Rivers of Blood
Evil isn't what you think it is
Mark Changizi
4 March 2021
4 March 2021
One of the most insightful paragraphs on what we’ve experienced over the last year is this:
“In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple; and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity.”
This is from Charles Mackay’s Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
Despite how timely it seems, it was written in 1841!
This helps focus one’s mind on the true forces driving the large-scale events we’re struggling with today. The evil that plagues society isn’t necessarily -- and isn’t even usually -- the charismatic evil political leader or scheming billionaire. It’s you, me, our neighbors, our friends, our family. It’s us. We’re the problem.
Or at least one huge part of it. It’s the social network itself of regular folk that sometimes can malfunction, creating bottom-up forces that drive these events.
For our current Covid mass delusion that’s definitely a vast part of the story. In most places, for example, individuals are wearing masks far more widely than the mandates require, such as in their cars. The people are often leading the mandates rather than the other way around. I talk about these forces in this Science Moment video.
One of our goals at FreeX is to make sense of these events. How can we turn them around once they’ve occured? ...and do so without experiencing “rivers of blood”?
PREVIOUS: Designerless
NEXT: Left-Right to Up-Down
“In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple; and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity.”
This is from Charles Mackay’s Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
Despite how timely it seems, it was written in 1841!
This helps focus one’s mind on the true forces driving the large-scale events we’re struggling with today. The evil that plagues society isn’t necessarily -- and isn’t even usually -- the charismatic evil political leader or scheming billionaire. It’s you, me, our neighbors, our friends, our family. It’s us. We’re the problem.
Or at least one huge part of it. It’s the social network itself of regular folk that sometimes can malfunction, creating bottom-up forces that drive these events.
For our current Covid mass delusion that’s definitely a vast part of the story. In most places, for example, individuals are wearing masks far more widely than the mandates require, such as in their cars. The people are often leading the mandates rather than the other way around. I talk about these forces in this Science Moment video.
One of our goals at FreeX is to make sense of these events. How can we turn them around once they’ve occured? ...and do so without experiencing “rivers of blood”?
PREVIOUS: Designerless
NEXT: Left-Right to Up-Down