Talk:Mattias Desmet
Mattias Desmet mass formation The cause of M F is loneliness, isolation, loss of purpose and meaning in the life of the individual.
We must also move beyond the rational technocratic view of mankind and nature which can reduce the mystery of life as if it is subject to our rational understanding.
Only a small amount of reality can be understood rationally at any one time.
The mkority can only be grasped by Empathically resonating with it.
Two kinds of knowledge Rational and resonating.
Is resonating knowledge what we have called revelation?
That resonance or harmony must be rooted in the universal ethics of nature.
If you reduce life to rational understanding you kill the essence of life. This prtcept is iterated in the story of the two "Trees", one of knowledge and the other of life, one of the intellect or mechanical mind and the other of the soul and spirit.
If the Mass Formation lof Psychosis is an accurate explanation of the law of Nature then atleast 30% of the people will "disbelieve" it with no evidence. They will dismiss the facts and evidence available seeing it as "discredited" because they cannot see it to be true. There will be 60% that will go along with these "discreditors" (Latin "dis" “apart,” ... negative, or reversing force & "credit" from "credo" "I believe". )
In 1847 the term "psychosis" was said to mean "mental affection or derangement" based on the Modern Latin. It was from the Greek psykhē "mind, life, soul" (see psyche) + Latin suffix -osis, "abnormal condition," together form the word psychosis.
Psychosis is when people lose a connection with some part of reality. This might involve seeing or hearing things that "other people" cannot see or hear such as hallucinations and believing things that are not actually true which could be counted as delusions. A problem arises when the "other people" we rely upon to determine what is real, or true(i.e. reality) are already suffering from a psychosis.
This los of connection is also seen in the story of the two Trees where Adam and Eve lose their connection to the tree of life. The garden was their safe place where the tree of life was their *source" of understanding. They now fled from the tree and the garden in which it stood like they had done when they hid from God when the "ate" of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
The concept of a God of Nature is the acceptance that there is a 'true standard of reality' independent of the individual opinions formed about reality.
This undoubtedly why the God of Moses was said to be the "I AM".
Exodus 3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
Greek psykhosis was said to mean "a giving of life; animation; principle of life". It is from the term psykhē which by itself can have a meaning of "understanding, the mind (as the seat of thought), faculty of reason" but that seat was also said to be “the soul, mind, spirit, or invisible animating entity which occupies the physical body”. That "spirit, or invisible animating entity" may be not be alone but be influenced by gods and goddesses or even "the dead".
http://preparingyou.com/wiki/Mass_Formation_Psychosis
https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdrQgUnf/
Most significant comment of Malone... listen at 2:39 to 2:43 Mattias Desmet's Mass Formation Psychosis
Malone says, "We’re sick as a society and we have to heal ourselves. And one of the things we have to do is come together. We have to recreate our social bonds; we have to buy into integrity, the importance of human dignity, and the importance of community. That’s how we get out of this.” This is what Christ said and even commanded but the modern Churches have failed to do.
http://preparingyou.com/wiki/Social_bonds
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3SCsueX2bZdbEzRtKOCEyT
Psychosis is a separation from reality which is the truth. People suffering from it will always deny the psychosis. Jesus called it sitting in darkness. http://preparingyou.com/wiki/Mass_Formation_Psychosis
Welcome to "Tucker Carlson Today." Things have changed so fast in the United States that it's hard to understand exactly what is happening. 0:12 And one of the reasons it's hard to understand what's happening is that we don't have words for what is happening. 0:17 You can't understand something unless you can describe it. Words are the first step to understanding. 0:24 So the country became-- began to change in very obvious ways right around the time George Floyd died, 0:29 Memorial Day, two years ago in Minneapolis. And all of a sudden, you saw large groups of people acting, 0:36 in what seemed to be perfect synchronicity with one another, as one. And then trying to enforce a uniformity of opinion 0:43 on the rest of the country. And the rest of the country, for the most part, went along with it. Nothing like this had ever happened in America, 0:49 certainly not in our lifetimes. What were we watching? Something new and different for sure. 0:54 Also, something self-evidently threatening to our most basic freedoms and to our human dignity. 0:59 So what was it? Well, it wasn't really until December of 2021, 1:05 in a broadcast of "The Joe Rogan Experience" that a doctor called Robert Malone described in words, 1:13 what we may have been watching. Here was that clip, which instantly became famous. 1:19 What the heck happened in Germany in the '20s and '30s? You know, very intelligent, highly educated population. 1:25 And they went barking mad. And how did that happen? 1:32 The answer is mass formation psychosis. When you have a society that has become 1:39 decoupled from each other and has free floating anxiety, in a sense 1:44 that things don't make sense. We can't understand it. And then their attention gets focused 1:52 by a leader or a series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis. 1:58 They literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere. 2:05 So Malone goes on to attribute that idea, at the core of his description, something called a mass formation, to an academic in Belgium called Mattias 2:13 Desmet, who wrote a book on it actually called "The Psychology of Totalitarianism." I want to put a quote up on the screen that gets to the nut 2:20 of what he's describing. And we're quoting. "Mass formation is in essence, a kind of group hypnosis 2:26 that destroys individuals ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically. 2:31 This process is insidious in nature. Populations fall prey to it unsuspectingly. 2:37 To put it in the words of Yuval Noah Harari, quote, 'Most people wouldn't even notice the shift toward a totalitarian regime. 2:43 We associate totalitarianism mainly with labor, concentration, and extermination camps, but those are merely the final, bewildering stage 2:51 of a long process." So those words come from, as we just said, a Belgian academic 2:58 called Mattias Desmet, who we are honored to have join us on the set now to describe what all of us 3:05 have been watching for the last two years. Professor, thanks so much for coming on. MATTIAS DESMET: No, thank you for inviting me. TUCKER CARLSON: Is it a little strange to find out 3:10 that you're famous in the United States for-- Yes, a little bit, a little bit. Yes, yes. It would be. So 10 years ago, I think, this would have been considered 3:16 a kind of esoteric, academic theory, you know, relevant to your specific study but not really relevant to the society that we live in. 3:23 And all of a sudden, you've so perfectly described what the rest of us have been watching. 3:30 So before we get into it, if you just tell us who you are, and where you're from, and how you wound up concluding this. 3:37 Yes, well, I'm from Belgium, as you said. I'm a professor at-- in clinical psychology at Gent University. 3:43 I also have a Master's in statistics. And that's actually how-- In statistics? In statistics, yes. Yeah. 3:49 I did a PhD on methodological problems in academic research. I started my PhD in 2003, when it became clear that up to 85% 3:58 of the academic papers is seriously flawed. That's what my PhD was all about. 