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do it there. Thank you all right. I want to
welcome everyone to book number nine in my series. I
took a week off or two weeks off and back
to it and this time I'm going to do something different.
I'm going to read a book that I haven't read,
so we're going to read it together for the first time.
Or a lot of people I know have read this book.
I just haven't had a chance, and I thought, well,
here's my chance. So the book is called The True Believer.
The head the subheading is Thoughts on the Nature of
Mass Movements. It's a non going by Wikipedia here. It's
a nonfiction book authored by the American social philosopher Eric Hoffer,
published in nineteen fifty one. It depicts a variety of
arguments in terms of applied world history and social psychology
to explain why mass movements arise to challenge the status quo.
A little bit about Haffer. Haffer, it says, was an atheist,
American philosopher, social critic, conservative moderate with an atypical working
class background. Authored ten books over his career. Was awarded
the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February nineteen eighty three.
His first book, The True Believer, was widely recognized as
a classic, receiving critical acclaim from scholars and layman. Early
life many elements of Hoffer's early life or unverified, but
in autobiographical statements. Hoffer claimed to have been born in
nineteen oh two in the Bronx city of New York
to Newt and Elsa Geibel Hoffer Well. His mother's maiden
name was Gebel Geibel. His parents were immigrants from Alsace,
then part of Imperial Germany. By age five, Hoffer could
already read in both English and his parents' native German.
When he was five, his mother fell down the stairs
with him in her arms. He later recalled, I lost
my sight at the age of seven, two years before
my mother fell. My mother and I fell down the stairs.
She did not recover and died in that second year
after the fall. I lost my sight and for a
time my memory. Haffer spoke with the pronounced German accent
all his life and spoke the language fluently. He was
raised by a living relative or servant German immigrant named Martha.
His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was fifteen years old.
Fearing he might lose it again, he sees in the
opportunity to read as much as he could. His recovery
proved permanent. But Haffer never abandoned his reading habit all right,
So this book is recommended by many people. I don't
even remember who recommended it to me first because it's
been recommended by so many. So let's read it together.
I'm going to start with the preface and yeah, let's
just get into it deals with some peculiarities common to
all mass movements, be they religious movements, social revolutions, or
nationalist movements. It does not maintain that all movements are identical,
but that they share certain essential characteristics which give them
a family likeness. All mass movements generate in their adherence,
a readiness to die, and a proclivity for united action.
All of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and
the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm for hope, hatred,
and intolerance. All of them are capable of releasing a
powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life. All
of them demand blind faith and single hearted allegiance. All movements,
however different in doctrine and aspiration, draw their early adherents
from the same types of humanity. They all appeal to
the same types of mind, though there are obvious differences
between the fanatical Christian, fanatical Mohammedan, the fanatical nationalists, the
fanatical communists and the fanatical Nazi. It is yet true
that the fanaticism which animates them may be viewed and
treated as one. The same is true of the force
which drives them on to expansion and world dominion. There
is a certain uniformity in all types of dedication of faith,
of pursuit of power, of unity, and of self sacrifice.
There are vast differences in the contents of the holy
causes and doctrines, but a certain uniformity in the factors
which make them effective. He who, like Pascal, finds precise
reasons for the effectiveness of Christian doctrine, has also found
the reasons for the effectiveness of communist, Nazi and nationalist doctrine.
However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps
die basically for the same thing. This book concerns itself
chiefly with the activity with the active revivalist phase of
mass movements. This phase is dominated by the true believer,
the man of fanatical faith, who is ready to sacrifice
his life for a whole cause, and an attempt is
made to trace his genesis and outline his nature. As
an aid in this effort, use is made of working hypotheses,
starting out from the fact that the frustrated the frustrated
predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements, and
that they usually join of their own accord. It is
assumed one that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting
from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics
of the true believer, that an effective technique of conversion
consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and
responses indigenous to the frustrated mind. To testabilidity these assumptions,
it was necessary to inquire into the ills that afflict
the frustrated, how they react against them, the degree to
which these reactions correspond to responses to the true believer,
and finally, the manner in which these reactions can facilitate
the rise and spread of a mass movement. It was
also necessary to examine the practice of contemporary movements which
successful techniques of conversion had been perfected and applied, in
order to discover whether they corroborate the view that a
proselytizing mass movement deliberately fosters in its adherents a frustrated
state of mind, and that it automatically advances its interest
when it seconds to propensities of the frustrated. It is
necessary for most of us these days to have some
insight into the motives and response as the true believer,
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. It is perhaps not superfluous to
add a word of caution. When we speak of the
family likeness of mass movements. We use to term the
word family in a taxonomical sense. The tomato and the
night shade are in the same family, the soleness solena, say,
I've ever seen that word before, Though though the one
is nutritious, in the other poisonous. They have They have
many morphological, anatomical, and physiological traits in common, so that
even the non botanist senses of family likeness. The assumptions
that mass movements have many traits in common does not
imply that all movements are equally beneficent or poisonous. The
book passes. This book passes no judgment and expresses no preferences.
