Madness ...

[inavalan]

"Madness is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups."

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/friedrich_nietzsche_134058

[strangerthings]

Not in ALL groups.

Some perhaps.

Buy madness can have a definition such as; "mad about life" meaning very passionate.

There are groups that get together and bring peace to an area for example simply by feeling such.

Groups can change things constructively and have zero to do with madness=tyranny.

[Deb]

"Madness is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups."

I'm curious if he ever explained why he felt that is the case.

[inavalan]

I looked it up, and somebody wrote that he couldn't find that quote in Nietzsche's works.

So I looked it up a little more creatively, and found out a genuine Nietzsche quote in his "Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future", Chapter IV: APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES. It expresses the same idea.

156. Insanity in individuals is something rare--but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.

When I read it, I firstly interpreted it in the light of the events we've experienced in the last few years. Then I recalled other examples, and an article recently authored by dr. Robert Malone

https://speakingofseth.com/index.php/topic,2818.msg23166.html#msg23166

It is about what others call groupthink, mass-formation, mob-culture, ...

Also:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-meaning-of-the-quote-from-Friedrich-Nietzsche-Madness-is-something-rare-in-individuals-but-in-groups-parties-peoples-and-ages-it-is-the-rule-What-is-the-authors-claim?share=1

[Deb]

Ah yes, mass formation psychosis. I've heard a lot about that in the past couple of years. Makes sense, but it seems the word "insanity" is a bit strong. "Mass formation psychosis is when a large part of a society focuses its attention to a leader(s) or a series of events and their attention focuses on one small point or issue. Followers can be hypnotized and be led anywhere, regardless of data proving otherwise. A key aspect of the phenomena is that the people they identify as the leaders – the one's that can solve the problem or issue alone – they will follow that leader(s) regardless of any new information or data. Furthermore, anybody who questions the leader's narrative are attacked and disregarded."

It really bothers me how many people don't want to think independently and would rather put their minds/thoughts/beliefs into the hands of others. We'd have a lot less religions, cults and censorship.

The first time I came across this concept was in a website usability design book entitled, Don't Make Me Think. The basic premise was that most people do not want to have to think. So getting too creative with a design which is not immediately intuitive frustrates visitors and they leave the site for others that have more traditional layouts and navigation.

The Quora explanation was terrific, thank you.

[inavalan]

@Deb The most detrimental case of "mass formation" must be our modern perception of physical reality. As I understand Seth, it mustn't be as we experience it now, and "historically" it wasn't always experienced this way.

In hypnosis and in NLP, confusion is one of the methods used to make the subject suggestible. This can happen unintentionally too. Once brought to that condition, the subject can't really be held accountable for what he does, perceives, thinks, reasons. So, it isn't that people are lazy at thinking, or stupid. It is also known, that the more intelligent people are more hypnotizable.

An easy way of creating confusion is brain-overloading, based on the brain's limited capability of following multiple threads simultaneously. Another way, used a lot by the Eastern gurus, is inflicting a surprising shock, physical or mental.

Unfortunately, there is no way to realize that you are caught in mass-formation, and there is no way to pull out somebody from such a state, excepting a shock, physical or mental.

The good news is that eventually all mass-formations implode. The bad news is that the larger the formation the longer it takes for that implosion to happen, and the larger the needed shock.

[strangerthings]

@Deb

In hypnosis and in NLP, confusion is one of the methods used to make the subject suggestible. This can happen unintentionally too. Once brought to that condition, the subject can't really be held accountable for what he does, perceives, thinks, reasons. So, it isn't that people are lazy at thinking, or stupid. It is also known, that the more intelligent people are more hypnotizable.

Umm what in the world ? Do you have hands on personal experience with this or you just reading fear stories and spreading he said she said malarky? I have a lot of experience with NLP to include hypnotizing and this to me is so far out in left field. I hope you have proof to back up your claims otherwise its mere gossip and fear mongering.