4:05 And then when the corona crisis started, I immediately started to study the statistics a little bit. 4:10 And I immediately got the impression that the mathematical models and statistics that were used, dramatically overrated 4:17 the dangerousness of the virus. And then in my opinion, a few months later, 4:23 by the end of May 2020, this was actually proven beyond doubt at that moment. 4:28 But the initial mathematical models on which the Corona measures were based, the models issued by Imperial College 4:36 predicted that by the end of May 2020, in a country, in a small country such as Sweden, about 60,000 people 4:44 would die if the country didn't go into lockdown. And Sweden didn't go into lockdown. And only 6,000 people died. 4:52 And at that moment for me, in the first week of the corona crisis, I published two opinion papers in which 5:00 I tried to warn people that there was something dangerous out there. And I wasn't referring to the virus. 5:05 The title of the first paper was "The fear of the virus is more dangerous than the virus itself." 5:11 And strangely enough, I tried to show people in what way the statistics were wrong, but nobody 5:16 really seemed to care about it. And everybody-- everybody continued to buy into the narrative. And even when, by the end of May 2020, 5:24 it was proven beyond the shade of a doubt that the mathematical models had been dramatically wrong. 5:30 The narrative continued in a society-- continued to behave as if the mathematical models had 5:35 been right. And that was the moment for me when I switched my perspective. At that moment, I decided to focus 5:41 on the psychological mechanisms that could explain why an entire society couldn't see anymore 5:48 that the narrative they believed in was blatantly absurd in many respects. 5:54 And I-- it took me one or two months before I could, 6:00 in my opinion, pinpoint it and before I started to understand that what we were dealing with was a large scale process 6:07 of mass formation, which is like a kind of group formation, which has a very-- which has some very 6:14 strange effects at the level of individual psychological functioning. The most important being probably that people who are 6:21 in the grip of such a process, in one way or another, lose all capacity to take a critical distance 6:27 of what the group believes in. And this can go extremely far, like during the revolution 6:33 in Iran in 1979, people-- which was a large scale process of mass formation in Ira. 6:40 People started to believe that the portrait of the Ayatollah, whom they considered-- considered a leader, 6:46 was printed on the surface of the moon. And when there was a full moon in the sky, they typically were standing in the streets showing 6:52 each other where exactly you could see the portrait of the Ayatollah. That's the first strange effect at the level 6:58 of individual psychological functioning of the process of mass formation. The second one-- TUCKER CARLSON: And Iran in 1979 was 7:04 not a backward, remote country. It was a very westernized, very well-- educated, 7:09 sophisticated country. Of course, the level of education doesn't play any role, even not the intelligence. 7:14 Even more, the higher the level of education, the easier, the more vulnerable people 7:20 are for mass information. TUCKER CARLSON: OK, let me just back up a step. So you said in 19-- 7:27 rather in 2003, you begin your PhD. And your main focus was the fact, 7:32 and you describe as a fact, that 85% of academic papers had serious flaws within them. Yeah. Now, 85% is the overwhelming majority. 7:40 And academic papers are the basis of academia. So I mean, that's a shocking. 7:47 So maybe-- maybe that was the first example you saw of mass formation, because how could they not fix that? 7:52 Yes, well, I published a small book about that in which I tried to show in a very tangible, and concrete, 7:58 and simple way why most research methods impossibly can lead to valid results. 8:04 And what I noticed was my-- my examples were really clear and tangible. 8:09 Everyone who wanted to see it could see that the methods could only lead to flawed results. 8:15 And to my surprise, only about 5% of my colleagues wanted to open their eyes and want 8:20 to see what they were showing. And the rest of them didn't want it. And that was the moment when I started to think about what could possibly explain 8:27 why people became so blind. And that was the moment when I first started to be interested in mass formation. 8:32 And exactly the same process repeated itself in the Corona crisis. I immediately noticed, like these statistics 8:38 and these mathematical models can be right. I tried to show it. It didn't work. And then started to think about what psychological processes 8:45 could explain that. And I stumbled upon over-- I tried to re-articulate material mass formation 8:52 in public space then. TUCKER CARLSON: We had the same experience-- MATTIAS DESMET: What exactly? --in the United States on the show. 8:58 In the spring of 2020, it became clear that the original Imperial College predictions, which were 9:04 the basis of our public policy here in the United States were completely wrong. And nobody cared. 9:09 In fact, they reacted with hostility if you pointed it out. Absolutely. TUCKER CARLSON: What is so-- 9:14 OK, so just a predicate here, the background. You pointed to 1979 as an example 9:21 where this happened in another country with a large group of people. Is this a feature of history? Have we've seen this a number of times? 9:28 Mass formation has existed as long as mankind exists. So there is like-- like we have-- we've had the Crusades, 9:33 the witch hunts, the French Revolution, then the mass formations in the Soviet Union, the mass formations in Nazi Germany. 9:40 So it has existed as long as mankind exists. But for a specific reason, the mass formations 9:45 became stronger and stronger and stronger throughout the last few of years. And that's interesting because in the first half 9:52 of the 20th century, the masses became so strong. That led by certain leaders, they could seize 9:57 control of the state apparatus. And that's how totalitarian states emerge. 10:04 Totalitarian states [inaudible] says are always diabolic pact between the masses and their leaders. 10:11 It's a diabolic pact between the masses and their leaders. And in this way, like a completely new kind of state emerges, which is completely different 10:18 from a classical dictatorship. In a classical dictatorship, there is a small group of people, a dictatorial regime who 10:25 has such an aggressive potential that people are so scared of them. That they can impose, unilaterally, their social contract to the society. 10:32 TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. But the totalitarian state emerges in a completely different way. In a totalitarian state, there is first a process 10:38 of mass formation, which is the process through which a certain part of the population, usually about 30%, 10:45 fanatically starts to believe in a certain ideology, and this phenomenon can be created artificially 10:52 through indoctrination propaganda. TUCKER CARLSON: And just pause, you think that number can be as low as 30%? Yes, usually, it is not higher than 30%, yes. 10:59 That's scary. That's scary because-- yes, but there's always 60% or 65% of the people who do not really go along with the narrative, 11:06 but who will never speak out. Who will always choose the easy way and go along with the people, with this group 11:13 of people that seems to have the loudest voice. And that's why in the end, up to 95% or even sometimes even more 11:20 go along with the totalitarian narrative, with the narrative that led to the mass formation. 11:25 And there is then an additional 5% that doesn't go along with it. That tries to speak out. And that-- and that's extremely important. 