It merely tries to explain and the explanations all of them.
Theories are in the nature of suggestions and arguments, even
when they are stated in what seems a categorical tone.
I can do no better than to quote Montane. All
I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by
way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if
it were my due to be believe. So, I think
that this is going to hit a lot of people.
I think that a lot of people are going to
listen to this or read it, and they're going to think, well,
this doesn't have anything to do with me, this is
the other guy. Well, I think the intelligent man, the
man of history, can examine himself and see where they
can find themselves in pretty much anything. So we'll see
how it goes. Part one is called the appeal of
mass movements. Part one of that is the desire for change.
It is a truism that many who join a rising
revolutionary movement are attracted by the prospect of sudden and
spectacular change in their conditions of life. A revolutionary movement
is a conspicuous instrument of change many, or I would say,
in the culture around them, the term reactionary comes to mind.
It gets thrown around now. So obvious is the fact
that religious and nationalists movements too can be vehicles to change.
Some kind of widespread enthusiasm or excitement is apparently needed
for the realization of vast and rapid change, and it
does not seem to matter whether the exhilaration is derived
from an expectation of untold riches or is generated by
an active mass movement. In this country, the spectacular changes
since the Civil War were enacted in an environment charged
with the enthusiasm born of fabulous opportunities for self advancement
read individualism. Where self advancement cannot or is not allowed
to serve as a driving force, other sources of enthusiasm
have to be found if momentous changes, such as the
awakening and renovation of a stagnant society or radical reforms
in the character and pattern of life of a community
are to be realized and perpetrate and perpetuated. Revolutionary and
nationalist movements are such generating plants of general enthusiasm. So
stagnant society, momentous changes awakening. I'm pretty sure you can
get where this is. Where he's starting this from in
the past religious movements where the conspicuous vehicles have change.
The conservatism of a religion its orthodoxy is the inert
coagulum of a once highly reactive SAP. A rising religious
movement is all change and experiment, open to new views
and techniques from all quarters. Islam when it emerged was
an organizing and modernizing medium. Christianity was a civilizing and
modernizing influence among the savage tribes of Europe. The Crusades
and the Reformation both were crucial factors in shaking the
Western world from the stagnation of the Middle Ages. In
modern times, the mass movements involved in the realization of
vast and rapid change are revolutionary, nationalist, singly or in combination.
Peter the Great was probably the equal in dedication, power
and ruthlessness of many of the most successful revolutionary or
nationalist leaders. Yet he failed in his chief purpose, which
was to turn Russia into a Western nation. And the
reason he failed was that he did not infuse the
Russian masses with some soul stirring enthusiasm he either did
not think it necessary or did not know how to
make of his purpose a holy cause. It is not
strange that the Bolshevik revolutionaries, who wiped out the last
of the Czars and Romanovs, should have a sense of
kinship with Peter, a Czar and a Romanov. For his
purposes now theirs, and they hope to succeed where he failed.
The Bolshevik Revolution may figure in history as much as
much an attempt to modernize a sixth of the world's
surface as an attempt to build a communist economy. I
think it's interesting that he when he brings up a
that Peter failed because he didn't he wasn't able to
stir enthusiasm in the people. And you know, he wanted
to basically turn it into a Western nation, which Russia
will never be. Ever, and when you look at what
the progressives are trying to do, it's so against our
nature that instinctively most of us realized that it's wrong
and immediately start pushing back against it. So yeah, and
then he talks about for his purpose, now he talks
about the Bolshevik Revolution, Well, the way they would get
they wouldn't be able to get people excited for what
they were doing. They're just telling him this is the
way it's going to be, and if you don't like it.
