Europe's Mass-Psychosis Getting WORSE | Prof. Mattias Desmet

## Diagnosing the patient: what is Europe suffering from? The exchange at the Kyoto symposium advanced a stark diagnosis: Europe is not merely facing political missteps or policy failures, but a psychological crisis that reshapes how citizens think, feel, and act. The conversation framed this as a double-sided ailment. On one side are leaders and institutions wielding sophisticated propaganda machinery; on the other is a segment of the population that, despite intelligence or access to information, becomes susceptible to collective narratives that demand sacrifice and suppress dissent. Taken together, these dynamics do not simply produce disagreement; they reconfigure social bonds, erode trust between neighbors, and make large swathes of society prone to what the speakers called “mass formation.” Treating this as a clinical diagnosis clarifies the stakes. If an entire polity becomes organized around fear-linked narratives—where anxiety, frustration, and aggression are externally directed at a single object—then policy choices follow psychological imperatives rather than reasoned deliberation. That helps explain phenomena that otherwise confound political analysis: highly educated citizens endorsing punitive measures, or an electorate that remains emotionally impermeable to corrective evidence. The conversation insisted on treating these phenomena as symptoms of a systemic state of mind rather than isolated errors of judgement. ## Intelligence, conformity and the paradox of expertise A central puzzle explored in the discussion was why highly intelligent people sometimes embrace patently absurd claims. Rather than dismissing this as mere gullibility, the speakers shifted the focus to the social and emotional conditions that make intellectual capacity insufficient as a safeguard. Professional expertise, they argued, can be hollowed out by institutional incentives, measurement failures, and group norms that reward rhetorical conformity over independent critique. One striking illustration invoked was the methodological crisis within psychology itself: repeated measures that should have been stable instead showed no correlation, yet the profession resisted confronting the implications. That episode was used to suggest a broader cultural tendency: when an intellectual community is confronted with inconvenient truths about its methods or assumptions, the defensive response is often anger and ostracism rather than sober debate. In such contexts, intelligence does not immunize against conformity; it can even facilitate the persistence of error, because smart people are adept at rationalizing the positions that keep them socially and professionally aligned. The conversation therefore reframed expertise as socially embedded cognition. Individuals bring analytic skills into a field that also contains reputational structures, publication pressures, and shared narratives. When those social structures favor a dominant story, even critical minds may buckle. The useful implication is that remedies must attend to institutional incentives and cultural practices of critique, not just to better facts. ## Loneliness, meaninglessness and the mechanics of mass formation At the heart of the analysis was an argument linking rising loneliness and weakened meaning-making to susceptibility to collective narratives. Modern societies, the participants argued, have been “atomizing” for centuries—industrialization, urbanization, and cultural shifts toward individualism have progressively thinned dense webs of interpersonal attachment. Recent public health pronouncements about a loneliness epidemic were presented not as metaphors but as epidemiological facts with political consequences. The psychological sequence described is precise: chronic loneliness and a deficit of meaningful relationships lead many people to experience free-floating anxiety, frustration, and aggression that are not tied to specific objects. This diffuse affective state can be harnessed by narratives that supply an identifiable enemy—be it a virus, a foreign state, or another scapegoat. Once those emotions attach to a concrete target, attention narrows and social energy reorients toward a single collective aim. The emergent mass feels less lonely because of shared purpose, even though the underlying bonds are redirected from neighbor-to-neighbor to individual-to-ideal. This reorientation has paradoxical effects. The new “social bond” forged through a shared enemy is not a relational bond between people; it is an attachment to an abstract collective ideal. Over time this siphons off the affective resources that sustain interpersonal care, making people less able to tolerate difference. The speakers warned that this dynamic can accelerate: one mass formation creates conditions—greater alienation, more rigid identity—conducive to further rallies around new enemies. ## Intolerance, propaganda and the escalation to conflict Once mass formation takes hold, its political expression is markedly hostile. The conversation emphasized three consistent psychological consequences: the erosion of critical distance, a heightened readiness for self-sacrifice, and a pronounced intolerance toward dissent. Together these traits create a population primed for escalation. The narrowing of attention reduces the capacity to weigh complex trade-offs; willingness to self-sacrifice lowers the bar for endorsing risky policies; and intolerance silences opposition and polices orthodoxy. Propaganda accelerates these processes by supplying coherent narratives that link the diffuse affective state to a villain and morally justified action. But the speakers were careful to underline that propaganda alone is insufficient—its success depends on pre-existing psychological vulnerability. Historical references were drawn to classic thinkers of mass psychology who observed similar phenomena in earlier eras: crowds cohere not through interpersonal intimacy but by sharing symbols and targets. Contemporary media ecosystems, with their speed and reach, simply make the formation of such masses more rapid and encompassing. This analysis has concrete geopolitical implications. When large constituencies are mobilized around simplified enemy images, foreign policy decisions can be driven more by the need to perform unity and moral clarity than by strategic prudence. The risk is not merely miscalculation; it is a polity that sacrifices nuance and restraint for the emotional catharsis of righteous action. In such a state, escalation to violent confrontation, even nuclear brinkmanship, becomes a plausible policy path. ## Sincere