James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
Some twenty five years ago, Charles D. Hayes, sent me a
manuscript to read. In those days,
prospective authors often sent me manuscripts, which I politely declined to
read. But Charles manuscript attracted
me beyond the passion of his words: he had something original to say. I read the book, writing copiously on the
margins, and was about to return the manuscript to Charles when my wife,
Beautiful Betty, said, “He’ll have no
idea what you’ve said. Type your
responses with reference pages.
Otherwise, there is no point in sending this back to him.”
So I obliged, which represented scores of typed pages, single
spaced. We have never met but have been
constantly in touch with each other. He
once mentioned that my writing reminded him of Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman
social and moral philosopher who has been a favorite of mine, mainly because,
like Charles, he has a point of view which is candid and stimulating.
* *
*
Eric Hoffer (1898 – 1983) was a child of immigrant parents
living in New York City, when he fell with his mother at age seven and lost his
sight. At five, he could already read
fluently in English and German.
Miraculously, his eyesight returned when he was fifteen with him becoming
a voracious reader, first checking out a large volume in small print of the
essays of Michel de Montaigne to whom he was dedicated the rest of his
life. He moved to the West coast after
his father died at age nineteen, working up and down the Coast of California as
a picker of fruit, eventually becoming a longshoreman. Hoffer writes: My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in
the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.”
In 1950, he sent a manuscript written in longhand to Harper &
Row Publishers because “I thought them
the best in the business.” His book, THE TRUE BELIEVER was published
the following year to modest success. Some
seventeen years later, Television social commentator Eric Sevareid of CBS Television
presented a long discussion with Eric Hoffer, “A Passionate State of Mind” in September
1967 which was repeated in November 1967 by popular demand. Eric Hoffer was now what he never wanted to
be, an international celebrity and prominent social and moral philosopher.
Given the current Pandemic, the divisive nature of politics and religion, the inevitable attraction to simplistic solutions, and the ever presence of "Mob Rule" just off stage, I reread this book and thought some of Eric Hoffer's reflections might be worthy of pondering. Therefore, what follows are excerpts from THE TRUE BELIEVER with two
exceptions. Where Hoffer refers to “mass
movements,” I have substituted “Mob Rule,” which is always in quotation marks;
and the title of the book always appears in capital letters.
*
* *
On God
Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a
God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.
For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of
irreligious. THE TRUE BELIEVER is
everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping
the world in his own image. And whether
we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all
we can concerning his nature and potentialities (Preface).
On Freedom
It is doubtful that the oppressed ever fight for
freedom. They fight for pride and power,
power to oppress others. The oppressed
want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate
On Power &
Intellectuals
It’s disconcerting to realize that businessmen, generals,
soldiers, men of action are less corrupted by power than intellectuals. You take a conventional man of action and
he’s satisfied if you obey. But not the
intellectual. He doesn’t want you just
to obey. He wants you to get down on
your knees and praise the one who makes you love what you hate and hate what
you love. In other words, whenever the
intellectuals are in power, there’s soul-raping going on.
Business &
Corruption
It is probably true that business corrupts everything it
touches. It corrupts politics, sports,
literature, art, labor unions, and so on.
But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic
totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its
liberating best in a noncapitalistic environment.
Nature of the Mob
The less justified the man is in claiming excellence for his
own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his
religion, his race or his holy cause.
It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief
possible. What we know as blind faith is
sustained by innumerable unbeliefs. The
opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatic atheist but the gentle
cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. Mass movements (i.e., mob rule) can rise and
spread without belief in God, but never without belief in the devil. Passionate hatred can give meaning and
purpose to an empty life. The awareness
of their individual blemishes and shortcomings inclines the frustrated to
detect ill will and meanness in their fellow men. True loyalty between individuals is possible
only in a loose and relatively free society.
For although ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of
irreligious. The TRUE BELIEVER (1951) is
everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping
the world in his own image. And whether
we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all
we can concerning his nature and potentialities.
PART ONE
Appeal of
Mob Rule
When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets. It is well for the timid to lock doors,
shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between
hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded
youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse (p. 20).
Desire for Substitutes
There is a fundamental difference
between the appeal of “mob rule” and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers
opportunities for self-advancement, and its appeal is mainly to
self-interests. On the other hand, “mob
rule,” 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. “Mob rule” 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
(p. 21).
Faith in a holy cause is to a
considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves (p. 22).
