The next illusion this way comes

Merz declares wind power a transitional technology – and sells nuclear fusion as a way out

Friedrich Merz calls wind power a transitional technology, although the expansion of offshore plants and grids is planned for decades. Nevertheless, he links the expansion to a grand narrative of the future. He says Germany should "connect the world's first fusion reactor to the grid." At the same time, electricity prices remain high for many households, and approval for the expansion of wind power is crumbling in parts of the population.

Merz explains that wind energy will accompany us "for ten years, 20 years, maybe 30 years". In doing so, it is setting an expiration date, although the energy transition needs stable generation capacities. It also sends a signal to investors that sounds like a reservation. Offshore projects in particular expect long durations and high upfront investments.


Not truth, but error has always been the chief factor in the evolution of nations, and the reason why socialism is so powerful to-day is that it constitutes the last illusion that is still vital.

In spite of all scientific demonstrations it continues on the increase. Its principal strength lies in the fact that it is championed by minds sufficiently ignorant of things as they are in reality to venture boldly to promise mankind happiness. The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them.

Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

Because it cannot lie

"If one destroyed in museums and libraries, if one hurled down on the flagstones before the churches all the works and all the monuments of art that religions have inspired, what would remain of the great dreams of humanity? To give to men that portion of hope and illusion without which they cannot live, such is the reason for the existence of gods, heroes, and poets. During fifty years science appeared to undertake this task. But science has been compromised in hearts hungering after the ideal, because it does not dare to be lavish enough of promises, because it cannot lie."

Gustave Le Bon quoting Daniel Lesueur (Jeanne Lapauze) in -

The Crowd; study of the popular mind (1895)


In which case, science must be made to lie in the interests of ruling elites. Ruling elites have no use for science as a secure knowledge culture which cannot lie, especially as the cold blue light of reason could be turned on their lies. 

Science wasn’t lavish enough of promises and has become less lavish in recent decades, but its great fault is the same as it was in Le Bon's day - as a knowledge culture it cannot lie. The favoured approach to fixing this fault has long been familiar to us.

Harman on diverse opinions

Labour MPs and officials briefing against work and pensions secretary should 'shut up', Baroness Harman says

The government is set to announce "radical welfare reforms" next week as it faces major concerns from Labour MPs.

Labour MPs and officials briefing against work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall should "shut up", Harriet Harman has said.


The following reflection of an English parliamentarian of long experience doubtless applies to these opinions, fixed beforehand, and rendered unalterable by electioneering necessities:

"During the fifty years that I have sat at Westminster, I have listened to thousands of speeches; but few of them have changed my opinion, not one of them has changed my vote."

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

State-paid functionaries

The working man no longer wishes to remain a working man, or the peasant to continue a peasant, while the most humble members of the middle classes admit of no possible career for their sons except that of State-paid functionaries. Instead of preparing men for life French schools solely prepare them to occupy public functions, in which success can be attained without any necessity for self-direction or the exhibition of the least glimmer of personal initiative.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: a study of the popular mind (1895)


And so it continues to this day. Expand university admissions and we were bound to see an increased demand for careers as State-paid functionaries. It's what our MPs are. Marginal seats may be less secure than a career in the Civil Service, the NHS or the BBC, but State-paid functionary is what many MPs are, especially those who bagged a secure seat years ago. 

Our MPs are advised by more State-paid functionaries, pass laws drafted by State-paid functionaries but supposedly they oversee the activities of millions of State-paid functionaries. It can't work as claimed and it doesn't.

Keir Starmer seems to think it's all a jolly good idea, so much so that we need more of it. From what we see so far, he intends to bring the role of MPs even closer to that of a of a State-paid functionary. 

We’ve never warmed to the impersonal

‘It’s so accidental, the whole business,’ she remarked, branching off to another aspect of the case in order to mask the confusion caused by the sincere flattery in his voice. ‘It was only by chance that Milly had that particular part at all. Suppose she hadn’t had it. What then?’

‘Everything’s accidental,’ he replied. ‘Everything that ever happened is accidental, in a way — in another it isn’t. If you look at your own life, for instance, you’ll find it’s been simply a series of coincidences. I’m sure mine has been. Sheer chance from beginning to end.’

