The Rise of Global Conformism
At a formal ceremony for retiring professors at my university, each retiree got an opportunity to make a short speech. In my own speech, I mentioned that my last few years coincided with the CV panic. Far more than the disease itself, what shocked me was the worldwide mass mind that sprang into existence seemingly overnight.
All over the world, suddenly people were subjected to all-encompassing propaganda and pressures to conform to the same CV policies. In contrast, a university should be a place to protect and encourage individual thinking, I maintained.
Aside from the CV phenomenon, in recent years I have often observed the tendency for novel ideas to spread rapidly around the world and quickly become established orthodoxy that precludes debate and criticism. This amounts to a kind of toxic global conformism.
“Toxic conformism” can be defined as aggressively promoted compliance with evil and/or harmful behavior in order to remain in good standing with others. In response to Covid, the universal, rapid implementation of toxic conformity may be unique in history.
There is nothing wrong with conformity per se, as long as it represents adhering to the reasonable expectations of a sane society. For example, conformity to norms of politeness has great merit in most circumstances, as anyone can appreciate who participates in a civil society, such as Japan’s. Only the immature and maladjusted believe that defying reasonable norms of behavior is somehow always commendable.
However, the kind of conformity we currently observe on an international scale is not organic or reasonable. It is imposed by fiat from those with power and influence, despite the doubts and objections of many. It is not the product of wholesome social development and rational, willing acceptance.
These days a great problem for Japanese people–as well as for citizens of other nations–is not conformity to their own society and culture; it is mandatory conformity to powerful international organizations like the UN and the WEF. Since their agendas are often foolish and unreasonable, conforming to their expectations often causes great harm.
Whenever I hear about a new idea rapidly spreading in Western media and cultural circles–e.g., “People should eat bugs”–I know that in a matter of weeks or months, I will be hearing the same idea in the Japanese media and elsewhere. News stories about bug farms, recipes for preparing meals with bugs, and propaganda explaining that bugs are not repulsive but rather tasty and nutritious will soon be everywhere. Actually, this very thing is happening at present.
A few years later (or even sooner), the Gospel of Bug Eating will likely also be widespread in the religious world, especially among academic pundits and megachurch/parachurch leaders. They will go through the Bible and church history with a magnifying glass looking for texts and traditions to support insect consumption. Since he subsisted on a diet of locusts and honey (Mark 1:6), even John the Baptist will find himself on the bandwagon (more on this phenomenon later).
The pace of global conformism has been immeasurably amplified through the power of social media and the Internet. Therefore, international bodies like the WEF and the UN, along with national governments, are very anxious to control online communication. As the French thinker Jacques Ellul put it, “Propaganda must be total” or it fails in its goal of making people “psychologically unified.”
Long before the Internet, Ellul analyzed powerful modern influences tending to create a mass mind in his books Propaganda and The Technological Society. Instead of serious reading, which develops rational thought, in modern times people are often swayed by emotionally charged (but often misleading) visual images and verbal sloganeering from movies and TV. More recent technological innovations have made Ellul’s observations and warnings even more pertinent.
Largely as a result of social media, somehow it became “cool” to be a global conformist in the eyes of many. During the CV experimental injection mania, many posted “I got my CV vaccine” on Facebook, even in their profile pictures.
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