Commonly Accepted DELUSIONS BIND MINDS TOGETHER. And The Crazier The Bond, The Stronger It is: Collective Madness is Both A Crowd Creator And Crowd Control (and Often Crowd Weaponization!)
Why is madness so popular with crowds? It is common to condemn the madness of the crowds, while being mystified by all sorts of follies, conflicts, moods and ideas inciting to mayhem, which crowds engage in with relish… just observe any sport stadium crowd getting hysterical about their team.
The deity Jews, Muslims and Christians share, orders Abraham to kill his own child, and the devout Abraham agrees to do so. Although Abraham’s child is saved, in some other cases in the Bible, children are killed by the Bible God to punish parents. This obedience to gore is the divine image the respected believers revere: what could be more horrible? Why are the consequences (murderous believers) surprising?
But why such an inclination to collective madness? Of what problem is collective madness the solution? Why so little wisdom in so many moods and thoughts systems? Why so much allure to collective sentiment? Is it an accident, a coincidence, an happenstance… Or is the mayhem not a consequence of the crowd, but, instead, what creates the crowd? Is the call to mayhem a method, a system, a deep, and perverse, logic at work, hidden from a first glance? This is what we will show here: the madness of crowds does not arise from the crowd as much as the crowd from the will to madness.
There is a fascist psychology underlying the madness of crowds, to make out of many minds one. Common crime, or common thought crime, helps to make one mind out of many, and the worse the crime, the better the bond. There is no worse crime than killing children, thus no better bond. Thus Carthage practiced it.
A contrario, by rejecting human sacrifice, Rome placed the Republican values above anything.
Because, quite often, there is a higher sort of wisdom, a secret plot, a perverse mechanism, a nonlinear feedback, attached to the apparent blatant lack of wisdom. An apparent lack of wisdom can hide a deeper logic. The logic often has to stay hidden, because, if revealed, it would look rather perverse, and the opposite of what the mechanism it claims to achieve appears to be.
For millions of years, the greatest enemy of man has been other men, the men of the alienated tribe, next door. Proper ecology serving the survival of all, required to find them repulsive, to reject them, to kill them. Such is the basic reason for the evil men commit: ecology. But there is even worse: there can be too many children, and the most atrocious crimes, are the most binding:
The atrocious delusion that the boSS is more important than the life of a child is the faith which Binds Judaism, and Its Ilk: Christianism, & Islamism. Should we use the neologism “pedocidal”?
Crime binding innocence to extinguish it. Should we call Abrahamism, the “Would-be Child Killer religion“? That would distinguish it from Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, etc.
DELUSION IS A SIGN THAT WE BELONG:
How does one recognize friend from foe? By a signal. It could be the color of a skin, the color of a badge, a flag, and other visual or auditory signal (an accent, say). However, the ultimate structure is a brain structure. They fall in two classes: ideas, and moods.
So, to recognize the friend, the one who has the signal, and the foe, the one who does not, it’s best to entertain a particularly strong signal.
One not seen in nature. That will be best, because no doubt very special.
But are not the most clever, and wisest ideas and moods, faithful reproductions of nature?
Yes.
So the best way to identify a friend, and thus foe, are most stupid and most unwise ideas, and moods.
This is why Judaism, Christianism and Islamism celebrate the would-be child killer, Abraham his name, as their founder. The idea of killing one’s child is assuredly unnatural, unwise, most cruel, and grotesquely inhuman. It’s the ultimate dumb atrocity: destroying the species, starting with one’s flesh and blood.
It’s abominable. Thus it’s best to identify friend (the one who expresses intense admiration for the same despicable madness) and foe (the one who has kept common decency, readily distinguishable as alien, therefore).
What do we see here?
The madness, the insanity which binds.
Thus many delusions are the cement that does not just unite the group, but even defines it.
No doubt delusions will also help to unite those scatterbrains (schizophrenic) minds some of us suffer from.
Delusion can be the crucible of the many, and the cement of the one.
Madness in crowds and madness of the one, thus spring from a common logic of human ethology.