The less justified a man is in
claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence
for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause (p.23).
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 (p. 23).
The burning conviction that we have a
holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching and drowning selves to a
passing raft. What often looks like
giving a hand is often holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our
lives puny and meaningless. There is no
doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously
in self-esteem. The vanity of the
selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless (p. 23).
When our individual interests and prospects
do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need of something apart from
us to live for. All forms of dedication,
devotion, loyalty, and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to
something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives. Hence the embracing of a substitute will
necessarily be passionate and extreme.
We can have qualified confidence in ourselves, but the faith we have in
our nation, religion, race, or holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising. A substitute embraced in moderation cannot
supplant and efface the self we want to forget.
We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are
ready to die for it. This readiness to
die is evidence to ourselves and others that what we had to take as a
substitute for an irrevocably missed or spoiled first choice is indeed the best
there ever was (p. 24).
PART TWO
Potential Converts to “Mob Rule”
The poor on the borderline of
starvation live purposeful lives. To be
engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from
a sense of futility. The goals are
concrete and immediate. Every meal is a
fulfillment; to go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph and every windfall a
miracle. What need could they have for
“an inspiring super individual goal which would give meaning and dignity to
their lives?” They are immune to the
appeal of “mob rule” . . . Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare
living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams. One of the reasons for the unrebelliousness
of the masses in China is the inordinate effort required to scrape together the
means of the scantiest subsistence. The
intensified struggle for existence “is a state rather than a dynamic influence”
(pp. 32-33).
The Free Poor
Unless a man has talents to make
something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the
self be ineffectual? We join “mob rule”
to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi,
“to be free from freedom.” It is not
sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of
all the enormities they had committed.
They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder
responsibility for obeying orders. Had
they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?
It would seem then that the most
fertile ground for the propagation of “mob rule” is a society with considerable
freedom but lacking the palliatives of frustration. It was precisely because the peasants of 18th
century France, unlike the peasants of Germany and Austria, were no longer
serfs and already owned land that they were receptive to the appeal of the
French Revolution. Nor perhaps would
there have been a Bolshevik Revolution if the Russian peasant had not been free
for a generation or more and had had a taste of the private ownership of land
(pp. 35-36).
Those who see their lives as spoiled
and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom
to establish equality and uniformity.
The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity; to be one
thread of the many that make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from
the others. No one can then point us
out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority (p 37).
Where freedom is real, equality is
the passion of the masses. Where
equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority. Equality without freedom creates a more
stable social pattern than freedom without equality (p 37).
Misfits
The permanent misfits are those who
because of a lack of talent or some irreparable defect in body or mind cannot
do one thing for which their whole being craves. No achievement, however spectacular, in other
fields can give them a sense of fulfillment.
Whatever they undertake becomes a passionate pursuit; but they never
arrive, never pause. They demonstrate
the fact that we can never have enough of that which we really do not want, and
that we run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.
The permanent misfit can find
salvation in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by
losing themselves in the compact collectivity of “mob rule.” By renouncing the individual will, judgment
and ambition, and dedicating all their powers to the service of an eternal
cause, they are at last lifted off the endless treadmill which can never lead
them to fulfillment.
The most incurably frustrated, and,
therefore, the most vehement, among permanent misfits are those with an
unfulfilled craving for creative work.
Both those who try to write, paint, compose, etcetera, and fail
decisively, and those within and know that never again will they produce aught
worthwhile, are alike in the grip of a desperate passion. Neither fame nor power nor riches nor even
monumental achievements in other fields can still their hunger. Even the wholehearted dedication to a holy
cause does not always cure them. Their
unappeased hunger persists, and they are likely to become the most violent
extremists in the service of their holy cause (p 50).
PART THREE
United Action and Self-Sacrifice
Factors Promoting Self-Sacrifice
The capacity to resist coercion stems
partly from the individual’s identification with a group. The people who stood best in the Nazi
concentration camps were those who felt themselves members of an compact party
(the Communists), of a church (priests and ministers), or of a close-knit
national group. The individualists,
whatever their nationality, craved in (p 61).
Make-believe
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 that are to be.” We are ready to sacrifice our true 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 “mob rule,”
make-believe plays perhaps a more enduring role than any other factor. When faith and the power to persuade or
coerce are gone, make-believe lingers on.
There is no doubt in staging its processions, parades, rituals and
ceremonials, “mob rule” touches a responsive chord in every heart. Even the most sober-minded are carried away
by sight of an impressive mass spectacle.
