The Mass Fallacy

Fallacy: the Function of Community is to Determine What is Truth


If you wanted to conquer the world, the method would be simple, yet brilliant: change the basic definitions of community. Utilize a behavioral intervention to perpetrate a mass hysteria with the goal of creating dissociative mental states as the norm. Utilize the need for homeostasis in each individual (and the penchant for laziness) and create institutions that force the balance of reason and emotion into unhealthy, irresponsible, poorly informed, yet comfortable choices. Seat the fallacy in institutions, because humans typically do not question the institution—the proverbial “they.” Create a sense and sensitivity to scarcity. Construct relationships as zero-sum propositions, in which each party must give an equal share to add up to one hundred percent.

Under the guise that “you will never be wrong,” convince a generation that faith is blind belief without question. Support that generation to teach a need to be right to their children. Define “right” as “truth,” “truth” as immutable, and immutability as strength of faith. Subtly, remove the greatest power from each individual: choice—the choice to challenge, the choice to question, and the choice to be great. Reduce a once empowering choice to a sophomoric question of in-group versus outsider—a question of a desire to belong. Since you all want to belong—we all want relationship—you do not care what the cost is. The institution has provided comfort that you can see. Others have conformed and prospered. You join with the others in our new blind faith, without question, with no request for reciprocity, and build the strength of our immutable truth. You know it is the truth—the ultimate level of our development potential—because it is not the “evil” you were participating in before.