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do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone
back to part two of my reading of The True
Believer by Eric Hoffer. Let's get right into it, all right.
The first part you could see that there was a
lot that I did not agree with mister Hoffer. I'm
sure we're going to get to some points that he
makes some really good points. But let's move on, all right.
Part three of I believe this is part three of
chapter one, the interchangeability of mass movements. Hold on one second,
there we go. I am ready to go. When people
are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe
for any effective movement, and not solely for one with
a particular doctrine or program. Where do you think he's
gonna go? Okay? In pre Hilarian Germany, it was often
a toss up whether a restless youth would join the
Communists or the Nazis. It's actually true, in the overcrowded
pale of Tsarist Russia, the simmering Jewish population was right
both for revolution and Zionism. True, in the same family,
one member would join the revolutionaries and the other the Zionists.
Doctor heim Weitzmann quotes a saying of his mother in
those days, whatever happens, I shall be well off. If
Shimoul the revolutionary son is right, we shall be happy
in Russia. And if Hiam the Zionist is right, then
then I shall go live in Palestine. The receptivity of
to all movements does not always cease, even after the
potential true believer has become the ardent convert of a
specific movement. Where mass movements are in violent competition with
each other, there are not infrequent instances of converts, even
the most zealous shifting their allegiance from one to the other.
Assault turning into Paul is neither a rarity nor americal.
In ourday, each proselytizing mass movement seems to regard the
zealous adherents of its antagonist, of its antagonists as its
own potential converts. Hitler looked on the German Communists as
potential national socialist, putting the petite bourgeois social democrat and
the trade union boss will never make a national socialist,
but the communist always will. Captain Rahm boasted that he
could turn the reddest Communists into a glowing nationalist in
four weeks. On the other hand, Carl Raddick looked on
the brown Nazi shirts as the essay as a reserve
for future communist recruits. Since all mass moves and strung
their adherence from the same types of humanity and appeal
to the same types of minds. It follows A all
mass movements are competitive, and the gain of one in
adherence is the loss of all the others. B. All
mass movements are interchangeable. One mass movement readily transforms into
itself into another. A religious movement may develop into a
social revolution or a nationalist movement, a social revolution into
militant nationalism, or religious movement or a religious movement. A
nationalist movement into a social revolution or a religious movement
reminds me of that, Thomas says. Thomas seven seven seven
says there is no third position. Now in the West
or what when I say the West, I'm just talking
about Europe and America. There's no third position. You're either
global assuranti globalist. You're either zion asperancy zionist. That's it.
The switching back and forth between those I don't know.
It is rare for a mass movement to be wholly
of one character. Usually it displays some facets of other
types of movement, and sometimes it is two or three
movements in one. The exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt
was a slave revolt, a religious movement, and a nationalist movement.
The militant nationalism of the Japanese is essentially religious. The
French Revolution was a new religion. It had its dogmas,
the sacred principles of the Revolution lirete es san igarite.
It had its form of worship, an adaptive of Catholic
ceremonial which was elaborated in connection with the civic fetis
feats fits. It had its saints, the heroes and martyrs
of liberty. At the same time, the French Revolution was
also a nationalist movement. The Legislative Assembly decreed in seventeen
ninety two that altars should be raised everywhere, bearing the
inscription the citizen is born, lives and dies for la patri.
The religious movements of the Reformation had a revolutionary aspect,
which expressed itself in peasant uprisings, and were also nationalist movements,
said Luther. In the eyes of the Italians, we Germans
are merely low Teutonic swine. They exploit us like Charlatan's
and suck the country to the marrow. Wake up Germany.
The religious character of the Bolshevik and Nazi revolutions is
generally recognized the hammer and sickle and the swastika are
in a class with the cross. The ceremonial of their
parades is as the ceremonial of a religious procession. They
have articles of faith, saints, martyrs and holy sepulchers. The
Bolshevik and Nazi revolutions are also full blown nationalist movements.
The Nazi Revolution had been so from the beginning, while
the nationalism of the Bolsheviks was a late deval okay
good I agree with them there. Zionism is a nationalist
movement and a social revolution. To the Orthodox jew it
is also a religious movement. Irish nationalism has a deeply
deep religious tinge. The present mass movements in Asia are
both nationalist and revolutionary. The problem of stopping a mass
movement is often a matter of substituting one movement for another.
A social revolution can be stopped by promoting a religious
or nationalist movement. Thus, in countries where Catholicism has recaptured
its mass movement spirit, it counteracts to spread of communism.
In Japan, it was nationalism that canalyzed all movements of
social protest. In our South, the movement of the racial
solidarity acts as a preventative, a preventative of social upheaval.
A similar situation may be observed among the French in
Canada and among the Bores in South Africa. Non anymore,
the method of stopping one movement by well, I'm not
going to say that, but the movement that he was
talking about at this time, the method of stopping one
movement by substituting another, for it is not always without
danger and it does not usually come cheap. It is
well for those who hug the present and wants to
preserve it, as it is not to play with mass movements.
