The New ‘Two Solitudes’

Sadly, we may be entering in Canada a new era of what Hugh MacLennan dubbed “The Two Solitudes.” Only instead of the divide being between French and English Canada, it will be the gulf between the compliant and the dissidents, those for or against the truckers’ Freedom Convoy, pro- and anti-authoritarians.

In this context the work of Belgian psychology professor Mattias Desmet is directly relevant. He speaks of how, during the deployment of fear propaganda designed to create what he calls “mass formation psychosis,”[1] the demographics fall out fairly consistently. First of all you have the solid core of those who are hypnotizable, constituting approximately 30 percent of the population. Well after the Covid hysteria has passed, they will be the ones who will continue to be masking, social distancing, and getting booster shots (assuming they survive them).

Even now, in the aftermath of Trudeau’s invocation of federal emergency powers, such people continue in personal emails to repeat the falsehoods about the Freedom Convoy they learned from mainstream media, often using the exact words. As a friend recently emailed me: “Urinating and defecating on the streets, horns blaring for almost three weeks, Nazi and American flags waved in our face…” Sound familiar? It should. It’s the script we heard repeated in the media every day during the convoy protest. This despite the fact that there exists a considerable body of video evidence to the contrary taken by protestors on Parliament Hill during the three-week occupation by the convoy. Nor are the media likely to fully backtrack on their falsehoods in the clear light of the post-Covid day, as Professor Randall Marlin writes:

“A deception perpetrated on the public by some official source accomplishes, as we often see, a given objective. It is later found to be a deception, but the mass media are no longer interested in publicizing the truth, partly because the correction arrives too late to undo the damage caused, partly because exposure of the deception would also incriminate the media as negligent or dupes. It is not in the interest of the media to injure their own credibility by such exposure.” —Randall Marlin, Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion [2]

I suspect the cognitive dissonance this core group of hopelessly hypnotized will suffer as the rest of society leaves the hysteria behind will leave them bitter, frustrated and permanently controlled by fear. In a word: neurotic. To someone not in this demographic, the appropriate response should be pity: that such people are unable or unwilling to move on, leaving them shuffling through the same mental landscape of lockdowns for the rest of their lives. Anyone controlled by fear to that extent is unlikely to enjoy a fulfilling life wherein they have the courage and initiative to set goals and then accomplish them. The world will have acquired a permanent stamp of being a dangerous place and this may well disable them altogether from taking any kind of risks whatsoever. Aside from those who died during lockdowns from suicide, drug overdoses, vaccine reactions or lack of access to medical care, this group is perhaps the most tragic, for they will live out their lives as a kind of walking dead. As Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer, “People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident.” [3]

Then there’s what I call the ‘soft middle’ of the mass hypnosis demographic, the 40 percent who are the ones that go along with the prevailing political winds out of herd instinct, the desire to fit in. Obviously for many within this demographic, there’s also a realist sensibility at work: “Well, if I want to keep feeding my children, paying my bills, and so on, I’d better just do what I’m told.” There’s also a narcissistic element to it that, sadly, I see more often among the young: “Well, if I want to travel overseas or continue building my international career, I’d better get the Covid shot.” Though one can hardly blame the young for doing what the young have always wanted and needed to do before they get nailed down to the commitments of career and family life. This soft middle therefore is somewhat malleable. Sometimes known in politics as ‘the swing vote,’ it’s often the demographic politicians most focus their efforts on. When the political winds begin to shift, they will often shift with it. Many were no doubt secretly fed up with all the lockdown restrictions anyway and anxious to get back to some semblance of normal life. This demographic should have far less trouble adjusting to the post-Covid reality; flexibility is after all an adaptive response, and adaptation is a key factor in evolution that has enabled humans to endure as long as they have.

