Science, anxiety, and society

Abstract

In the few years since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the almost global lockdowns imposed by governments on human social and economic activity, concerns that we are witnessing the emergence of a new era of totalitarianism have been growing. Belgian clinical psychologist Mattias Desmet, who endured rejection from colleagues and the media for his criticism of the epidemiological models used to justify the lockdowns, already found the increase in censorship, reduction in privacy, and regulatory expansion arising from the masses' growing desire for greater security disconcerting. Like many of us, the Covid-19 crisis intensified Desmet's interest in understanding what was leading people to “sacrifice their own personal interests in solidarity with the collective,” and why this resulted in “a profound intolerance of dissenting voices and a marked susceptibility to indoctrination and pseudoscientific propaganda.”