What ends hysteria?

I’ve previously written about social manias throughout history.

We’ve discussed what gets them started, but how do they end? Is there a way we can cut them short?

Let’s examine some examples and see if any patterns emerge:

Economic bubbles

What ended the South Sea Bubble? The same thing that ended Tulipomania, the Tech Wreck and the US housing bubble of 2007.

The day comes when a critical mass of people realise that their chances of selling the asset to a ‘greater fool’ are low, so they sell for whatever they can get.

There’s argument about what a bubble is and how they end, but generally the overvalued asset must come back down to Earth sooner or later. Irrational exuberance dissipates like mist in the sunshine.

World War I

I reckon the war mania did not end even after the armistice, given the insanity of the Treaty of Versailles.

When did it end? I guess at the conclusion of WWII. At that point, wiser heads prevailed and both West Germany and Japan were assisted in their reconstruction. American supremacy seemed to play a major role as they were never as deeply trapped in the imperial dreamworld as their European cousins.

Witch hunts

The most convincing explanation I’ve found is that witch hunts thrived amid the chaos of the Wars of Religion and related civil wars. Once these settled down and strong central government resumed, witch hunts were legislated out of existence in various countries.

There were also articles published criticizing the witch mania and there were advancements in science and philosophy. However, I see these as downstream from the firm slap of authority which opened up space for them to occur.

This matches modern theories about the need for a strong, centralised power to rein in purity spirals.

Perhaps the more recent Satanic Panic ended the same way, with then-respected media and psychological organisations pouring cold water on the reliability of repressed memories. In other words, adults took charge.

Superstitions

Their popularity waxes and wanes, but superstitions never seem to go away. Most Westerners will now happily live at Number 13 (American readers please confirm) but horoscopes are as popular as ever and New Age nonsense holds strong sway over half the population.

Perhaps a firm hand would sweep away these superstitions but nobody’s bothered to try.

I guess the Chinese Communists did, but all those superstitions seem to be back again, sometimes in weirdly warped form. Don’t know much about that.

Crusades

There was little profit for the Crusaders and the European kings got sick of funding eternal campaigns to hold conquered territory.

In other words, the Christians ran out of money. They turned to more lucrative conquests in the Iberian Peninsula and then the Americas and further afield.

Is the War on Terror winding down for the same reason? I don’t know. Biden’s handlers unexpectedly pulled troops out out of Afghanistan. The powers behind this decision are unseen and not at all understood. Not to me, anyway.

Ideologies

The Germans lost enthusiasm for Nazism once the Red Army was closing in. That will clear your mind.

The people of Communist countries seemed to lose their own enthusiasm decades before the fall of the Soviet Union but it took time for events to break through the system’s inertia. To some extent, it was another case of the money running out.

Sometimes reality is enough to bring dreamscapes crashing down, eventually.

Dancing mania

This is an interesting one. Authorities ended the mania by isolating the dancers to eliminate social infection. This can work pretty well for physical and mental illnesses so long as they are not too contagious.

Such measures might work on modern social contagions like gender disphoria (of some varieties), anorexia and so on. Keeping the infected person away from the internet and like-minded fellows may help.

I don’t know much about this and would be interested in hearing more from someone who does.

Conclusion

There seem to be two threads involved in ending bouts of mass hysteria.

The first is for sensible people to seize control and forcibly end the madness. There are many cases of this happening throughout history. The Vietnamese army crushed the Khmer Rouge. British colonial forces ended widow-burning and the Thuggee cult in India.

When the sane cannot exercise power over society, the best they can do is to exercise control over themselves. This can be achieved through managed social isolation – limiting time online and avoiding TV.

Finally, as always, be wary of certainty and try to keep some insight. As previously discussed, anyone can get trapped in an echo chamber and start believing ridiculous things.

The best personal defence against hysteria is to keep an open mind and to hold one’s opinions lightly, never fearing to hear contrary views.

We must also accept that we will never do this perfectly. Be humble.