I met Professor Matius Desmet at the Button Factory.
I’m still working through my thoughts on what makes a person take the risk to speak out against the machine. There is hope for our future, that’s for sure.
Whenever I was asked who I admired or who I looked up to, I would always say my Dad. Whomever asked me would laugh, expecting me to have said Mary Robinson, Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela; however, I never felt like any one of these personalities ticked all the boxes for me. People thought my looking up to my father was funny and cute, but I had a good reason to admire him and other members of my family, as their core value is a passion for truth. My father would stand up in a room and say what he truly believed, even if it went against the grain, and he knew he could be ridiculed.
Over time I really got to know and understand, and share, his passion for the truth. Truth above comfort. That’s no small thing; seeing truth as a value that is worth sacrificing for, means a possible sacrifice. Courage and bravery is required to step away from your comfort zone - it’s not for everyone. Dad’s area of interest at that time was standards and guidelines for safety in protective clothing for the fire and high-risk industry. He told me many years ago that many of the industries making protective clothing cut corners to save money, which dropped the quality of the clothing and put people’s lives at risk. My father said the standards needed to be adhered to and even improved, and he would argue for this while his colleagues argued around what was economical. He persisted, and eventually broke through, and after a time he became known as an expert in safety guidelines in the high-risk industry, and was often called upon to mediate and moderate heated discussions around them.
Speaking out, going against the grain, stepping out of your comfort zone is vital if something that’s accepted by a majority is detrimentally affecting people’s lives. More and more people are speaking out over the past (almost) three years, and I’ve found many new people that I admire for their bravery and courage to put the truth ahead of their reputation. One of these people is Professor Matias Desmet, who I met a couple of nights ago when he came to Dublin.
I wanted to present Professor Desmet with my theory as to why people didn’t fall for the mass formation. I didn’t think I’d actually have an opportunity to do this, but I was early and I saw him sitting alone. I introduced myself, and sat beside him, and we spoke for a time.
Professor Desmet’s theory of Mass Formation postulates that while the majority of people are susceptible to propaganda and fear-based tactics used by authorities to gain control over the masses, there is always a small group of people who are not. He has not been able to pin down what it is, exactly, that separates the smaller group from the large. We didn’t get to talk about this for as long as I would have liked, however I was able to tell him that in my opinion, those that do not fall for propaganda have a belief in God, in something higher than themselves, in truth as an absolute, rather than anything a corporation or indeed a government, would offer as truth. He agreed, and said it was something he was beginning to believe, too.
You can read about Mass Formation here on his brand new substack:
I didn’t just go that evening to hear Professor Desmet speak, I also went to connect with the members of my new community, a community that I value very highly. I was delighted to see my new friend, Louise Roseingrave, whom I met at the Saoirse Creatives event organised by Gerry O’Neil. We all have substacks now, because that is the only way to ensure we don’t have what we say censured or deleted. Louise wrote an article about the evening with Professor Desmet and I share it here. It’s a very accurate account of the evening, along with some additional background information about Professor Desmet that I have not seen anywhere else.
I quote from Louise here, as she quotes Desmet:
“It was a tradition in my family. At least several of the narratives that circulated and that were conveyed from generation to generation in my father’s family line were about the courage to speak out. They were small examples but they always fascinated me as a child because my ancestors often spoke out even when it meant they would have to leave the village because the priests or others didn’t appreciate what they had to say,” he said.
“My father and my grandfather, they were people who in many respects, had a strong feeling for justice. They were not scared of going against the current, or the group. I also had this a little as a child I think. If I ever had a feeling there was injustice, something happening that was not fair, I usually preferred to fight than to sit back and remain silent and watch what happened.”
It seems that Desmet also grew up admiring his father who valued truth above comfort. That hit me at a very deep level and I had to take a day to think about it.
You see, I had written a totally different article to publish here today about meeting the Professor. I was going to speak about what drives certain people to seek truth. I had written about the correlation between truth and God, and the sense I have that only God knows the actual truth, but do we know who God truly is? And what his intentions for us are? I also wrote about an Irish couple I admire who are staunch atheists yet still stand for truth even though they have been defamed in newspapers and threatened by police, to illustrate that a love of truth does not have to be connected to God. But I know there is more to it. Someone in the comments of my earlier substack about this very thing mentioned that having grown up in a family of abuse, she was very suspicious of anyone in authority and had a deep-set lack of trust for anyone who told her what to do.
After reading Louise I can see clearly that our family values and home life is a very important factor in out attitude towards truth and justice. Possibly the most important factor. Where truth and what is right is valued highly at home, whether it be truth for the sake of it, or God’s truth; where members of a family are willing to take action out of their comfort zone to defend what they believe to be true, especially when lives are at stake, then the attitude is inherited by the children to create resilient, free-thinkers who will also take a stand for what they believe to be true. And where there is abuse at home, a survival mechanism of distrust and rebellion towards authority may activate and perpetuate long into adulthood.
So where does this lead us?
