Clown World Chroncles: What Is 'Groupthink'?

Clown World Chroncles: What Is ‘Groupthink’?

Much of the psychology of Clown World is the psychology of the herd. Although the human ego likes to place itself above the rest of the animal kingdom, the reality is that we are just as much a herd animal as any wildebeest. Understanding the psychology of Clown World requires that we understand the phenomenon of groupthink.

William H Whyte Jr., the sociologist who came up with the term, described it as “a rationalized conformity – an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as well.” This sense of righteousness is key to understanding groupthink. It’s what motivates groupthinkers to destroy outsiders.

The Asch Conformity Experiments demonstrated the power that groupthink exerts over human behaviour. In these experiments, participants were placed into a group, all of the other members of which were conspiring with the experimenter. These other group members then pretended to believe something that was clearly false, so that the participant was forced to choose between conforming to group norms or speaking the truth.

In about a third of cases, the participants went along with the false information, despite that it was obviously false. When asked why, most of them said they were afraid of social disapproval.

Humans have always been a social species, right back into the biological past. Because of the threat of ostracisation, we have always had to take the social environment into consideration. This has had consequences for how our minds have evolved. We have learned to be afraid of assuming a low social status, lest it lead to us getting kicked out of the group. The more dependent a person is on others, the more afraid they are.

The desire for social harmony leads people to go along with things that they know aren’t true. This has always been the case when it came to cults, but in Clown World it’s the case in general. Today’s groupthinkers insist that mass immigration has made us all wealthier, or that all racial groups are precisely the same in all psychological measures, or that cannabis causes mental illness. The existence of evidence demonstrating otherwise is simply denied.

Characteristic of groupthink is that it increases the likelihood of dehumanising the outgroup. The more a person becomes convinced that their ingroup is morally superior, the more they become convinced that any outgroup is morally inferior. This line of thinking can have lethal outcomes.

The most prominent example of groupthink in Clown World was the leadup to the Iraq War in 2003. Although many people expressed a feeling that the war was a bad idea (a million people protested in London, and three million in Rome, the largest protests in the history of the world), no-one close to George W Bush seems to have done so. Iraqis were dehumanised; civilian deaths in the invasion were written off as “collateral damage”.

In principle, any time a group of people get together and start irrationally hating outsiders could be considered an example of groupthink. The war-like mentality that fuels it seems to be built into human nature. It’s as if that, sometimes, it’s just time for killing, and when it is the group needs to work together as a single unit, with no dissent.

The ruling class is aware of all this, which is why they like to hype the population into a war mentality whenever possible. One of the most unpleasant aspects of Clown World is that the war hype is now permanent. There is always an enemy, always some terrorist out there who will destroy us the moment we relax. The mainstream media keeps us in this state of combat readiness with 24/7 reminders of the world’s danger.

In an age where the average person is so weak, groupthink is much more common than it was. The average person is now so cowardly that the prospect of going against the authority of the group is practically unthinkable. Only abject submission can reduce anxiety to tolerable levels.

This was demonstrated amply by the hysteria around the need to wear masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus. All it took was for the mainstream media to create the perception that anyone not wearing a mask was endangering the public, and people were happy to rip into them. At no point was it necessary to demonstrate scientifically that wearing masks was worth all the grief. Groupthink ensured that dissenters were destroyed.

The general propensity for groupthink is made worse by situational factors. Increased anxiety makes people more liable to put group approval above truth. The prevailing sense of panic in the West since 9/11 has made groupthink a common phenomenon. When a wartime mentality prevails, you don’t want to go against the group, lest you be declared a traitor and cast out (or worse).

The rise of social media has made groupthink much more intense. Because dissenting views can be, and are, silenced so easily on online platforms, it’s very common for people to get an illusory sense of consensus. Anyone accused of xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia or Islamophobia will soon be shut down, creating the impression that everyone agrees with the main globohomo narrative.

Perhaps the most archetypal examples of groupthink in Clown World are the SJW vs. Alt Right conflicts that are boiling over all across the West. An alt centrist can try to stay out of the fray, but the outgroup hostility possessed by both groups will inevitably cause them to accuse any neutral party of being an enemy.

Groupthink is why political activists can get so hysterical when encountering their declared enemy. This is a grave danger – such hysteria has motivated some of the worst atrocities of times past. Given the extent of social discord in Clown World, it’s easily possible that it could motivate some terrible crimes in the future. The presence of cancel culture is an unmistakable sign that the will to destroy the lives of perceived enemies exists.

