[houseatrielah]

Censored and then "rationalized"

Gustave Le Bon was a French scientist who wrote extensively on crowd psychology. He left behind a number of important works, being the first writer to thoroughly investigate the psychology of socialism. For a long time, noted Le Bon, psychologists regarded belief as voluntary and rational….” But a shocking discovery was made. Psychologists discovered that mass belief is an unconscious process, “under the influence of mystical and affective elements independent of reason and will….” We do not fully understand why people believe irrational things, noted Le Bon, but they do.”[36]

According to Le Bon, the decisive role of the unconscious means that the decisive factors in belief are: “prestige, affirmation, repetition, suggestion and contagion.” These factors sway the mind independent of reason. “The power of these influences on the genesis of beliefs” is “proved by their effects on the actions of even the most cultivated men,” noted Le Bon. Man is not so much the “rational animal” as he is a “rationalizing animal” whose irrationality is supported by seemingly logical arguments. Le Bon wrote, “We have arrived thus at this important philosophical law: Far from presenting a common intellectual origin, our concepts have very different mental sources and are ruled by very different forms of logic. From the predominance of each … are born the great happenings of history.”[37]

https://jrnyquist.blog/2023/07/23/about-the-s-word-a-polemic...