A lot of what fueled the conformity and compliance over the last year’s “scamdemic” was the pack mentality. The pack mentality refers to the opposite of independent thought. It means: “If everyone else is doing it, I guess I’ll do it too.” That’s why the thugs we call politicians and “leaders” didn’t have to work very hard to enforce mask mandates, and the like. The vast majority of people were willing to go along to get along.
Now that very same mentality is working against the tyrants, controllers and abusers. States and localities relied on the euphemistic term “guidance” to enforce mask mandates. They were counting on most people to pressure each other into doing it. The way that people pressure each other is through the pack mentality. Without a widespread pack mentality, governors and mayors would have literally been required to send police into the streets and on to private property and force the masks onto people’s faces. Like I said, they never had to do that.
Most people would rather DIE than be forced to feel like mass numbers of people disapprove of them. I suppose that’s why in poll after poll, public speaking gets listed as the # 1 fear people have — even above heights, snakes, flying on airplanes and the dentist, in many cases. People who fear public speaking believe they’re being belittled, or disapproved of, by others. However, in that case the fear has more validity. When you’re giving a speech, all eyes are literally focused on you. When you’re walking around with (or without) a mask, you’re not necessarily the center of attention. But you FEEL like you might be, and that’s the anxiety most people cannot tolerate. “If others don’t like me, it means I’m not a good person.” Wow, is that wrong — and destructive.
It’s probably a good guess that most people, even those who vote for Democrats and watch MSNBC or CNN, didn’t LIKE wearing the masks. The ones who did like wearing masks, by the way, are still wearing them; but even in blue states and cities, mask-wearers appear increasingly few and far between. They’re a minority now, in most spots. So now the pack mentality plays to the opposite. Instead of, “Everyone else is wearing a mask, so I better wear one too” it converts to, “Most other people aren’t wearing a mask, so I won’t either. Good riddance to the masks.” And, suddenly, it almost feels like 2019 again. Bad news for the Karens of the world. How will they control people now?
But the pack mentality is still with us. And the tyrants who dominate our cultural establishment — government, media, celebrities — know it. They know they can count on the pack mentality to serve their interests with the next crisis they will concoct or exaggerate with the aid of a 99.99 percent compliant media. Unless or until people develop critical, objective, independent thinking habits on a far greater scale than we’ve seen over the past year in regard to what the media dishes up every day, we’re going to have serious problems.
Remember: human beings are not wolves. We don’t survive primarily by the pack. We survive because of innovation, technology and ingenuity. We survive, even as ordinary people, through our THINKING. Thinking is, by definition, an INDEPENDENT act; not the collective action of a pack. Sure, we can often benefit by putting our independent, thinking minds together with other minds. That goes without saying. But in the case of COVID, the great majority put aside their thinking and common sense in order to “go along to get along”.
THIS is the kind of thing that creates mass stupidity. And this is the kind of thing that gave us Nazi Germany, and other disasters. We cannot go on that way. Groups often do more to undermine and impair rational thought than help it. Only a society of hardcore, unwavering individualists can sustain anything like the greatness and prosperity America has for so many generations known.
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