Fortunately, perhaps, groupthink is also a function of group cohesion, and neither SJWs nor the Alt Right have the group cohesion to enable any truly malicious outgroup prejudice. At least not yet. As Clown World gets worse, though, we can predict that the hunkering down phenomenon will intensify and this will lead to increased groupthink and increased outgroup hostility.

This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in the middle of 2020.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Clown World Chronicles: What is ‘Incel Rage’?

Although the subject of incels has been covered in another chapter, it’s necessary to take a closer look at one specific aspect of incels. This is incel rage. The phenomenon of incel rage has shaped Clown World society greatly, long before incidents like the Elliot Rodger chimpout and the Toronto van attack of 2018.

Incel rage doesn’t just manifest in people getting upset on the Internet. In fact, the world has always had incel rage, because the world has always had incels.

Incel rage is a naturally-occurring and mostly biological phenomenon that exists in all primate species. When an individual is denied mating opportunities, they become angry in an attempt to gain those opportunities by force. This anger, although it carries the risk of injury from violence, has been selected for by the increased mating opportunities it leads to.

The most typical expression of incel rage is violence against either innocents in general or women in particular. This can take the form of a sexual assault, or, as per the examples given above, murderous violence. Another typical expression is extreme recklessness, such as driving under the influence of drugs or binge-drinking alcohol.

Incel rage is a major problem because there are now more incels than ever before. It’s believed that over 30% of young American males are sexually inactive. These numbers are similar in other Western nations. The highest rates are in Japan, where almost half of the male population are incels.

Even if an incel is not fighting people or taking unnecessary risks, their rage can manifest in a great number of subtler ways, some unexpected.

The desire for control produces anger when things don’t go the way one wants. When this anger intensifies into rage, it can create an element of malice. There are a wide range of malicious expressions in the world’s raging incels, and they have a wide range of targets, but the primary target is women.

Many men wish to control women, but find it hard. These men understand, deep in their hearts, that they could beat the shit out of a woman and/or rape her, and that this would be much easier than trying to win her devotion through displaying rectitude. Many also understand that it was legal to hit women up until a few decades ago, and that that also made women easier to deal with.

This is incel rage.

Incel rage could be defined as the violent resentment of genetically unfortunate males towards the rest of society, on account of that women form pair bonds with other men, and, when they do form pair bonds with lower value men, aren’t particularly devoted to them.

Whenever you find expressed a sentiment to patrol thots, to restore the patriarchy, to strip voting rights from women, to hit children, to criminalise people for enjoying alcohol, tobacco or cannabis, to praise Islam for keeping its women under control, or to condemn all pleasures as some kind of “degeneracy” you have likely encountered a source of incel rage.

The men who support such measures are invariably either incels or men who have been driven to sadism by an extended period of incelibacy. They consider such sentiments legitimate ways of getting back at the society that has so unjustly shunned them. The logic is that if I can’t have a good time, no-one can.

This is the reason for the large increase in reactionary authoritarianism. This is not a new thing: most of Abrahamic culture is based on incel rage. Suicide bomber culture requires a large number of incels to target with radicalisation efforts, and the idea that women can’t be priests because they aren’t spiritual comes from incel rage.

Reactionary authoritarianism manifests in Clown World when it idealises primitive religious mentalities or totalitarian (Communist, Nazi) mentalities as “anti-degenerate”. When a person expresses the idea that we need to convert to Islam or Nazism to get degeneracy under control, chances are very high that that person is an incel frustrated at their lack of romantic opportunities.

Herein lies the great danger of incel rage – it leads people to extremism. A person who can’t get laid might decide they’ve got nothing to lose from society’s order getting tipped upside down.

Aggravating the danger is that Clown World is set up in a way to maximise incel rage. Young people today have trouble affording a private space where they could entertain a person of the opposite sex. Even if they could afford one, meeting a quality person is not straightforward. Clown World has the effect of reducing everyone’s average quality, so that dissatisfaction is more likely.

Casual Tinder sex is not fulfilling because it doesn’t assuage the deepest desire of the incel: to be wanted. Getting one’s end away is not enough, because, although one is wanted, it’s only for shallow reasons. The kind of truly fulfilling, compassionate, companionate love that tames a man’s heart is not easy to find on Tinder – or anywhere else.

