NOT RELIGION, NOT SCIENCE, BUT CULTURAL MARKERS!

 

Henry writes:

 

Humans are fortunate that the giftie gave us science. The science of evolution lets humans step away from ourselves in the here and now although, wrote Boyer, "doing science is also difficult and frustrating, and in many ways goes against the grain of our spontaneous way of thinking.  

It is a groping in the dark to seek a solution to a problem without understanding what that problem really is to begin with. This goes for problems among humans, societal problems, as well as for other kinds of problems, those addressed by physicists, chemists, and biologists; from the Big Bang up. As for the many seemingly intractable problems among humans, Pascal Boyer wrote that there is no good reason human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success of a thoroughly probed piece of research as applied to the rest of nature. Here are just some questions begging for answers:

• Why do people believe many things that are not true?
• What explains morality?
• What makes people cooperate or not?
• Why do people want other people to be more like themselves?

My Reply:

Henry,

This is eloquent as are all your missives.

Perhaps because of the nature of my Sense of Self (Personality), Sense of Place & Space (Geography), and Sense of Self-Worth (Demography), or the typology of The Fisher Paradigm, I am not looking for answers but for understanding.

Understanding exists beyond answers, as answers suggest solutions, and as we know, solutions only postpone understanding.

I am simply interested in the ever shifting nature of the stimuli that bombards our consciousness, and the consequences of that activity.

In my case, religion, Irish Roman Catholicism, gave me A Sense of Self; where and when I was born gave me A Sense of Place & Space; and my essence and its employment gave me A Sense of Self-Worth.

Equally so, science provided me with tools for a reasonably interesting life, but I have never been awed by science, or with those who would treat it as a new religion.

Where religion and science commingle for me, it is in culture.

All my works can be wrapped around that one word, “culture.”

Religion and science (for me) are blended into a harmonious whole as necessary aspects of my spiritual and rational needs as a conscious being. Incidentally, Einstein came to the same conclusion but in more poetic terms:

Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.

I am currently reading Harvard University trained etymologist and anthropologist Mark W. Moffett's "The Human Swarm: How our Societies Arise, Thrive and Fall" (2018), which, incidentally, is not unlike our own inevitable personal experience, as we (each) are essentially "a society of one."

Moffett studied under E. O. Wilson, the ant man, and like his mentor, has much to say about ants. Having read Wilson before, there are no surprises here.

What is, however, new for me is his comprehensive and elaborate presentation on cultural markers, such as how we differentiate each other from the way we talk, dress, eat, value and behave.

Markers are also our national flag, monuments, statues, patriotic songs, pledges (e.g., to the flag), and so on. Markers hold a society together, not science, not religion, but cultural markers.

Currently, I am working on a little book about Eric Hoffer and The Fisher Paradigm©™ which is surprising me on how identical our corporate society has become to a “mass movement” in the lexicon of Hoffer; how juvenile our society has become since WWII; and how that mindset has been allowed to decimate and deprecate traditional cultural markers without consequence by “rebels without a cause” but with the angst of spoiled brats, not realizing (apparently) that they are cutting off their hands that feed their faces.

Stay tuned,

And always be well,

Jim

1960s FREEZE-FRAMED IN THE 21st CENTURY

1960s Freeze-framed

In the 21^st Century

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© July 5, 2020

I am in the process of using quotes from Eric Hoffer books to illustrate another way of looking at THE FISHER PARADIGM©™ when it occurred to me that what I have been insisting in my writing that we created a “spoiled brat” generation after World War Two, also known as “The Baby Boomers,” was also a concern of Eric Hoffer fifty to sixty years ago. 

In this newest treatment of this The Fisher Paradigm, the reference typology PERSONALITY is classified  as a SENSE OF SELF, GEOGRAPHY as a SENSE OF PLACE, and DEMOGRAPHY as a SENSE OF SELF-WORTH. Only “the sense of worth” is covered in this expose.

What follows are quotations (with book and page designations). Remember, Hoffer was writing in the 1950s and 1960s when African Americans were known as Negroes.

DEMOGRAPHY -- SENSE OF SELF-WORTH.

We have over the centuries gone through alienation, self-estrangement, the divided self, the disowned self, the sexual self, a nomenclature that gets increasingly weird without apology.