Arnold Bennett - The Old Wives' Tale (1908)


It’s strange how something so familiar yet so mysterious is intimately woven into all of our lives. It’s one of those old and impossible questions – how much of my life was accidental? How much could have been otherwise? Begin totting it up and the answer becomes impossibly daunting.

My known history could begin in the nineteenth century with my great grandfather moving from Leicestershire to Derby to work on the railway. Or my great grandmother moving from Ulverston to Derby for unknown reasons. Before that – who knows? In the seventeenth century, maybe a young Jedidiah first glanced at Mary in church, seated in a nearby pew. But for that conjectural glance I’d never have existed.

Any life is an impossibly complex matrix of events which could have been different with different outcomes. How different we’ll never know because myriad lost possibilities didn’t happen. Chance meetings, major decisions, catching the wrong train, applying for the wrong job, applying for the right job, meeting the wrong person or staying at home a rainy day. Petty incidents, a few of which may have major personal consequences.


A hundred petty crimes or petty accidents will not strike the imagination of crowds in the least, whereas a single great crime or a single great accident will profoundly impress them, even though the results be infinitely less disastrous than those of the hundred small accidents put together.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd; study of the popular mind (1895)


Stir in genetic speculation and it becomes even more complex. Yet it isn’t necessary to wander through the futilities of a free will debate to see the issue clearly and personally because we are all extremely familiar with it.

An overweight young woman orders a coffee shop frappé. Listed as 400 calories but maybe she has what we call a sweet tooth. Her companion is a slim young woman who orders a skinny latte. Is this two dispositions from two genetic histories reacting to commercial temptation?

A school classroom, the pupils are bored by a teacher who cannot instil even a spark of enthusiasm which might at least benefit some. Why is he there, why is he a teacher? He drifted into it because… well his father was a teacher…

Lives governed by histories and controlling influences, we see them every day, but what do we do about it? Look the other way and keep it autonomous seems to be one answer. We’ve never warmed to the impersonal. 

The Substitution

A curious feature of woke-talk is the impersonal nature of it. Even when a single individual frames their conversation within the approved narrative, it fails to come across as coherently personal, as if behind it there is an idiot crowd babbling away through one set of vocal cords.


Organised crowds have always played an important part in the life of peoples, but this part has never been of such moment as at present. The substitution of the unconscious action of crowds for the conscious activity of individuals is one of the principal characteristics of the present age.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd; study of the popular mind (1895)


Imagine a situation where communication has become so slick and easy that the individual becomes hopelessly subsumed into the communicating crowd and is that much less an individual. Thanks to mobile phones and social media we end up with The substitution of the unconscious action of crowds for the conscious activity of individuals.

So far the substitution isn’t going well.

Equally Ignorant

With regard to social problems, owing to the number of unknown quantities they offer, men are substantially, equally ignorant.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd; study of the popular mind (1895)


A striking aspect of life since the internet monster rose among us has been the increased transparency of ignorance. Pundits are almost never polymaths, the media do not employ polymaths and polymaths rarely climb the greasy pole. Le Bon was right - men are substantially, equally ignorant. And women of course. Displays of abject ignorance within the public arena have become perfectly normal. It is not an easy thing to assess, but I don’t think ignorance was ever this transparent.

One point of the previous post was to follow on with this one, because real life harbours major complexities and complexities harbour ignorance. Nobody knows what the future will bring. Tiny effects have vast, unforeseen consequences. The invention of the transistor was never suspected of enabling totalitarian surveillance.

Yet ambitious people, including government experts, have to know more than we do. As they usually do within their field, but government is about politics and that widens the field beyond the expertise of experts. SAGE members may disagree of course.

This is where complexity and ignorance come in. So often, the big decision for ambitious people is to accept complexity or deny it and climb the greasy pole on the back of that denial. One might say that an aspect of complexity is the public display of ignorance in all of its silly, unattractive, often evil incarnations.

TV news readers solemnly read the latest scare story about climate change from a position of the most abject ignorance as to how climate actually changes over the decades and centuries. What we see over and over again is a confident and entirely assured display of the most miserable ignorance.

We have seen something similar during the coronavirus debacle, although here, complexity is mingled with reality. Exaggeration shrouds itself behind a genuine disease, censorship fails to blur the boundaries between what we know and what we do not, between what we suspect and what we are expected to accept.