There is an exhilaration and getting out of one’s skin in both participants
and spectators. It is possible that the
frustrated are more responsive to the might and splendor of the mass than
people who are self-sufficient. The
desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the
frustrated a facility for pretending, for making a show, and also a readiness
to identify themselves wholly with an imposing mass spectacle (pp. 65-66).
“Things are which not”
The successful businessman is often a
failure as a communal leader because his mind is attuned to “things as they
are” and his heart is set on that which can be accomplished in “our time.” Failure in the management of practical
affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public
affairs. And it is perhaps fortunate
that some proud natures when suffering defeat in the practical world do not
feel crushed but are suddenly fired with the apparent absurd conviction that
they are eminently competent to direct the fortunes of the community and the
nation (p 74).
The readiness for self-sacrifice is
contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life . . . For self-sacrifice
is an unreasonable act. It cannot be the
end-product of a process of probing and deliberating. All active “mob rulers” strive, therefore, to
interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the
world. They do this by claiming that the
ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that
there is no truth nor certitude outside it.
The facts on which the TRUE BELIEVER bases his conclusions must not be
derived from experience or observation but from holy writ . . . To rely on the
evidence of senses and of reason is heresy and treason. It is startling to realize how much unbelief
is necessary to make belief possible.
What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs (p
75).
We can be absolutely certain only
about things we do not understand. A
doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength. Once we understand a thing, it is as if it
had originated in us. And, clearly,
those who are asked to renounce the self and sacrifice it cannot see eternal
certitude in anything which originates in that self. The fact that they understand a thing fully
impairs its validity and certitude in their eyes.
They who clamor loudest for freedom
are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their
shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually, their innermost desire is for an
end to the “free for all.” They want to
eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is
continually subjected in a free society (pp. 76 -77).
The urge to escape our real self is
also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are
develops a distaste for facts and cold logic.
There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the
miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable
reality. They ask to be deceived . .
. “They pray not only for their daily
bread but also for their daily illusion.”
The rule seems to be that those who find difficulty in deceiving
themselves are easily deceived by others.
They are easily persuaded and led.
A peculiar side of credulity is that
it is often joined with a proneness to imposture. The association of believing and lying is not
characteristic solely of children. The
inability or unwillingness to see things as they are promotes both gullibility
and charlatanism (pp. 78-79).
Fanaticism
The fanatic is perpetually incomplete
and insecure. He cannot generate
self-assurance out of his individual resources, out of his rejected self, but
finds it only in clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to
embrace. This passionate attachment is
the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the source
of all virtue and strength (p 80).
The opposite of the religious fanatic
is not the fanatic atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is
a god or not. The atheist is a religious
person. He believes in atheism as though
it were a new religion. He is an atheist
with devoutness and unction. According
to Renan, “The day after that on which the world should no longer believe in
God, atheists would be the wretchedness of all men.” So, too, the opposite of the chauvinist is
not the traitor but the reasonable citizen who is in love with the present and
as no taste for martyrdom and the heroic gesture (p 81).
Mob Rule and Armies
Both “mob rule” and armies are
collective bodies; both strip the individual of his separateness and
distinctiveness; both demand self-sacrifice, unquestioning obedience and single-hearted
allegiance; both make extensive use of make-belief to promote daring and united
action; and both can serve as a refuge for the frustrated who cannot endure an
autonomous existence (p 83).
Unifying Agents – Hatred
Hatred is the most accessible and
comprehensive of all unifying agents. It
pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of
his weal and future, frees him of jealousies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering
with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into on flaming mass. Heine suggests that what Christian love
cannot do is effected by a common hatred.
“Mob rule” can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never
without belief in a devil (pp. 85-86).
We do not make people humble and meek
when we show them their guilt and cause them to be ashamed of themselves. We are more likely to stir their arrogance
and rouse in them a reckless aggressiveness.
Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt
within us. There is a guilty conscience
behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of
self-righteousness (p 89).
Imitation
Imitation is an essential unifying
agent. The development of a close-knit
group is inconceivable without a diffusion of uniformity. The one-mindedness and Gleichschaltung (i.e., synchrony) prized by every “Mob rule” are
achieved as much by imitation as by obedience (p 94).