As a consequence, a SENSE OF SELF-WORTH has lost meaning in terms of personal identity, as it continues to ignore the fact that a biological male or female is determined by distinct sets of chromosomes and not by sex role identities which now number in over 100.

There is probably no better way of gauging the nature of a society than by finding the direction in which ambition and talent flow. In what fields are there to be found the greatest rewards? What achievements does society prize most? In this country until not very long ago the social landscape was steeply tilted toward the marketplace. Most energies and talents flowed toward business. The American businessman, served by lawyers and politicians, ruled the roost. He dominated not only the marketplace but “society.” (The True Believer, p 43).

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 (The True Believer, Preface, 1951).

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 (Ibid, Preface).

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 (Ibid, 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 (Ibid, 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 (Ibid, 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 (Ibid, 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 (Ibid, 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 (Ibid, p 83).

Who would have dreamt that an unprecedented improvement in the lot of the Negro would result in burning and looting in cities; that the unprecedented affluence of the young would bring into being adolescent skid rows with adolescent whores, pimps, dope pushers, moochers and derelicts; that unprecedented opportunities for education would bring anarchy to places of learning? Whereas medical doctors when they prescribe a new drug warn the patient against dangerous side effects, our quacks of the body politic assume their prescribed reforms can never go wrong. We know now that in human affairs there is no certainty that good follows from good and evil from evil. As we enter the last third of the century it ought to be self-evident that when a society sets out to purge itself of iniquities and shortcomings it should expect the worst and grid itself for a crisis that will test its stability and stamina. A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness (First Things, Last Things, 1968. pp. 100-101).

It is questionable whether the Negro revolution can do much for the Negro. The Negro’s future in this country will be determined by his ability to compete and excel. If the Negro cannot learn to strive and build on his own he will remain lowest man on the totem pole no matter how explosive his slogans and how extravagant his self-dramatization. Nevertheless, the Negro revolution is a fateful event because of its effect on non-Negro segments of the population. It is an illustration of the fact that the most important revolutions are those other people make for us. The effect of the Negro revolution on the non-Negro young is as unexpected as it is puzzling. Why have the young so whole heartedly adopted the Negro’s way of life? The Negrification of the young will have profound and durable effects on language, sexual mores, work habits and the attitude towards drugs. Even the young white racists are Negrified and do not realize it (Ibid, pp. 101 – 102). 

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 (The True Believer, 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 (Ibid, 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 (Ibid, p 94).

What strikes one about the activist young is their lack of zest. Their obscenities are wooden, their insolence without a sparkle, and even their violence is trancelike. They dissipate without pleasure and are vain without a purpose. The revolution of the young is not against regimentation but against effort, against growth and, above all, against apprenticeship. They want to teach before they learn, want to retire before they work, want to rot before they ripen. They equate freedom with effortlessness and power with instant satisfaction. Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults. A society that takes its solemn adolescents seriously is headed for serious trouble. How humorless and laughable the solemn young! One realizes that one of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does. There is a lack of seriousness and dehumanization. Is there anything more serious that a cow grazing in the pasture? The nonhuman cosmos is immersed in an ocean of seriousness. Man alone can smile and laugh (First Things, Last Things, pp. 103 – 104).

One has the impression that the young do not want to, or perhaps cannot, grow up. Our campuses have become dour, playless nurseries echoing with doctrinaire baby talk. You see six-foot babies clamoring for power and protesting against universities not having adequate arrangements for child care. Here is San Francisco, as I watch the young with their bedrolls hitching rides and see them sprawled on the grimy sidewalks of Market Street and Haight-Ashbury, I am reminded strong of the Great Depression. That the great affluence of the 1960s should have produced a phenomenon so similar to that produced by the Great Depression, only substituting juveniles for grownups, is one more striking absurdity of an absurd age. Never has youth been face to face with more breathtaking opportunities and more deadly influences, and never before has character been so decisive a fact in the survival of the young. Nowadays a ten-year-old must be possessed of a strong character in order not to get irrevocably flawed and blemished. The road from boyhood to manhood has become sievelike; those without the right size of character slip into pitfalls and taps. The society of the young is at present almost as subject to the laws of sheer survival as an animal society. In the Bay Area you can see the young preyed upon by dope ushers, pimps, perverts and thugs. The supposedly most sheltered generation is actually the most exposed.