Yet even with the blurred boundaries there is a solid official determination to hide ignorance, gloss over uncertainties and project confidence where many people know quite well that the confidence is based on very little.

The last illusion

For the purposes of this blog post I needed a lie uttered by a leading political figure. After a quick look around I found this example from the few days ago. It wasn't at all difficult to find and there are some bonus lies too - three lies one after the other.

President Joe Biden on Thursday vowed the US would do its part to cut greenhouse gas, pledging America will cut its emissions blamed for climate change by 50 to 52 percent by 2030, compared with 2005 levels, and to set America on a path of zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.

'The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable. The cost of inaction is mounting,' the president said in his speech kicking off his Climate Summit.

The signs are not unmistakable, the science is entirely deniable and the cost of inaction is not mounting. Joe Biden is lying. No surprises there but political lying never is surprising. Political actors putting truth before expediency – that would be surprising. Even astonishing.

Not truth, but error has always been the chief factor in the evolution of nations, and the reason why socialism is so powerful to-day is that it constitutes the last illusion that is still vital. In spite of all scientific demonstrations it continues on the increase. Its principal strength lies in the fact that it is championed by minds sufficiently ignorant of things as they are in reality to venture boldly to promise mankind happiness. The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd; study of the popular mind (1895)

We are so, so familiar with elites lying to us. So familiar has it become that they clearly have no interest in what we used to call ‘truth’. Because? The masses have never thirsted after truth.

As with many other words, ‘truth’ is losing its meaning and has become little more than a feeble flag of probity for those old-fashioned enough to think the flag is still worth waving. A state of affairs which has been building for a long time.

In the age of the internet, it is even more apparent how populations divide between those who value truth and those who only use it to assess true bank statements, or true house prices or true football results. As if those with little talent but plenty of ambition are allowed to plug the talent gap with lies if they have that burning ambition to climb the greasy pole. So they do.

The age of the naked emperor

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Prestige lost by want of success disappears in a brief space of time. It can also be worn away, but more slowly by being subjected to discussion. This latter power, however, is exceedingly sure. From the moment prestige is called in question it ceases to be prestige. The gods and men who have kept their prestige for long have never tolerated discussion. For the crowd to admire, it must be kept at a distance.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

A powerful insight from Le Bon, especially relevant to an age such as ours which purports to value and promote equality. This is what many seem to fear, the levelling power of familiarity, the threat to prestige. The threat is genuine - we see its effects everywhere. Declining respect for religions, royalty, presidents, prime ministers, business leaders, major charities and institutions such as the BBC.

We it in major controversies such as the catastrophic climate narrative which now seems so silly and irrelevant. Yet the public is still expected to swallow it largely on the basis of their respect for both scientists and tame institutions such as the BBC. 

Unfortunately for climate science, the dishonesty has become embarrassingly obvious. In part because Le Bon’s caveat is much more difficult to achieve in the modern world. For the crowd to admire, it must be kept at a distance. No doubt that’s where the infamous settled science ploy comes from.

What next? The decline of universities? Having a degree is no longer the distinction it was. The gods and men who have kept their prestige for long have never tolerated discussion. Universities would be well advised to keep this interesting issue off the agenda, as I’m sure they already know.

How about presidents, prime ministers and high officials? We are already familiar with their deficiencies, but no doubt there is more to come if respect continues its apparently inexorable decline. We live in revealing times with hordes of naked emperors strutting their flabby stuff.

To convince a newborn babe

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Now most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities. And Mr. Shaw and such people are especially shrinking from that awful and ancestral responsibility to which our fathers committed us when they took the wild step of becoming men. I mean the responsibility of affirming the truth of our human tradition and handing it on with a voice of authority, an unshaken voice.

That is the one eternal education; to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child. From this high audacious duty the moderns are fleeing on every side; and the only excuse for them is, (of course,) that their modern philosophies are so half-baked and hypothetical that they cannot convince themselves enough to convince even a newborn babe. This, of course, is connected with the decay of democracy; and is somewhat of a separate subject.

G K Chesterton – What’s Wrong With the World (1910)

As he does so well, Chesterton uses a rose-tinted view of the past to probe a genuine canker in human affairs. One obvious response is that we have a problem where modern philosophies are so half-baked, because of our increased awareness of myths and uncertainties.