So that's I think that's an important sentence right there.
It is well for those who hug the present and
wants to preserve it as it is not to play
with mass movements. So if you see, if you see
our guys like on social media on Twitter, and we're
pushing for change, and somebody who is aligned with us,
or I mean could be associated with us and trying
to pump the brakes, they're trying to play gatekeeper. There's
they are hugging. They're hugging the present and wanting to
preserve what they have. I always look at something like
that as a fear of loss, whereas my fear of
loss is always in staying in what is at the
moment the threatening to take away from me. You know,
some people just have they have enough that some could
get taken away and they could be perfectly fine and comfortable.
Not everyone's like that, for it always fares ill with
the present when a genuine mass movement is on the march.
In pre war Italy and Germany, practical businessmen acted in
an entirely logical manner when they encouraged a fascist and
a Nazi movement in order to stop communism. But in
doing so, these practical and logical people promoted their own liquidation.
Not necessarily, there are others well. Eventually, because the world
decided that they couldn't exist, there are other safer substitutes
for a mass movement. In general, any arrangement with either
discourages atomistic individualism or facilitates self forgetting, or offers chances
for action and new beginnings tend to counteract the rise
and spread of mass movements. These subjects are dealt with
in later chapters. Here we shall touch upon one curious
substitute for mass movements, namely migration. Emigration offers some of
the things that frustrate the frustrated hope to find when
they join a mass movement, namely change and a chance
for a new beginning. The same types who swell the
ranks of a rising mass movement are also likely to
avail themselves of a chance to emigrate. Thus, migration can
serve as a substitute for a mass movement. It is plausible,
for instance, that had the United States and the British
Empire welcomed mass migration from Europe after the First World War,
there might have been neither a Fascist nor a Nazi
revolution in this country. Free and easy migration over a
vast continent contributed to our social stability in this country,
Free an easy migration over a vast continent contributed to
our social stability. Really, how's that working on? Now? Are
we socially stable? I mean we were they importing the
Third World after the First World War? Or are we
talking about people within or is he talking about people
within the country being able to move and go where
they wish? Which I don't know that that creates social stability,
because you know, in my opinion, people should be tied
to where their family is that they are better off
and their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren will be
better off having a solid foundation in one place, rather
than searching the country for riches, wealth and the best
zip codes own a house. In compare one to the other,
bear the nineteenth century to the twentieth century. If you
could have the technological advances in the nineteenth century, but
to keep the nineteenth century culture, seems better to me,
Although you know, the argument can also be made that
the technology is what adds to a lot of this,
then we start uncle ted posting again. However, because of
the quality of their human material, mass migrations are fertile
ground for the rise of genuine mass movements. It is
sometimes difficult to tell where a mass migration ends in
a mass movement begins, and which came first. The migration
of the Hebrews from Egypt developed into a religious and
nationalist movement. Migrations of the Barbarians in the declining days
of the Roman Empire were more than mere shifts of population.
The indications are that the barbarians were relatively few in number,
but once they invaded a country, they were joined by
the oppressed and dissatisfied in all walks of life. Quote.
It was a social revolution started and masked by a
superficial foreign conquest. Something's taken to consideration. There the indications
are that the barbarians were relatively few in number, but
once they invaded a country, or they just walked over
the border, they were joined by the oppressed and dissatisfied
in all walks of life. It helps if you have
been creating a class of people, a large group of
people who feel that they've been oppressed and dissatisfied in
all their walks of life, because then it turns into
it was a social revolution started in masked by a
superficial foreign conquest. We don't want to call it a conquest.
Every mass movement is in a sense of migration, a
movement toward a promised land, and when feasible and expedient,
an actual migration takes place. This happened in the case
of the Puritans and a Baptists, Mormons, Ducabors, and Zionists.