11:32 If you understand the mechanism of mass formation, if you really understand it, then you know what 11:38 this small group should do. If it makes the wrong analysis, it will be destroyed in the end. 11:45 The chances are very high that it will be destroyed. If it makes the-- if it starts from the correct analysis, it will survive. 11:51 That's why it is so extremely important to understand how this mechanism works because I've just mentioned 11:56 that mass formation makes individuals completely blind for everything that goes against what the group believes in. 12:02 But there is two other characteristics that are also extremely important. And the first one is that when people are in the grip 12:08 of mass formation, they seem to lose all awareness of their individual interests. 12:13 They are prepared to radical-- to radically self-sacrifice. That's extremely strange. 12:18 And then the third characteristic, which is the most problematic is that people in a mass formation 12:24 become radically intolerant for dissident voices. And in the ultimate stage of the mass formation, 12:30 they will typically start to destroy everyone who doesn't go along with the masses. 12:35 And they will do so as if it is their ethical duty to do so. To refer to the French-- to the revolution in Iran again. 12:43 I was talking to this woman in Iran, Shohreh Feshtali, this conversation is available on the internet. 12:49 And she told me how she has seen with her own eyes, how in the last stage of the mass formation, 12:55 a mother reported her son to the state. How this mother hung the noose around the neck of her son 13:00 when he was on the scaffold. And when he was home, she claimed to be a heroine for what she had done. 13:06 That's the end stage of mass formation. And this end stage-- TUCKER CARLSON: A mother killing her own son? Yep. 13:12 And if you understand the mechanism as I explain it in my book, "The Psychology of Totalitarianism," it's perfectly logical why that happens. 13:21 And that's why this is extremely important. This last stage of mass formation 13:26 can be prevented if the small group who doesn't go along with the mass formation makes the right choice. 13:32 It has to make the right choice. It has-- and then this choice has everything to do with whether it will choose to speak out 13:40 or whether it will remain silent. If it doesn't speak out, it will be destroyed because the masses 13:46 will move to the last stage. So it's just quintessential for this group to continue to speak 13:51 out in an honest, sincere way. And all this follows from the mechanism of mass formation. 13:59 If you understand it, you will see why the people who do not go along with it 14:04 have to speak out. And that's what I explain in my book. I will have this phenomenon of mass formation, which is a kind of group formation, 14:11 emerges under very specific conditions. So like the first and the most important condition 14:16 is always that many people have to feel socially-- have to feel disconnected from their natural and social 14:22 environment. And that was definitely the case just before the Corona crisis started. 14:27 The number of lonely people peaked. Up to 40% of the population worldwide reported not to have one meaningful relationship 14:36 and to only connect to other people through the internet. And from this follows the second condition. 14:41 If people feel disconnected from the natural and social environment, they will typically start to struggle with lack of meaning making. 14:48 To give an example from the situation just before the Corona crisis, 60% of the people 14:54 worldwide reported that they considered their job to be a so-called bullshit job. That means a job without purpose or meaning. 15:02 And in this state, if people feel socially disconnected and they feel a lack of meaning making, 15:07 they will typically start to suffer from something very specific at the effective level. They will feel confronted. 15:14 They will be confronted with so-called free-floating anxiety, frustration, and aggression. That means a kind of anxiety, frustration, 15:21 and aggression that is not coupled to a mental representation. A kind of anxiety, frustration, and aggression in which people 15:28 don't know what they feel anxious, frustrated, and aggressive for. And that state is extremely aversive. 15:35 If you feel anxious and you don't know what you feel anxious for, you have the feeling that you cannot control your anxiety. 15:40 If you feel frustrated and aggressive and you don't know what you feel frustrated and aggressive for, you cannot take it out to someone. 15:46 And all the frustration and aggression piles up in your psychological system and leads to a certain very aversive tension. 15:53 And in this state, if the population is in this state, something very specific might happen. 16:00 If under these conditions a narrative is distributed through the mass media indicating an object of anxiety 16:08 and at the same time providing a strategy to deal with that object of anxiety, for instance, the lockdowns to deal with the virus, 16:15 concentration camps to deal with the Jews, witch hunts to deal with the witches, and so on. 16:21 If under these conditions a narrative is distributed, disseminated through the mass media indicating the subject 16:27 of anxiety and the strategy to deal with it, then there might be a huge willingness to participate in a strategy to deal with the object of anxiety 16:35 no matter how absurd this narrative is. Simply because, in this way, people feel that they 16:43 can control their anxiety. They feel that they have something to direct their frustration and aggression on. 16:48 So that's the first extremely important step. And then follows the second one, which is the really dangerous step. 16:55 Because so many people participate at the same time in the strategy to deal with the object of anxiety, 17:01 they feel connected again. It is as if the loneliness disappears. They feel full of solidarity. 17:08 And that's the point. They have the feeling that they fight this collective heroic battle with the virus. 17:14 And they will consider everyone who doesn't go along with them as an egoist, as someone who lacks all solidarity. 17:21 And that in itself, the strange thing is, you could say, well, what's the problem? People felt lonely. 17:26 And now they feel connected again. So what's the problem? But there is a problem because a mass 17:32 is a group that is formed not because people connect to each other. 17:37 A mass is a group that is formed because each individual separately connects to the collective. 17:43 Meaning that the famous solidarity of the masses is never a solidarity with other individuals. 17:49 It's a solidarity where the collective. And the longer the mass formation exists, the more everyone demands that everyone 17:57 sacrifices all his personal interests for the collective. And that's exactly the reason why in the corona crisis, 18:04 for instance, everyone was talking about solidarity. And at the same time, we accepted that if someone got 18:10 an accident on the street, we were no longer allowed to help him. At the same time, he accepted that if our father or mother 18:17 were-- our parents were dying somewhere in a nursing home, that we were no longer allowed to visit them. 18:23 So it was all-- everyone had to sacrifice everything 18:28 for the sake of the collective. So mass formation is extreme collectivism. 18:34 Its extreme collectivism. It's the balance between individualism and collectivism 18:40 that goes completely in a direction. TUCKER CARLSON: But there's no-- actually, I mean, but at the same time, the people who encourage it 18:46 discourage the formation of individual relationships between people. MATTIAS DESMET: Always. 18:51 So the government in this country, the Biden administration, was encouraging children to turn 18:58 in their parents to law enforcement if they said something that deviated from the explanation-- from 19:03 the corona narrative online. So they're breaking apart solidarity between people. 19:08 Of course. Of course, there's always a feature of it. The strange thing is that this happens spontaneously. 