speech as therapy: limits and necessities If mass formation feeds on loneliness and meaninglessness, the conversation proposed a deceptively simple therapy: the cultivation of sincere speech and renewed interpersonal connection. Sincere speech, as framed in the exchange, is communication that reestablishes mutual recognition and responsibility—not polished rhetoric designed to persuade by manipulation but candid exchange that rebuilds trust. The historical argument was that modern materialist worldviews and performative discourse have hollowed out the social functions of speech; remedying mass psychology therefore requires a cultural renewal of sincerity. Practically, the speakers did not propose mass conversion programs but emphasized the strategic role of a small, resilient minority. Drawing on classical crowd theory, they suggested that even a small fraction—those willing to speak truthfully and persistently—can prevent a mass formation from reaching its most destructive stage. This minority serves as a moral and psychological anchor: by refusing to acquiesce to the dominant narrative, they keep alternative framings alive and reduce the likelihood that the majority will shift into an exterminatory logic. The remedies outlined are both public and intimate. Publicly, institutions and media practices must be reformed to

Europe's Mass-Psychosis Getting WORSE | Prof. Mattias Desmet The most fragile moment in 500 years of Western imperial dominance is also its most dangerous. As power slips away, the masses are forming into a new and frightening way. And it all has to do with psychology. Kyoto University Symposium 2026: "Geopolitics in the Time of Monsters" Presentation 3: Prof. Mattias Desmet Why do even intelligent people fall for the most ridiculous narratives? At the Kyoto Symposium, Mattias Desmet presents his theory of mass formation, linking loneliness, anxiety and collective identification to propaganda and intolerance. He argues that sincere speech can rebuild human connections and resist destructive conformity. The discussion tests his account against history, modernity, class, racism and contemporary geopolitical conflict. Audience members challenge his assumptions and explore whether psychological explanations can complement structural analysis when diagnosing the dangers facing societies today. Mattias's Links: Official website: https://mattiasdesmet.com/en/ Substack: https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/ Neutrality Studies Links: Neutrality Studies Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Support Neutrality Studies: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Neutrality Studies shop: https://neutralitystudies.com /shop Time Stamps 00:00 Introduction: diagnosing the patient 04:56 Intelligence, conformity and mass formation 08:31 Loneliness and the appeal of collective narratives 15:56 Intolerance, propaganda and conflict 19:39 Sincere speech and rebuilding human connections 24:10 Q&A: anxiety and propaganda 38:17 History, class and the limits of mass psychology 56:40 Belief, experience and the final audience questions #Pascal Matthias Desmet, you've been working for many years now upon mass psychology, and this will take us away from history, but I'm very keen on hearing your take on what's going on. Matthias, please. #Mattias Desmet Thank you. I'm not sure that my talk will take us away from history. We will see. So, Pascal, you suggested we first diagnose the patient and then propose a therapy. Who is the patient? Is the patient the geopolitical leader who manipulates the population into a nuclear conflict, for instance, with Russia? I think the geopolitical leader definitely is part of the problem. I do believe that modern democracy actually, from the beginning, was a state system where propaganda was the organizing principle. So that's a major part of the problem. But beyond that, I think there is at least a second patient. That's part of the population which blindly buys into propaganda, no matter how absurd it is. That's one of the most remarkable things, and that's what my work is all about: mass psychology. -- 1 of 19 -- How can you understand that intelligent people buy into the most absurd war propaganda, knowing that it might send their children to war? That's a more fascinating and more challenging psychological question, and also a diagnosis which is more challenging at the level of therapy. Well, let me tell something about the beginning of my academic career. I started to work in academia back in 2003, and I was supposed to do classical research in psychology, and I was supposed to study how certain personality traits related to depression. And my supervisor asked me to measure depressive symptoms in a certain sample, and then to also assess personality traits in that sample, and then to compute statistical correlations between the two. And I started to do that research, and I measured personality traits with three different personality measures. And I repeated the measures for three consecutive days. And the correlation between the three series of personality measures was zero. So in psychology, when you measure a personality trait for three consecutive days—today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow—the correlation in the same sample, the correlation between the three series of measurements, might be zero, meaning that, by definition, it is impossible that the psychological test which pretends to measure personality actually measures personality, because personality exactly refers to the characteristics in a human being that are stable over time. Okay? So, the strange thing is... I wrote my PhD about that because I switched the focus of my PhD from classical research in psychology to research into the quality of research in psychology. And I published my first book, The Pursuit of Objectivity in Psychology, and that book was banned from university. Couldn't use it anymore. And my last book was also banned, a book about the psychology of totalitarianism. I think I'm the only professor in Belgium who wrote three books, of which two were banned by his own university. The first book, it was all about this problem, like that actually, from a mathematical point of view, most psychological research is absolutely absurd. It's absolutely absurd. And my first book was about that. And the most interesting thing to me was that while most of my colleagues are highly intelligent people, when they were confronted with that problem, they refused to see it, and they got very angry. And they never, they never proposed one argument against my theory. Instead, they were just angry and didn't want to talk with