The present-day young do not seem to go anywhere yet they are impatient. They cannot hide their time because it is not the time of their growth. It seems doubtful whether a generation that clamors for instant fulfillment and instant solutions is capable of creating anything of enduring value. Instantness is a characteristic of the animal world, where action follows perception with the swiftness of a chemical reaction. In man, because of his rudimentary instincts, there is a pause of faltering and grouping, and this pause is the seedbed of images, longings, forebodings and irritations which are the warp and woof of the creative process. Peter Ulich, in The Human career, underlines the social significance of the pause: “Rarely is anything more important for the rise of civilization than the human capacity to put an interval between stimulus and action. For within this interval grow deliberation, perspective, objectivity, all the higher achievements of the reflective mind” (Ibid, pp. 105 – 106).

One also suspects that the young’s exaggerated faith in spontaneity and inspiration is a characteristic of unstretched minds. Creative people believe in hard work. At the core of every genuine talent there is an awareness of the effort and difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. It needs great effort to make an achievement seem effortless (Ibid, p 107). 

Intimidation

Thousands of peaceful Americans in city streets and ghettos, in suburbs and on campuses are meekly submitting to muggers, robbers and hoodlums, and to foulmouthed insults and threats. Few hit back or speak out loudly in outrage. The other day, at Berkeley, a class of 250 students was addressed by an intruding Negro student as mother……. and warned not to come to class next day or have their throats slit. The punk was not thrown out. The professor, a famous teacher, begged the intruder to leave the class. Would it have been overreaction had the class rushed the foul-mouthed punk and thrown him out? Was it sheer humanness that kept the famous professor meek in the face of insults and threats? The students and the professor were plainly afraid. When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot. Our sociologist quacks are warning us that violence is a symptom of a deep-seated social disease; that “it is the most dangerous error to treat symptoms and not get to the root causes of the disease itself.” They deprecate the demand for law and order on the grounds that “those who raise it are not intelligent enough to comprehend fully any complex issue or else have something other in mind than the concern for public safety.” In human affairs it is the shallow mind that refuses to deal with symptoms and is not awed by the mystery of the visible. Those who, when probing man’s behavior, brush aside what’s on the surface, and look for “root causes,” are like those who, when peeling an onion, discard scale after scale, and look for an inner kernel (Ibid, pp. 108-109).

The evidence of our eyes tells us that violence is not the outer manifestation of some dark disorder in the cellars of the mind but the perverse highjinks of unruly punks who think they can get away with it. We have here a virulent form of juvenile delinquency on a large scale. Seventy-five percent of crimes in the streets are committed by adolescents under twenty-one, and the odds are five to one they won’t get caught. (The odds are fourteen to one in stealing and nine to one in housebreaking.) The young thugs stalk older people like animals stalking their prey. They not only rob but brutally beat their victims. They do it for money but also for the excitement. It needs swift, unrelenting justice to take the fun out of violence and make willful juveniles think twice before they let themselves go.

The unavoidable conclusion is that the unprecedented meekness of the majority is responsible for the increase in violence. Social stability is the product of an equilibrium between a vigorous majority and violent minorities. Disorder does not come from an increased inner pressure or from the interaction of explosive ingredients. There is no reason to believe that the nature of the violent minorities is not greatly different from what it was in the past. What has changed is the will and the ability of the majority to react.

It is hard to tell what causes the pervasive timidity. One thinks of video-induced stupor, intake of tranquilizers, fear of not living to enjoy the many new possessions and toys, the example of our betters in cities and on campuses who high-mindedly surrender to threats of violence and make cowardice fashionable (Ibid, pp. 110 – 111).

THE FISHER PARADIGM©™ interest is in providing intuitive insight into where we seem to be in this long journey away from self-knowing. Eric Hoffer’s commentary is presented here in that spirit.

ONCE MORE, WAKING A GIANT

ONCE MORE, WAKING A GIANT

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© July 3, 2020

Klaus writes,

Jim,

Did you get the article from the WSJ? Racism is still an issue as well anti-Semitism. I read Eric Hoffer a long time ago and still have his book.

I do think all the confederate monuments should be taken down as well as the bases named after confederates should be changed. Those people were traitors, and they were lucky at the end they were not hanged.