19:14 In every group, which has an extremely strong group identity, all the energy will be sucked away from the bonds 19:20 between individuals. For instance, in a military commando, if they have to do something dangerous, they will typically demand that there 19:25 are no sexual relationships between the members of the group, simply because this relationship between the members, the strong relationship, 19:32 could threaten the group. And in a dangerous situation, these members could choose for each other instead of for the group. 19:38 So that happens in every group with a very strong group identity spontaneously. And in a mass to an extreme extent, 19:45 in a mass, all solidarity, all the love between the individuals is sucked away. 19:50 And it's all injected in the love between the individual and the collective. And that's why in the end, even the strongest bond, 19:57 the bond between the mother and her child completely impoverishes. And even mothers report their sons to the state and get 20:05 them killed if they feel that they are not loyal enough to the state. So it's a natural-- natural, it's a psychological process that is very logical 20:12 but that is extremely dangerous. And that's exactly why we have to try to understand it. 20:18 And we have to try to understand what we can do about it. TUCKER CARLSON: So what we can do about it? First of all, the hair on my arms 20:23 is standing up because you've so precisely described what we've all just seen. I mean precisely. 20:29 Because it sounds like this is a feature of human nature. People are this way, always. 20:36 Can you think of examples where mass formation was stopped before it became totalitarianism by a small group of people 20:43 standing up and saying no? Oh, definitely, definitely. You know, the first totalitarian systems in history 20:51 were the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, in the first half of the 20th century. 20:56 But there were trends towards totalitarization at several places in the world. And in most places, they stopped. 21:02 TUCKER CARLSON: Well, all through Europe. Yes. - They stopped. And the reason-- the problem in the Soviet Union 21:08 and in Nazi Germany was that the resistance at a certain moment 21:14 decided to go underground and to stop speaking out in public space. That happened in 1930 in the Soviet Union and the around 21:23 1935 in Nazi Germany. And within six months in both countries, 21:28 the destruction campaigns started. Within six months, the destruction campaign started. So there is an almost perfect correlation 21:36 between the resistance that stops to speak out and the start of the atrocities and cruelties in a country, 21:47 simply because if you understand the mechanism, then you know like mass formation is a kind of hypnosis. 21:53 It's identical. It's exactly the same. In a hypnotic procedure, there is someone, the hypnotist who 21:59 focuses the attention of someone else on one aspect of reality, for instance, an object that is swinging 22:04 on a chain or something. And once the attention is focused 22:09 on that one aspect of reality, all the rest of reality disappears. All the rest of reality-- 22:15 it is as if the rest of reality doesn't exist anymore. And this mechanism is extremely strong. 22:22 You can-- a simple hypnotic procedure sufficient to focus someone attention so much on one aspect of reality 22:28 that the person won't notice anymore that there is a surgeon who cuts through the skin, through the flesh, 22:35 the flesh even straight through the breastbone to perform an open heart operation. That happens all the time in a university hospital in Belgium. 22:42 There is a professor, Elisabeth Faymonville, who uses this simple procedure to focus a patient's 22:48 attention on something. And then the surgeon can do no matter what he wants, cut through the breastbone. 22:54 The patient won't notice it. So that's the power of this mechanism of the focusing of attention. 23:00 Exactly the same happens in a mass formation. First, people start to deal with all kinds 23:05 of emotions that are no longer coupled to mental representations. And then all these emotions, all these anxiety 23:12 are focused on one point. And consequently, the people don't notice anymore that they 23:17 lose everything, that they lose their health, their wealth, the future of their children, and so on. That's exactly what happens in a mass formation. 23:24 So once you understand that the mechanism of mass formation is a kind of hypnosis. 23:30 You understand that it is a phenomenon that is always provoked by the voice of someone, the leaders 23:35 of the masses who use indoctrination and propaganda to continue the mass formation. And then you also understand that if you want 23:43 to disturb the mass formation, then you have to continue to speak out. That the dissident voices have to continue to speak out. 23:50 If the dissident voices, if the people who do not go along with the masses continue to speak out, 23:56 they won't succeed in waking up the masses. Sometimes someone will wake up. 24:01 But usually, the people will continue to be in the grip of the mass formation. But that doesn't mean that their speech 24:07 has no effect, not at all. Their speech will constantly disturb the hypnosis 24:12 to a certain extent. And it will prevent the hypnosis to become so deep that the people become convinced 24:18 that they have to destroy everyone who doesn't go along with them. From the 19th century onwards, scholars like Gustav Le Bon 24:25 have described that. That the people who are not in the grip of the mass formation have-- 24:31 that their speech has exactly this effect. It doesn't wake them up, but it disturbs the mass formation. 24:37 And it makes sure that it doesn't go so deep that the masses start to commit atrocities. 24:42 And in this way, that's from a strategic point of view quintessential. In this way, what will happen is the following-- 24:50 the masses are always self-destructive. And they will slowly exhaust themselves. 24:55 They will exhaust themselves and destroy themselves before they destroyed the people who do not go along with them. 25:04 So once you understand that, you understand that the first and foremost strategic principle 25:09 that you have to follow is that you have to continue to speak out. And at the same time, it's also an ethical principle. 25:17 As a human being-- TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, it is an ethical principle. It's an ethical principle. As a human being, you have the ethical duty 25:22 to articulate these words that seem sincere and honest to you, no matter what the consequences are. 25:28 And if you do that, we have numerous examples described by Solzhenitsyn, by Primo Levi, by Viktor Frankl. 25:36 If you do that, something wonderful will happen. If you stick to your ethical principles, 25:42 when the world dehumanizes, you go through a very fast process of mental evolution, a very fast process of mental evolution. 25:50 As a human being, start to become stronger, and stronger, and stronger as a human being at a mental level. 25:56 And sometimes, even at the physical level, if you read Solzhenitsyn, he gives us wonderful examples 26:02 of how in the Gulags, most people started to act in a beast-like manner. 26:08 But there were some, a small minority, who went in exactly the opposite direction. Who in this pool of darkness chose 26:15 to try to represent humanity. And who became more and more deterministic to stick, 26:22 under all conditions, no matter how difficult it was, to their ethical principles. And Solzhenitsyn gives these wonderful examples in which he 26:31 describes how these people very often survived the concentration camps and became even stronger while most others died within a few weeks 26:38 or a few months. Of course, it's not a guarantee. But I think that if you understand that, we understand 26:47 that the process of mass formation and everything that happens now, in a certain way, has meaning and purpose. 26:53 It should motivate us to understand the value of ethical principles for a human being. 