|
# 2020-07-08 - The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
# The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
# Contents
* My thoughts
* Book quotes
* Relevant blog quotes
# My thoughts
I found a forum post that basically claimed this book would shed
light on recent politics in the USA. To me, this book seemed well
structured but not very satisfying. The author classifies people
involved in mass movements into a catalog of archetypes. It rings
true to the degree that a horoscope does.
A critical online review states:
It is the type of book that congratulates the reader while pretending
to challenge him; it is a mirror that reflects to the reader what he
wants to hear... [much like a horoscope]
It is written primarily in the form of aphorisms... [also like a
horoscope] For the first few pages, the book seems insightful, but
soon enough the reader starts to wonder where the meat is.
# Book quotes
Man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be
happy and sees that he is miserable; would fain be perfect and sees
that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of love
and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion
and contempt. The embarrassment wherein he finds himself produces in
him the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable, for he
conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and
convinces him of his faults. —PASCAL, Pensées
## Part 1, The Appeal of Mass Movements
## Preface
This book deals with some peculiarities common to all mass movements,
be they religious movements, social revolutions or nationalist
movements. It does not maintain that all movements are identical,
but that they share certain essential characteristics which give them
a family likeness.
All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and
a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the
doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism,
enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are
capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain
departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted
allegiance.
All movements, however different in doctrine and aspiration, draw
their early adherents from the same types of humanity; they all
appeal to the same types of mind.
Though there are obvious differences between the fanatical Christian,
the fanatical Mohammedan, the fanatical nationalist, the fanatical
Communist and the fanatical Nazi, it is yet true that the fanaticism
which animates them may be viewed and treated as one. The same is
true of the force which drives them on to expansion and world
domination. There is a certain uniformity in all types of
dedication, of faith, of pursuit of power, of unity and of
self-sacrifice. There are vast differences in the contents of holy
causes and doctrines, but a certain uniformity in the factors which
make them effective. He who, like Pascal, finds precise reasons for
the effectiveness of Christian doctrine has also found the reasons
for the effectiveness of Communist, Nazi and nationalist doctrine.
However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die
for the same thing.
This book concerns itself chiefly with the active, revivalist phase
of mass movements. This phase is dominated by the true believer--the
man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy
cause--an attempt is made to trace his genesis and outline his
nature. As an aid to this effort, use is made of a working
hypothesis. Starting out from the fact that the frustrated
predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and they
usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration
of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can
generate most of the peculiar characteristics of a true believer; 2)
that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the
inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to
the frustrated mind.
...
It is perhaps not superfluous to add a word of caution. When we
speak of the family likeness of mass movements, we use the word
"family" in a taxonomical sense. The tomato and the nightshade are
of the same family, the Solanaceae. Though the one is nutritious and
the other poisonous, they have many morphological, anatomical and
physiological traits in common so that even the non-botanist senses a
family likeness. The assumption that mass movements have many traits
in common does not imply that all movements are equally beneficent or
poisonous. This book passes no judgments and expresses no
preferences.
## Chapter 2, The desire for substitutes
There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass
movement and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical
organization offers opportunities for self-advancement, and its
appeal is mainly to self-interest. On the other hand, a mass
movement, particularly in its active, revivalist phase, appeals not
to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to
those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement
attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire
for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for
self-renunciation.
People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a
worth-while purpose in self-advancement. ... Their innermost craving
is for a new life—a rebirth—or, failing this, a chance to acquire
new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth
by an identification with a holy cause. An active mass movement
offers them opportunities for both.
To the frustrated a mass movement offers substitutes either for the
whole self or for the elements which make life bearable and which
they cannot evoke out of their individual resources.
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for
the lost faith in ourselves.
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by
minding other people's business.
In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's
shoulder or fly at his throat.
Mass movements are usually accused of doping their followers with
hope of the future while cheating them of the enjoyment of the
present. Yet to the frustrated the present is irremediably spoiled.
Comforts and pleasures cannot make it whole. No real content or
comfort can ever arise in their minds but from hope.
## Part 2, The Potential Converts
The Creative Poor
Poverty when coupled with creativeness is usually free of frustration.
Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with
ourselves as the continuous ability to create; to see things grow and
develop under our hand, day in, day out.
The Chinese sage Mo-Tzü who advocated brotherly love was rightly
condemned by the Confucianists who cherished the family above all.
They argued that the principle of universal love would dissolve the
family and destroy society.
The communal compactness of the Jews, both in Palestine and the
Diaspora, was probably one of the reasons that Christianity made so
little headway among them. The destruction of the temple caused, if
anything, a tightening of the communal bonds. The synagogue and the
congregation received now much of the devotion which formerly owed
toward the temple and Jerusalem. Later, when the Christian church
had the power to segregate the Jews in ghettos, it gave their
communal compactness an additional reinforcement, and thus,
unintentionally, ensured the survival of Judaism intact through the
ages.
## Part 3, United Action and Self-Sacrifice
## Chapter 12, Preface
The reader is expected to quarrel with much that is said in this part
of the book. He is likely to feel that much has been exaggerated and
much ignored. But this is not an authoritative textbook. It is a
book of thoughts, and it does not shy away from half-truths so long
as they seem to hint at a new approach and help to formulate new
questions. "To illustrate a principle," says Bagehot, "you must
exaggerate much and you must omit much."