Migration in the mass strengthens the spirit and unity of
the movement of a movement, and whether in the form
of a foreign conquest, crusade, pilgrimage, or settlement of a
new land, it is practiced by most mass active most
active massed movements part two. The potential converts the role
of the undesirables and human affairs. There's a tendency to
judge a race, a nation, or any distinct group by
its least worthy members. Though manifestly unfair, this tendency has
some justification, for the character and destiny of a group
are often determined by its inferior elements. That's a that's
a paragraph right there. For the character and destiny of
a group is often determined by its inferior elements. Why
because in the inferior amongst a group, they stand out
because they cause negative consequences they're not going to and
in most cases they're not only going to cause negative
consequences inside the group, but they're going to cause negative
consequences outside the group, and then people are going to
start to notice. The inert mass of a nation, for instance,
is in its middle section. The decent, average people who
do the nation's work in cities and on the land
are worked upon and shaped by minorities at both ends,
the best and the worst. It's like some high low
middle stuff here. The superior individual, whether in politics, literature, science, commerce,
or industry, plays a large role in shaping a nation,
but so to individuals. At the other extreme, the failures, misfits, outcast, criminals,
and all those who have lost their footing or never
had one. In the ranks of respectable humanity. The game
of history is usually played by the best and the
worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can
exert a marked influence on its course is that they
are wholly without reverence towards the present. They see their
lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy, and they
are ready to waste and wreck both. Hence their recklessness
and their will to chaos and anarchy. It's like short time,
low time preference versus high time preference. They also cave
to dissolve their spoiled, meaningless selves in some soul stirring,
spectacular communal undertaking, hence their proclivity for united action. Thus
they are among the early recruits of revolutions, mass migrations,
and of religious, racial and chauvinist movements, and they imprint
their mark upon these upheavals and movements which shape a
nation's character in history. I don't really talk much about
him anymore, but this is the argument that is Russell
made in his book Renegade History of the United States,
was that the low the lowest class, the misfits and
the outcasts and the degenerates, are the ones that actually
make our culture. And when you think about it, when
you think about our culture comes out of Hollywood and
music and entertainment. I guess the argument is there this
discarded and rejected are often the raw material of a
nation's future. The stone the builder's reject becomes the cornerstone
of a new world. A nation without dregs and malcontents
is orderly, decent, peaceful, and pleasant, but perhaps without the
seed of things to come. It was not the irony
of history that the undesired undesired in the countries of
Europe should have crossed an ocean to build a new
world in this continent, or they could do it. Well.
I don't know that they were undesired in the countries
of Europe, but they certainly wanted to break away because
there could have been tensions there. There could have been
numerous things happening. And did they help to build a
new world in this continent? Well? Yeah, The question is
is where did it go wrong? Though? The diss effect
that are found in all walks of life. They are
most frequent in the following categories. The poor, misfits, outcasts, minorities,
adolescent youth, the ambitious, whether facing insurmountable obstacles or unlimited opportunities,
those in the grip of some vice or obsession, the
impotent and body and mind, the inordinately selfish. The Board
the Sinners, Session twenty through forty two deals with some
of these types. New heading the poor, the new poor.
Not all who are poor or frustrated. Some of the
poor stagnating in the slums of the cities are smug
in their decay. They shudder at the thought of life
outside their familiar cesspool. Even the respectable poor, when they're
poverty is of long standing, remain inert. They are awed
by the immutability of the order of things. It takes
a cataclysm and invasion, a plague, or some other communal
disaster to open their eyes to the transitoriness of the
eternal order. It is usually those whose poverty is relatively recent,
the new poor, who throb with the ferment of frustration.
The memory of better things is as fire in their veins.
They are the disinherited and dispossessed who respond to every
rising mass movement. It was the new porn in seventeenth
century England who ensured the success of the Puritan Revolution.
During the movements of Enclosure Section five, thousands of landlords
drove off their tenants and turned their fields into pastures.
Strong and active peasants, enamored of the soil that nurtured them,
were transformed into wage workers or sturdy beggars. City streets
were filled with paupers. It was this mass of the
dispossessed who furnished the recruits for Cromwell's new model army.
In Germany and Italy, the new poor, coming from the
ruined middle class, formed the chief support of the Nazi
and Fascist revolutions. The potential revolutionaries in present day England
are not the workers, but the disinherited civil servants and businessmen.
This class had a vivid memory of affluence and dominion,
and is not likely to reconcile itself to straightened conditions
and political impotence. Well, so much for World War Two
benefiting everyone right. There have been, of late, both here
and in other countries, enormous periodic increases of a new
type of new poor, and their appearance undoubtedly has contributed
to the rise and spread of contemporary mass movements. Until recently,
the new poor came mainly from the propertied class, whether
in cities or on the land. But lately, for the
first time in history, the plain workingman appears in this role.
So long as those who did the world's work lived
on a level of bare subsistence, they were looked upon
and felt themselves as traditionally poor. They felt poor in
good times and bad. Depressions, however, severe were not seen
as aberrations and enormities. But with the wide diffusion of
a high standard of living, depressions and the unemployment they bring,
they bring assumed a new aspect. The present day workingman
in the Western world feels unemployment as a degradation. He
sees himself disinherited and injured by an unjust order of things,
and is willing to listen to those who call for
a new deal. The abjectly poor, the poor on the
borderline of starvation, lived purposeful lives. To be engaged in
desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly
free from a sense of futility. The goal concrete and immediate,
every meal is a fulfillment, to go to sleep on
a full stomach as a triumph, and every windfall a miracle.