27:00 It should make us more determined to continue to live 27:06 according to ethical principles while the rest of the world leaves them behind. 27:12 TUCKER CARLSON: Let me say this is one of the most amazing conversations I've ever had. And I'm so grateful that you're-- I mean that. 27:17 I'm grateful that you're here. I feel like you're speaking directly to our country. What is the difference between the people who go along, which 27:27 is the majority it sounds like, and the smaller percentage who decide no I'm going to say what I believe is true no matter 27:32 what? What makes people to decide to take one path or the other? 27:38 And can you predict it ahead of time? No, you can't. From the 19th century onwards, from the moment, 27:47 the psychologists have been studying the phenomenon of mass formation. It has been remarked and observed time and time again 27:54 that every time a mass emerges in a society, there is a small group who doesn't go along with it. But the small group is extremely diverse and heterogeneous. 28:01 TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. And nobody seems to know what connects these people. TUCKER CARLSON: I've noticed this. Which characteristic these people share. 28:08 But in one way or another, they all make this fundamental 28:14 decision, a decision that cannot be reduced to anything else. They make this decision to choose for truth speech. 28:21 Instead of choosing the easy way and going along with the narrative for everybody believes in, but which-- 28:27 of which everybody actually knows that it is utterly absurd and unethical. So because the mass formation-- you 28:34 know, that's very interesting. The reason why people buy into the narrative that leads to mass formation is not because they think that the narrative 28:41 is correct, not at all. The reason why they buy into the narrative is because it leads to this new social bond. 28:48 Because it makes them feel connected again. Because loneliness is the most painful state. 28:54 We don't know it, but it is like that. We don't realize it, but it is like that for a human being. And it wants to escape. It wants this new social bond. 29:01 And the reason why the people-- why the people buy into it is because it leads to all these psychological advantages. 29:06 It gives-- it couples the anxiety to an object. It provides an object at which people 29:11 can direct their frustration and aggression. It leads to this new connectedness. So that's the reason, this new social bond. 29:18 And the effective advantages is the reason why people continue to go along with the narrative no matter 29:23 how absurd it becomes. We could even say more. It's just the same like people in a football stadium 29:29 all sing the same song not because they think it's the most beautiful song in the world, no. It's because the song connects them with the other people. 29:39 And you could even say more. The more absurd the measures become, for instance, the Corona measures, the more they 29:46 will be applauded by this part of the population that is really in the grip of the mass formation, simply because the measures have the function of a ritual. 29:56 And what is a ritual? Ritualistic behavior is always behavior that 30:01 has no pragmatic meaning and that demands a sacrifice from the individual. A sacrifice through which the individual 30:08 shows that the collective is more important than itself. So people, without knowing it, we 30:15 live in a time in which we think, the materialist man in the world believes that rituals 30:21 have no meaning and no function, but they are essential for us. And in totalitarianism without knowing it 30:26 people engage completely in rituals, but they don't realize it. And these rituals or rituals of dead, people sacrifice, 30:35 blindly sacrifice everything just to escape their profound feeling of social atomization, 30:43 to escape their profound feeling of loneliness and disconnectedness. It's a kind of suicidal ritual that is committed. 30:51 And that's exactly why many people expected that if the rituals became-- if the Corona 30:58 measures became more absurd, that people would start to wake up. But that usually didn't happen. TUCKER CARLSON: No. 31:04 No, simply because people don't understand that unconsciously, these measures have the function of a ritual. 31:10 And the more absurd they are, the pure they fulfill the function of a ritual. 31:16 TUCKER CARLSON: That's exactly right. The more unlikely, the more compelling. Yep, [inaudible]. 31:21 So then you have to get-- I mean, I think this is, again, one of the most amazing 31:28 conversations I've had, ever. But it does raise the question of motive, 31:33 like why did Robespierre do that? Why did Lenin do that? 31:38 Why did Hitler do that? Why did our own government, not all of whom are evil, a lot of good people, why did they do this? 31:47 MATTIAS DESMET: Yes, well, we have answered the question, I think, why the population goes along with the narrative because there are all these psychological problems. 31:53 And they are solved by mass formation. But the second question is why does the elite do it? TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. And I think, throughout the last few hundreds of years, 32:01 we have seen two things developing alongside each other On the one hand, the population got in a state 32:09 where it became more and more vulnerable for mass formation. And this simply has to do with our mechanist, rationalist view 32:14 of man in the world. Something in our rationalist, scientific ideology 32:22 disconnects people from the social natural environment. That's what I describe in detail, 32:27 really in detail in the first five chapters of my book. I describe how-- I describe how it is, our obsession 32:33 with rational understanding. Our delusional belief that the mystery of life, the essence of life can be understood and reduced 32:40 to the categories of-- categories of our own rational thinking. It's that delusional belief of the human being that 32:47 disconnects it from its environment more, and more, and more, and more. And that's exactly the reason, there 32:53 was more and more disconnectedness in the population that led to the mass formation which became 32:59 stronger, and stronger, and stronger. And in the end made it so strong that totalitarian states could-- states could emerge. 33:05 But at the same time, another process happened at the level of the elite. This mechanist, rationalist view of the man-- 33:12 view of man in the world created a new elite. An elite which rationally tried to understand 33:19 the psychological processes in a society and then use this rational understanding to manipulate 33:27 and control the population. And that's why immediately after the French Revolution, 33:33 that means after the fall of the ancien regime in France. Immediately, we saw the emergence of modern 33:39 indoctrination and propaganda. Napoleon was the first one who established a Bureau L'opinion publique, a kind of office for propaganda. 33:45 And then in the beginning of the 20th century, like 100 years later, we saw already 33:52 this enormous propaganda machineries of the First World War. And it became worse in the Second World War. 33:58 And now it's even much, much, much more worse. Our entire public space is saturated 34:05 with indoctrination propaganda constantly, simply because-- it's strange. If you read the works of the founding fathers 34:12 of indoctrination propaganda such as Lippman, Trotter, Bernays, then you hear how these people 34:17 think in the following way. They say, well, since modern democracy, 34:22 the political leaders are not true leaders anymore. They have to be elected, meaning that they have to follow the masses. 34:29 So they can never control the masses. 