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# 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." | |
From: https://forge.medium.com/we-are-all-the-burnout-generation-abe2118880ed | |
"As cognitive biases affect every single individual no matter their | |
standing, academic credentials, authority or projected confidence, | |
and produces the constant risk of wrong decision-making and | |
subsequent conflicts, the advances and fairly peaceful state in not | |
all, but a large number of societies is against all odds. | |
This remarkable outcome became possible because over millennia, | |
humanity discovered strategies and systems to reduce the impact of | |
individual cognitive biases on the collective reasoning--often | |
through painful and bloody trial-and-error. | |
On an individual biological level, eliminating cognitive biases | |
before they happen is impossible. For now, these biases are our | |
evolutionary legacy and we're stuck with them. The best one can do | |
is to be aware of one's failures in reasoning and make a deliberate | |
effort to act against an initial thinking error." | |
From: https://hackernoon.com/in-the-digital-age-cognitive-biases-are-running-wi… | |
author: Hoffer, Eric | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/The_True_Believer | |
LOC: HM281 .H6 | |
source: | |
https://www.academia.edu/21464682/The_True_Believer_-_Eric_Hoffer | |
tags: ebook,history,non-fiction,philosophy | |
title: True Believer | |
# Tags | |
ebook | |
history | |
non-fiction | |
philosophy |