I don't know, I don't know that we can talk
about anyone in the country like this now. It just
doesn't it doesn't make sense considering the incitlements that are
out there. I think, if you're like this, you just
want to be What need could they have for an aspiring,
super individual goal which would give meaning and dignity to
their lives. They are immune to the appeal of a
mass movement. Angelica Balabanov describes the effect of abject poverty
on the revolutionary ardor of famous radicals who flocked to
Moscow in the early days of the Bolshevik Revolution, quoting here,
I saw men and women who had lived all of
their lives for ideas, who had voluntarily renounced material advantages, liberty, happiness,
and family affection for them, realization of their ideals completely
absorbed by the problem of hunger and cold. Where people
toil from sunshine as 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 there to scrape
together the means of the scantiest subsistence. The intensified struggle
for existence is a static rather than a dynamic influence,
So basically saying, if you're working all the time just
to eat, you don't have any time to entertain these
ideas or participate in it. So it's people who it's
going to be, people who are pretty well off or
were well off and desire to be well off again,
who are most open and will have the time. I
guess as long as you're not to the point where
you have to every second of every day is to
figure out how you're going to survive. Misery does not
automatically generate discontent, nor is the intensity of discontent directly
proportionate to the degree of misery. Discontent is likely to
be highest when misery is bearable, when conditions have so
improved that an ideal state seems almost within reach. Agreements
is most poignant when almost redressed to Toauville and his
researches into the state of society in France before the Revolution,
was struck by the discovery that in no one of
the periods which have followed the Revolution of seventeen eighty
nine has the national prosperity of France augmented more rapidly
than it did in the twenty years preceding that event.
He is forced to conclude that the French found their
position the more intolerable, the better it became. Really, if
that be true, there is just another difference between the
French and the American Revolution. The American Revolution was different,
but the French Revolution was a real winner, because even
the spirit of that revolution spread here in both France
and Russia. The land Hungary peasants owned almost exactly one
third of the agricultural land at the outbreak of revolution,
and most of that land was acquired during the generation
or two preceding the revolution. It is not actual suffering,
but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
A popular upheaval in Soviet Russia is hardly likely before
the people get a real taste of the good life.
The most dangerous moment for the regime of the polleit
Bureau will be when a considerable improvement in the economic
conditions of the Russian masses has been achieved and the
irons hotalitarian rule somewhat somewhat relaxed. It is of interest
that the assassination in December nineteen thirty four of Stalin's
closest friend, Kirov happened not long after Stalin had announced
the successful end of the first five Years Plan in
the beginning of a new prosperous, joyous era. Nineteen thirty
four success killing killing millions of Ukrainians I guess as
a success. The intensity of discontent seems to be in
inverse proportions to the distance from the object fervently desired.
This is true whether we move toward our goal or
away from it. It is true both of those who
have come within sight of the promised land and of
the disinherited who are still within sight of it, of
both of the about to be rich, free, etc. And
of the new poor and those recently enslaved. Our frustration
is greater when we have much and want more than
when we have nothing and want some. We are less
dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem
to lack but one thing. We dare more when striving
for superfluities. Why is that word of killing me? We
dare more when striving for superfluity superfluities than for necessities.
Often when we renounce superfluities, we end up lacking in necessities.
There is a hope that acts as an explosive and
a hope that disciplines and infuses patients. The difference is
between the immediate hope and the distant hope. A rising
mass movement preaches the immediate hope. It is intent on
stirring its followers to action, and it is the around
the corner brand of hope that prompts people to act.
Rising Christianity preached to the immediate end of the world
in the Kingdom of Heaven. Around the corner, Mohammed dangled
loot before the faithful. The Jachomans promised immediate liberty and equality.
The early Bolshevik Bolsheviks promise bread and life. Hitler promised
an immediate end to Versailles bondage and work and action
for all. Later, as the movement comes into the possession
of power, the emphasis is shifted to the distant hope,
the dream and the vision for an arrived mass movement
is preoccupied with the preservation of the present, and it
prizes obedience and patience above spontaneous action. And when we
hope for that we see not. Then then do we
with patients wait for it. Every established mass movement has
its distant hope. It's brand of dope to dull the
impatience of the masses and reconcile them with their lot
in life. Stalinism is much an opium of the people,
as are the established religions. The free poor slaves are poor.
Yet where slavery is widespread and long established, there is
little likelihood for the rise of a mass movement. The
absolute equality of the slaves and the intimate communal life
and slave quarters preclude individual frustration. In a society with
an institution of slavery, the troublemakers are the newly enslaved
and the freed slaves. In the case of the latter,
it is the burden of freedom which is at the
root of their discontent. Freedom aggravates at least as much
as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole
blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual, and
as freedom encourages a multiplicity of attempts, it unavoidably multiplies
failure and frustration. Freedom alleviates frustration by making available the
palliatives of action, movement, change, and protest. Unless a man
has the talents to make himself of something, freedom is
an irksome burden of what avail is freedom to choose
if this self be ineffectual, we join a mass movement
to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the
ardent young Nazi, to be free from freedom. It was
not sheer hypocrisy to be free from freedom or what
kind of freedom? I mean, we're told that we have freedom.