And finally you have the approximately 30 percent who are non-hypnotizable, the ones the Great Reveen will be astute enough not to pick as volunteers for his public performances. This slice of the demographic, clearly the minority, seems to inherently possess some capacity for critical thinking. Some of them are by nature reflexive iconoclasts or rebels. In anarchist political philosophy many of these would simply be viewed as ‘native’ anarchists in spirit, if not necessarily active participants in an overt movement toward anarchism. My natural pessimism would have pegged this un-hypnotizable demographic as a much smaller group; I used to say only about 10 percent of the population actually seems capable of independent thought. No wonder then that demagogues and tyrants don’t waste time appealing to the intelligentsia. They go straight to the majority who are far more susceptible to propaganda and manipulation. But this core group of dissident thinkers has the advantage that they make up their own minds, and therefore are fully self-possessed human beings.

That’s not to say that this makes situations such as Covid lockdowns any easier for them. On the contrary, because they are often the ones who can clearly see through the lies and propaganda, they suffer for it, both intellectually and socially. They are stigmatized by the rest of society and the media as “anti-vaxxers,” “anti-maskers,” “extremists,” or whatever epithet best suits the ever-changing needs of thought control. Nevertheless, for such independent thinkers, adaptation to tyranny is simply not an option. To keep abreast of the tidal wave of propaganda that has washed over the world during Covid requires an almost paranoiac mentality. It’s arguable that for the dissident class this is as adaptive a survival response as the soft middle’s wishy-washy flexibility. After all, as the past two years have proven, last year’s conspiracy theory is this year’s reality.

But remaining on the alert, critical as it is to a truly free mind, comes with a cost. As I write in my forthcoming book, Words from the Dead, the great 1960s TV show The Prisoner is as perfect an allegory for Covid lockdowns as could be imagined. Its central character, played by the late Patrick McGoohan, is a spy who resigns and then suddenly finds himself spirited away to a remote community known only as “The Village.” It’s an idyllic seaside setting with comfortable grounds and cottages, not overtly a prison. However, all attempts at escape are foiled by a technologically sophisticated security system and constant surveillance. Village residents are given only numbers, not names. Despite his now-iconic protest that, “I am not a number, I am a free man!” our hero is dubbed Number Six, his pre-Village identity stripped away.

Roland Topor observes of the Village’s lone dissenter that an almost paranoid mistrust of governing authorities becomes for him an essential survival reflex: “Being by nature a free man, refusing both his number and integration into the Village, he is able to escape the widespread schizophrenia. If he torpedoes the comforting rituals of daily life, if he persists in tearing away the shrouds of banality, it is because he is constantly on the defensive.” [4] Those who refuse to social distance, use gobs of hand sanitizer every fifteen minutes, or wear masks are doing just that: “torpedoing the comforting rituals of daily life,” and living on the defensive. For them as for Number Six it’s as much an act of affirming their existence as free beings as it is of resisting dangerous tyranny.

Professor Desmet has said that the Covid crisis “is much more of a psychological crisis than a biological crisis,” [5] not least due to the vast swath of death and psychological damage that are the most prominent side effects of lockdowns. Just like Number Six, those of a dissident mindset have had to adopt a hypervigilant mental state. And as I write in Words from the Dead, “It’s this hypervigilance that’s required if we’re to avoid succumbing psychologically.” [6] Left unchecked, of course, hypervigilance can lead to other mental health issues.

But there are plenty of costs and consequences to go around for all three demographics. Still, I’d rather deal with the consequences of hypervigilance than allow myself to succumb to the zombie-like mental state I see on the faces of so many conformists since Covid. Even the physical comportment of people I know has changed. I see so many of them walking down the street masked, hunched forward and shuffling like someone decades older. This is before we address the issue of what the long-lasting damages will be from the oxygen deprivation to the brain created by wearing masks far longer than they were ever intended to be. Already some alarming reports are noting a drop in IQ in young children who have been forced to mask. If we allow ourselves to buy into the media’s ‘fear porn,’ explains psychologist Dr. Dianne Perlman, “people regress and lose higher cognitive functions, capacity for logic, the ability to anticipate consequences and to understand cause and effect.” [7] We are engineering a society of imbeciles, in other words. And imbeciles are easily controlled.