The statues and the bases were erected and named during the Jim Crow era. When the mayor of Washington DC painted black lives matter in front of White House Trump did not complain, but when it was going to be painted on street where Trump tower is located, he complained. All police are not evil either, but when they do something bad like kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for over 8 minutes even though he had his hands handcuffed behind his back they should be punished.

As I have said before when I first came from Germany at the age of nine, I played with black kids. At one point a bunch of white kids our age started throwing rocks at us, and shouting I assume racial words at us even though my understanding of English was not that great at the time. I was also a teacher when they first integrated the schools. The first year we had about a hundred white kids at Young Junior High and the rest were black. Trump also tweeted that video where the man was shouting white power. Also, I think that the people who were doing the looting used the demonstrations as a back drop.

Klaus

Jim Responds:

Yes, I read this, piece and, sadly, I know it is only too true.  

I also agree criminals were at the ready to exploit the situation.  

Your view is legitimate.  Mine may differ a bit with yours, but it is respectfully submitted, not to refute yours, but to explain mine.

During the 1970s, when I was a police consultant, I witnessed this bias with some police organizations in terms of failure to promote deserving African American and Jewish police officers.  While traveling over a thousand hours with police officer in patrol, I never witnessed anything approaching what happened to George Floyd.  

That said, I did, however, write my Master's thesis on my nine months while embedded in the Fairfax County Police Department, an affluent county just outside Washington, DC.  What brought me to be so situated was a white police officers emptied his revolver on a 27 year old black man in a 7-11 Store in Herndon, killing him, after the man took the police officer’s nightstick, and began to beat the police officer on his head and shoulders.  A riot followed (re: A Social Psychological Study of the Police Organization: The Anatomy of a Riot, University of South Florida, 1976).   

Unlike you, I grew up in a community of 33,000 in Iowa without a single African American in my high school class, although when I was a junior, there was one on my high school football team.  

Less than one-tenth of one percent African Americans lived in Clinton, Iowa in the 1950s, or less than 300.  I never saw them at the Clinton swimming pool, the stores downtown, at the baseball ballpark, or in the neighborhood. 

It was not until I was at the University of Iowa that I had classes and made friends with them.  Throughout my life, I have always had African American friends, and have a granddaughter whose late mother was African American.  Her father, my son, has a tennis club in Jupiter, Florida.  The great African American tennis professional, Venus William, a friend of my son’s, while visiting him, met my six-year old granddaughter, who appears to be white, but who declared to Venus proudly, “I am an African American like you are.”

I had Jewish classmates in high school and at university, and during Christmas vacations, I would hang out at the Clinton County Library every day, studying.  My mother once asked me, “Jimmy, do you see any of your friends at the library?”  I answered, “Only my Jewish friends.”  My mother was quite enamored of the Jewish ethnicity, I think, because Jewish parents in her experience motivated their children to study.  She once said, “If I were not an Irish Catholic, I would prefer being Jewish.”

ONCE AGAIN, WAKING THE GIANT

Comparing the history of the United States to what you remember from Europe, and especially Germany may not be a reliable gauge. 

It is not in most history books, but the Thirteen Colonies that fought the Revolutionary War of Independence from Great Britain, were not all interested in being part of the United States of America. 

Tiny Rhode Island held out before finally abandoning its independence as a “separate country” within the confines of the United States. 

Southern states, of the 13 colonies, also demonstrated similar reluctance (see “The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution: 1788 – 1789” by John J. Ellis, 2015, profiling George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, and their respective roles in The Federalist Papers and the American Constitution). 

Another source, which demonstrates the ambivalence of the 13 colonies, was the War of 1812, in which Great Britain attempted to step into the American chaos of the time and regain control of its original colonies (See “Union1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence” by A. J. Langguth, 2006, and “Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans: The Battle that shaped America’s Destiny” by Brian Kilmeade, 2017).

We have always been a violent society according to sociologist David Riesman informs us in “The Lonely Crowd,” (1950).  See Chapter One: The American Character & Society. 

The irony is that American society, while seemingly to be individualistic, at one level, and has always been a contentiously conforming society at another, with resistance to that conformity always percolating just below the surface. 

Force harmony, which is compliance, is not the glue that holds a people to a common purpose but managed conflict, which sponsors cooperation.  This is a major theme in itself and can only be mentioned here.