On the other hand, Chesterton makes a telling point in that our awful and ancestral responsibility has also seeped away into the swamps of relativism and moral uncertainty. Possibly connected with this:

Were it possible to induce the masses to adopt atheism, this belief would exhibit all the intolerant ardour of a religious sentiment, and in its exterior forms would soon become a cult.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

Is atheism a cult? Not in itself perhaps but something secular and cult-like has arisen since Le Bon's time.

Caste

Being well acquainted with the psychology of castes, and also with the psychology of other categories of crowds, I do not perceive a single case in which, wrongly accused of a crime, I should not prefer to have to deal with a jury rather than with magistrates.

I should have some chance that my innocence would be recognised by the former and not the slightest chance that it would be admitted by the latter. The power of crowds is to be dreaded, but the power of certain castes is to be dreaded yet more. Crowds are open to conviction; castes never are.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

In various ways and from various angles, an aspect of the recent general election was the widespread view that major political parties are becoming much the same. Presumably their supporters think otherwise but the perception of bland similarity seems to be growing.

Unfortunately we don’t have the political language to lay hold of the problem in a clear and unambiguous way. Politics perverts language – it’s what ruling castes always do.

We could take Le Bon’s quote, extend it and build on the idea that a global caste is taking control of global politics. It’s a sound enough idea, but the word caste is old, has a specific social meaning  and to my mind is insufficiently compelling for modern politics.

Which brings up a deeper problem - what language do we use for global political trends? There does seem to be a global caste, but what do we call it? Current political language is lacking good terminology and for obvious reasons there is no political desire to fix it. The global caste is not in favour of transparency – not yet anyhow. And so we are shafted by the paucity of our language.

The reign of committees

Committees under whatever name, clubs, syndicates, &c., constitute perhaps the most redoubtable danger resulting from the power of crowds. They represent in reality the most impersonal and, in consequence, the most oppressive form of tyranny.

The leaders who direct the committees being supposed to speak and act in the name of a collectivity, are freed from all responsibility, and are in a position to do just as they choose. The most savage tyrant has never ventured even to dream of such proscriptions as those ordained by the committees of the Revolution.

Barras has declared that they decimated the convention, picking off its members at their pleasure. So long as he was able to speak in their name, Robespierre wielded absolute power. The moment this frightful dictator separated himself from them, for reasons of personal pride, he was lost.

The reign of crowds is the reign of committees, that is, of the leaders of crowds. A severer despotism cannot be imagined.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

Government power sits in a vast number of committees, most members of which are unelected, many being outside the UK even though their deliberations affect our lives. Even if we drag ourselves to the polling booth in May, even if we persuade ourselves it is worthwhile, we still have such realities contend with.

To vote as effectively as possible we should probably vote for whoever promises to be the best committee member, the person most likely to sit on lots of them and say something sensible every now and then. In which case, political parties are best ignored – vote for the person most likely to be a moral and boringly enthusiastic committee member.

Moral? Strewth, where did that word come from?

Equally ignorant

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With regard to social problems, owing to the number of unknown quantities they offer, men are substantially, equally ignorant.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

Something happens when we try to get closer and closer to the more complex aspects of human life. Somehow we seem to lose focus, the overall picture fragments into lots of vignettes. What we want from more detailed scrutiny is the limpid clarity of unclouded understanding. What we often end up with are reasons why the other lot keep getting it wrong.

As time goes by problems multiply, wrong conclusions pop up, exaggerations creep in, useless predictions infest debates, celebrities muddy the waters, charlatans gather in the gullible. In short, it is often unclear if anything worthwhile has been achieved apart from an enormous amount of activity. Paid activity at that.

It’s as if complex human issues have an optimal focus. Get too close and the thing becomes blurred and fragmented, stand too far back and important features disappear.

Economics seems to be like this. For non-economists it is a matter of finding someone to trust because the alternative seems to be standing on the sidelines forever. Yet a suspicion remains that the sidelines are where one has the best view.

I think many political people, know this perfectly well. They know there are few firm conclusions to be had in the ebb and flow of human complexities. They also know that this gives them scope for a secure political standpoint where with a dash of luck, only the most glaring failure will sink their boat.