We are currently experiencing a fracture of the family unit through the indoctrination of children via propaganda. Now I can see clearly that this is a deliberate ploy to destroy a free-thinking, empowered society. They want to teach the children what to think, not how to think, and negate the parents, or indoctrinate the parents too, depending on the circumstances. We saw the strong arm of the government interfere with family in the USA when they gave children the ability to have a vaccine without parental consent, with the offer of a free donut as enticement. How could they refuse? Now, with the onset of an AI generation, Totalitarian governments want to own your body so it’s no coincidence that early sexualisation and gender dysphoria is being pushed onto to young vulnerable children. When I was 10 I was overwhelmed by choice in an American supermarket and didn’t choose anything. Gender was never anything I had to choose from, and with 57 different flavours and counting, I can see the stress around having to pick one could easily lead someone to a mental breakdown.
Let me say this - wanting to belong is all a teenager craves. I used to cut a pieces off of my personality to fit into different groups at school, now you can literally cut off a piece of yourself to be accepted. Unlike a piece of your personality, you can’t grow back a body part. Chemical castration and mutilation is a trend. This sickens me. As I settle into myself in my 50’s can I say I like myself and am happy being me, and that’s only really happened in the last 10 years or so. Imagine if I tried to change my sex in my pursuit of finding myself? I would no longer be showing up as a healthy member of a community who is of service to others. They deliberately create dysfunction, their aim to disempower, divide and conquer the family and the individual.
But we must remember - those of us who are not afraid to speak the truth are getting stronger. I hope that more people will find inspiration from those of us that have taken the risk. And the more ridiculous the mainstream trends become, the more people will open their eyes.
I pledge allegiance to the truth. I will hold my hands up if my version of the truth is wrong - but let’s have that conversation. Convince me that I’m wrong, instead of cancelling me, resorting to name-calling or attacking me. If we could have those conversations openly, without fear, we may not have ended up here in the first place.
Desmet started a conversation using language that we didn’t have before. His theory of mass formation, although an uncomfortable truth, helped me realise at a vital time, that I was not going insane. I will be forever grateful to him for that.
I want to add - we don’t all have to be brave and speak out to do the right thing by the truth. Knowing something is wrong and changing direction is a big deal. A small act of defiance to push back against the flow still means suffering the consequences, and the thought of it could be as much as some people’s systems can handle. I understand that. It takes a lot of energy to push against the mass formation.
This is a complicated issue. And I know this piece is longer than my usual articles, but I feel the need to keep going, because it’s important. We must look at our tendency to judge others, whether we are aware of it or not. Because when we judge each other, we divide ourselves. And we can’t afford to do that right now.
Judgement of others can be more damaging than we realise. Here’s an example - I posted a video in my telegram channel by Dear Danny, someone else who is not afraid to speak out, because I enjoyed the sentiment of what he was saying. Someone sent me an image of a post made about my share. I post it here:
“This is where the healers and spiritualized people often fall down - in complexity… It was Peterson who spent himself and his health trying to alert people to what was coming.” Meaning perhaps that sharing Danny in my group didn’t cost me anything? I’m not sure what their point about me was and I’m certainly not going to lose any sleep over it. However, the point they made about Jordon Peterson was interesting - here is another person who is not afraid to choose the difficult path of speaking out. We have to remember this - free speech means free speech for all, even if we disagree with it. Jordan Peterson is highly intellectual, he, for the most part, ignores spiritual and emotional health, I don’t agree with everything he says, yet I admire him, too.
We are evolving and I hope we continue to evolve. More people talk about emotional and spiritual health, as well as mental and physical health, than ever before. Even though it does seem that we are evolving in some ways in a backwards direction, remember the planets do appear to move backward when they go retrograde, and healing is not a straight line drawn from A to B.
The new Hate Speech law that is being passed in Ireland is a backwards move. Who gets to define what is hate speech and what is not? We need to fight for each other’s right to say whatever is important to us. This way we meet each other as adults, listen to everything, give each other the space that we deserve to be heard, and give ourselves the choice of what feels right for ourselves. The protest in the above photograph shows how politicised our freedom of speech is becoming. This has to stop.
There is hope.
Professor Desmet says it’s vital that we don’t form our own mass, a conglomerated group all believing the same thing in opposition to the main group. He says as long as we don’t try to force anyone to believe everything that we believe, we will stay healthy. It’s a relief to hear this, and it makes perfect sense. As long as we make space to listen to everyone, we can always decide what we believe to be right for ourselves. That’s what being a responsible adult means, for me anyway, and is possibly why the media (and our politicians) continue to speak to us as if we are children. In this way we regress and hand over the power of our choices to them, just as a child would do to its parents.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Professor Desmet, as reported by Louise Roseingrave:
“We each have to be able to articulate our own position. To recognise the human in each other. Diversity is the beauty of humanity, the importance of speaking out, regardless of the consequences, this action may appear abstract and feel futile, but it is ultimately powerful in unexpected ways. The solution will come from the small group if we stick to our ethical principles”