I definitely feel the collective has become increasingly psychopathic. I’ve come to understand, it’s a result of “grooming”.
The first time I ever heard of such a thing, was back in 2011 when I came across a, David Berkowitz quote. See: Evil Diabolical Brainwashing. I eventually came to understand, “evil diabolical brainwashing”, is widespread, taking place around the world, ’round the clock. I try to write about this from time to time, but encounter a lot of resistance.
“I’m not tricked! I’m not brainwashed!”
Oh, okay.
Carrying on, as I do, I have thought of this in many ways. I see people to be far more nasty than they were, twenty years ago. I can say this for sure, because I’ve been sticking my neck out here on this blog, for nearly that long. The level and the type of changes that have taken place in this time frame are stunning.
I began to see more and more people emulate psychopaths or model themselves after psychopathic characters in TV programs or other media. I touched on a lot of this in this post (and many others), though I don’t know if I was understood.
But now, lucky for me, I’m coming across these, mansplainers! I mean that in a respectful way!
I’m just an idiot astrologer from the desert, who happens to be observant. These men (who agree with me) have credentials! See Cause Of Immense Suffering, Terror, Oppression, Genocide & Decay.
Today, I have another mansplainer on deck. Meet, Gustave M. Gilbert, PhD who explains exactly what I’ve in talking about in his book, “The Psychology Of Dictatorship”, published in 1950:
“… by inculcating fear and hostility toward enemy groups and by encouraging the persecution of scapegoats it helps to constrict human empathy and ultimately “desensitizes” an increasing number of individuals to extreme aggression. This constriction of affect, combined with the militaristic “categorical imperative” and the ideological restriction of reality-testing, produces organized irrational hostility which is not only unlimited in its destructive potential but precipitates a self-destructive reaction. … the tendency of such a system is clear: the crippling of human [conscience] and reality-testing, which allow the irrational and psychopathic to become the norm, and the normal individual to become an unthinking member of a society regimented for irrational aggression…”
Simply put, “conscience” is excised from the human population for a purpose. A purpose that is evil and diabolical.
The method is by brainwashing. You become convinced, morality is for losers and idiots. You don’t necessarily see it happening.
When and if you do see it happening, you’re likely to stay with the pack, anyway, doubling down on your “consent”. It’s because few have the courage and conviction to do otherwise, which is understandable or at least it’s understandable to me or maybe I just choose to understand it. So long as society carries on this direction, I’d expect things to get steadily worse.
If you don’t like how things are going; clutch it up and do the right thing in your sphere, consistently. It’s got to be a commitment; not contingent on actions of others.
I admit this is harder to do, than just bitching all day. However, you’ll get more out of it.
Excellent post and I agree.
1000% correct.
Thank you, Ladies! 🙂
A most interesting paper I came across was arguing how socially accepted collective trauma leads to widespread lack of empathy. The paper was written before the pandemic and uses the holocaust as an example (of socially accepted collective trauma) but I found its notions could be applied to understand the potential effects of the pandemic and it’s aftermath which we are currently living through. Lack of empathy includes diminished ability to consider or reflect upon another person’s situation, feelings, etc.
Got a name or link to that paper? Sounds like a good read.
Yes. And it’s nothing new, as your example shows. People have been susceptible to this since times immemorial. What has changed in the last 20+ years is the advent of the internet, social media and smart phones. Grooming people is terribly easy now.
True!
Right, I have been shocked repeatedly this week, what
Comes out of some people’s mouths and brains; it’s got me shaking, my mouth is open and I’m just shocked at how I never saw crazy like this week.Oh May sweet May I so need some easy breezy jazzy feels .This week I gonna roll like roller skates away from all the cuckoo ca Khoo,Yikes
YES!! So when interacting with people discernment must be applied. The circle gets smaller and smaller. The glory days of ‘community’ are not what they used to be.
I think it’s different today because gas-lighting and fear (me/my tribe over you) is dominating.
I wish people understood what unfolded for decades – MK u!r@ – This has been applied globally and they are succeeding.
A succession of stages of trauma.
Also something has to be said (astrologically or not) about those that remain silent in today’s world.
That is the new form of psychopath.
After what we have all gone thru in the last 4 yrs and the divisive line, the insane amount of deaths – absolutely unnecessary and in horrible ways…well if one remains silent or looks the other way, that is new psychopath in my opinion (lack of empathy to the point that i will take myself/children out and stand with my tribe).
Lots of that!
I disagree. I speak openly, but I can’t count how many people have a clear boundary, they don’t want to go, there, or really, anywhere but where they are.
I choose to respect a boundary of this type. I feel it’s the right thing to do for many different reasons.
I think this falls under, leading a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. You really can’t make them drink, and frankly, I can think of a lot of reasons why a person might choose to deflect. Chief among them, its their mind. Their business what goes in and what gets blocked.