As such, a great number of men are raging. Incel rage, along with the rage of sexual dissatisfaction, is a major reason why there’s so much negative energy in Clown World society. It lies behind a great proportion of sadistic or otherwise antisocial acts.

The cure to incel rage varies, depending on the person. For most incels, smoking weed or drinking beer might be the answer to making themselves more personable; for others, lifting weights or achieving career objectives might give them the charisma they need. Some unfortunates are born permavirgins, however, and in an age where there is no spirituality to dampen their rage this leads regularly to havoc.

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Clown World Chronicles: What Is ‘Oversocialisation’?

In Industrial Society and its Future, author Ted Kaczynski analyses at length the psychology of the modern leftist. One of the phrases he uses is ‘oversocialisation’. It’s necessary to understand this concept if one is to understand Clown World behaviour.

‘Socialisation’ is what psychologists call the process of being conditioned into one’s place in society. The human animal has changed little over the past 20,000 years, so all babies are born savages. Only by a lengthy process of mimicry and conditioning, spanning many years, do they learn to behave in a manner acceptable to civilisation.

During the socialisation process, people learn to resist their natural violent and sexual impulses. We learn to seek consent before engaging in either. We even learn to pre-empt violence by being polite and forgiving. The socialisation process transforms us from barbarian to civilised.

Many behavioural problems stem from being undersocialised, particularly with regards to the aforementioned violent and sexual impulses. A person who is undersocialised may not be aware that they cause harm to other people by forcing their urges on them, or they may not care. In this sense they are like wild animals.

However, as Kaczynski understood, many behavioural problems also stem from being oversocialised. It has been noted elsewhere that the socialisation process creates an urge to conform. Problems arise in Clown World society because people are more socialised than ever. This has led to a stronger urge to conform than ever.

Before Clown World, people did many more things to unsocialise themselves. They went hiking, hunting, fishing, camping or just for a walk by themselves through their neighbourhood streets. This time away from other people offered a chance to come back to reality, to be socialised by Nature.

There, they learned from observing the various animals, birds, fish and insects, and from observing the daily and the seasonal changes in the environment, how Nature works. Truths such as the fact that all forms are transitory, or that no two things are the same, or the importance of kin, became deeply internalised.

Even when at home, people used to spend much more time alone on account of that there was no social media to connect them to anyone else. A lot of that time was spent working on projects alone, with no-one observing and judging. The result of this moderate level of socialisation was a healthy, balanced self-esteem.

Today, a person is socialised through screentime from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed. The largest change of all is that they now get instant feedback on all of their thoughts and behaviours. As such, the average person worries more than ever before about what other people think of them.

This preoccupation with what other people think of them has led to an extreme form of neuroticism. This has had society-wide consequences. One of the most prominent is an increased psychological malleability. The average person is now so neurotic that the slightest sign of approval from an authority grants a powerful sense of relief. This conditions them to seek approval even harder.

The oversocialisation process has produced a large number of people who are completely unable to think outside the box, a generation of teacher’s pets. They are too afraid to say or do anything original in case someone expresses disapproval. This disapproval would represent a mortal wound to their egos.

As Kaczynski put it, “the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him.” It can be understood from this that oversocialisation is akin to a form of brainwashing. Clown World is – even though it’s not spoken aloud – a totalitarian system, and as such it seeks to control every last thought of its subjects.

Explaining oversocialisation goes a long way to explaining why there are so many baizuos, gutmenschen, soyboys and other weaklings in Clown World. Many of these people would have been normal if they’d spent more time in the wilderness hiking or hunting. But because they have always been immersed in the urban world, the natural world is known to them only by YouTube.

It’s not that the world needs more violence and uninvited sexuality. What it does need is a higher quality of socialisation, instead of quantity. Instead of a paranoid state of permanent moral alertness, we need to learn to know ourselves, so that we can intelligently transmute our impulses into correct action.

The chief problem is that the rulers of Clown World are perfectly happy with oversocialisation. In a society as corrupt as this one, the greatest threat to the ruling class comes not from the outside, but from the people. So the rulers are more interested in keeping the masses down than they are in strengthening the nation to resist external threats.

The answer is not anarcho-primitivism but a return to a more nature-based way of living. Clown World will end sooner or later, probably when the cheap oil runs out, which will make big city consumerism impossible. This might see the population of the West move out of the cities and spread across the land, going back to a village model.