The repercussions of how authorities have handled Covid will reverberate long into the future, especially for the youngest among us. There will be a great need for remedial care and compassion for the victims. Unfortunately what this means is that as a civilization, our forward momentum is over. We will be dealing with the shattered remnants of a society much the same as a city shattered by bombing must ever so gradually rebuild and recover. This could take decades or even longer. It’s arguable, as I write in Words from the Dead, that Europe took a good two centuries to fully recover from the Black Death—the bubonic plague of the 14th century.

Historian Philip Ziegler writes of how the aftermath of plague played out in society:

“The plague not only depopulates and kills, it gnaws the moral stamina and frequently destroys it entirely; thus the sudden demoralization of Roman society from the period of Mark Antony may be explained by the Oriental plague… In such epidemics the best were invariably carried off and the survivors deteriorated morally.” [8]

Historian William H. McNeill rounds out this sad picture of post-plague sociology:

“The disruptive effect of such an epidemic is likely to be greater than the mere loss of life, severe as that may be. Often survivors are demoralized, and lose all faith in inherited custom and belief which had not prepared them for such a disaster. …When an initial exposure to one civilized infection is swiftly followed by similarly destructive exposure to others, the structural cohesion of the community is almost certain to collapse.” [9]

So the deep divisions fostered by Covid propagandizing are likely to remain with us. As Ziegler wrote, comparing the after-effects of the Black Death with World War I: “In both, in a word, the whole population was ‘shell-shocked,’ a state from which they were not fully to emerge for many years.” [10] I say this with a deep sense of sadness for the country I love. It’s not a statement of defeatism, just a realist projection based on the available evidence so far. In Canada, our Two Solitudes seem forever destined to be a part of our sociological fabric, even if the target of division shifts from languages to pro- and anti-authoritarian personality types. If there’s a positive side to all this, it may be that with so many rendered physically or psychologically disabled, our ‘compassion gene’ will activate in an unprecedented manner. Let’s hope and pray that is so. Meanwhile, Ziegler provides some grounds for optimism based on history’s long record of recovery from all manner of disasters:

“The resilience of mankind is perpetually astonishing and within only a few years the horrors of the plague had been thrust from the forefront of their minds. But no one can live through a catastrophe so devastating and so inexplicable without retaining for ever the scars of his experience.” —Philip Ziegler, The Black Death [11]

And if no such Two Solitudes persists in Canada, I’ll be delighted to be proved wrong.

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[1] “Why People WILLINGLY Give Up Their Freedoms w/ Prof. Mattias Desmet | Mass Formation Psychosis”:

[2] Randal Marlin, Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion, Broadview Press, 2002, p. 25.

[3] Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, Perennial Classics, 1951 (1989 ed.), p. 118.

[4] Roland Topor, “The Greatest Science Fiction Film of All Time,” from The Prisoner—A Televisionary Masterpiece, Virgin Books, 1989, p. 10.

[5] “The Psychology of Totalitarianism with Prof. Mattias Desmet,” testimony to Siftung Corona Ausschuss (Corona Investigative Committee) transcribed to author’s notes, OVALmedia, Odysee video channel, July 31, 2021, accessed October 10, 2021: https://odysee.com/@VeryOpinionatedShow:5/lbry-Mattias-Desmet:7

[6] Sean Arthur Joyce, Words from the Dead: Relevant Readings in the Covid Age, Ekstasis Editions, 2022, p. 185.

http://ekstasiseditions.com

[7] Quoted in Words from the Dead: Relevant Readings in the Covid Age, Ekstasis Editions, 2022, p. 185.

[8] Philip Ziegler, The Black Death, Penguin Books 1969 (1982 reprint), p. 267, emphasis mine.

[9] William H. McNeill, Plagues & Peoples, Anchor Books/Random House, New York, 1976 (1998 ed.),  pp. 86, 87.

[10] Philip Ziegler, The Black Death, Penguin Books 1969 (1982 reprint), p. 286.

[11] Philip Ziegler, The Black Death, Penguin Books 1969 (1982 reprint), p. 267.