Oh yes in casual conversations I agree.
I should of been more specific- I mean the silence within themselves or those close to them (responsibility (family).
Maybe the saving grace, if you could call it that, is that along with the collective sociopathy is also a collective stupidity.
In the UK, we have had a new series on Netflix, based on real events. The actor is the one who actually experienced it, and is effectively reliving some pretty vile and horrendous acts committed against him. I’m guessing it must have been cathartic for him though. It’s called Baby Reindeer.
The takeaway from all this? People en masse playing armchair online detectives, trying to conduct their own investigations as to who the real life perpetrators are. With some innocent people getting accused, harassed, and ironically, stalked over it. What kind of dumbassery is this?!!! How utterly STUPID can they be? Not to mention, ghoulish.
It’s got to a point where TV producers are considering putting a disclaimer at the beginning of any series based on real crime events, along the lines of, “Please do not try to conduct your own investigations”. Good grief.
If the real apocalypse comes, those types wouldn’t last an hour! So maybe survival of the fittest would come into play.
Astrologically, I think it’s Neptune Pisces. 13 years of mass delusions.
“13 years of mass delusions.”
Gone on a lot longer than that.
This Neptune Pisces point is intriguing, Mermaid.
My 6th house is 29 Aqua to 25 Pisces, and I recently noticed that Neptune’s slitherings into, out of, and back into this house since 2011 have coincided with three different work situations where I had to deal with (and eventually leave behind) malignant-type narcissists in authority roles.
Neptune is now in my 7th until 2035, so I’ll be on the lookout for love-bombings, for sure.
Right on Elsa!
All I can say is.. I agree and I don’t like where it’s going. My sphere is small but I do my best.
So very true. And yes of course its always the other!
I can be convinced i have discernment and can see through all manipulation… but is that really true?
The only solution is probably to go with our gut feel, keep our empathy and never stop seeing others as human beings, although its hard when some ppl make their whole personality all about hate and deliberate ignorance
Thanks for all the great content of late, Elsa; I’ve mentioned that I’ve followed the blog for a good while and you have certainly hit your stride this past year. Your perspective on surviving and even thriving amidst the turmoil is very much appreciated.
I feel the same, and have seen it brewing for years as well; it is particularly concerning to me among the very young. It’s going to be very challenging to correct later on, if it’s possible at all.
It is more important than ever IMO to be conscious and realize that if we want love and real sanity instead, we have to actively create love and real sanity and propagate it, it isn’t just going to ‘happen’, and all of the ‘othering’, narcissism, entitlement, and hostility can’t ever possibly be loving or sane.
Agree.
Especially with the people have gotten meaner in the last 20 years comment.
🙁
Well, I have felt this way since around 2011 or 2012. I was an upstanding citizen, running my own successful business for 10 years with a contractors license to my name, and I was victimized by the local police, as they were harassing a group of young women including my daughter, and picking out which one they were going to interrogate based on their hair color and desirability, and they decided to scapegoat me in order to justify their illegal grooming actions.
I was assaulted and jailed, spent 10 grand in lawyers, and was still advised to cop a plea while I was completely innocent(but they didn’t trust going to court against them), which simply led to more policial harassment, and placing my life on the line with psychopathic cops who actually began to tremble when I came near, hoping they could justify attacking me violently. They would put DUI stops on my corner, and drive past my house craning their necks to look in the windows. These were the same cops who would lament that they wished they had a girlfriend like me when they pulled me over.
Needless to say, when I realized that the very people in society who were supposed to protect and serve me were actually targeting me and my daughter with their legal misuse of violence, fines and arrest, I decided to close shop and move overseas.
I have 29 Leo Uranus out of sign cj my 2 Virgo asc, and Pluto+Venus in the 1st(sudden power struggles with me as a woman). Stellium scorpio in the 3rd(constantly pulled over and ticketed). 11 years now without a ticket!
Brilliant post and thanks for sharing – I will certainly share this with several individuals who know and care nothing about astrology – I am for the most part an outcast consistently because I stand up for ethics and compassion and justice, peace and environment. These are all considered highly subjective by the out of control social justice and political movements.
Honestly I dont care. Im a double Aries with Pluto conjunct my MC natally in Virgo. Cleanse and do what is ethically right. Period. John Stuart Mill for the win.
Thank you!
Elsa hit the nail on the head. I have seen this in the popular fiction of the time as well. What we create and consume in film, TV, literature and entertainment in general is often a reflection of society’s mindset, yet also feeds into it. A symbiotic relationship. I also agree with Mermaid that Neptune in Pisces, working in tandem with Pluto in Capricorn, is playing a large part in this.
