Things are changing. Rapidly. So, get used to it, and don’t look back, because as we march into this brave new world together, the pressure and stress of the situation is going to affect people’s mental health and personalities in more dramatic ways.
The human psyche is built to withstand only a certain amount of pressure, and in our over-connected world, during a global crisis, the stressful stimuli we’re soaking up in a single day is astronomical. The mind has a few coping mechanisms, like fight or flight, cognitive dissonance, denial, Stockholm syndrome, etc., but in a time like this, you’re likely to experience it all.
As the chronic stress grinds on, with no end in sight, it wears us down emotionally, physically, and mentally, and in this state we regress into more habitual, subconsciously driven behaviors, and the mind becomes very easy to manipulate. To the interrogator or torturer, sustained stress is the key to unlocking the mind and the key to creating obedience and conformity.
In the preface to A Brave New World, Aldous Huxley warned us that a minority interest in our world was deliberately and successfully exploiting the mass human mind for the interests of commerce and politics.
“Impersonal forces over which we have almost no control seem to be pushing us all in the direction of the Brave New Worldian nightmare; and this impersonal pushing is being consciously accelerated by representatives of commercial and political organizations who have developed a number of new techniques for manipulating, in the interest of some minority, the thoughts and feelings of the masses.” ~Aldous Huxley, Preface to A Brave New World
There has been a sustained, century long effort to crack the code of the mass mind, which today includes all of the tools of technology, media and social media. In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, in the most divisive period in modern American history, some of the more dangerous aspects of human psychology are taking root in the mass mind.
1. Deferring responsibility to perceived authority figures.
When people are told what to do by an apparent authority figure, they will even go so far as to harm and even kill another.
Stanley Milgram’s famous 1961 social experiment on obedience to authority is hailed as a milestone in our understanding of how people’s ethics can drastically change when responsibility for their actions is deferred on to an authority figure, such as an ‘expert’ or leader. Intrigued by the role of Nazi military personnel in concentration camps during WWII, Milgram wanted to know how much coercion people needed in order to willingly inflict harm on another person.
“He asked volunteers to deliver an electric shock to a stranger. Unbeknownst to the volunteers, there was no shock—and the people they were shocking were actors pretending to be terribly hurt, even feigning heart attacks. Milgram found that most people would keep delivering the shocks when ordered by a person in a lab coat, even when they believed that person was gravely injured. Only a tiny percentage of people refused.” [Source]
The suggested conclusion is that people are inherently unable to think for themselves when given a subordinate role in some authoritarian hierarchy, such as the role of the people in a state-controlled world. Their natural and unconscious reaction is to defer responsibility for their actions to someone of authority, relieving themselves of the stress of guilt.
“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.” ~Stanley Milgram, The Perils of Obedience, 1974
In the Covid-19 reality, the masses are being deliberately directed toward one set of experts and influencers, and and directed away from other credible but contrarian perspectives. Those today who believe in mainstream authority are taking franchise in bullying, harassing, censoring, and threatening those who would prefer to be neutral or contrarian.
Furthermore, the official enforcers of new Covid policies present more concrete examples of how this dynamic plays out. Recent footage from Australia shows a male cop choking a woman for improperly wearing a mask, and around the world those obeying the rules are increasingly violent and callous towards those not obeying.
2. When put into a position of authority people will abuse their power. When put into a subjugated position, people will behave as prisoners.
Dr. Phillip Zombardo conducted another well-known study on social authority in 1971. In what is known as the Stanford Prison experiment, students at Stanford University answered an ad to participate in a research study with the aim of studying the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or a prison guard.
The group of prisoners were humiliated, searched, deloused, and locked up, humiliated, taunted and abused.
They were issued uniforms, ID numbers, had their hair covered with a nylon stocking, and had one ankle bound in a heavy chain, thus masking their personal identity and stripping it away.
“The process of having one’s head shaved, which takes place in most prisons as well as in the military, is designed in part to minimize each person’s individuality, since some people express their individuality through hair style or length. It is also a way of getting people to begin complying with the arbitrary, coercive rules of the institution.The dramatic change in appearance of having one’s head shaved can be seen on this page.” ~Stanford Prison Experiment
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