Absolutely brilliant. Not only is this work critical to understanding the dynamics of what is occurring in the world today, Desmet has achieved the rare feat of making a deeply intellectual discussion thoroughly practical. (I also must say that Desmet’s writing is a thing of beauty. Despite its weighty subject matter and mind-blowing implications, it was a pure pleasure to read.)
Sure. This book might not be the political tome that some hoped for. However, political tomes are a dime a dozen. This analysis, by contrast, is foundational. Indeed, part of the angst (for lack of a better word) caused by the global pandemic response, both by governments and the masses, is that none of the observed phenomena can be understood, at all, through politics. Yet here we are.
There’s a great deal of hope in the truth that totalitarian regimes always implode and that remaining (or becoming) a dissident can at least slow the advent of atrocities. That fact is not chopped liver. Rather, it’s wonderfully liberating for those who accept it. We can’t crush the regime (global or local). Nor can we “take back” anything. That is fact. Once the totalitarian regime is established, it must exhaust and extinguish itself. On the other hand, we are not powerless. Our honorable and effective contribution to the implosion process is to remain dissident, hold ground, and remember that even little acts of speaking out are poignant and magnified in these times.
Indeed, internalizing the fact that all your “little” acts of speaking truth do make a tremendous difference to the lifecycle of the totalitarian regime is exhilarating.
While much of the analysis here is set out as the mass vs. the truth-speakers, in a more primitive sense it’s the fearful vs. the fearless. Specifically, those who dreadfully fear death vs. those who, for whatever reason, don’t. (Not that any of us are free of fear, but the old adage applies: courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the determination to keep going anyway.)
But this shows up a terrible irony. Clearly, there is an inverse relationship between fear and compassion. This inversion is at its zenith when it regards death. The more a person is whipped up to fear his own death, the less compassion he has on the dying. See seniors dying alone, without even any human touch, and no one within the mass cared. The response to children forcibly being carried off and “prophylactically” imprisoned. Much worse scenarios could be stated. The fear-generated lack of compassion becomes ruthless on every level.
Dr. McCullough talks often about the crisis of compassion among doctors and health care workers during the pandemic, at times to the point that he shed tears. The anti-human policies that were accepted are a testament to the power wielded through mass fear. A doctor who is part of the mass is suddenly psychologically able to hard-heartedly tell patients “no, you’re not allowed to even try that medicine,” even if the patient is dying and, under non-mass circumstances, the doctor would have been quick to prescribe that med for off-label use.
As fear burgeons and becomes the organizing principle of the mass, compassion plummets. Multiply that times a million individuals in various positions of power and authority—all in an intensely enforced positive feedback loop—and the mass becomes ruthless and brutal indeed.
Thus, it should come as no shock that those who integrate into the mass fear are stripped of their humanity first. Then they strip the Other.
But, again, the good news here is that no matter how overwhelming the mass may appear, history proves its vulnerabilities. There’s value in buying time and delaying the atrocities. There’s moral and practical value in speaking the truth in ways large and small, matter-of-factly declining to go along, in love, in living without fear of death. Light, no matter how small, does extinguish darkness. Thank you, Professor Desmet.
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