34:35 And at that moment, they decided-- and you can read this literally in the works of the people I just mentioned-- 34:40 Lippman, Trotter, Bernays. At that moment, these guys decided we have-- 34:45 we need, constantly, to manipulate the masses or otherwise they will govern the country, and not 34:53 the politicians, or not us. So the elite relied more, and more, 34:58 and more on indoctrination, propaganda, manipulation, psychological operations, brainwashing, 35:04 and so on of the population just to manipulate the masses from behind. 35:09 TUCKER CARLSON: To subvert democracy, to end the promise of democracy. Yes, of course. Of course, of course, of course. That's a problem. 35:15 Yeah, exactly. So why do they do it? Well, why do they do it? You know some-- and that question 35:22 should be answered, I think, in a very nuanced way. Many people think that totalitarianism is all about power. 35:27 And that it's all about the money. And to a certain extent, that's true. But the ultimate motivation of totalitarian leaders 35:33 is always ideological in nature. TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. It's ideological. TUCKER CARLSON: Stalin actually believed in Marxism. 35:39 Of course. And he wanted to sacrifice everything-- all his money and all his power if he could just reshape society according to his Marxist ideas. 35:50 That's so typical for totalitarian leaders. They want to sacrifice everything. TUCKER CARLSON: And they actually believe it though. 35:57 They usually don't believe the narratives they use, but they believe the ideology blindly. 36:02 So like in this case, I think, here and now in our situation, for me, the ideology at work is a technocratic transhumanist 36:09 ideology. And in order to impose this ideology to society, 36:18 they use of-- people use-- the elite uses, the large global institution uses all kinds 36:25 of narratives to convince, to try to entice the people to go along with this ideology. And this ideology, well, these narratives, so like the climate 36:32 narrative, or the terrorism narrative, or the Corona narrative. 36:37 And usually, the totalitarian leaders usually don't believe-- 36:45 they fanatically believe in their ideology. They really believe that their technocratic transhumanist ideology will create like a new paradise for the human being. 36:53 But they usually don't believe the narratives they use. They believe so blindly and fanatically in their ideology 37:00 that they think it is justified to lie, cheat, and manipulate the population. To convince them to accept all these ideological changes 37:11 they try to impose to society. So we have to distinguish, I think, if you ask the question why they do so. 37:16 And in the end, I really believe they do so because they believe they have this obsessional drive to impose their 37:25 ideological fiction to society. That's the root cause, I think, or the root motivation 37:30 of totalitarian leaders. And I know that's not very popular. Most people prefer to believe that it's all about the money. 37:36 That it's all about-- TUCKER CARLSON: No, no. Because I know some of them. And I agree with you 100% that there's a sincerity 37:43 at the bottom of it. So how far along is the West in what appears to be this move 37:51 toward totalitarianism? Well, you in 1951, Hannah Arendt 37:57 said that we've seen the collapse of fascist totalitarianism, she said. 38:04 And we will soon witness the collapse of communist totalitarianism. But she said a new totalitarianism will emerge, 38:11 the ultimate totalitarianism. And that is the technocratic totalitarianism. A kind of totalitarianism which is not led by gang leaders 38:20 such as Stalin and Hitler, but which is led by dull bureaucrats and technocrats. And I think-- 38:26 TUCKER CARLSON: Hannah Arendt wrote that in 1951? In 1951, she wrote that. I mentioned it in my book. And that technocratic totalitarianism is the ultimate 38:37 manifestation of the kind of ideology I just referred to, this kind of materialist, mechanist ideology which 38:45 believes that the entire universe is like a set of elementary particles-- atoms and molecules that all 38:52 interact with each other in a-- according to the laws of mechanics, and that can be perfectly understood 38:57 in a rationalist way. If you start from such a view on man in the world, 39:04 then the logical conclusion is that this universe machine and this machine-like society should be led, not 39:11 by democratically elected politicians, but by technocratic experts who possess 39:17 the rational knowledge to make the machine 39:23 run as smoothly as possible. So that's the delusional belief of technocratic system. It's a logical consequence of our rationalist, mechanist view 39:31 of man and the world. We have to-- the real enemy, for me, it's not the elite. 39:38 It's that ideology. That ideology, that rationalist view of man in the world that on the one hand created a new kind 39:46 of population, which was so vulnerable for mass formation. And on the other hand created an elite which delusionally 39:53 started to believe that it could manipulate, cheat, control, try to steer everyone in society. 40:00 So that the root cause of the problem is this mechanist ideology, which always 40:05 presents itself as science, but which has nothing to do with science. TUCKER CARLSON: But how did you-- 40:11 I mean, given your job description, I mean, 40:17 you're a prime candidate for believing that. Everyone in your world believes that. Why don't you believe that? MATTIAS DESMET: I have no idea. 40:24 I was never very-- I had never a great talent to believe what other people believed. 40:29 In one way or another, I always tried to think with my own head. And I always-- 40:34 I think like, well-- TUCKER CARLSON: What is your parents do? What world were you raised in? 40:40 Why did you-- were you told it was important to think for yourself? I will tell you something about my parents. 40:46 My father didn't want me to go to university. Because he said, you will see, he said, 40:51 the institute that pretends to represent the truth in society. 40:57 You won't find much truth there, he said. And so I decided to go to university against his will. 41:03 TUCKER CARLSON: Had he gone to university? No, but he was an-- he was a very intelligent person who read a lot, really a lot, 41:11 every day in the morning and the evening. But who had like a contempt for all kinds of degrees, academic degrees. 41:18 He said like the only reason why you should gather knowledge is because you have a passion to know a real passion 41:25 for knowledge and not because you want to have a certain degree. And he also, in his opinion, a human being 41:31 had to work with its hands. And then also read and learn something in its spare time. 41:36 MATTIAS DESMET: I think I would like him. Maybe, yeah, maybe. So but then-- but I went to university. 41:41 And actually, now when I became a professor, I could understand that more and more that-- 41:50 I'm happy that I went to university. But I'm also disappointed in-- 42:01 I don't think that-- 42:07 or maybe that holds for-- applies to society in general. But I don't think that most people are motivated 42:14 by a search for truth, no. 42:21 TUCKER CARLSON: How you become very public with these views and the response to them, at least online, 42:29 has been enormous. And you become famous in this country, anyway. I have no idea how you're regarded in Belgium. 42:34 But how do your colleagues at the university feel about what you've said? 42:40 Most react in a very defensive way. I have to say that the Dean reassured me 42:49 that I had the right to express my opinion. 42:55 It was clear that they were not happy with it. But I was not fired or something. 