The fact that both the French and Russian revolutions turned
into nationalist movement seems to indicate that in modern times,
nationalism's most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm, and
that nationalists fervor must be tapped if the drastic change
is projected and initiated by revolutionary enthusiasm are to be consummated.
One wonders whether the difficulties encountered by the present Labor
government in Britain are not partly due to the fact
that the attempt to change the economy of the country
and the way of life of forty nine million people
had been initiated in an atmosphere singularly free from fervor, exultation,
and wild hope. The revulsion from ugly patterns developed by
most contemporary mass movements has kept the civilized and decent
leaders of the Labor Party shy of revolutionary enthusiasm. The
possibility still remains that events might force them to make
use of some mild form of chauvinism, so that in
Britain too, the socialization of the nation might have as
its corollary the nationalization of socialism. So he seems to
be implying here that even though we see basically in Britain,
even among nationalists, the NHS is just a given, you know,
which is a form of socialism that in the beginning,
he's writing this in nineteen fifty one, so this is
post war that and you know, the NHS came into being,
I think it was in forty eight or forty nine.
Not everybody would have been excited about it. It would
have had to have been sold, and it doesn't look
like there was any revolutionary enthusiasm for it. But as
time goes on, you make it, you make it a
part of and any of my my British listeners can
who know the history better than I do. You make
it a part of the nation. You make it something
that they're proud of. You make it. I've referred to it.
I've heard it referred to us as the crown one
of the crown jewels of England. Well, then no one's
ever going to think that forty million, any portion of
forty nine million people could have been against it. The
phenomenal modernization of Japan would probably not have been possible
without the revitalist spirit of Japanese nationalism. It is perhaps
also true that the rapid modernization of some European countries,
Germany in particular, was facilitated was facilitated to some extent
by the expurge and thorough diffusion of nationalist fervor. Judged
by president indications, the Renaissance the rena sense of Asia
will be brought about through the instrumentality of nationalist movements
rather than by other mediums. It was the rise of
a genuine nationalist movement which enabled Kamal Kamal at a
Turk to modernize Turkey almost overnight. I usually just see
edit Turk. Rarely do I see it written with his
first name. In Egypt, untouched by a mass movement, modernization
is slow and faltering, though It's rulers from the day
of Mahmed Ali have welcomed Western ideas and its contacts
with the West have been many. An intimate Zionism is
an instrument for the renovation of a backward country and
the transformation of shopkeepers and brain workers into farmers, laborers
and soldiers. Had Shanghai Shek known how to set in
motion and genuine mass movement, or at least sustain the
nationalist enthusiasm kindled by the Japanese invasion. He might have
been acting now as the renovator of China, since he
did not know how he was easily shoved aside by
the masters of the art of religification, the art of
turning practical print purposes into holy causes. It is not
difficult to see why America, in Britain, or any Western
democracy could not play a direct and leading role in
rousing the Asiatic countries from their backwardness and stagnation. That
democracies are neither inclined nor perhaps able to kindle a
revivalist spirit in Asia's millions. The contribution of the Western
democracy to the awakening of the East has been indirect,
and certain unt and certainly unintended. They have kindled an
enthusiasm of resentment across the West, and it is this
anti Western fervor which is at present rousing the Orient
from its stagnation of centuries. So I know that this
has been recommended to me for years, But I don't
know how is he going to feel about nationalism? Is
some nationalism okay? Is some nationalism wrong? I have no
idea which direction he is. I have a tendency to
believe he's going to make the argument that nationalism is wrong,
which I don't have a problem with covering and reading,
because as much as I well nationalism, nationalism is a
term that you may have to use when it when
you have a maybe one of the only terms you
could use when you have a multicultural society. But multicultural
societies really don't work even with nationalism, and some people
don't like nationalism amongst monocultural societies. So we'll see where
this takes us. Though the desire for change is not
infrequently a superficial motive, it is yet worth finding out
whether a probing of this desire might not shed some
light on the inner working of mass movements. We fall inquire, therefore,
into the nature of the desire for change. There isn't
us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our
existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in
our minds with the state of things around us. Hence
it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think
it is a good world and would like to conserve
it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change,
the tendency to look for all. Let me read that again.
Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment
think it is a good world and would like to
conserve it as it is, while the frustrated face favor
radical change. I mean, if I was to try to
relate that to today, I mean, the people who think
they have a sense of fulfillment but certainly don't act
like it would be progressives, those who defend the regime,
and then those who and they seek to conserve it.
While the frustrated favor radical change, the frustrated would be
I mean, I would consider myself frustrated. I would consider
most of the people I know frustrated. If that's a
bad thing, well, we'll see what. We'll see where this
takes us. The point being is that you you can't
this can't exist in a vacuum. Obviously, people who were
in the gulag were frustrated, and we're looking for radical change.
So yeah, If anything, ale Aman says to Row so
that he does not his functions, if he have a
pain in his vowels, even he forthwith sets about reforming
the world. It is understandable that those who fail should
incline to blame the world for their failure. The remarkable
thing is that the successful, too, however much they pride
themselves on their foresight, fortitude, thrift, and other sterling qualities,
are at bottom convinced that their success is the result
of a fortuitous combination of circumstances. The self confidence of
even the consistently successful is never absolute. They are never
sure that they know all of the ingredients which go
into the making of their success. The outside world seems
to them a precariously balanced mechanism, and so long as
it ticks in their favor, they are afraid to tinker
with it. Thus, the resistance to change and the ardent
desire for it to spring from the same conviction, and
the one can be as vehement as the other. Anyone
who's successful out there disagree with that jero is waiting
for Dominosa starts to fall right. Three. Discontent by itself
does not invariably create a desire for change. Other factors
have to be present before discontent turns into disaffection. One
of these is a sense of power. Those who are
awed by their surroundings do not think of change, no
matter how miserable their condition. When our mode of life
is so precarious as to make it patent that we
cannot control the circumstances of our existence, we tend to
stick to the proven and the familiar. We counteract a
deep feeling of insecurity by making of our existence a
fixed routine. We hereby acquire the illusion that we obtain
the unpredictable fisher folk, nomads and farmers who have to
contend with the wilful elements, the creative worker who depends
on inspiration, the savage awed by its surroundings. They all
fear change. They face the world as they would an
all powerful jury. The abjectly poor, too, stand in awe
of the world around them, and are not hospitable to change.
It is a dangerous life we live when hunger and
cold are at our heels. There is thus a conservatism
of the destitute as profound as the conservatism of the privileged,
and the former is as much a factor in the
perpetuation of a social order as the latter. It's interesting
that he connects the very poor to having a fear
of change as much as very successful. But it makes sense.
If you're very poor and you're getting you're getting by
change could always make it worse. Where for the very
wealthy or the very successful, if there's change in the
opposite direction, you have a long path. You have a
long path to get to the abjectly poor. Not always,
but the men who rush into undertakings of vast change
usually feel they are in possession of some irresistible power.
The generation that made the French Revolution had an extravagant
conception of the omnipotence of man's reason and the boundless
range of his intelligence. Never, says to Touteville, had humanity
been prouder of itself, nor had it ever so much
faith in its own omnipotence. And joined with this exaggerated
self confidence was a universal thirst for the change which
came unbidden to every mind. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who
plunged recklessly into the chaos of the creation of a
new world, had blind faith in the omnipotence of Marxist doctrine.
The Nazis had nothing as potent as that doctrine, but
they had faith in an infallible leader, and also faith
in a new technique. For it is doubtful whether national
socialism would have made such rapid progress if it had
not been for the electrifying conviction that the new techniques
of blitzkrieg and propaganda made Germany irresistible. There was also
some technical some technical progress and prowess there too, But
what do you expect. Even the sober desire for progress
is sustained by faith, faith in the intrinsic goodness of
human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is
a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by
men who set out to build a city and a
tower whose top may reach onto heaven, and who believe
that nothing will be restrained from them which they have
imagined to do good. Reference to Babbel four or am
I reading the page numbers out well. Possibly, but anyway offhand,
one would expect that the mere possession of power would
automatically result in a cocky attitude toward the world and
of receptivity to change. But it is not always so.
