Matt Taibbi is one of my favourite journalist and writer, I read various books from him, watched plenty of his interviews, in general followed him for years, now I subscribed to his channel and follow him on Substack.com so, first and foremost I have to clarify that not only is Matt Taibbi completely unaware of my admiration, but he has nothing to do with what I am describing here, that is I what I call "Matt Taibbi effect", the sole connection is that, in reading one of his books, I found the perfect example of one of my theory and coaching/healing principles.
In fact in his books “The Great Derangement”, Matt Taibbi, as a brilliant investigative journalist like he is, did infiltrate in a fundamentalist Christian sect: for various months he did participate in the masses, seminars and all other events of the sect, becoming in all respects an active member of such community.
At the end of his introduction and training path in the sect, Taibbi describes the final ceremony to become a fully accepted member: more than two hours of collective prayers and preaching to "expel demons" from the bodies of the new believers.
The scenes described by Taibbi are shocking: tens, hundreds of people in a collective hysteria with real convulsions and powerful retching due to the expulsion of invisible evil demons possessing their bodies.
More: Taibbi is brave enough to describe (confess?) what is happening to he himself: in fact, and incredibly, he discovers he has no need to pretend, the screams, gagging and convulsions also come to him in a spontaneous and real knot, the effect of months and months of indoctrination, masses, religious seminars and active life in the community of the faithful become real, and they are powerful enough to take over even the mind of an atheist, a very rational and cold blood investigative journalist who is there undercover simply in order to analyse first hand a mass movement.
Taibbi is unknowingly describing the effects of a collective hypnosis, a deep state of trance empowered by mass presence and consolidated practice and rituals, where the Hypnotic commands or "anchors" are the orders roared by the reverend in chief.
In fact in every sufficiently deep hypnotic state our unconscious mind is able to receive "direct" commands, little or no mediated by our rationality, our "conscious mind".
Obviously, as every hypnotist very well knows (and I add luckily) it is certainly not possible to have anything done with just an hypnotic command simply because there are various strategies of defence at either unconscious and conscious level, had the reverend commanded something absolutely contrary to Taibbi's beliefs and morals the command would certainly not have been performed.
It’s reasonable to suppose that to shake convulsively and rejecting in order to improve himself and being part of a community is something that Matt Taibbi is definitely willing to do at every level of his being.
Now I would like the reader to put aside for a moment the understandable scepticism due to the disturbing aspects of the story and concentrate on a fundamental point which is the core reason behind this and other similar happenings: the benefits of doing such things.
It is not credible to minimize the potential of a collective hypnosis like the one just narrated in terms of mood and state of mind: Taibbi clearly describe the strong emotion and the sense of relief, well-being, happiness, even ecstasy evidently felt by the people involved, I believe (and hope) by Matt Taibbi himself (despite I suspect he could have experienced sense of guilty. IMHO completely undue).
It’s described by something overwhelming, a flood of relief, pure joy, very often something life changing, now, what if we can live similar state of grace to improve our life without being divisive or even sectarian, wouldn’t it be a convenient tool?
This is what I call the Taibbi Effect: it’s when we bypass even the most critical of the minds and we allow ourselves to experience that infinite joy that can come simply from living and that, I think, is our natural right.
In order to get this happiness and joy we might have to do things that can sound weird if not inconvenient to the left side of our brain but IMHO it’s very much worth it!
I wonder: what is your feeling after reading this post?
I would like to hear your opinion on this post, any feedback will be welcome, please post your comments here or contact me privately
