On Page 5 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer describes how nationalism enabled Japan to modernize almost overnight: “The phenomenal modernization of Japan would probably not have been possible without the revivalist spirit of Japanese nationalism. It is perhaps true that rapid modernization of some European countries (Germany in particular) was facilitated to some extent by the upsurge and thorough diffusion of nationalist fervor. Judged by present indications, the renascence 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 Kemal Ataturk to modernize Turkey almost overnight. In Egypt, untouched by a mass movement, modernization is slow and faltering, though its rulers, from the day of Mehmed Ali, have welcomed Western ideas and its contacts with the West have been many and intimate. Zionism is an instrument for the renovation of a backwards country and the transformation of shop keepers and brain workers into farmers, laborers, and soldiers. Had Chiang Kai-shek known how to set in motion a genuine mass movement, or at least sustain the nationalist enthusiasm kindled by the Japanese invasion, he might be 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 ‘religiofication’—the art of turning practical purposes into holy causes.”
My response: Hoffer offers two important points here: those peoples that can be motivated by their nationalist fervor and patriotism, can trigger a mass movement to modernize themselves, whereas those lacking this united passion, languish in stagnation and tradition.
Second, Mao was a master of the art of “religiofication”, the art of turning practical purposes into holy causes. Chiang could not excite the Chinese people to move as a enthused united group, and Mao was.
Hoffer or H after this: “It is not difficult to see why America and Britain (or any Western democracy) could not play a direct and leading role in rousing the Asiatic countries from their backwardness and stagnation: the democracies are not inclined or perhaps able to kindle a revivalist spirit in Asia’s millions. The contribution of Western democracies to the awakening of the East has been indirect and certainly unintended. They have kindled an enthusiasm of resentment against the West; and it is this anti-Western fervor which is at present rousing the Orient from its stagnation of centuries.”
My response: Hoffer seems to suggest that democracies are not fanatical enough or ruthless enough to trigger nationalist mass movements, and they are foreign, so resentment of these hated foreigners was the only way to trigger fervor and change for the masses of any Asian country.
H: “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 shall inquire therefore into the nature of the desire for change.
2
There is 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 causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health and so on, ‘If anything ail a man, says Thoreau, ‘so that he does not perform his functions, if he had a pain in his bowels even . . . he forthwith sets about reforming—the world.’”
My response: First, Hoffer is noting that people are collective creatures naturally and live communally. Most are used to living in tyrannies, grouped together, and herded like sheep, but their elite overlords ride herd over them. People regularly and naturally are passive and fatalistic, and their group-living reinforces this lack of personal activism and initiative.
If they are doing well, the system gets the credit, and they are disinclined to listen to discontented rabble rousers seeking to generate popular support so a mass movement of the citizenry will rise up and overthrow the established order.
If many or a majority come to be dispossessed, or they lose their sense of identity and cultural affinity for the mores, customs, and traditions they group up in, these frustrated individuals will blame the system, and be receptive to joining a mass movement and seeking a new order, new leadership taking them in a very different direction, to a different place.
If they succeed, the give the system, not themselves the credit. If they fail, they blame the system not themselves for failing.
The individualist gives himself credit for his success especially when merited, and he will blame his failings, normally on himself, not the system or community.
A committed individualist, an individuators, great soul or supercitizen would intuitively recognize that reform is more personal than collective to be successful. If enough individuals reform themselves, that is how the community does better. Collective efforts by true believers in mass movements might work occasionally, but mass movements too often lead to social arrangements where poverty, tyranny, want, suffering and starvation are permanent, intense, and absolute.
I think in the paragraph above, I am interpreting where Hoffer implicitly anticipated that fatalistic, groupist, group living citizens, once alienated and frustrated, make ready recruits and true believers in holy cause and mass movements.
Here is H on the bottom of Page 6 and onto Page 7: “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 the consistently successful is never absolute. They are never sure that they know all 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 spring from the same conviction, and one can be as vehement as the other.”
My response: His point above is subtle and easy not to grasp. Hoffer seems to me to remind us that most people most of the time (They all have some natural free will untapped and undeveloped.) are not motivated by internal drives, plans, and aims. They are herd creatures, fatalistic, passive, and obedient to authority. If they are satisfied and successful within the system which they hold favorably accountable for their success and happiness, they will not accept change at all or very little.
If they are without a warm niche socially, or disposed, or lost and ruined, without connection to, rank or identity any longer linking them to the system, its mores and its narrative, they are isolated, lonely, angry, miserable and resentful; these frustrated, surplus people are marginalized so a guru touting an alternative holy cause, a new social order, if the lost, disaffected vagabond can glom onto, they may well join the mass movement if there is one near to grapple for. They blame the system for their ruined lives, so their loyalty to the replacement cause will be total.
For both the embedded and successful and the disposed and frustrated loser, the collective system respectively gets the credit or blame. Change is not acceptable to the former, and is regarded as indispensable, and critically necessary right now by the frustrated.
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