The powerful can be as timid as the weak. Which
seems to count more than possession of instruments of power
is faith in the future. Where power is not joined
with faith in the future, it is used mainly to
ward off the new and preserve the status quo. On
the other hand, extravagant hope, even when not backed by
actual power, is likely to generate a most reckless daring.
For the hope will can draw strength from the most
ridiculous source of power, a slogan, a word, a button.
No faith is potent unless it also has faith in
the future, unless it has a millennial component. So to
an effective doctrine, as well as being a source of power,
it must also claim to be a key to the
book of the future. So there has to be a promise.
What he's saying is there has to be a promise
that things will be getting better, that your lot in
life will improve. In order for you to join this
mass movement. Those who would transform anation or the world
cannot do so by breeding and getting discontent, or by
demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes, or
by coercing people into a new way of life. They
must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope.
It matters not whether it be hope of a heavenly
kingdom of heaven on earth, of plunder and untold riches
of fabulous achievement, or well dominant or world dominion. If
the Communists win Europe in a large part of the world,
it will not be because they know how to stir
up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but
because they know how to preach hope. Well, since you
wrote this in nineteen fifty one, maybe we can at
consider that when we look at why they failed. Thus,
the differences between the conservative and the radical seems to
spring mainly from their attitude towards the future. Fear of
the future causes us to lean against and cling to
the present, while faith in the future renders us receipts
to change. Both the rich and the poor, the strong
and the weak. They who have achieved much or little
can be afraid of the future when the presence seems
so perfect that the most we can expect is its
even continuation in the future, change can only mean deterioration. Hence,
men of outstanding achievement and those who live full, happy
lives usually set their faces against drastic innovation. So if
that's true, and you see any men of incredible means
right now who seems would seem to have everything who
are calling for change, pay attention. That means something. If
his hypothesis is true. The conservatism of invalids and people
and people past middle age stems too from fear of
the future. They are on the outlook for signs of
decay and feel that any change is more likely to
be for the worst for the better. The abjectly poor
also are without faith in the future. The future seems
to them a booby trap buried on the road ahead.
One must step gingerly. To change things is to ask
for trouble. As for the hopeful, it does not seem
to make any difference who it is that is seized
with a wild hope. Whether it be an enthusiastic intellectual,
a land hungry farmer, a get rich quick speculator, a
sober merchant, or an industrialist, a plain workingman, or a
noble lord. They all proceed recklessly with the present wreck
if necessary, and create a new world. There can thus
be revolutions by the privilege as well as by the underprivileged.
I would say revolution by the privilege what we call
that elite theory. Under privilege, we'd call that revolution like
real revolution, which is usually funded by elite. The movement
of enclosure in sixteenth and seventeenth century England was a
revolution by the rich. The woolen industry rose to high prosperity,
and grazing became more profitable than cropping. The landowners drove
off their tenants, enclosed the commons, and wrought profound changes
in the social and economic texture of the country. The
lords and nobles were upsetting the social order, breaking down
ancient law and custom, sometimes by means of violence, often
by pressure and intimidation. Another English revolution by the rich
occurred at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of
the nineteenth century. It was the Industrial Revolution. The breathtaking
potentialities of mechanizations set the minds of manufacturers and merchants
on fire. They began a revolution as extreme and radical
as ever inflamed the minds of sectarians, and in a
relatively short time these respectable, god fearing citizens changed the
face of England beyond recognition. When hopes and dreams are
loose in the streets, it is well for the timids
locked doors, shutter windows, and lie low until the wrath
has passed, For there is offering a monstrous incongruity between
the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which
follows them. It is if ivied maidens and garlanded youths
were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse. For
men to plunge headlong into an undertaking a vast change,
they must be intensely discontented, yet not destitute. And they
must have the feeling that by the possession of some
potent doctrine, infallible leader, or some new technique, they have
access to a source of irresistible power. They must also
have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of
the future. Finally, they must wholly They must be wholly
ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience
is a handicap. The men who started the French Revolution
were wholly without political experience. The same is true of
the Bolsheviks, Nazis, and the revolutionaries in Asia. The experienced
man of affairs is a late comer. He answers the
movement when it is already a going concern. It is
perhaps the Englishman's political experience that keeps him shy of
mass movements. Part two, The desire for substitutes. There's a
fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and
the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers
opportunities for self advancement, and its appeal is mainly to
self interest. On the other hand, a mass movement, particularly
in its active revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent
on bolstering and advancing a cherish self, but to those
who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A
mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it
can satisfy the desire for self advancement, but because it
can satisfy the passion for self renunciation. In order to
become a movement, you have to give up. What he's
saying is in order to become a part of a movement,
you're gonna have to give up your individualism. That's how
I read it. Somebody wants to I'm open to people
saying I'm wrong, people who say their lives, people who
see their lives as irredeemably spoiled cannot find a worthwhile
purpose in self advancement. He's used self advancement out here
to sentences in a row. It's individualism. It has to
be the prospect of an individual career. Cannot stir them
to a mighty effort, nor can it evoke in them
faith and single minded dedication. They look on self interest
as on something tainted and evil, something unclean and unlucky.