Now the freedoms to you? What destroy our culture? Destroy order,
destroy religion, destroy faith, destroy cohesiveness of people. I'm gonna
need more. It was 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 show the responsibility for obeying orders. Had
they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be
free from Had they not joined the Nazi movement in
order to be free from responsibility? I mean, I don't
think so. I don't think anybody joins the movement to
be free from responsibility. Saying that people join movements to
be free from the responsibility of being an individual because
he prizes individuality amongst collectivism. This is what This is
how I'm reading it. Some can argue differently. This is
how I'm seeing it, and five six years ago I
probably would agree with one hundred percent. I just don't anymore.
I see what individualism or radical individualism has wrought, and
it's brought us to where we are. It's not the answer,
it's where we are. It would seem that the most
fertile ground for propagation of a mass movement in a
society with considerable freedom but lacking the palliatives of frustration.
It was precisely because the peasants of eighteenth century France,
unlike the peasants of German and Austria, were no longer
served 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. Even
the mass movements which rise in the name of freedom
against an oppressive order do not realize individual liberty once
they start rolling. So long as a movement is engaged
in a desperate struggle with the prevailing order, or must
defend itself against enemies within or without, its chief preoccupation
will be with unity and self sacrifice, which require the
surrender of the individual's will, judgment, and advantage. According to Robespierre,
the revolutionary government was the despotism of liberty against tyranny.
The important point is that in so if that is true,
well what is it the despotism of individualism against collectivism?
How that works out? The important point is that in
forgetting or postponing individual liberty, the active mass movement does
not run counter to the inclinations of a zealous following fanatics, says,
run a fear liberty more than they fear persecution. It
is true that the adherents of a rising movement have
a strong sense of liberation, even though they live and
breathe in an environment of strict adherence to tenets and
commands liberty, what sense of liberation is he even talking about?
He's selling It's almost like he's selling individualism as just
that you either have that or you just have tyranny
and you have your followers and you have you know,
you're the quote unquote true believer. I guess, I guess
you don't believe anything if you're an individual, or you
just believe in yourself. The sense of liberation comes from
having escaped the burdens, fears, and hopelessness of an untenable
individual existence. It is this escape which they feel as
a deliverance and redemption. The experience of vast change, too,
conveys a sense of freedom, even though the changes are
executed in a frame of strict discipline. It is only
when the movement has passed its active stage and solidified
into a pattern of stable institutions that individual liberty has
a chance to emerge. The shorter the active phase, the
more will it seem that the movement itself, rather than
its termination, made possible the emergence of individual liberty. This
impression will be the more pronounced, the more tyrannical the
dispensation which the mass movement overthrew and supplanted. Those who
see their lives are spoiled and wasted grave equality and
fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor I
don't know about equal, I don't know how he's defining
equality in the sentence, Those who see their lives as
spoiled and wasted grave equality and fraternity more than they
do freedom. Sure, fraternity, But what does equality mean 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
which 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. You have elites
amongst every group. Even if you have a group that
gets together for a certain purpose, The leaders are obvious,
are going to be obvious. This is indisputable. It's drought history,
it's human. They who clamor loudice or 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 desires 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. Once again, he is elevating
an individual individuals in a free society, above groups, collectives,
and the thing here is now You'll even have some
people say, well, I don't care if you collective eyes,
as long as you do it voluntarily. He seems to
be shitting on that too, although he seems to think
that people don't do that voluntarily, they have a reason
for doing it, and their reason is discontent and something
now that may be my could be my reason. I'm
discontented that the culture does not represent me at all.
But there are people who are born into the culture
who never leave the culture. Who are they don't know
anything else? Whereas I was born into a culture which
was very much about the individual and a free society
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. No one is This is
almost like a straw man or he's saying that anybody
who wants to be a part of a group wants
everybody in that group to be equal. That's not even close.
It's not even close. The creative poor poverty, when coupled
with creativeness, is usually free of frustration. This is true
of the poor artists and skilled in his trade and
of the poor writer, artists, and scientists, and the full
possession of creative powers. Nothing so bolsters our self confidence
and reconciles us with ourselves as a continuous ability to create,
to see things grow and develop under our hand day
and day out. The decline of handicrafts in modern science
is perhaps one of the causes of the rise of
frustration and the increased susceptibility of the individual to mass movements.
I'm going to say my comments till I read this.
It is impressive to deserve. How with the fading of
the individual's creative powers, there appears a pronounced inclination toward
joining a mass movement. Here, the connection between the escape
from an ineffectual self and a response and a responsiveness
to mass movements is very clear. The slipping author artists,
scientists slipping because of a drying up of the creative
flow within, drifts sooner or later into the camps of
ardent patriots, racemongers, uplift promoters, and champions of holy causes.
Perhaps the sexually impotent are subject to the same impulse.