All tools can be used as a weapon or as constructive. To include hypnotizing. However you just post stuff without ANY references and I think we deserve them.

I have quite a few posts on this forum about NLP as it helped me tremendously.

[strangerthings]

I think Seth and Mass Reality and other great niblets of his is good enough to explain a group reality.

Can be used for beneficial life or harm but only if others consent to recieve. 

I think Nietzche is trying to get fanaticsm out of his mouth ... would have been simpler.


I always come home to Seth material. Breath of fresher air.

[Deb]

In hypnosis and in NLP, confusion is one of the methods used to make the subject suggestible.

I can see fear being extremey effective, I think that's where Malone was going with his mass formation comment. With covid, people were scared out of their wits, being told the virus had high mortality rates, the horror of the symptoms, no one would be spared, no way to treat it. It was never going to go away, will be a danger to everyone in the world forever, the new norm. Looking to the trinity Fauci, the CDC, WHO to tell us what to do. To save us. Wear a paper mask. Masks don't work. Masks do work. Only special masks work. Everything shuts down, shelter in place, forget about family gatherings. Or church. Businesses closed for good, people lost their jobs. I still see people wearing masks in stores, restaurants, their cars (alone!), out in nature for walks or bike rides. I suppose there are a lot of people who have PTSD from covid and now monkey pox and some other new mysterious viruses are in the news.

The most detrimental case of "mass formation" must be our modern perception of physical reality.
- - -
Unfortunately, there is no way to realize that you are caught in mass-formation, and there is no way to pull out somebody from such a state, excepting a shock, physical or mental.

OK I can see our perception of this camouflage reality (our mass hypnosis) is mass formation. I don't know about it being the most detrimental case, it's by design. We accept the rules of this game each time we re-enter physical reality and this is could probably be considered the big foundation. But the smaller mass formations occurring within this grand mass formation—I wonder what Seth would have to say about them. Not realizing when a person is caught up and not being able to be snapped out of it feels too much like victimhood. Surely those caught up in mass formation have agreed to participate at some level.

This got me thinking about Seth's explanation of Jonestown. A cult is a mass formation, complete with a leader (or leaders) that are the godhead. Rob noted they wanted to make a little book on the topics of Jonestown and Three Mile Island,

"Seth on Jonestown and Three Mile Island: Religious and Scientific Cults."
—NoME Part Three: Chapter 6: Session 846, April 4, 1979 

I think Nietzche is trying to get fanaticsm out of his mouth ... would have been simpler.

Yeah, I thought saying madness being the rule in groups was a big leap. Too polarized for me. I'm into shades of grey. No, not the book, lol.

[inavalan]

@Deb

The most detrimental case of "mass formation" must be our modern perception of physical reality.
- - -

"Most detrimental" because it has the most negative impact on our individual evolvement: we don't know why we are here, what we have to do. We're focused on all kind of incorrect ideas. This wasn't always the case, and it isn't by design, as it brings no benefit. Seth keeps advising to change our ways: to use our dream time, carry our awareness into sleep, use psychological time, to not cause ourselves unnecessary pain and suffering with our mishandling of our emotions, and such.

To a good degree, I subscribe to Prof. Mattias Desmet's views on mass-formation, and it is close to what Seth is calling natural-hypnosis. It isn't about following a leader, but about a large mass of people individually losing their critical-factor.

That's a significant read:

"I came back home a little afraid for my country, afraid of what it might want, and get, and like, under pressure of combined reality and illusion. I felt—and feel—that it was not German man that I had met, but Man. He happened to be in Germany under certain conditions. He might, under certain conditions, be I."  —Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, ix.

It's been more than seventy-five years since the Nazis were defeated and Auschwitz was liberated. Seventy-five years is a long time—so long, in fact, that while many still learn of the horrors of the Holocaust, far fewer understand how the murder of the Jews happened. How were millions of people systematically exterminated in an advanced Western nation—a constitutional republic? How did such respectable and intelligent citizens become complicit in the murder of their countrymen? These are the questions Milton Mayer sought to answer in his book They Thought They Were Free.

