Slime

 

In 1951 Eric Hoffer published his classic nonfiction book, The True Believer, Thought on the Nature of Mass Movements.

 

I am going to write out his two quotes in the Preface of the book and comment on them.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “Man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be happy and see that he is miserable; would fain be perfect and see that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt. The embarrassment where he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable, for he conceives a mortal hatred against the truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults. –Pascal, Pensees”

 

My response: This is so well written and dark. Pascal is no believer in human goodness. We role play that we are great, happy, perfect, loved and esteemed, when in fact we are insignificant mediocrities without merit or respect, living lives of quiet despair, quite flawed and sinful, self-hating and other-hating, treated with and self-treating the self with contempt. The truth is so brutal and painful for fragile, marginal humans to deal with, that we flee into illusion (group-living, and nonindividuating), and there, without self-respect or any willingness or effort to face what we are and struggle to clean up the mess we personally are, we hide in the pack in utter self-loathing, and our hatred festers, producing in us the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable. If this was not hatred enough, then we hate the truth more than anything, and will do anything to truth-tellers that seek to remind us of our hopelessly spoiled life. We cannot accept blame or condemnation for our choice to escape from freedom.

 

Hoffer is notifying the reader that people are not basically good, and their natural psychic state is sick, insane, and unpleasant, making them feel quite miserable, if they do not address it. When such collectivized, unhappy, and unhinged people are grouped, and when these masses of self-loathing, group-living, nonindividuators are uprooted from the cultural narrative that kept them asleep and fairly stable, they seek any passing holy cause to hitch their fallen star to, and as purely obedient myrmidons serving their witch doctor and ism without hesitation or concern. They are willing, eager Islamists, Nazis, Communists, or chauvinistic nationalists from that point onward.

 

H: “And slime they had for mortar. –Genesis 11.”

 

My response: These masses of unhappy, desperate, stampeded people. They are the slime that the demagogues, commissars, men of action and gurus enlist the make the mortar of the mass movement being unleashed upon abused humanity in need of no further assaults.

 

If we can embrace truth and face how rotten we are naturally, and yet not despair, we work hard to clean up our act and make the world right, or to serve God willingly, even joyfully, then we can transcend our sordid nasty, natural selves in our incipient state of existing and find happiness, meaning, love and fulfillment here on earth. I think Hoffer was amazed to discover that the capitalist system, the championing here of individualism, self-esteem, the belief that the individual is sovereign, liberty, opportunity, and happiness pursued in this constitutional republic (America) had accidentally made America into the best country ever, a near-paradise on earth, to be enjoyed but not transformed into a Latin American banana republic.