My point is that Southerners did not see themselves as traitors, but as patriots defending States’ Rights in which slavery became the burning issue supplanting this original complaint.  Ken Burns did a television series on the American Civil War with Southern historian Shelby Foote eloquently presenting the States’ Rights justification for the rebellion of the South.

Closer to our own time, Texas and California have threatened to succeed from these United States. 

That said, slavery cannot now, then or ever be justified. 

In this era of the pandemic, we might just be awakening the sleeping giant in the American electorate.  Andrew Jackson did it in his presidency, which changed the presidency forever (See “America in the Age of Jackson” by David S. Reynolds, 2008) and Japan did it once again on December 7, 1941 bombing the American Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. 

Jim       

PS I am using Eric Hoffer quotations from his books to illustrate The Fisher Paradigm©™ in a new way vis-à-vis the Pandemic.  Stay tuned.

   

CONVERSATION WITH A READER ON SUBTEXT

A Conversation with a Reader Subtext!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 28, 2020 (March 19, 2016, originally published) 

A READER WRITES 

So...am I correct that you are saying that the subtext we all carry with us will impact how we view the content and context of our current life/affairs? 

It seems to me that the subtext, if that is correct, is the background of our lives and will be different depending on the time and place of our development. Consequently, though you and I are both from small town mid-west up-bringing, your subtext as someone whose formative years were during the late depression and WWII will be different from mine which results from growing up in the 1950s. As one psychologist put it years ago – “who we are depends on where we were when...” If that is all even close to what you mean by subtext let me know.

DR. FISHER

That is precisely what I mean by subtext.

But subtext is more than many faceted. Subtext applies equally to race, religion, nationality and culture, indeed, civilization, as they are all protean to its construction.

Subtext relates to us individually and collectively, and is marinated with our distinct histories. We bring our subtext in greetings to those with whom we interact and relate, and ultimately assimilate without conscious awareness of how aspects of that exposure finds its way into our own subtext.

In the end, we are always richer for the exposure and attention although that may not seem so at first.

Humanity is one body. Subtext may differ but it rises from that same source. Philosopher Isaiah Berlin writes that no subtext is superior to another but all can be identified through events.

The late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and etymologist E. O. Wilson developed the theory of "sociobiology," claiming that our subtext remains with those who follow. It surfaces quite dramatically and sometimes radically when continuity leads to discontinuity to disruption to catastrophe, or simply to mock catastrophe in comedic relief.  The point is that subtext is not usually apparent.

The stock market crash of 1929 and in 1987, and again in 2008 was evidence of the subtext surfacing and going awry in mass hysteria.  Ironically, people who had no money to lose talked as if they did.  It was an opportunity for subtext to be on display.

On the other hand, the current divisiveness in the Republican Party is playing out as dramaturgic relief as The Donald (Trump) exposes the hypocrisy in subtext. His popular bombast reveals an uptight nation comfortable and complacent in its denial.

Everything is subtext to behavior but most people do not understand that.

Occasionally, over the years, I've published "Fragments of a Philosophy." It was quoted in a missive on my blog (www.fisherofideas.com) August 30, 2009, titled "The Subtext of Life and Its Meaning." It remains the most popular piece I have ever posted:

“There is general denial of the subtext of life. It is contained in a kind of culture that exists apart from the kind transmitted by schools and universities, a kind of culture that once flourished in typical neighborhoods across the country, but is gone now. It helped to stem lawlessness, greed, corruption and other social diseases. It was a kind of social resistance that is lacking today, something upheld by average citizens, but by people in authority as well. There was a subtext of restrain undefined, unwritten, unspoken, but nonetheless felt, practiced and experienced.

“Today, the gap between people’s dreams and experience is too large. People have resorted to living life on the edge, running without thinking, on automatic pilot in the rhythm of the content and context of things without a sense of restrain or penalty. We see this in general apathy as people react to the lead stories on television nightly news and in the headlines of morning newspapers regarding murder, mayhem, rape, fraud, and malfeasance with irritations but little more. It is the ghost in the room.

“The mind is homeless. It lacks roots. Most people aren’t from where they are. A kind of isolation from a sense of place and space breaks people. Easily forgotten is that shameful acts are committed by people, wounded human beings.  “Once upon a time, they were children, little ones running down the street at the start of school with their backpacks bouncing in cadence to their happy feet. They were on their way to school and on their way out into life.