## Chapter 13, Factors Promoting Self-Sacrifice
Identification With a Collective Whole
To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his
individual identity and distinctness. The most drastic way to
achieve this end is by the complete assimilation of the individual
into a collective body.
The effacement of individual separateness must be thorough. In every
act, however trivial, the individual must by some ritual associate
himself with the congregation, the tribe, the party, etc.
To be cast out from the group should be equivalent to being cut off
from life.
This is undoubtedly a primitive state of being, and its most perfect
examples are found among primitive tribes. Mass movements strive to
approximate this primitive perfection, and we are not imagining
things when the anti-individualist bias of contemporary mass
movements strikes us as a throwback to the primitive.
The unavoidable conclusion seems to be that when the individual faces
torture or annihilation, he cannot rely on the resources of his own
individuality. His only source of strength is in not being himself
but part of something mighty, glorious and indestructible.
Make-believe
Dying and killing seem easy when they are part of a ritual,
ceremonial, dramatic performance or game. There is need for some
kind of make-believe in order to face death unflinchingly.
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for
glory without a vivid awareness of an audience—the knowledge that
our mighty deeds will come to the ears of our contemporaries or "of
those who are to be." We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory
self for the imaginary eternal self we are building up, by our heroic
deeds, in the opinion and imagination of others.
In the practice of mass movements, make-believe plays perhaps a more
enduring role than any other factor.
Things Which Are Not
One of the rules that emerges from a consideration of the factors
that promote self-sacrifice is that we are less ready to die for what
we have or are than for what we wish to have and to be. It is a
perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something
worth fighting for," they do not feel like fighting.
The successful businessman is often a failure as a communal leader
because his mind is attuned to the "things that are" and his heart
set on that which can be accomplished in "our time."
Doctrine
Rudolph Hess, when swearing in the entire Nazi party in 1934,
exhorted his hearers: "Do not seek Adolph Hitler with your brains;
all of you will find him with the strength of your hearts."
## Chapter 14, Unifying Agents
Hatred
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying
agents.
When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed,
he answered: "No... We should have then to invent him. It is
essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one." F.
A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932
to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of
the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied: "It is
magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only
we can't, because we haven't got any Jews."
When we renounce the self and become part of a compact whole, we not
only renounce personal advantage but are also rid of personal
responsibility.
The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are
ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of
selflessness.
The Effects of Unification
It is of interest to note the means by which a mass movement
accentuates and perpetuates the individual incompleteness of its
adherents. By elevating dogma above reason, the individual's
intelligence is prevented from becoming self-reliant. Economic
dependence is maintained by centralizing economic power and by a
deliberately created scarcity of the necessities of life...
Thus people raised in the atmosphere of a mass movement are fashioned
into incomplete and dependent human beings even when they have within
themselves the making of self-sufficient entities. Though strangers
to frustration and without a grievance, they will yet exhibit the
peculiarities of people who crave to lose themselves and be rid of an
existence that is irrevocably spoiled.
## Part 4, Beginning and End
## Chapter 15, Men of Words
Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has
been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the
blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men
of words with a grievance.
There is apparently an irremediable insecurity at the core of every
intellectual, be he noncreative or creative. Even the most gifted
and prolific seem to live a life of eternal self-doubting and have to
prove their worth anew each day. What de Rémusat said of Thiers is
perhaps true of most men of words: "he has much more vanity than
ambition; and he prefers consideration to obedience, and the
appearance of power to power itself. Consult him constantly, and
then do just as you please. He will take more notice of your
deference to him than of your actions."
To sum up, the militant man of words prepares the ground for the rise
of a mass movement:
* by discrediting prevailing creeds and institutions and detaching
from them the allegiance of the people;
* by indirectly creating a hunger for faith in the hearts of those
who cannot live without it, so that when the new faith is preached
it finds an eager response among the disillusioned masses;
* by furnishing the doctrine and the slogans of the new faith;
* by undermining the convictions of the "better people"--those who
can get along without faith--so that when the new fanaticism makes
its appearance they are without the capacity to resist it. They
see no sense in dying for convictions and principles, and yield to
the new order without a fight.
## Chapter 16, The Fanatics
The most significant division between men of words is between those
who can find fulfillment in creative work and those who cannot. The
creative man of words, no matter how bitterly he may criticize and
deride the existing order, is actually attached to the present. His
passion is to reform and not to destroy.
The man who wants to write a great book, paint a great picture,
create an architectural masterpiece, become a great scientist, and
knows that never in all eternity will he be able to realize this, his
innermost desire, can find no peace in a stable social order—old or
new. ... Only when engaged in change does he have a sense of freedom
and the feeling that he is growing and developing.
The danger of the fanatic to the development of a movement is that he
cannot settle down. Once victory has been won and the new order
begins to crystallize, the fanatic becomes an element of strain and
disruption.
# Relevant blog quotes
In Alchemy, Rory Sutherland paraphrases [Mercier's] paper, writing:
"Mercier's argumentative hypothesis suggests reason arose in the
human brain not to inform our actions and beliefs, but to explain and
defend them to others... Reason is not as Descartes thought, the
brain's science and research and development function--it is the
brain's legal and PR department."
In The Secret of Our Success, Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich
showed that when toddlers and apes compete in a variety of cognitive
tests, the only domain in which toddlers outperform apes is social
learning, or mimicry.
As Henrich writes, "Under uncertainty, toddlers used cultural
learning." According to Henrich, we mimic "spontaneously,
automatically, and often unconsciously."
|