Leadership
No matter how vital we think the role
of leadership is in the rise of “Mob Rule,” there is no doubt that the leader
cannot create the conditions which make the rise of a movement possible. He cannot conjure a movement out of the
void. There has to be an eagerness to
follow and obey, and an intense dissatisfaction with things as they are, before
movement and leader can make their appearance.
When conditions are not ripe, the potential leader, no matter how
gifted, and his holy cause, no matter how potent, remain without following (p
103).
Once the stage is set, the presence
of an outstanding leader is indispensable.
Without him there will be no movement.
The ripeness of the times does not automatically produce “mob rule; nor
can elections, laws and administrative bureaus hatch one . . . Exceptional
intelligence, noble character and originality seem neither indispensable nor
perhaps desirable. The main requirements
seem to be audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction
that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and
luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning
estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials);
unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and
fairness; a recognition that the innermost craving of a following is for
communion and that there can never be too much of it; a capacity for winning
and holding the utmost loyalty of a group of able lieutenants. This last faculty is one of the most
essential and elusive (pp. 105-106).
Charlatanism of some degree is
indispensable to effective leadership.
There can be no “Mob Rule” without some deliberate misrepresentation of
facts. No solid, tangible advantage can
hold a following and make it zealous loyal unto death. The leader has to be practical and a realist,
yet must talk the language of the visionary and idealist (p 107).
People whose lives are barren and
insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are
self-sufficient and self-confident. To
the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom
from restraint. They are eager to barter
their independence for relief of the burdens of willing, deciding and being
responsible for inevitable failure. They
willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan,
command and should all responsibility (p 109).
The frustrated follow a leader less
because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because
of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted
selves. Surrender to a leader is not a
means to an end but a fulfillment.
Whither they are led is of secondary importance (p 110).
Action
Action is a unifier. There is less individual distinctness in the
genuine man of action, the builder, the soldier, sportsman and even the
scientist, than in the thinker or in one whose creativeness flows from communion
with the self. The go-getter and the
hustler have much in them that is abortive and undifferentiated. One is never really stripped for action
unless one is stripped of a distinct and differentiated self. An active people thus tends toward uniformity
(p 111).
Men of thought seldom work well
together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy
camaraderie. Teamwork is rare in
intellectual or artistic undertakings, but common and almost indispensable
among men of action (pp. 111-112).
The awareness of their individual
blemishes and shortcomings inclines the frustrated to detect ill will and meanness
in their fellow men. Self-contempt,
however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the
blemishes we hid in ourselves (p 114).
PART FOUR
Men of Words
A full-blown mass movement is a
ruthless affair, and its management is in the hands of ruthless fanatics who
use words only to give an appearance of spontaneity to a consent obtained by
coercion. But these fanatics can move in
and take charge only after the prevailing order has been discredited and has
lost the allegiance of the masses. The
preliminary work of undermining existing institutions, of familiarizing the
masses with the idea of change, and of creating a receptivity to a new faith,
can be done only by men who are, first and foremost, talkers or writers and are
recognized as such by all. As long as
the existing order functions in a more or less orderly fashion, the masses
remain basically conservative. They can
think of reform but not of total innovation.
The fanatical extremist, no matter how eloquent strikes them as
dangerous, impractical or even insane.
They will not listen to him . . .
Things are different in the case of
the typical man of words. The masses
listen to him because they know that his words, however urgent, cannot have
immediate results. The authorities
either ignore him or use mild methods to muzzle him. Thus imperceptibly the man of words
undermines established institutions, discredits those in power, weakens
prevailing beliefs and loyalties, and sets the stage for the rise of “Mob rule”
(p 120).
The men of words are of diverse
types. They can be priests, scribes,
prophets, writers, artists, professors, students and intellectuals in general .
. . Whatever the type, there is a deep-seated craving common to almost all men
of words which determines their attitude to the prevailing order. It is a craving for recognition; a craving
for a clearly marked status above the common run of humanity. “Vanity,” said Napoleon, “made the
Revolution; liberty was only a pretext” (p 121).
The practical men of action
There are, of course, rare leaders
such as Lincoln, Gandhi, even FDR, Churchill and Nehru. They do not hesitate to harness man’s hungers
and fears to weld a following and make it zealous unto death in the service of
a holy cause, but unlike a Hitler, a Stalin, or even a Luther and a Calvin,
they are not tempted to use the slime of frustrated souls as mortar in the building
of a new world. The self-confidence of
these rare leaders is derived from and blended with their faith in humanity,
for they know that no one can be honorable unless he honors mankind (p 135).