The role of the non creative in the Nazi movement
is discussed and about and basically there's the only groups
that the failed author artists scientists go into is a government,
is a state, state jobs because they have no there's
no demand for them. They're not artisans, they don't build houses,
they don't do no. They become the state, that progressive
arm of the state. That's where they run to. I
don't know that at this time he's writing this in
nineteen fifty, released in nineteen fifty one, probably started writing
it for thready aid forty nine to fifty even could
be even earlier. I don't know how much patronage there
was out of the state at that point. This would
be an interesting little section to update the unified poor.
The poor who are members of a compact group, a tribe,
a close to the family, a compact racial or religious group,
are relatively free of frustration and hence almost immune to
the appeal of proselytizing mass movements. You go to small
towns and places where people's families have lived there forever. Yeah,
usually they're worried about overreach from the federal government, but
usually locally they're a political pretty much a political locally,
which also makes them open for infiltration. The lesser person
sees himself as an autonomous, incapable individual. Let's start that again.
The lesser person sees himself as an autonomous individual, capable
of shaping his own course and solely responsible for a
station in life, the less likely he is to see
his poverty as evidence of his own inferiority. Man, a
member of a compact group, has a higher revolting point
than an autonomous individual. It requires more misery and personal
humiliation to go to him to revolt. The cause of
revolution and totalitarian society is usually a weakening of the
totalentarian framework, rather than resentment against oppression and distress. I'm sorry,
just reading this again to try to see where he's going.
Like I said, I haven't read this before. I'm reading
this with you for the first time. I said that
the first episode. If you're tuning into this one, please
go back and do the first one. Family ties to
the Chinese probably kept them for ages relatively immune to
the appeal of mass movements. The European who dies for
his country has behaved in a manner that is unintelligible
to a Chinaman because his family is not directly benefited,
is indeed damaged by the loss of one of its members.
On the other hand, he finds it understandable and honorable
when a Chinaman, in consideration of so much paid to
his family, consents to be executed as a substitute for
a condemned criminal. It is obvious that a proselytizing mass
movement must break down all existing group ties if it
is to win a considerable following, the ideal potential convert
is the individual who stands alone, who has no collective
body he can blend with and lose himself in, and
so mass the pettiness, meaningless, meaninglessness, and shabbiness of his
individual existence. This is so sure the individual is easier
to pick off, But then you should be arguing against individualism.
But then he says that the reason the individual is
drawn to these mass movements is because they can't survive
as an individual, and they're just looking for someone else
to blame it on. That's how I'm reading this. If
anybody else, please comment if you think I'm If you
think I'm reading this wrong, I'm welcome to be. Yeah,
as long as you're respectful, I'm welcome to be to
have a conversation about this. Where a mass movement finds
a corporate pattern of family, tribe, country, et cetera. In
a state of disruption and decay, it moves in and
gathers to harvest. Where it finds the corporate pattern in
good repair, it must attack and disrupt. On the other hand, when,
as in recent years in Russia, we see the Bolshevik
movement bolstering family solidarity and encouraging nation, racial and religious cohesion,
it is a sign that the movement has passed its
dynamic phase, that it has already established a new pattern
of life, and that its chief concern is to hold
and preserve that which it has attained. In the rest
of the world, where communism is still a struggling movement,
it does all it can to disrupt the family and
discredit national, racial, and religious ties. The attitude of rising
mass movements towards the family is of considerable interest. Almost
all our contemporary movements showed in their early stage as
a hostile attitude toward the family and did all they
could to discredit and disrupt it. They did it by
undermining the authority of the parents, by facilitating divorce, by
taking over the responsibility for feeding, educating, and entertaining the children,
and by encouraging illegitimacy. Crowded housing, exile, concentration camps, and
terror also helped to weaken and break up the family. Still,
not one of the contemporary movements was so outspoken its
antagonism towards a family as was early Christianity. Jesus meant
no words. Quote Prime comes to set a man at
variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother,
and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is
not worthy of me, And he that loveth son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me. When
he was told that his mother and brothers were outside,
desiring to speak with him, he said, who is my mother?
And who are my brethren? And stretched forth his hand
towards his disciples and said, behold my mother and my brethren.
When one of his disciples asked leave, asked the leaves
to go and bury his father, Jesus said to him,
follow me, and let the dead bury their dead. He
seems to sense the ugly family conflicts his movement was
bound to provoke both by its proselytizing and by fanatical
hatred of its antagonists, and the brothers shall deliver up
the brother to death, and the father the child, and
the children shall rise up against their parents and cause
them to be put to death. It is strange but
true that he who preaches brotherly love also preaches against
love of mother, father, brother, sister, wife, and children. The
Chinese sage Mozou, who advocated brotherly love, was rightly condemned
by the Confucianists. Cherished who cherished the family above all.
They argue that the principle of universal love would dissolve
the family and destroy society. The proselytizer who comes and says,
follow me, is a family wrecker, even though he is
not conscious of any hostility toward the family and has
not the least intention of weakening of solidarity. When Saint
Bernard preached his influence with such that mothers are said
to have hid their sons from him, and wives to
their husbands lest he should lure them away, he actually
broke up so many homes that the abandoned wives formed
a nunnery Jesus' apostles when they left to go with him.
