Dear Dr. Breggin - let's talk.

It seems that Dr. Breggin doesn’t like my ‘Suicidal Society’ substack. Please find his comments here. Let me first and for all say this to him: let’s talk. It’s time to have a proper conversation.

You might know what my ‘Suicidal Society’ article was about: the idea is gaining traction in public discourse that we would be better off if a major part of the population stopped to exist. Humans cause climate change; they are a virus proliferating on the surface of the earth. There is too many of them. Let’s start with eliminating the elderly through euthanasia – old people are costly and useless. We see how such ideas pop up more and more in the mainstream media.

And then comes the part Dr. Breggin seems to be quite angry about: I remark that such ideas can only gain traction in society when there is a strong suicidal wish in the population. Everyone can read the full article here.

In a nutshell: Dr. Breggin believes that I am blaming the innocent victims of propaganda while excusing the propagandists. And it is not the first time I do so. According to him, I did exactly the same with my mass formation theory: blaming the innocent people and excusing the criminal elite. And even before the coronacrisis, he claims, I walked this path already. He found a 2018 newspaper article reporting that I protected mass murderers in my psychotherapy practice.

Here is what I propose to Dr. Breggin (as I proposed before): let’s have a public conversation. I read some parts of his book. It seems to me that we have some common goals. And I add to this that I am grateful for his efforts to expose pharmaceutical crime.

For me this isn’t a matter of ‘winning a debate’ with Dr. Breggin – it’s an invitation to have an open-minded conversation. I propose people read ‘The dawn of everything’ by Graeber and Wengrow. In the first part of the book, the authors describe how the native inhabitants of North-East America succeeded in organizing their tribal societies almost without use of power or hierarchical relationships. How could they do so? Because they practiced the art of sincere speech in public space, hours and hours and hours a week.

That’s what I invite Dr. Breggin to: let’s practice the art of speech together. We have different opinions indeed. Unlike Dr. Breggin seems to believe, I don’t think that the problems of this society can be reduced to the actions of an ‘evil elite’. We are all part of the problem, also the people who fall prey to the actions of ‘the elite’. Dr. Breggin seems to interpret this as ‘victim blaming’. In my opinion, I rather make people aware of the fact that they are not powerless. We are all part of the problem and hence we can all contribute to the solution.

And we do so in the first place by openness and willingness towards those who have a different opinion than we have. As I remarked before, in my analysis, this is the essence of the metaphysical revolution we are going through: on the one hand we have a mass in the grip of this new kind of lie and manipulation which we call ‘propaganda’; on the other hand we see the emergence of a group of people united by sincere speech. In the mass, everyone has the same propagandized opinion. In the group, people all have their own, singular opinion. And that’s what makes them eager to talk and listen to one another. As soon as the group becomes energetically more powerful than the mass, the era of totalitarianism is over.

Dr. Breggin: let’s find out whether speech can unite us across our differences in opinion. I hope you kindly accept my invitation.

Mattias