Another Invasion of the ‘Body Snatchers’

A freedom march was held in downtown Ottawa to support farmers protesting the Dutch government's climate change policies, in Ottawa, Canada, on July 23, 2022. Annie Wu/The Epoch Times

Commentary

Forms of mass psychosis arise periodically throughout human history. It is a human condition, viscerally driven to create herd protection in the face of fear or fear of the unknown.

Mass hysteria—however logical in its cause—denies, defies, and fears logical explanations for its actions, and equally constrains the emergence of wisdom, nobility, and true leadership. This wildfire swarming of fever-eyed locusts has strategic consequences.

It is a fever that burns without logic, ultimately consuming those who have joined in the mindless huddle of obedience to mob rule. It is also a phenomenon that is heightened and hastened by large-scale urbanization and by the technologies of mass communication. Both these characteristics define our current situation, and clearly, both phenomena have suppressed the mass appetite for leadership.

This present era is largely bereft of leadership. And the English saying (claimed to come from the Chinese), “May you live in interesting times,” needs to be seen for what it is: a blessing, not a curse. Interesting and uninteresting times may each be dangerous, but an age of mass psychosis—mass hysteria—is not an interesting age. It is an age that defies what defines an interesting age: inquiry, debate, innovation, risk, and relishing the unknown.

In uninteresting times, such as we have now embarked on, questioning a mob’s belief incites it to a frenzy of fear. As history shows, it is a fear that distills beliefs to visceral and viral panicked oversimplification.

Almost any mass belief held in the form of crowd psychosis or hysteria exists only to create the comfort of conformity among societies packed closely together. These mass beliefs, when held together by mob-driven enforcement, are usually, subsequently, seen to have been incorrect and damaging to the societies that had been infected. (“What were we thinking?”) The most prevalent expression, or outcome, of mass hysteria is to tear down social, economic, and intellectual patterns of the past, from religion to technology to social structures.

Antique pills that promised to cure hysteria-related complaints at the Santa Maria Novella pharmacy in Florence, Italy, on April 19, 2016. Michelle Locke via AP

We are afraid, and the old gods have betrayed us.

So the past—history—and its record of successes and failures are what mass psychosis is most intent on destroying. The popular expression (particularly at this time of incitement against Russia) that “the future for Russia is certain; it is only its past which is uncertain” is actually a mantra for today’s global mob. Indeed, Russia today—after the inevitable collapse in 1991 of Soviet communism—is intent on rediscovering its deep history as something that can guide its future.

The rampaging, ragged, and ignoble mobs of the West, however, are the ones casting doubts on the past; trying, indeed, to erase the past and create a view of the future, which is pseudo-utopian. So these are not interesting times; they are merely times of oppression and the searing of all thoughts from the brain. Fear is not interesting; it is merely tragic. Indeed, a modicum of fear is necessary—and natural—to stimulate defenses and creative thinking. But excessive fear, pervasive and inescapable, is as damaging to thought as the excesses of wealth. Indeed, more so.

British scholar Jessie Childs, in her 2023 history, “The Siege of Loyalty House: a Story of the English Civil War,” cites another writer, the late Anglo-Irish novelist J. G. Farrell, in his 1973 book, “The Siege of Krishnapur,” in saying: “We look on past ages with condescension, as mere preparation for us … but what if we’re only an after-glow of them?” History shows that while we may indeed be only an after-glow of great human accomplishment of the past few hundred years, it is equally probable that greatness will occur again after we have passed beyond the scarified firebreak of the present.

Today we gaze helplessly at the socially—or politically—contrived mass psychosis that has removed much of society from all meaningful debate and common sense. It is reminiscent of the 1954 U.S. science fiction serial by Jack Finney, “The Body Snatchers,” made in 1956 into the movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” in which “aliens” take possession of the bodies of humans to seize control of the Earth.

I have seen the aliens, and they are us.

Young demonstrators hold placards as they attend a climate change protest opposite the Houses of Parliament in central London on Feb. 15, 2019. Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images

The Children’s Crusade of 1212—in which children (and others) gathered spontaneously all over Europe into a march intended to take them to the Holy Lands to fight a war for Christendom—was such a symptom of mass psychosis. It was mirrored in a new, seemingly spontaneous “children’s crusade” around 2018. It was triggered by a troubled then-15-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, whose wild-eyed jeremiads caused adherents to her “climate change” religion to fall to their knees in supplication.

Mass psychoses emerge from the fears of societies and are then usually exploited by pseudo-leaders. Anglo-Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke said, “The crowd is in the street; I must go out in front of them if I am to be their leader” to take advantage of the naturally-arising hysteria.

Hysteria rarely takes root in highly-structured autocratic states. The oppressed have little need for belief until a crack appears in their prison walls. Obedience takes root in the certainty—the trust—of oppression, but messianic belief—mass psychosis—takes root in the uncertainty of freedom.

Political opportunism attempts to capture that mass psychosis.

Together opportunistic politics and mass psychosis corrode democracy, which is usually about a trust-based social contract between individuals, as well as between governed and governors.

Fear recalibrates trust.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.