Podcast with Naomi Wolf
Dear friends,
Below you find a podcast with Naomi Wolf. I rarely publish the podcasts I participate in on my Substack page, but this time I do. It is all about the theoretical and intellectual background of my mass formation theory and in this respect it is unique content. I appreciate Dr. Wolf’s kindness to invite me to a podcast with her, and, much more importantly, the way in which she has spoken out throughout the last few years.
I read her Substacks often and I truly admire her courage in many respects, for instance when she publicly changes her opinion if she feels her conscience demands it of her. I remember a Substack in which she said that after meeting Donald Trump, she realised that she had been misled by the media in forming her opinion about him. She noticed that the image the media created of him was not so correct.
I've never met Donald Trump in person and my vote would rather go to someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but I can tell you one thing: ever since I saw how the media created an image about myself, I am much more reluctant to go along with what the media says about other people. Given the intellectual environment that Dr. Wolf comes from, I know it takes lion courage to articulate these words about Trump.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Mattias
Or: https://rumble.com/v3is9jo-what-is-mass-formation-the-psychology-of-totalitarianism-with-dr.-mattias-d.html
I remember when doing a psychotherapy and Counseling course, reading Gustave Le Bon. He said " The more educated people are, the more vulnerable they are for Mass Formation". The West has fallen for their government narrative to inject everyone with the poison while we in Africa, never believed our corrupt governments and never fell for one medicine or one injection in this case for ALL!
This line of thinking, that our rational minds can never grasp the truth, is resonant with Iain McGilchrist's work on the hemispheric differences and how each side of the brain looks at the world. The left brain, the brain of language (not all language, the left brain can't do metaphor) is one of focussed attention, manipulation, decontextualizing, is disembodied, and basically, not in touch with reality, because it does not see the "whole." The left brain mistakes the map for the terrain, so to speak. Whereas the right brain pays attention to the whole, as a continuous, ever changing 'flow'.
The left brain comes up with systems, narratives, ideologies. And, without the right brain, we become trapped in them, believing in them more so than reality. That is our problem these days.