“One wonders watching this parade if there goes a thief, a wife beater, an addict, a drug dealer, a murderer, a rapist, an embezzler, a gang member, a prostitute, a pimp, a drag on society, someone on the fringe that will garner those lead stories.  “Is this predetermined? Quite the opposite.

But only if people use their intelligence and good will to get beyond surface issues of class and race, status and wealth, education and profession, immigration and ethnicity, religion and ideology, language and culture to consider the subtext of life to uncover what destroys social restrain and how to prepare the damage.  The world gets better or worse one person at a time. Apathetic or psychopathologic behaviors occur because people are not acquainted with the subtext of their lives and therefore enslaved to surface issues.  It was the same a hundred years ago and is likely to be so a hundred years hence.”

James R. Fisher, Jr., “Fragments of a Philosophy” (unpublished)

* * *

THE READER

What is happening in the world is that at any given time the current content and context are what develop the subtext that will be the life background baggage for those who are at that time in their formative years.

DR. FISHER: 

The subtext can include baggage, but it is not background.  Oh, no!  It is always there working its ways to the fore but just not always apparent.  In any case, acknowledged or not, it influences events.  

The subtext is what is.  It is what drives events.  

The source of subtext is the subconscious (individual or collective) from which the content and context of behaviors are displayed and ultimately managed or mismanaged.  

You could liken subtext to values if you like or collective history but only as a gauge.  The subtext is there, fully operational, but not apparent.  By that I mean that during periods of order surface consistency give the mocking sense that all is well when it never is.

Great disruptions, personal or societal, bring the subtext to prominence and to the confusion of those in charge, who are so schooled in denial that "what is" does not get much attention.  We have seen this in love and war, politics and religion, especially in politics and religion.    

It is during these periods of disruption, such as our current "Age of Technology," that subtext is neither acknowledged nor challenged.  It is avoided by more wondrous technology.

To be fair, there has been more change in the past 30 years than the previous 300.  So, rather than acknowledge subtext, and deal with its root attributes, we call this the "Age of Anxiety" and develop drugs to treat the condition, or writes books to describe it, and on and on.  

We valiantly avoid doing anything constructive about it, which would start by addressing the nature and function of subtext relative to the current age.   

THE READER

Hitler had not attacked the US and yet we declared war on Germany and in less than 4 years the US alone killed at least 2 million Germans.  In the 1940s there was no question in our collective mind that Germans were bad and in need of killing.  Hence it was a short war.  

DR. FISHER: 

Oh, dear!  That great justification, attrition!  

Here it is an expression of content (numbers) and context (dead Nazis) as it was also used in Vietnam, but without any attention to the events (including Vietnam history), which were driving subtext.  I will have more to say about WWII shortly. 

The US military routinely published its daily successes in Vietnam in terms of "body count" (Vietnamese killed) on the television nightly news as if a war of attrition was the answer to a war without a purpose.

That attention shows a total ignorance of subtext, and yet no one in power or public life at the time seemed to see the absurdity.

The French ruled Vietnam for more than a century, the subtext of a colonial power.  When France fell to Germany in WWII in 1940, this colonial power base was disrupted.  Finally, in 1954, France lost the First French Indo-China War, and Vietnam received its independence, being divided into North and South Vietnam as if you could separate a common people without disruption. 

Not surprisingly, that solution aggravated the problem of the subtext of Vietnam as a common people wanting total independence from foreign influence.  

President Kennedy stepped into this South Vietnam quagmire in support of a corrupt South Vietnam regime with American advisers and trainers.  

From that point forward it became a descent into the subtext of hell with more than 55,000 Americans in the military losing their lives in a cause that history hasn't treated kindly.  A generation of young Americans who protested against the war and refused to join in the fight were consumed in subtext and eventually stopped its advance.  

The subtext has a very long pull from the collective or historical subconscious of a people.  The book I'm now writing, NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND, is an attempt to give subtext to the American madness that currently dominates the content and context of our times, which is optimism in the face of reality of a pessimistic future.

To give you a closer sense of how pervasive subtext can be to history, consider WWII.  It all started long before even WWI.

Up until WWI, the aristocracy controlled every aspect of life of the European Western world.  The pull of Queen Victoria of Great Britain, alone, is impressive.  Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was a grandchild. Other grandchildren included queens of Greece, Norway, Romania, Spain and Sweden and the Tsarina Alexandra of Russia.  