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The Bread And Circuses Are Winding Up

Panem et circenses is an ancient Roman phrase, attributed to the poet Juvenal, that means “bread and circuses.” The idea is that a degenerate society, once it has abandoned all higher values, has nothing left but bread and circuses. Take that away, and the society will fall apart. Our bread and circuses are in the process of being taken away.

The Roman Empire discovered that paying for public circuses was a great way of preventing civil unrest. If the people had an upcoming gladiatorial games to look forward to, they were much more likely to be content. When they didn’t have anything to look forward to, they tended to entertain thoughts of rebellion.

Eventually, the Romans found themselves unable to pay for more games, and that was the tipping point. The cessation of the circuses meant that the citizens got their entertainment from wrecking society instead, and that was the end of the Roman Empire.

The Western World appears to be going through a similar process.

Professional sports have replaced the circuses in the West, and most professional sports leagues have been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. The English Premier League season lost three months, the Major League Baseball season lost 100 games, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, predicted that running the NFL later this year would be impossible.

In New Zealand, there hasn’t been a single All Blacks match so far in 2020, and it looks like there won’t be. There hasn’t been a Black Caps match since March, and there is no news of upcoming fixtures (although a tour to Bangladesh has supposedly been planned).

Even worse, the increasing politicisation of professional sport has seen many turn their televisions off. NBA viewership is down some 20% compared to this time last year. Although the linked article suggests injuries to star players may be the cause of the decline, the truth is that many viewers are sick of having political issues shoved in their faces.

People watch sport to be entertained. They don’t care about the political opinions of professional sportsmen, any more than they care to watch Donald Trump play basketball. They know the sportsmen are not educated intellectuals who study history and human nature. As such, their political opinions don’t need to be taken seriously.

Compounding the problem are blatant double standards when it comes to the political issues being pushed.

In an NBA match earlier this month, Los Angeles Clippers player Montrezl Harrell called Dallas Mavericks player Luka Doncic a “bitch ass white boy“. Although a white player calling a black player a “bitch ass black boy” would be a worldwide scandal, it appears that Harrell is going to avoid sanction entirely.

There might be an inherent demand for entertainment once a person’s basic survival needs are met, but it’s hard to be a white person and keep watching a sports league when you know that league explicitly endorses anti-white racial abuse. It’s a direct humiliation, and many sports fans have found themselves switching off instead.

As in ancient Rome, the lack of easily-available entertainment has led to people seeking it elsewhere, in more destructive ways. There is a direct link between the winding up of the American circuses and the widespread civil unrest there. Instead of finding entertainment in sport, people are finding it in other people getting shot and beaten to death.

More worryingly, the bread is also winding up.

When Juvenal spoke of “bread” he was referring to the grain dole, another Roman invention for defraying rebellious sentiments. Because of the psychological effect of starvation, hungry populations soon become violent. The Roman masses were pacified with free grain, then free bread, wine and pork.

When this food dole wound up, people started going hungry, and this led to even more trouble than the boredom. A bored person can get entertained quickly by setting something on fire; a hungry person won’t be satisfied until they kill someone. For the Roman ruling classes, to not dole out bread meant the collapse of their society.

The West doesn’t have a grain dole, but we do have a system of social welfare which has much the same effect. It’s also being scaled back.

In America, negotiations for a second stimulus check are in doubt, because Republicans and Democrats cannot agree on terms. The first stimulus check was granted because the coronavirus pandemic had destroyed many American jobs, but those jobs are yet to return, and therefore the economic stress has not gone away.

In New Zealand, the COVID-19 Resurgence Wage Subsidy – designed to have a similar effect to the American stimulus checks – is expiring later this week. The likely outcome is a high volume of job losses. Already the New Zealand economy has been hit hard by the near-total annihilation of our international tourism sector; further major job losses would cause widespread despair.

It’s possible that Donald Trump and Jacinda Ardern will extend welfare benefits, at least for now. But the largesse cannot be continued indefinitely. The New Zealand national debt was $US 59.6 billion in March this year, but has already blown out to $US 81.1 billion by September. They can’t keep borrowing money to keep the party going forever.

When these special coronavirus payments are stopped, the inevitable result will be an increase in the number of people taking to the streets in protest. Given how ugly sentiments already are, with multiple protesters having been shot dead in America over the past week, a wider collapse of order is a very realistic prospect.

In summary, society is held together by bread and circuses, and both of those are winding up thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. This phenomenon is occurring across the Western World, which suggests that we’re all in for some difficult times over the next 12 months or so.

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