Are all groups defined by delusions? No, the Directly Democratic Republic can define itself without a common madness (this is why Switzerland holds together, in spite of its four official languages and several religions). By insisting on the basic ideas and moods of our common humanity.
This is why the Republic can be enough of a religion, the one that works, without delusion.
Human nature is made to make one out of many (mental fascism). That’s how lions and hyenas were fought (just as baboons still do it: by making the troop into one giant superorganism). Making one of many was also what was necessary to stay competitive on the (human meat) market: if one did not want to become dinner for the other guys, one had to stay united.
Thus humans sharing a group have a strong instinct to think all the same. In two ways: to define the group, even if it means through a delusion, and to make the group fight as one.
(The more crowded the human population, the more delusions will have to define groups; this is why nationalism grows with the crowding… the latter being relative: considering its technology then, in 1900, Germany was relatively more crowded than now; hence the rise of German fascism, which went in parallel with the explosion of the German population, 1850-1914…)
Yet, human beings are truth machines. That’s an instinct going the other way. Because herd animals think all the same, they cannot think anew. Except to stampede, somewhere., or search for the simplest things: new grass, water.
Those who search for truth will avoid the group (all the more as it is all too often defined by a delusion).
Searching for truth is more human, and a way to reach for greater survivability.
Hence the one, the philosopher, will, by necessity, fight the group. Between the delusion which define the groups and the truths, which define the philosopher, it’s a fight to death. The spirit of philosophers always won over the madness of the crowds.
Yes, delusionists, and illusionists are fit for attack, especially when they engage in mass delusion. It’s a matter of collective safety, for the world community. The reason for this is that delusions feed aggression. Delusion is entertained to create the group, the troop, with aggressive purpose in mind.
In particular, theists. Especially of the would-be child sacrifice type (Abraham his name).
As I explained, the main reason for collective delusion, just as for individual delusion is to create a system of mind (moods plus thoughts) that binds.
Thus, the fundamental reason for the collective to bind through delusion is aggression. Either real, or potential. Exclusion and alienation are aggressions. Mass delusions enable them.
Mass delusions such as various sects of Abraham (the word ‘sect’ comes from cutting: chopping heads is what sects do best).
Mass delusions are obsessive about aggression. Be it supposedly for resisting aggression (real or imagined), or committing it, in any case, making it as the big thing in life, worth deluding one’s mind, just to identify as a group, and enjoy the pleasures thereof.
Delusion such as: ’I am the Elected People, not that’s me; I prove it, by exterminating you, etc.’
When a religious group goes around, exhibiting its religious appurtenance, it exhibits its delusion. Thus, implicitly, its aggression.
And size matters. Because the size of a threat matters: when groups of predators fight each other, say lions versus hyenas, generally the side with the greatest total mass wins.
This is why French public schools forbid religious symbols of more than such and such a size, or why schools in Britain impose uniforms (and that’s even better).
WE ARE ALL SCIENTISTS; “BELIEVERS” KNOW THEY ARE DELUDED:
Believers know they are deluded, deep down inside. That’s why they are so aggressive, when confronted to their incoherence.
In Copenhagen last week, an Islamist assassin shot at a Freedom of Expression meeting, killing and wounding, and then repeated the performance at a Synagogue, killing and wounding. In a freezing rain, 500 deluded fanatics came to the killer’s burial. Let’s hope the police and secret services took a lot of pictures.
Experience shows fanaticism makes a universe most pleasant to those who dominate it.
Experience is what gives us a ground for all our propositions. This is important, because it means, whether they know it, or not, all human beings are scientists.
This is why the notion of “believer” has been introduced. It, all by itself, is a delusion. A deliberate, collective delusion, to create the group (and then proceed with some crusade, jihad, ghetto).
“Believers” are precisely those who believe in NOT applying science, for the most important metaprinciples.
However, what they have to apply every day to function as animals, and full human beings, is based on what is called “the scientific method”, but which is simply common sense, systematized industrially.
Thus “believers” fundamentally, do not believe!
Patrice Ayme’
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 