Dr Matt's Newsletter November 30, 2022
Supporting healthy social interactions and diversity of health choices. World Cup Edition – “The joy of victory and the agony of defeat.”
Calling all runners to join us for the Parkway Classic “Family 5k” on April 23rd.
The World Cup gives an opportunity every four years to look around and see a taste of various countries. When the USA played Iran yesterday, November 29th, as demonstrations erupted in Iranian streets against their totalitarian government, I was reminded of the lessons on the Psychology of Totalitarianism and how it relates to covid-19 hypnosis. This is covered in the “research section of the week”.
On a lighter note, seeing the Brazilian national team have samba jams on the bus and in the locker room gave me inspiration for our ”music of the week”. Last but not least, the athletes from all over the world spurred me to invite you to join us for the Parkway Classic” run on April 23rd.
Here is a list of sections:
Health and community building – George Washington Parkway 5 k and 10 mile runs on April 23rd
Music of the week – Brazilian Bossa Nova, Modern Brazilian Acoustic, and the “Seleção Canarinho” Locker Room Jam sessions
Research of the week – Psychology of Totalitarianism with Mattias Desmet: what the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nazi Germany, Communism of Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, and the Covid-19 fueled technocratic transhumanism all have in common.
Humor of the week – Thanksgiving Turkey Plays it Safe
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Yours truly, one moment at a time.
Matt Irwin
Health and community building – George Washington Parkway 5k and 10 mile runs on April 23rd
When I see athletes performing at a high level, I am reminded we all need to move our bodies to help us age a bit slower, and for younger people, help them grow stronger and healthier. What better opportunity for this than the yearly run along the scenic George Washington Memorial Parkway starting at the Mount Vernon mansion and ending in old town, called “The Parkway Classic”.
I hope you can join us on April 23rd. The race ends near my office, so it is a perfect fit. The 5K section can be run at a leisurely pace and even partly walked if desired – the point is to just finish in one piece and not to “win”.
Once you sign up please let me know. If the weather is nice we can meet up for a post-race fruit buffet before we all head home. A group picture at the beginning and much smellier one at the end would be great for my newsletter. I am always in need of material 😊.
One of my patients ran the Boston Marathon a few years ago and has run the Parkway Classic many times. She will help us get information about the details. I ran the Army 10-miler in October, but I have never done the Parkway Classic before.
Here is a link where you can register and learn more about it.
https://www.parkwayclassic.com/raceinfo
Music of the week – Brazilian Bossa, Samba, and Musical Poetry
I lived in Brazil from 1st to 3rd grade, and fell in love with samba and “futebol”. When I saw the Brazilian soccer players playing samba instruments on the way to their dressing room, I was reminded of the way Brazilians love to make music together, and dance together. Here is a very short video of the team as it left the bus in Qatar – what a great way to blow off steam…
Tom Jobim: Águas de março – played by João Gilberto
If you want to learn Portuguese, this song “Waters of March” would be a great way to start. It is a series of visual images and sensations, like a string of Japanese Haiku poems: Below is a short translation of some of them, followed by the link.
It's wood, it’s stone
It's the end of the road
It's a rest from the music, it's time all alone
A shard of glass, it's life, it's the sun
It's the wind blowing through, it's the end of the run
It's the beam, it's the gap, it's the river, it's the rain,
From the waters of March, it's the end of the pain
Ana Carolina and Seu Jorge – Chatterton
This song is about absorbing pain, absorbing suffering, and accepting it to overcome it. This is a musical version of the quotes in my newsletter from November 16th from Sufi teacher Inayat Khan and the quotes about cradling our suffering on November 9th from Thich Nhat Hanh.
Chatterton was an English poet in the 1700’s who ended his own life at a young age. The lyrics can seem very dark and tragic, listing artists who ended their own lives or “lost their minds”, but you can tell from the energy of the song that it is actually about emerging through the suffering and embracing a bit of craziness to find peace with life - this is why the crowd cheers so enthusiastically.
Here are some translations to help you follow: The word “Suicidou” which they say after the names of many artists such as Van Gogh and Kurt Cobain, is a verb form of suicide, and the word, “enlouqueceu” which they say after Nietzsche and Schumann means to go crazy or lose your mind. “Não vou nada bem”, which they repeat over and over, means “I am not doing well at all”. Their crazy laughter, coughs, and some choice curse words need not be translated :-).
Lenine: É o Que Me Interessa
This song is a poetic meditation on intuition. Here are some translated lyrics:
Turn my clock back
calm my hurry
give me your word
Whisper in my ear
The Logic of the Wind
The Chaos of Thought
The peace in solitude
The orbit of time
The pause of the painting
The voice of intuition
Geraldo Azevedo: Berekekê
At its heart this is a fun and poetic love song. I have not been able to find out what the major repeated phrase and title means: “Erumbekum Berekekê”. It may be from a native Brazilian Amazonian language as the song speaks of the beauty of the tropics, uses traditional instruments, has exotic jungle sounds, and mentions “indio Amazonas”.
Research of the week – Psychology of Totalitarianism and Mattias Desmet.