Anything undertaken under the auspices of the self seems to
be for doomed. Nothing that has its roots and reasons
in the self can be good and noble. Their innermost
craving is for a new life, a rebirth, or, failing this,
a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope,
a sense of purpose and worth by an identification with
a holy cause. An active mass movement offers them opportunities
for both. If they join the movement as full converts,
they are reborn to a new life in its close
knit collective body. Or if attracted as sympathizers, they find themselves.
They find elements of pride, confidence and purpose by identifying
themselves with the efforts, achievements, and prospects of the movement. Basically,
what he's doing here, he's not using the term but
I'm He's basically saying, like people who've failed, people who
failed themselves doing things themselves, they haven't been able to
accomplish anything. So by joining a movement, they feel like
they can accomplish something. Trying to figure out a good example.
And I don't want to insult any of my veteran friends,
but I think you see a lot of people who
a lot of kids who do that by joining the military.
I don't think that's the only reason people join the military,
and I think there's good reasons to join the military,
but I think that that's probably a pretty good example.
You're joining something that's a movement. You're a part of
something you know, and if you know, if you have
your country has a really good military, you have something
to be proud of. There's something to brag about. To
the frustrated of a mass movement off to the frustrated,
a mass movement offers substitutes, either for the whole self
or for the elements which make life bearable and which
they cannot evoke out of their individual resources. It is
true that among the early adherents of a mass movement
there are also adventurers who join in the group that
the movement will give a spin to their wheel of
fortune and world them to fame and power. On the
other hand, a degree of selfless dedication is sometimes displayed
by those who join corporations, orthodox political parties, and other
practical organizations. Still, the fact remains that a practical concern
cannot endure unless it can appeal to and satisfy self interest,
while the vigor and growth of a rising mass movement
depends on its capacity to evoke and satisfy the passion
for self renunciation. When a mass movement begins to attract
people who are interested in their individual careers, it is
a sign that it has passed its vigorous stage, that
it is no longer engaged in molding a new world,
but in possessing and preserving the present. It ceases then
to be a movement and becomes an enterprise. According to Hitler,
the more posts and offices a movement has to hand out,
the more inferior stuff it will attract, And in the end,
these political hangers ons overwhelm a successful party in such
number that the honest fighter of former days no longer
recognized as the old movement. When this happens, the mission
of such a movement is done for. It sounds like
he's describing gatekeepers. Like some kind of movement gets going,
shows promise and right before it's about could be just
at the point when it's about to explode. And actually
I hate the term mainstream, but be adopted, start being
adopted on a wider scale. These people come in, the
ones who are already have, who are have their career,
have their individual careers, and who are aren't hungry. Basically,
they come in to just take advantage of what's been
built and even stop it in its tracks. And any
of you who listen to me and a lot and
you know you will know who I may be may
be talking about. So the nature of the complete substitute
offered by conversion is discussed in the chapters on self
sacrifice and united action. In Part three, here we shall
deal with partial substitutes. Faith in a holy cause is,
to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith
in ourselves. The less justified a man is in claiming
excellence for his own self, the more ready he is
he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion,
his race, or his holy cause. Basically, it seems when
you read that faith in a holy cause is to
a considerable extent of substitute for lost faith in ourselves,
he seems to be He doesn't even seem to he's
coming at it from visualism, liberal classical liberalism, the kind
of things that have sought to infiltrate, you know, real
right wing thinking, you know, who have brought us to
where we are. Seems that he's championing it, and he's
saying that when men abandon that, they're more ready to
claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race,
or his holy cause. Now he may be saying that
they are doing that when they really shouldn't be taking
any credit for it. But yeah, I think see where
this is going. 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. The minding of other people's business
expresses itself in gossip, snooping, and meddling, and also in
feverish interests in communal, national, and racial affairs, and running
away from ourselves. We either fall on our neighbor's shoulder
or fly his throat. So minding other people's business expresses
itself in gossip, snooping, and meddling. Okay, here's the thing. Normally,
when you're noticing what other people are doing and you
think it's detrimental to yourself, your society, your family, your culture,
your religion. It's because other people, other peoples. He's trying
to make people's here, he's put the apostrophe on people's
he's trying to make it singular. No, they're coming together,
and this is exactly the problem. The problem is is
that you can be an individual all you want and
think that you have it all worked out and that
you're going to live the rest of your life and
no one's going to hurt you or take your stuff.