So many films and shows since 2011/2012 have emphasized moral ambiguity, edgy anti-heroes or protagonists going rogue, villain protagonists whose actions are “justified.” Ultra-violence, frequent, once-per-episode deaths, society or government being to blame, a general air of helplessness and misanthropy, extremely complex, all-encompassing stories. Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, Squid Games, The Joker, Attack on Titan, and most recently, Three Body Problem. Disney making their villains sympathetic (Cruella, Maleficent) or reconciling abusers’ or antagonists’ actions because “trauma was the real villain all along,” if there’s a villain at all. Also all of the “true crime” documentaries and dramatizations, making criminals relatable. Just to name a few. (No shame to any of these, there’s just a pattern I noticed!)
Just this general emphasis on trauma, especially collective.
I think this plays into the glamorization of victims and victimhood in Neptune in Pisces, and the loss of security from Pluto in Capricorn.
If it’s any consolation, I already see a shift with Pluto in Aquarius taking a more upbeat approach, and Saturn in Pisces making people a bit more skeptical. I see this with the crackdowns and decline of social media. Neptune in Aries will be interesting, since it’s the sign of childhood, heroes and villains, back-to-basics proactivity. I’d imagine we’ll see an uptick of villainous villains and heroic heroes, and anti-heroes becoming less popular. More emphasis on badassery, triumph and looking totally awesome and bold, simple “good vs evil” might be more popular than complex and complicated or ambiguous.
Not sure how that will translate to society, but these things come in waves. Overall, I’m pretty hopeful, especially with that “basket” in 2025/26.
Brainwashing and cruelty seem to be the subjects of the week where I am.
Have been researching self sabotage and found a man who’s an expert in this, who says it’s mainly created by the programming and brainwashing of humans to believe the negative stories about ourselves (deeply ingrained and perpetrated on humanity for eons). This seemed interesting (haven’t done any deep digging into it yet), but then he also had a link about how coffee effects our frontal lobes and this is also a brainwashing issue. Apparently coffee reduces the oxygen by 53% whenever we drink it which makes us less empathetic, and especially – less discerning of what we are told by the news or the government, and even less caring about what’s happening out there in the world. Which then reminded me of the studies on Tylenol – it also seems to make humans less empathetic towards others. So we’re dealing with both mental and psychotropic manipulations – no wonder things are getting so ugly!
And trying to tell this to people, like you say, they don’t really want to know (I’m planning how I’m going to lessen coffee’s grip on me as we speak, lol!).
P.S. That guy also said, because he thinks the volume of coffee now available everywhere is planned *because* it dumbs us down, that there is a Starbuck’s coffee cup in EVERY scene in the Fight Club movie.
P.P.S. I have no idea how this relates to astrology, but this is a great conversation! 😀
Mass delusion, everything being a conspiracy. Neptune in Pisces.
Lol! Thanks for the diagnosis!
All of this sociopathy doesn’t come from nothing. There is usually a root cause for behaviors or illnesses.
Research on the anti-social effects of Tylenol on humans has been documented. The coffee one is new to me and hit closer to home: I drink coffee, I don’t take Tylenol.
This is likely my Gemini asc collecting facts and my Sag sun proselytizing. :))
Can this also work the other direction, where people don’t notice anything or think about anything that makes them uncomfortable? Neptune is pretty foggy.
Yes. Denial. Avoidance. Not gonna go there, look there, see anything.
Thank you, Elsa.
I know many people who don’t want to play even a little with speculating about all the weird stuff happening right now. I find it pretty fascinating, especially when new information pops up and I have Aha moments!
And I think about it now whenever I drink my morning coffee…
Absolutely Elsa, I so agree! We’ve collectively lost the sense of mercy, forgiveness and redemption. There is no longer the notion of personal improvement past sin. You sin, you make a mistake, you are condemned. Forever. There is no phoenix rising. It is as if the demotion of Pluto as a planet has excised the archetype of the phoenix. Past sin, through forgiveness and humble repentance, comes rebirth. Now you are just cancelled and dead forever.
I saw and heard things during the pandemic which shook me, whichever choice you made, there was someone to condemn you and to never forgive.
Ending the knowledge of redemption is to lie about the very Earth we live on and the nature that sustains us. After Winter, must come Spring. Life’s decay, death into the Earth, feeds the seeds that feed us. Nothing is lost forever, nothing is dead forever. That’s a law of physics, energy neither created nor destroyed.
But, separated from nature physically in cubicles in cities, now we are emotionally separated from nature’s truth of the life / death cycle.
Unless consciously halted, this lack of mercy with and for each other will continue to the detriment of our communal being and togetherness.
“None Dare Call It Conspiracy,” published in 1964 has been the go-to for modern mad movements and their brainwashing techniques.
Thanks. Sounds interesting!