Jesus knew that they'd be going back after a certain
amount of time, as one would expect a disruption of
the family. Whatever it causes, Foster's automatically a collective spirit
and creates a responsiveness to the appeal of mass movements.
The Japanese invasion undoubtedly weakened the compact family pattern of
the Chinese and contributed to their recent increases responsiveness to
both nationalism and communism. In the industrialized Western world, the
family is weakened and disrupted mainly by economic factors. Economic
independence for women facilitates divorce. Economic independence for the young
weakens parental authority and also hastens an early splitting up
with the family group. The drawing power of large industrial
centers on people living on farms and in small town
strains and breaks family ties by weakening the family. These
factors can try, but it's somewhat to the growth of
the collective spirit in modern times. Hitler's lunatic shifting of
entire populations during the Second World War and his fantastic
feats of extermination must have minced and scrambled millions of
families in a large part of Europe. At the same time,
the Anglo American I mean I guess starting the war
had nothing to do with it, right, I wouldn't add
this if he didn't start a war, if other people
he didn't start the war. When you have a when
you have the kind of when you're at war at
the scale it was happening, What do you what do
you think is gonna happen? He didn't want war, He
just knew what was coming. What was he supposed to do?
Just let the Russians invade? Unfreck unbelievable. At the same time,
the Anglo American and Air raids, the expulsion of nine
million Germans from the East and south of Europe, and
the delayed repatriation of German prisoners awards It's Germany what
Hitler had done to Europe. It is difficult to see how,
even under optimal economic and political conditions, a continent and
stream with the odds and ends of family could settle
into a normal, conservative social pattern. The discontent generated and
backwards countries by their contact with Western civilization is not
primarily resentment against exploitation by domineering foreigners. It is rather
the result of a crumbling or weakening of tribal solidarity
and communal life. I'm going to go back to that
the part where he's talking about Christ and some of
the things that Christ said. Let's remember that he had
an audience back then. One of the things that I
learned when I was in seminary was that there was
actually a people in the first century that he was
speaking to, and that we're reading other people's mail. Okay,
it was a revolutionary time back then, it wasn't always
going to be a revolutionary time, which is why the
church set up covenant with the within the family and
YadA YadA, all down the road. He's I could do
a whole show shows on this. So all right, where
was Okay? Yeah? At the same time, the Anglo area,
it is difficult to see how even under optimal economic
and political conditions of continent's strewn with the odds and
ends of families, could settle into a normal conservative social pattern.
Is discontent generated in backward countries by their contact what
estern civilization is not primarily resentment against exploitation by domineering foreigners.
It is rather the result of a crumbling or weakening
of tribal solidarity and communal life. The ideal of self
advancement with the civilizing West offers to backward populations brings
with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages
brought by the West are or ineffectual substitutes for the
sheltering and soothing anonymity of a communal existence. Even when
the westernized native attains personal success, becomes rich or masters
of respected profession, he is not happy. He feels naked
an orphan. He feels naked an orphan. The nationalist movements
in the colonial colonies are part of a striving after
group existence and an escape from Western individualism. Nobody was
seeking to destroy families when this country was founded. This
is written in anineteen fifty one, and he's writing to
a modern audience. He's I can't see him taking that
into consideration here, because saying all the advantages brought by
the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing
anonymity of a communal existence. When even when the westernized
native attains personal success, becomes rich, or the ideal of
self advancement, which to civilizing West offers to backward populations,
brings with it the plague of individual frustration. Well, the
first thing you have to do in a backward population
is civilized them It doesn't mean that they have to
lose their identity as a people. That's on us if
that happens. That that wasn't the It wasn't to turn
to go in. The original goal wasn't to go in
and turn these people into individuals, turn them into Christians,
turn him into French. And it didn't work. But it
wasn't to tournaments and oh, now you're going to become
derastinated little annuities that are going to run through life.
That's just not what it was. The Western colonizing powers
offer the native the gift of individual freedom and independence.
They try to teach himself reliance. What it actually amounts
to is individual isolation. It means the cutting off of
an immature and poorly furnished individual from the corporate whole
and releasing him, in the words of Komakov, to the
freedom of his own impotence. The feverish desire to band
together and coalesce into marching masses so manifest both in
our homelands and in the countries we colonize, is the
expression of a desperate effort to escape this ineffectual, purposeless
individual existence. It is very possible, therefore, that the present
nationalist movement in Asia may lead, even without Russian influence,
to more or less collectivists rather than democratic form of society.
Oh Man. The policy of an exploiting colonial power should
be to encourage communal cohesion among the natives. It should
foster equality and a feeling of brotherhood among them. For
by how much the ruled blend and lose themselves into
a compact whole, by so much is softened the poignancy
of their individual futility, and the process which transmutes misery
into frustration and revolts is checked that the source the
device of divide and rule is ineffective when it aims
at a weakening of all forms of cohesion against the rule.
