Imagine an avalanche on a mountainside filled with rocks. Some tiny insignificant pebble at the top shifted, bumped into several others, each which bumped into more, and so on until the entire slope began sliding down as one.

Now imagine instead that each rock is a person, and rather than being physically knocked downhill to knock into others, each is socially “pressured” to “pressure” others.

Perhaps several of my social network neighbors are fearful of a pandemic and agitating for immediate suspension of civil liberties for society’s safety, and I’m accordingly subjected to considerable “social force” to join in with the movement.

A “people” version of an avalanche we call a “mass movement,” “mass hysteria,” “groupthink,” “riot,” “moral panic,” “stampede,” etc. (depending on further details).

Now, although there are crucial similarities between an avalanche of rocks and a mass hysteria (or one of these other variants) of people, one key difference is that people but not rocks have free will, and can choose not to be part of it. By refraining to “slide” despite being pressed to do so, a person not only doesn’t end up part of the mass hysteria, but also thereby doesn’t further its spread.

A small number of folks in March of 2020 were such “steady rocks.” They never got swept up into calling for lockdowns. Not for a minute, and not for two weeks.

But most slid, at least for a while. Some slid for only a short stint and “woke up.” Others slid for many months before digging their heals in. And others are still sliding to this day, pressuring their neighbors on the mountainside (the social network) to continue sliding.

Unlike rocks, these human sliders bear responsibility for the mass hysteria. And the “larger” the social forces the person could impart (the bigger the “boulder”), the more responsibility he or she bears.

Many of those who stopped their sliding eventually joined the anti-lockdown movement, often failing to note that they initially were part of the avalanche.

And many of these anti-lockdown latecomers are now some of the loudest voices demanding to know “Who did this to us?!” They point to China, the WEF, Klaus Schwab, Event 201, Bill Gates, etc. They excuse (or minimize the culpability of) the actual leaders, public intellectuals, journalists and “experts” who in fact did this to us.

And their largest blind spot is themselves: they are among those culpable. They contributed to the very mass hysteria that bred wholly ill narratives and civil-liberties-violating interventions that it will take a generation to recover from. They are the boulders at the bottom of the mountain side who started near the top, helped ensure that the avalanche was as large as it was by their early pronouncements of fear and demands for interventions, and who then stamped and screamed among the debris at the bottom, demanding to know who caused the avalanche.

These boulders will invariably never see their own culpability. They won’t rest until they find a “true evil mastermind” scapegoat who caused the avalanche.

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Find a Playlist on culpability at YouTube.

Unlike rocks, any person “pushed” has free will to not be “pushed.” This applies to everyone, but especially culpable are those with larger social power who let themselves be pushed — and themselves pushed others — for longer periods of time.

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