WWI broke up this comfy aristocratic status but not its aristocratic subtext.  We are still feeling it to this day.

By the end of WWI, the high aristocracy collapsed.  The tsar, a relative of King George V of Great Britain, was overthrown and he and his royal family murdered by the Bolsheviks.  The great disruption didn't end there.

In the 1920s, the royal families across Europe had to find new ways to make a living as the aristocracy was in a state of collapse.  Take Germany's aristocracy as palpable evidence.  By 1938, nearly a fifth of the senior ranks of Heinrich Himmler's SS Gestapo were filled by holders of titles of nobility. The subtext goes ever deeper.  

The Third Reich of Hitler's Germany had a cozy relationship with King George and Queen Mary, current Queen Elizabeth's parents.  Her father even taught her the Nazi salute as a child.  

Many of the English aristocracy were fond of Hitler's Germany and believed he had restored political and social order.  They also saw him as a perfect foil to communism.  That was the content and context of the times with many with royal ties advocating an Anglo-German alliance.  

Great Britain's Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, gave an appeasement speech (Munich Agreement) in 1938 essentially conceding the Czech Republic to Hitler while ceremoniously declaring, "We have peace in our time."

This speech was given one year to the month before Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, launching WWII.

Appeasement was but a mask to the prevailing subtext of those in power in the British government.  Many prominent Brits were willing to make huge concessions to Hitler to avoid war.  One man understood the subtext of events and their meaning, and he saved the day for the West.  

Were it not for Winston Churchill being elected Prime Minister, it is difficult to imagine Great Britain not capitulating to the will of Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain resigned eight months after the start of WWII, the war going badly at the time, with Churchill taken office on May 10, 1940, and having to resist Nazi sympathizers in Great Britain from the first. 

THE READER: 

In the new century, based on changed subtext we have a very different context and content.  We accept Islam as the religion of peace and are careful to sort out the bad Muslims who have hi-jacked the religion, from the good ones.  The war being, for that reason, more nuanced is longer but we are killing far fewer.  That is not business as usual for us – that is progress.

DR. FISHER:

I hope what you imply is true, that our subtext reaches such maturity.  It is possible.

The People of Islam are victims of history as were the Japanese, and as are we all. Demagogues throughout history have adulterated the subtext of a people to present aspects of subtext in a twisted content and context to further their aims.  

Yet, the subtext of a people's history can be ripped from the bowels of their beliefs to present ugly aspects of that subtext.  No history is without this occasional momentum, not even ours.

The al-Qaeda terrorists present themselves as fighting a holy war, but what they want is power and the pride and identity of that power with their people. They are using religion the way Roman Catholicism justified the Inquisition, or forcing Jews to become Christians, and the list goes on.  No people or history is without the ugly side of subtext.    

Interestingly, your last word is "progress," seeing tolerance for Islam and Muslims a sign of progress.  I see it as a common sign of decency for differences. 

Everyone thinks progress is good, at least most Americans. General Electric once boasted "Progress is our most important product."  Progress is as deceptive a word as is Islam or Christianity.  African Americans understand what I mean by this.

Everyone influenced by such words thinks they understand and are simply dealing with the content and context of matters when it is subtext that is ruling the day, and not necessarily wisely.  

For example, Spain wouldn't be as Spain is today without the invasion of the Moors from North Africa in the eight century.  Nor would Europe be Europe without the Moors who would dominate well into the sixteenth century.  The Moors brought with them art, literature, architecture, mathematics, science and culture to the continent, a culture of black men who were then called "Negros" and who also taught discipline, military expertise and tolerance.   

Shakespeare would capture something of this with his "Othello" in the sixteenth century.

My views, I must confess, were influenced by a nun.  I had the good fortune of having Sister Mary Cecile as my seventh and eighth grade teacher in grammar school at St. Patrick's School, who taught me about the Moors and about their influence and culture.  It has never left me.  

No, I have no love for terrorists of any stripe, but I have no fear of a new mosque going up in my neighborhood, or of a family of Muslims moving in next door.  

Thank you for stirring up my little gray cells.  Keep thinking and reflecting.

And always be well,

Jim 

"MOB RULE" & ERIC HOFFER'S THE TRUE BELIEVER

 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 18^th 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).