43:03 But even before the Corona crisis, well, most people at university were already angry with me 43:10 just because I exposed the problems with research in a way that most of them didn't like. 43:18 So for me, I was well prepared for the Corona crisis in many respects. I was used to swim against the tide. 43:29 TUCKER CARLSON: So everything about-- virtually everything about our response in the West to Corona 43:35 has been exposed as incorrect at best, fraudulent at worst. So we know how wrong everybody was. 43:43 Does that change the public's mind? I don't think so. 43:49 Maybe for a small percentage of the people it changes their mind. But most of them, in a strange way, 43:56 will continue to buy into the narrative for the reasons that I just mentioned. And then the problem is that there's this phenomenon 44:02 of mass formation. Well, mass formation-- the cause of mass formation 44:12 is loneliness. But mass formation itself, if you think about the mechanism 44:17 that I just explained, because it sucks all this energy away from the social bonds, creates even more loneliness. TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. 44:23 And that's put society in a condition where it is even more sensible, more 44:28 vulnerable for mass formation. So if one large scale mass formation emerges, there is a good chance that a second one will emerge which might even-- 44:36 which might be even more powerful. And if we really want to get rid of this process 44:42 of mass formation, we really will have to do something. We really have to move beyond this rationalist view of man 44:49 on the world. I mean it. That's the ultimate cause. As long as we continue to believe that we can reduce 44:56 the mystery of life around us, to have a rational understanding, we will continue to disconnect 45:02 from our environment. And we will continue to be vulnerable for mass formation. TUCKER CARLSON: So what is the accurate position? 45:07 if. We're telling our leaders who are telling themselves, I can fully understand people. 45:13 They're merely collections of atoms. And I can guide them toward utopia. 45:19 What should be our attitude toward people? What's the correct way to view? 45:26 We will have to educate them in such a way that they start to see that-- 45:32 that they start to develop the capacity to connect to the world in a different way. 45:38 I will quote Rene Thom. One of the most famous mathematicians of the 20th century. And one of the founders of complex dynamical systems 45:44 theory. He said, this part of reality that 45:50 can be understood in a rational way-- and he was a scientist, a top scientist. 45:55 This part of reality that can be understood in a rational way is very limited. And the rest of reality, we can only understand by empathically 46:03 resonating with it. And what Rene Thom said there [inaudible] empathically 46:08 resonating with it. So he differentiated between two different kinds of knowledge-- 46:14 a rational knowledge and a kind of resonating empathic knowledge with what happens around us. 46:20 And there are so many traditions in which they were aware of the differentiation, for instance, the Samurai tradition 46:26 in Japan said that if you learn the martial arts, or no matter what other art of no matter what other craft, 46:31 there first is the rational, technical aspect of it. First you learn techniques which you can 46:38 understand in a rational way. But when you practice these techniques for a long time, you will start to develop something else. 46:45 Something that cannot something that transcends all rational understanding. You're starting to develop a certain feel 46:53 with the art you practice. And that's-- and everyone who runs a craft knows this. 46:59 First you can try to understand, rationally, what you have to do. But slowly, you start to feel what you have to do. 47:04 And that's the moment where you start to resonate with what you are doing. It's this resonating knowledge which is so important, which 47:11 also is this resonating knowledge which makes you feel 47:17 the object that you're making in a craft, or which makes you feel the art that you're performing, 47:22 or that makes you feel the object that you're studying in a scientific study, and so on. 47:28 And as soon as you're connected in this way with the object, you start to get in touch with eternal principles of humanity 47:37 and with the eternal ethical principles of our existence as a human being. And it all these principles that can be the true cornerstone 47:45 of a human living together, a really fruitful human living together. Now, since a few centuries, we believe 47:52 that a rational knowledge should be the cornerstone of every human living together and of our existence 47:57 as a human being. That's an illusion. Rational knowledge is always extremely relative 48:02 and never really touches the real. Rational knowledge circles around the real. 48:07 TUCKER CARLSON: Are you guys listening to this? Sorry, this is just-- what you're saying is the truest thing. 48:15 Sorry, I'm getting excited. No, no. Rational knowledge cannot touch 48:21 the truth of human experience. I think that's what you just said. This is what I said, yeah. 48:27 Nobody acknowledges that, why? Because it's-- the illusion of complete 48:35 rational understanding is so enticing for a human being. It make some belief that he is almighty. 48:43 It makes him believe that he will be able to explain everything. That he will be able to understand everything. 48:48 That he will be able to manipulate everything, to control everything. It makes him believe that he will 48:53 be able to live forever, to live eternally, and eternal happiness. If you read the books of someone like Yuval Noah Harari, 49:00 then you see what this transhumanist ideology, which is only the contemporary version of the mechanist ideology, 49:06 really believes. It believes that man can become god, that's a problem, through rational understanding. 49:12 And, of course, it's extremely enticing for a human being to believe that. 49:17 But at the same time, it's what destroys life because the essence of life, and all seminal scientists 49:23 have concluded exactly that. They said, you can understand rationally something of reality. 49:31 Think of people such as Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Heisenberg. Schroeder, Bohr, for everyone, all seminal scientists 49:37 concluded the same. You can understand a certain part of reality rationally, but the essence of life, 49:42 I give many examples in my book, the essence of life escapes rational understanding. 49:47 Meaning that, strictly logical. Meaning that if you reduce life to rational understanding, 49:54 you kill the essence of life. MATTIAS DESMET: Yes. Inevitably, inevitably. And that's why it's so destruct-- 49:59 that's what we see now. We see a radical destruction of life. 50:04 MATTIAS DESMET: Are you a man of religious faith? I was an atheist when I was 18 years old, from my 16 50:11 to my 20 years old because just-- I didn't like it to be an atheist. 50:16 But I really believed like, OK, what would the universe be if not a system of material particles 50:24 of atoms that interact according to the laws of mechanics? There is just no possibility that the universe would be-- 50:30 it could be something else. The universe is a material phenomenon. And it can be understood according 50:35 to the laws of mechanics. It can be strictly rationally understood. And then slowly while reading all kinds 50:42 of scientific theories, I slowly started to see that the seminal scientists all started 50:49 from this rationalist ideology. But they all left it behind, one by one. That they all concluded, no. 50:57 The essence of the universe is not material in nature. No, you cannot understand. It's not mechanistic in nature. 51:02 If you like-- someone like Niels Bohr said-- the Nobel Prize winning physicist 51:08 who studied the elementary particles his entire life. He said, atoms, he studied atoms, 51:14 the behavior of atoms his entire life. He said, when it comes to atoms, language 51:20 can only be used as poetry. And he was dead serious. He said this behavior of elementary particles 51:28 is so intrinsically irrational, transcends all rational understanding that you need poetry 51:33 or mystical discourse to resonate with it, to have 51:39 a certain feeling with it. For me, it took me until I was 35 years old when I dived deep 51:48 into the mathematical basis of complex dynamical systems theory, before I suddenly started to see that what 51:57 we call reality, what we call the facts simply are not rational. 