me anymore. Okay, so that was the first time I was confronted with that strange phenomenon that a culture of highly intelligent people can go along with the most absurd theories and absolutely refuse to see it. That was where I got interested in mass psychology. And then, when the corona crisis started, like from the first days of the corona crisis, I could see that the statistics were bullshit, that most statistics were bullshit. That the mortality rate of the virus, for instance, was highly exaggerated. I published an opinion paper in Belgium, and from day one, I was public enemy number one in Belgium. And, like, even when, a few months later, even the people who constructed the initial mathematical models admitted that they had been overestimating the mortality rates of the virus by a factor of 10, even then, the narrative just continued in the media. And that was the moment when I tried to apply -- 2 of 19 -- what I learned about mass psychology to the corona crisis, and later on to many dynamics at the geopolitical level as well. So I will go into that strange phenomenon of what I call a mass formation, because I do believe that, in a certain way, it's extremely important to understand why populations, also the highly intelligent part of the population, actually go along with war propaganda. War propaganda, which is at least as absurd in many respects as the corona narrative. Well, I do believe that if we want to understand how an entire culture can be organized through propaganda, we do not only have to take into account the fact that modern leaders, modern geopolitical leaders, have a huge machinery at their disposal, like the internet, to manipulate public opinion. That's one important aspect of propaganda. But there is a second one. You need a population who buys into it, and to do that, you need a lonely population. Jacques Ellul, whom I consider the most intelligent writer about propaganda, said exactly this. He said propaganda is only efficacious in a lonely and disconnected population. And in a strange way, together with the emergence of propaganda techniques in modern democracy, together with the emergence of these propaganda techniques, we could also see how loneliness increased in the population. Like Hegel, the German philosopher Hegel, mentions in the beginning of the 19th century already, society is atomizing, it's falling apart. So there's all kinds of reasons for this atomization of society at the social level: the industrialization of society, also the fact that our society becomes more narcissistic. Narcissism isolates people from each other. And this narcissism started to increase with the beginning of the Enlightenment culture. So there's all kinds of reasons why the population got lonelier. #Pascal Hey, just a very quick note. The best way to support this channel is by signing up for my free Substack. You can also help with a paid subscription there, or you can get some of our new merch on neutralitystudies.com. Links below. See you there. #Mattias Desmet And in the beginning of the 21st century, there is, like, the problem is huge. Like Theresa May, I believe, in Great Britain, appointed a minister of loneliness because she recognized how many people felt lonely. And the U.S. Surgeon General, around the same time, said that there was a loneliness epidemic. So many people feel lonely, feel extremely— a lot of people feel lonely to the extent that up to 60%, I believe, of the people mention that they do not have one meaningful relationship to another human being. It's huge. And at the same time, with the problem of loneliness, as soon as loneliness increases in a population, you see a second problem at the level of the psychology of the population. You will see that the more people feel lonely, the more people mention that they struggle with lack of meaning-making in life, lack of purpose in life. And when these two conditions are fulfilled at the -- 3 of 19 -- psychological level—many people feel lonely, many people struggle with lack of meaning-making— you will see some dramatic changes at the level of emotional functioning. You will see how people start to struggle with what I call free-floating anxiety, frustration, and aggression. That means, like, a kind of anxiety, frustration, and aggression people cannot connect to a mental representation. People have always been anxious. But modern anxiety is different in this respect, that it is not connected to a mental representation. It's freely floating in the air, in the social air. It's under these conditions that propaganda gets extremely efficacious. If, under these conditions, someone distributes a narrative which indicates an object of anxiety—for instance, a coronavirus or Putin invading Ukraine—there is a very good chance. It's not 100%, of course, but it's very high. The probability is very high. There's a very good chance that all this free-floating anxiety will suddenly connect to the object of anxiety in the narrative that is disseminated through the mass media. So something very strange happens at that moment, something very important. All this free-floating anxiety at once connects to the object of anxiety. All the frustration, aggression, anxiety connects to the object of anxiety. And the field of people's attention, the field of attention in the population, narrows down until it only sees that one object of anxiety, which seems to be responsible for all the troubles in the world and consequently which has to be destroyed. So that's the first step of a transformation: the connection of all the free-floating emotions to one object of anxiety, frustration, and aggression. Then a second step happens, which is even more important. Because so many people at the same time connect their anxiety to the same object, it seems as if all these people escape their loneliness. It seems as if they are connected again, as if they fight this heroic battle with the object of anxiety, the coronavirus, or the Russians, okay? So this object of anxiety creates a new social bond. It saves people from loneliness and disconnectedness. It seems as if it frees people from their loneliness. But it doesn't really do so. That's extremely important. Because a mass, when a mass emerges, a mass is a group that is different from all other groups. In a normal group of people, the group is formed, the group emerges, because individuals connect to each other. They create a social bond to other members of the group. A mass is a group that emerges in a different way. A mass emerges not because people connect to another individual. A mass emerges because all people separately connect to the same collective ideal. The battle wit