it's out of a lab or if it's natural. The fact is we as a society are feeling the effects of being. sick and when that happens we act out we act out we act irrational we act crazy and you know there's a good chance that part of us is dying so I just can't get over the fact that you know if you if you just think about us humankind as not coming

into this world but coming out of it we as individuals are part of the planet we're part of nature. And so we're subject to nature's laws. We're subject to the same sicknesses that animals get. We're subject to the same transformations that nature does, like the grasshopper into the locust. And if this is the case, then it's ridiculous to think that the outcomes of our transformation would be different. Let's think about the word transformation. Like that word trans is in the lexicon so much lately, whether it's people, transitioning or if it's a you know just the word trans is everywhere it's all over the lexicon might that be because we as human beings are transitioning into something else you know the process of evolution

never stops we've been changing we've been seeing the world different we've been thinking different and thus the society and the world in which we live is changing it's just fascinating to see it change in your lifetime as fast as it is. It seems like we're on the cusp of this acceleration. Like we've, we, I'm in my 40s and I have gone through what I thought was a pretty, you know, normal childhood. You know, you wake up, you go to school, you know, you go to grade school, you go to middle school, and you go to high school, and you get out, you go to college, or you get a job. But I want you to think for a minute about how that's all going. away. Okay. Let's think about how that's all changing and maybe why that's good. When I look back,

when I look at the family unit, the way I was brought up, it was brought up in the Western tradition of the mom and dad go to work, the kid gets dropped off at school, grandpa and grandma go to a rest home. It's, it's pretty barbaric if you think about it. Like no one is there taking care of each other. It's just the family being completely split up. But you look at the Eastern traditions where you know, there is the entire household that lives together. You have grandpa and grandma that live with mom and dad, and then the kid lives there. The kid has this unbelievable family unit that is able to embrace him or her

and teach them and always have somebody there. So maybe this coming change in education is a good thing. Maybe some of the world in which we live needs to be torn down so that we can rebuild it. You know, I'm not sure that the long-term plan for education is a good one. It seems to me that what we're looking at going forward is everybody learning online. And the idea of that sounds beautiful. Like, you know, the idea of putting on a headset and learning about the Coliseum while being

there in virtual reality, being taught by someone who thoroughly understands what the Coliseum is all about sounds beautiful. before. But in reality, that's probably not what's going to happen. How many people don't have access to broadband? How many people don't have access to a headset? How many people don't have access to the internet? So in order for this, you know, idea of education to be online, we really need a lot more infrastructure when it comes to the telecommunications infrastructure. I do think that education, as we know it, is a problem. But it's a problem. But it's a lot of it. seems to try and destroy education right now is even a bigger problem.

So I just kind of had a quick one today about, I thought it was really interesting about the locust and the grasshopper transformation and where we're going as a society. So I just wanted to want to want to jump in and talk about that with you guys. And I hope you guys are all having a great new year. And I hope you had a Merry Christmas. I hope that you're all looking forward to something beautiful in your life in the next year. And I want you to know and just be able to. aware that the road going forward is probably going to be a bumpy one. It's probably going to be pretty tricky.

But you should do your best to read more, watch less, and think critically about the world going forward. I think it's always a good strategy to try and make everyone around you better. Try to think about what it is the people around you need help with and then be that person that helps them. I think it's a beautiful way to look at your life. And it's a beautiful way to have a strategy to make the world better is to see yourself in the... Look at this beautiful girl back here. I think a beautiful strategy in life is to try and notice

in other people the things that you like about yourself. What's up, Barry? It's good to see you, buddy. So, yeah, that's what I think. What do you think, Barry? You got any ideas about what's happening in this world right now? What are you excited about? And what do you got going on, my friend?

Anything good? What do you got, Skydizi? Nothing? That's pretty much what I got for today, guys. I love all you guys. I hope you guys are crushing it, and we'll talk to you soon. All right. Aloha.

All right.