Meanwhile we voters tend to ignore the debates and vote by habit or instinct. Nobody is ever likely to tell us where the optimum standpoint is anyway. That’s not how politics works.

So maybe useful analysis cannot flourish in political debates because the optimum standpoints are too obvious, too easily grasped for anyone to claim as their own and make political capital from them.

The last illusion

The philosophers of the last century devoted themselves with fervour to the destruction of the religious, political, and social illusions on which our forefathers had lived for a long tale of centuries. By destroying them they have dried up the springs of hope and resignation. Behind the immolated chimeras they came face to face with the blind and silent forces of nature, which are inexorable to weakness and ignore pity. 

Notwithstanding all its progress, philosophy has been unable as yet to offer the masses any ideal that can charm them; but, as they must have their illusions at all cost, they turn instinctively, as the insect seeks the light, to the rhetoricians who accord them what they want. Not truth, but error has always been the chief factor in the evolution of nations, and the reason why socialism is so powerful to-day is that it constitutes the last illusion that is still vital. 

In spite of all scientific demonstrations it continues on the increase. Its principal strength lies in the fact that it is championed by minds sufficiently ignorant of things as they are in reality to venture boldly to promise mankind happiness. The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. 

Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

Maybe global planners aim to promise mankind happiness in the form of a global consumer culture. Perhaps their plans are sound and a micro-managed consumer culture offers a facsimile of happiness most people would settle for.

A few may mourn the death of freedom, dignity and fulfilment, but do we currently have enough to fill the coffin?

An utterly unstable line of conduct

In the past, and in no very distant past, the action of governments and the influence of a few writers and a very small number of newspapers constituted the real reflectors of public opinion. To-day the writers have lost all influence, and the newspapers only reflect opinion. As for statesmen, far from directing opinion, their only endeavour is to follow it. They have a dread of opinion, which amounts at times to terror, and causes them to adopt an utterly unstable line of conduct.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

An utterly unstable line of conduct eh? That's encouraging isn't it?

A wretched ruin

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For a modern reader the perusal of Homer results incontestably in immense boredom; but who would venture to say so? The Parthenon, in its present state, is a wretched ruin, utterly destitute of interest, but it is endowed with such prestige that it does not appear to us as it really is, but with all its accompaniment of historic memories.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

I don't entirely agree with Le Bon but I know what he means. Inevitably I see the Parthenon through the filter of ancient Greek history and its place in our history. No doubt the activities of the tourist industry are in the mix too.

I can't quite see it as a wretched ruin, but it is certainly a ruin. There is also a kind of melancholy about ruins, particularly when the power that raised them is no more.

A gathering of imbeciles

The ease of modern communication is often seen as a good thing, socially, politically and economically. But what if there is a dark side to it?

One attraction of reading early writers in any field is often their unassuming nature. They write as they see, before the academic barnacles had a chance to encrust and obscure the original structure. In modern terms that structure may be somewhat lacking of course, but that doesn’t always matter.

One such is Gustave Le Bon. Politically incorrect and not the most profound writer, but some of what he wrote is worth a second thought. For example, he believed that a crowd wipes out the intellectual faculties of its members. Not a new idea even then and many others have expressed similar views, but take this quote as an example.

The substitution of the unconscious action of crowds for the conscious activity of individuals is one of the principal characteristics of the present age.

This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

This is more than cynical rhetoric. Le Bon is saying that crowds or assemblies have their own psychology which is not the sum of component individuals. It is something else, something sentimental, conservative, easily swayed by images and not intelligent in the sense that an individual is intelligent.

Okay, one could pile on the caveats and exceptions to this, but in the modern world when crowds become assemblies and when assemblies can be virtual assemblies on the web, then what if Le Bon was right? How much intellectual resource is the internet liable to suck out of our collective heads?

An implication of Le Bon’s point, whatever its limitations, is that many kinds of association constitute an intellectual loss for its members. By adopting a group belief, we don’t put our intellect on hold, we lose it wherever the belief system holds sway. Our critical faculties disappear like smoke on a windy day.

To know the art of impressing the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of governing them.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A study of the popular mind

The internet as the ultimate virtual assembly may damage or even destroy our collective critical faculties. The web may become a conservative, sentimental and unintelligent virtual crowd.