Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to part four of
my reading of Eric Hoffer's True Believer. A reminder about
Thomas and my watching movies and reviewing them. Head on
over to freemann Beyond the Wall dot com forward slash movies.
Do you see the movies that we've done. The last
one was Fantasm we did there for Halloween, and we
are getting ready to record our next Keep it a
secret as to what it is. Right now? All right,
let's see where a Hoffer goes with part three, United
action and self sacrifice, and he has a preface to
this one. The vigor of a mass movement stems from
the propensity of its followers for united action and self sacrifice.
When we ascribe the success of a movement to its faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, ruthlessness,
and so on, we are but referring to instruments of
unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness or
self sacrifice. It is perhaps impossible to understand the nature
of mass movements unless it is recognized that the chief
preoccupation is to foster, perfect and perpetuate a facility for
united action and self sacrifice. Correct, But there is an
ends as well, and self sacrifice here he The way
I have to read this as to what I've been
reading what I've read so far, is that that's a
bad thing. That people should be individuals, and by joining
a movement you've given up your individuality and embraced collectivism.
To know the processes by which such a facility is
engendered is to grasp the inner logic of most of
the characteristic attitudes and practices of an active mass movement.
With few exceptions, any group or organization which tries, for
one reason or another to create and maintain compact unity
and a constant readiness for self sacrifice usually manifest to peculiarities.
The peculiarities both noble and base of a mass movement.
On the other hand, a mass movement is bound to
lose much which distinguishes it from other types of organizations
when it relaxes its collective compactness and begins to count
in its self interests as legitimate motive of activity. Okay,
in times of peace and prosperity, a democratic nation and
an institutionalized association of more or less free individuals. Okay,
let me read that again. In times of peace and prosperity,
a democratic nation is an institutionalized association of more or
less free individuals. On the other hand, in times of crisis,
when the nation's existence is threatened and it tries to
reinforce its unity and generate in its people a readiness
for self sacrifice, it almost always assumes in some degree
the character of a mass move all right, in times
of peace and prosperity, a democratic nation is an institutionalized
association of more or free of more or less free individuals.
Correct democracy promotes and champions individualism, and when that starts
to fail, because it's going to fail, people revert back
to collectivism, coming together people of like mind, who look alike,
who share the same language, share the same ethnicity, and
he calls that a mass movement. The same is true
of religious and revolutionary organizations. Whether or not they develop
into mass movements depends less on the doctrine they preach
and the program they project, that on the degree of
their preoccupation with unity and the readiness for self sacrifice.
Any religious is going to be about a group. Revolutionary organization,
I mean, depends on how you define revolutionary. The important
point is that in the poignantly frustrated. The propensities for
united action and self sacrifice arise spontaneously. I spontaneously. Okay.
It should be possible, therefore, to gain some clues concerning
the nature of these propensities and the technique to be
employed for their deliberate inculcation, by tracing their spontaneous emergence
in the frustrated mind. The frustrated mind, I would so far,
if I were to define frustrated mind by what I've
read so far, is the mind that realizes, even subconsciously,
that collectivism is natural and is being forced into individualism,
and individualism is causing everything to fall apart, because that's
what it does. What ails to frustrated it is the
consciousness of an irredeemably blemish self. See that's this is
where he's just wrong. And I really like everybody listening
to this has picked up a book, read half of
it and stop reading, whether because they just were like,
I don't I'm not going to this is garbage, I'm
not going to read any more of it, or just
because you most of the time it is distracted by
another book. Many such cases. My correct At this point,
if I was reading this alone, i'd probably just put
it aside, because I mean, it's it's insane. And tell me,
if you're listening to this, tell me if you think
I should just stop reading this, if you've heard enough,
if it is you're the fourth episode, this is the
fourth episode. I'm going to finish the fourth episode. Tell
me if you think you've heard enough you don't need
to hear any more, or if you want me to
finish this. I usually don't do this. I usually do
things because I want to. But I want to get
your opinion on this as the people who are listening
to it. Some of you may just be at the
point where you don't. You're like, I'm not even gonna
listen to anymore of this. Pete. You know, Pete's kind
of wasting his time. You might believe that, and maybe
I am. But give me your opinion. Should I finish
this book probably would be. I was counting five or
six more episodes, So I mean, if you've heard enough,
all right, I'm gonna keep going. Their chief desire is
to escape the self again, and this Hoffer is a
radical individualists. And it is this desire which manifests itself
in a propensity for united action and self sacrifice, yeah, family,
ethnic toy, things that he seems to you not put
much in, not put much importance in. The revulsion from
an unwanted self and the impulse to forget it, mask it,
slough it off, and lose it produce both the readiness
to sacrifice the self and willingness to dissolve it by
losing one's individual distinctness in a compact, collective whole. Moreover,
the estrangement from the self is usually accompanied by a
train of diverse and seemingly unrelated attitudes and impulses, which
a closer probing reveals to be essential factors in the
process of unification and of self sacrifice. In other words,
frustration not only gives rise to the desire for unity
and the readiness for self sacrifice, but also creates a
mechanism for their realization. Such diverse phenomena as a deprecation
of the present, a facility for make believe, a proneness
to hate, a readiness to imitate credility, a readiness to
attempt the impossible, and many others which crowd the minds
of the intensely frustrated. Are as. We shall see unifying
agents and prompters of recklessness. In section forty four one
oh three, an attempt will be made to show that
when we set out to inculcate in people a facility
for united action and self sacrifice, we do all we can,
whether we know it or not, to induce and encourage
an estrangement from the self, and that we strike to
evoke and cultivate in them many of the diverse attitudes
and impulses which accompany the spontaneous estrangement from the self
in the frustrated In short, we shall try to show
that the technique of an active mass movement consists basically
in the inculcation and cultivation of proclivities and responses indigenous
to the frustrated mind. I'm going to make an executive
decision here and say I'm done with this book. If
you made it this far, God bless you. You're amazing.
But this is just insulting horseshit from a radical individualist
who I really can't find much out there about his background,
but I'm pretty sure I know what it is. And
to the people who have recommended this book to me
because they like it, we don't probably don't have much
in common at all. All right, take care of y'all,
and yeah, I'll just find another book and start reading.