But there are other people who are coming together and
they're gossiping, snooping and meddling and looking at you, you know,
looking at you and seeking to maybe they don't like
what your opinions are on communal, national, or racial affairs.
There are no individuals. Individuals are just there waiting to
be picked off. So again, the minding of other people's
business expresses itself in gossip, snooping, and meddling, and also
in feverish interest in communal, national, and racial affairs. In
running away from ourselves, we either fall on our neighbor's
shoulder or fly at his throat. This I mean, I
will say this is human nature. The burning conviction that
we have a holy duty toward others is often a
way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft.
What looks like giving a hand is often a 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,
if we gain enormously in self esteem. The vanity of
the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
So there is no doubt that in exchanging a self
centered for a selfless life, we gain enormously in self esteem.
What's he saying there, that somebody who's radically individual. Now
they go and they serve, serve in the military, and
they're selfless, and they'll give their life for their you know,
the man standing next to them that gives him self esteem.
And then he says, the vanity of the selfless, even
those who practice utmost humility, is boundless. So he's calling
that vanity. One of the potent attractions of a mass
movement is its offering of a substitute for individual hope.
This attraction is particularly effective in a society imbued with
the idea of progress, For in the conception of progress,
tomorrow looms large, and the frustration results from having nothing
to look forward to is more poignant. Hermann Rauschning says
of pre Hilary in Germany that the feeling of having
come to an end of all things was one of
the worst troubles we endured after that lost war World
War One. In a modern society, people can live without
hope only when kept dazed and get dazed and out
of breath by incessant hustling. The despair brought by unemployment
comes not only from the threat of destitution, but from
the sudden view of a vast nothingness ahead. The unemployed
are more likely to follow pedlars of hope than the
handers out of relief. Sometimes people are unemployed because other
people made them so, design the system so. Mass movements
are usually accused of doping their followers with hope of
the future, while cheating them of enjoyment of the present.
Yet to be frustrated, the present is irredeemably spoiled. Comforts
and pleasures cannot make it whole. No real content or
comfort can ever arise in their minds, but from hope. Yeah,
I guess you have to take into consideration that he's
writing this in nineteen fifty one. He's living in the
United States. The United States says, quote unquote won the war.
Hope is everywhere, prosperity is happening, and things look good,
even in the Bronx. I don't know where he lived
when he wrote this, but yeah, I think it's easy
to look at this now. If he's able to place
himself into the position of someone living in Weimar, you know,
or somebody you know, one of the people who was
slaughtered by the Bolsheviks after the revolution, well, hopefully he
can do that. 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
of desperate clinging to something which might give worth and
meaning to our feudal, spoiled lives. When he says spoiled,
I think he means harmed, destroyed. 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. So if you look at that sentence,
you know he talks about faith in your nation and
your religion, your race, or your holy cause. I think
there's your list. That's what he sees as a negative,
which is very interesting considering this was written right after
a year after the authoritarian personality is released. Very interesting.
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 right. And
this next part is called the interchangeability of mass Movements.
I'm going to leave it right there for the first day,
because I made a lot of a lot of comments,
and this is interesting. He immediately starts talking about pre
Hilarian Germany, Communists or Nazis, overcrowded pales, Ourist Russia, Zionism, Heimwittzmann.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, there's a lot. This is gonna
be good, all right, So thanks for tuning in for
this and I will see you on part two. Take
care bye,