In 1952, Mayer moved his family to a small German town to live among ten ordinary men, hoping to understand not only how the Nazis came to power but how ordinary Germans—ordinary people—became unwitting participants in one of history's greatest genocides. The men Mayer lived among came from all walks of life: a tailor, a cabinetmaker, a bill-collector, a salesman, a student, a teacher, a bank clerk, a baker, a soldier, and a police officer.

Significantly, Mayer did not simply conduct formal interviews in order to "study" these men; rather, Mayer had dinner in these men's homes, befriended their families, and lived as one of them for nearly a year. His own children went to the same school as their children. And by the end of his time in Germany, Mayer could genuinely call them friends. They Thought They Were Free is Mayer's account of their stories, and the title of the book is his thesis. Mayer explains:

"Only one of my ten Nazi friends saw Nazism as we—you and I—saw it in any respect. This was Hildebrandt, the teacher. And even he then believed, and still believes, in part of its program and practice, 'the democratic part.' The other nine, decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now. None of them ever knew, or now knows, Nazism as we knew and know it; and they lived under it, served it, and, indeed, made it" (47).

Until reading this book, I thought of what happened in Germany with a bit of arrogance. How could they not know Nazism was evil? And how could they see what was happening and not speak out? Cowards. All of them. But as I read Mayer's book, I felt a knot in my stomach, a growing fear that what happened in Germany was not a result of some defect in the German people of this era.

The men and women of Germany in the 1930s and 40s were not unlike Americans in the 2010s and 20s—or the people of any nation at any time throughout history. They are human, just as we are human. And as humans, we have a great tendency to harshly judge the evils of other societies but fail to recognize our own moral failures—failures that have been on full display the past two years during the covid panic.

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[Deb]

"Most detrimental" because it has the most negative impact on our individual evolvement: we don't know why we are here, what we have to do. We're focused on all kind of incorrect ideas.

That's the way it's set up here, what we have to learn. Nice to have Seth to coach us though. We haven't chosen the easiest system, that's for sure. It's like we're on a survival "reality" show, plunked down in a remote place with seven billion others, with no tools. Naked. 

Milton Mayer had a lot of questions about the Holocaust that I did/do. There were some people who did not get sucked up in the madness thank heaven.

Thanks for the link, what you posted is very interesting and I'll finish reading the rest of the article. I'm really appreciating the parallels in the psychology. 

Sometimes I feel like we as a civilization are making little to no progress. Or as Seth would say, at our donkey-rate pace.

[inavalan]

Seth presents natural hypnosis in NoPR #658 to #603

All of the gestures, dances, and other procedures are shock treatments, startling the subject out of habitual reactions so that he or she is forced to focus upon the present moment. The resulting disorientation simply shakes current beliefs and dislodges set frameworks. The hypnotist, or witch doctor, or therapist, then immediately inserts the beliefs he thinks the subject needs.

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[inavalan]

...
Sometimes I feel like we as a civilization are making little to no progress. Or as Seth would say, at our donkey-rate pace

The way I understand it, seemingly compatible with Seth (e.g. inverted time), all the "historical" civilizations exist simultaneously in all their probabilities (it is a virtual hyperspace, like a sandbox with three hyperaxes: time, space, probability).

When we incarnate, we choose (more or less wisely) the historical time point, location point, and probability point. One's incarnations aren't sequential in terms of physical time, nor restricted by space, nor in the same probability.

It is like when playing a game, we can choose between several levels and scenarios, function of the skill we want to develop, and of the skill level we think that we are at.

For example, we could've chosen this incarnation to be during a time when people were more in tune with the non-physical, like primitive men, but that would've offered less opportunities for intuition and intelligence development, and less emotional challenges, than this historical period offers.

It isn't that by design we are restricted from knowing, but that we chose a period that will challenge us in these specific ways. Some of us will learn and graduate, others had overestimated their level and won't graduate this round and try something more appropriate for them next.