The breaking up of a village, community, a tribe, or
a nation into autonomous individuals does not eliminate or stifle
the spirit of rebellion against the ruling power. An effective
division is one that fosters a multiplicity of compact bodies, racial, religious,
or economic, vying with and suspicious of each other. Let's
get more into this, encouraging people to be in cohesive groups.
Even when a colonial power is holy, philanthropic and its
sole aim is to bring prosperity and progress to a
backward people. It must do all it can to preserve
and reinforce the corporate pattern. It must not concentrate on
the individual, but inject the innovations and reforms into tribal
or communal channels and let the tribe or community progress
as a whole. It is perhaps true that the successful
modernization of a backward people can be brought about only
within a strong framework of united action. Spectacular modernization of
Japan was accomplished in an atmosphere charged with the fervor
of united action and group consciousness. Soviet Russia's advantage as
a colonizing power, aside from her lack of racial bias,
is that it comes with a ready made and effective
pattern of united action. And he didn't stick around long enough. Huh,
should have wrote this a couple of years later. It
can disregard it, indeed deliberately. I mean and lack of
racial bias. I mean they I guess when you kill
tens of thousands of Poles and tens of thousands of Germans,
you execute them in the forest because they're a diasporg
group and they're scared that they might collude with their
home country. Sure, that's not a racial bias. Not technically,
it's not like saying, oh, we think that we're better
than Germans. Still not good. And if you want to
play complete real politic, sure you can understand. But still
better to let them go home. The device of encouraging
communal cohesion as a preventative of colonial unrest can also
be used to prevent labor unrest in the industrialized colonizing countries.
The employer, whose only purpose is to keep his workers
at their task and get all he can out of them,
is not likely to attain his goal by dividing them,
playing off one worker against the other. It is rather
in his interest that the workers should feel themselves part
of a whole, and preferably a hole which comprises the
employer too. A vivid feeling of solidarity, whether racial, national,
or religious, is undoubtedly an effective means of preventing labor unrest.
Even when the type of solidarity is such that it
cannot comprise the employer, it nevertheless tends to promote labor
contentment and efficiency. Yes, when you figure that out, that's
why it's like, okay, we're going to allow We'll allow
them to have unions. We still have power over them.
We can fire them, but they have cohesion. Experience shows
that production at its be is at its best when
the workers feel and act as members of a team.
Any policy that disturbs and tears apart the team is
bound to cause severe trouble. That's why you can have
such great production during times to war, because people have
come together. People have come together for a cause. Incentsive
wage plans that offer bonuses to individual workers do more
harm than good group Incentsive plans in which the bonus
is based on the work of the whole team, including
the foreman, are much more likely to promote greater productivity
and greater satisfaction on the part of the workers. A
rising mass movement attracts and holds of following not by
its doctrine and promises, but by the refuge it offers
from the anxieties, barrenness, and meaninglessness of an individual existence.
It cures the poignantly frustrated, not by conferring on them
an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses
which made their lives miserable, but by feeding them from
their intefectual sees. And it does this by unfolding and
absorbing them in a closely knit and exults in corporate whole.
He makes this sound like a bad thing, and he
makes it sound nefarious. It is obvious. Therefore, in order
to succeed, a mass movement must develop at the earliest
moment a compact corporate organization and a capacity to absorb
and integrate all comers. It is futile. It is futile
to judge the viability of a new movement by the
truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises.
What has to be judges this corporate organization for quick
and total absorption of the frustrated. Where new creeds vie
with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the
one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins.
Of all the cults and philosophies which competed in the
Greco Roman world, Christianity alone developed from its inception a
compact organization. No one of its rivals possessed so powerful
and coherent a structure as did the Church. Other gave
its adherence quite the same feeling of coming into a
closely knit community. The Bolshevik movement out distanced all of
the Marxist movements in the race for power because of
its tight collective organization. The National Socialist movement too won
out over all other Folkish movements, which popular which pollulated,
that's a word pollolated in the nineteen twenties because of
Hitler's early recognition that a rising mass movement can never
go too far in advocating and promoting collective cohesion. He
knew that the chief passion of the frustrated is to
belong and that there cannot be too much cementing and
binding to satisfy this passion. And what I will say is,
it's not only when you take out brainwashing of radical
individualism from an early age the chiefs collectivism is not
accepted about the frustrated. It's accepted by everyone. That should
be painfully obvious. Brought up in a family and I mean,
for how long did you have two and three generation households?
That's who you were, You were who your family was.
Individualism and radical individualism makes it a bad thing. And
then he's complaining that radical individualism while those who fail
at radical individualism just run right back to collectivism, like
that's a bad thing. No, it's human, all right, stop
it right there and be back for part three in
a couple days. Like I said, leave any comments, I'm
reading this along with you guys. Take care,