52:02 They are not rational. Complex dynamical system theory-- and it's a paradox. It's paradoxical, but it's what complex dynamical systems 52:10 theory shows. This theory shows, in a strictly rational way, that the essence 52:15 of life is irrational, literally, that all complex dynamical phenomena in nature, and that's 52:21 most phenomena in nature, behave like an irrational number in mathematics. They are unpredictable, for instance, 52:29 a complex dynamical system such as convection patterns 52:35 in turbulence and fluid or gas can be described by a mathematical formula, 52:43 by the Navier-Stokes equations. But even with these equations in your hand, 52:48 you cannot predict one second in advance how this convection pattern will behave. 52:54 So that-- this completely breaks the illusion that we would ever 53:00 be able to really predict life. We will never be able. Our rational understanding stumbles 53:05 upon an absolute limit. And it's beyond that limit that the essence of life situates. 53:10 It's the mystery of life transcends the rational understanding. And if you continue to build that wall around you 53:18 of logical reasoning, because logical reasoning is really building a wall around you. You connect the one logical idea to the other. 53:25 And in this way, you isolate yourself from your environment. But as soon as you start to be humble enough, as soon as you 53:32 start to become aware of the fact that your rational understanding is limited. It is as if, literally, all these logical building 53:40 blocks slide away from each other a little bit. And as if the eternal music of life can go through the holes of the wall 53:47 and can touch the strings of your body and your soul. And it is at that moment that you can start to resonate 53:53 with the mystery of life around you, with the eternal spirit of life. And it is exactly at that moment, I experienced that in my own life, 54:00 that you can start to tolerate the idea of death and dying. And that's the most elementary disease of our society, 54:09 because we believe we are so obsessed by rational understanding. We don't know anymore what to do with the idea of dead, 54:16 dying, suffering. TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. And we deny it. We pretend that's not real. 54:23 And that gives rise to great anxiety, don't you think? Of course, it leads to a certain anxiety. 54:30 It leads to an incapacity to accept that life is risky sometimes. 54:35 That we might lose something. It leads to, in a strange way-- 54:41 at the same time, people reduce this life to something complete-- the rationalist ideology reduces this life 54:47 to something completely meaningless, to a biochemical process in our brain, 54:52 or to a biochemical process in our body. And at the same time, we cling to this life 54:59 as if it is the only thing that counts. So that's a paradox. TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, it is. It is a paradox. So where did it lead you, from atheist to what? 55:10 At least, it led me to someone who understands that we should be humble enough 55:18 to know that we will never-- 55:24 that our rational understanding is important. But that it is only the first stage. And that it should never be the goal in our lives. 55:30 There is something that transcends rational understanding that is much more important. And I also believe that it made me-- 55:42 I will quote Max Planck, also a Nobel Prize winning physicist. He said, I've spent my entire life 55:49 in the laboratory investigating elementary particles. And I came to the conclusion that our rational understanding 55:57 is extremely limited. And that in the end, the only thing that counts 56:06 is something that transcends rational understanding. That in the end, it's a contact with something 56:13 that we can only resonate with. He said it in a very literal way. And he said that it's something that transcends 56:18 all rational understanding. I will be clear, he said, for me as a personal god. He said a personal god. 56:26 He said, in my opinion, in my experience, science ultimately arrives where religion once started, 56:33 in a contact with something that transcends all rational understanding. And that something, he said, that 56:38 transcends all rational understanding for me is a personal god. That was how Max Planck put it. It is a wonderful book. 56:43 You should read it. It's so wonderful. It's a wonderful book in which he shows-- or in-- in which he was-- 56:49 in which he describes an experience that most seminal scientists have experienced. 56:55 Namely that if you follow reason and if you really push rational understanding to the limit, 57:01 you suddenly arrive at the limit. And it's there that the real journey of life starts. 57:13 TUCKER CARLSON: Do you have hope for the West that we can stop what seems inexorable unstoppable? 57:19 Of course, yes. I'm realistic, a realistic in the short term. I think that the years to come will be difficult 57:25 years, very difficult years. TUCKER CARLSON: How? I think that this technocratic system 57:30 and this rationalist ideology will impose itself in a radical way to our society. 57:38 Everyone who doesn't want to go along with it will be excommunicated, I think. But if this group makes the right choice, and the most 57:47 important thing is definitely that it should choose to continue to speak out. I mean it. It should choose to-- 57:53 it should continue to speak out, no matter how difficult it become. It will survive. 57:59 And it will, after a while, it will be able to deliver 58:07 the real ethical principles that have the potential to organize 58:14 a society in which human beings can live a life worthy of a human being. 58:19 I think that will be-- that's what the weighting is, I think. TUCKER CARLSON: How deep is your commitment to saying 58:26 what you believe is true? I mean, is there any circumstance where you would stop speaking? 58:32 MATTIAS DESMET: I don't think so. TUCKER CARLSON: [inaudible] Yes, I don't think so. What I experienced throughout the last two years 58:40 showed me something that for me is the most important thing in life. 58:46 I lost some things. I was to a certain extent kicked out 58:51 of some academic commissions and so on, because people didn't want to be in the same academic group 58:58 as me anymore. But the more I continue to speak out, 59:03 and I always try to do so in a calm and quiet way. I think that's important. We should try to speak out in a sincere and honest way, 59:14 not because we are convinced that we are the only ones who know the truth or something, no. 59:19 Just because we want to live up to this ethical duty of articulating the words that to the best 59:25 of your own understanding or true words, sincere words, and honest words. And while I try to do so, time and time again 59:33 throughout the last two years or 2 and 1/2 years, I start to feel that I-- 59:40 like a soft warm power become stronger and stronger in myself. 59:45 And I started to feel that we indeed might lose a lot. But we shouldn't care too much about that. 59:52 We should make sure that we don't lose the only thing that is really important for a human being. 59:58 And it is exactly this feel with eternal principles of life, with eternal-- 1:00:04 you can call it no matter what you want, with what transcends all rational understanding, with truth, the truth. 1:00:09 That's the only thing that we should really care of and make sure that we don't lose it. 1:00:15 All the rest is of secondary importance, I think. 1:00:21 A really remarkable conversation. And I want to thank you for coming all this way to have it with us. 1:00:26 And I hope this is seen by as many people as can possibly see it. Thank you very much for inviting me. TUCKER CARLSON: Well, thank you. 1:00:32 That's heartfelt. Remarkable. Mattias Desmet, an amazing man. 1:00:39 "Tucker Carlson Today" is the name of show. Three episodes a week on Fox Nation. Of course, we'll come back and see you every week day at 8:00 PM on the Fox News Channel.