Mattias Desmet is a professor of psychology in Belgium at the Ghent University. He has lectured for many years on the psychology of totalitarianism, building on the works of people like Hannah Arendt, a Jewish refugee and psychologist who wrote a seminal work after WWII called “The Origins of Totalitarianism”.
He points out that all humans have a tendency to join ideological ideals, and if they fall completely into the crowd psychology they can become so hypnotized that they are willing to sacrifice everything in order to show their solidarity with the group, even their own families and children. When this crowd and mob psychology becomes extremely pervasive and widespread, he calls it “mass formation” and says that the society has “formed a mass”. This event is aided by ideological belief-based propaganda, and repeated hypnotic phrases such as “we are all in this together”, “flatten the curve”, “remember the alamo”, and “stop the spread”.
Learning about the parallels with the past can be frightening at times, but Desmet also points out that by sticking to our moral and ethical human values, speaking out calmly and nonviolently, we can prevent the worst from happening. After many years, inevitably, the ideological power structure falls apart on its own. This is exactly what is happening in Iran today, and I am praying for them that the 60 % of people who are just “going along” against their better judgement can have the strength to peacefully end the totalitarian state in Iran.
Here is a link to an interview with RFK Junior
Below are some quotes and then a link to an article about Desmet’s work from the Organic Consumers Association (OCA). OCA understood the problems of mechanistic totalitarianism through the lens of “mechanistic agriculture” before covid-19 emerged. This industrialized version of farming has an imbalanced and illogical obsession with huge mechanized farms. “Roundup ready” genetically engineered crops and massive use of pesticides and herbicides does not generate more food. Research has shown that the older way of traditional farming, with crop rotations, natural fertilizers, no pesticides, and natural cover crops, produces more food per acre. They do demand more human labor which is one reason why I support increased visa programs for workers to come to our country legally and be protected from “coyotes” at the border.
First, some quotes, many of which are repeated in the interview with RFK Jr:
“That is what happened during the revolution in Iran, for instance. I talked with a woman who lived in Iran during the revolution, which was actually the beginning of a totalitarian regime in Iran. She witnessed, with her own eyes, how a mother reported her son to the government, and how she hung the rope around his neck just before he died, and how she claimed to be a heroine for doing so. That's the dramatic effects of mass formation.”
“‘Resistance from within a totalitarian system always has to stick to the principles of nonviolent resistance,’ Desmet says. But you must also continue to speak out in a clear, rational and nonabusive way. Desmet explains:”
“The first and foremost principle the resistance has to stick to during a process of mass formation and emerging totalitarianism, is that people who do not go along with the masses have to continue to speak out. That's the most crucial thing.
As totalitarianism is based on mass formation, and mass formation is a kind of hypnosis, the mass formation is always provoked by the voice of the leader, which keeps the population in a process of hypnosis. And when dissonant voices continue to speak out, they will not be able to wake the masses up, but they will constantly disturb the process of mass formation.”
“Once people who used to feel lonely, anxious and out of control start to participate in the strategy presented to them as the solution to their anxiety, a brand-new social bond emerges. This, then, reinforces the mass hypnosis, as they now no longer feel isolated and lonely.”
“So, as we’ve seen during the COVID pandemic, people will attack and lash out in the most irrational ways against anyone who doesn’t buy into the narrative. The underlying aggression will always be directed at the part of the population that isn’t hypnotized.
Speaking in generalized terms, typically, once mass formation is taking place, about 30% of the population will be hypnotized — and this typically includes most of the leaders who pronounce the hypnotizing narrative to the public — 10% remain unhypnotized and do not buy into the narrative, and the majority, 60%, feel there’s something wrong with the narrative, but go along with it simply because they don’t want to stick out or cause trouble.”
“In the Soviet Union, where the process of mass formation went very far, much further than in Nazi Germany, Stalin started to eliminate the aristocracy, the small farmers, the large farmers, the goldsmiths, the Jews, all people who according to him would never become good communists. But after a while, he just started to eliminate group after group without any logic. Just everyone. That's why Hannah Arendt said that a totalitarian state is always a monster that devours its own children. That destructive process accelerates when people stop to speak out.”
“In the end, the ultimate challenge is not so much to show people that the coronavirus was not as dangerous as we expected, or that the COVID narrative is wrong, but rather that this ideology is problematic — this transhumanist and this technocratic ideology is a disaster for humanity; this mechanistic thinking, this belief that the universe and man is a kind of material mechanistic system, which should be steered and manipulated in a mechanistic technocratic transhumanist way…. I think that's the real challenge we are facing. Showing people, ‘Look, forget for a moment about the Corona narrative. What we are heading for if we continue in the same way, is a radically, technologically controlled transhumanist society, which will leave no space whatsoever for life for a human being
“While it’s impossible to make accurate predictions, Desmet’s gut feeling is that it’ll probably be at least seven or eight years before the totalitarian system currently emerging with burn itself out and self-destruct. Could be more, could be less.”
Dr Matt is praying for less - but also my main effort is to live one moment at a time..
https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/psychology-totalitarianism