Sinners

 

On Pages 52 and 53 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer explains why sinners are potential converts to a passing mass movement: “

 

                                                            XI

 

                                                         Sinners

 

                                                            36

 

The sardonic remark that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels also has a less derogatory meaning. Fervent patriotism and well as religious and revolutionary enthusiasm often serve as a refuge from a guilty conscience. It is a strange thing that both the injurer and the injured, the sinner and he who is sinned against, should find in the mass movement an escape from a blemished life. Remore and a sense of grievance seem to drive people in the same direction.”

 

Here is another paradox: it seems intuitive or predictable, one would think, that  the sinner, injurer, sadist,victimizer or abuser would need to find refuge from his guilty conscience and to escape his blemished life by disappearing into a mass movement, but not that the sinned against, the injured, the masochist, the victim and the abused would feel so shattered and self-despising that she would find refuge too in a holy cause.

 

It seems as if the assertive individual, hurting none or allowing none to hurt him, is the most secure emotionally and psychologically, not irretrievably damaged or tarnished by hurting others or being hurt by others. He would insist that other in society be assertive and live-and-let-live in peace and cooperation as he practices. It could be where cruelty and malevolence, whether, emotional, violent, sexual, or verbal, is exerted by sinner against the sinned against, that evil pattern, taints and shatters both. It could be that such sadomasochistic patterns of power inequity and malevolence are more common and often institutionalized in group-living arrangements, with its institutions, its social hierarchies, it out of balance power relationships and its predominant altruist-collectivist morality. Selflessness and self-hatred, and resulting anger turned against the self and others would be another harmful exchange between sinners and the sinned against. All these factors would contribute to both the sinners and sinned against feeling frustrated.

 

H: “It sometimes seems that mass movements are custom-made to fit the needs of the criminal—not only for the catharsis of his soul but also for the exercise of his inclinations and talents. The technique of a proselytizing mass movement aims to evoke in the faithful the mood and frame of mind of a repentant criminal. Self-surrender, which is, as will be shown in Part III, the source of a mass movement’s unity and vigor, is a sacrifice, an act of atonement, and clearly no atonement is called for unless there is a poignant sense of sin. Here, as elsewhere, the technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure. ‘What a task confronts the American clergy’—laments an American divine—‘preaching the good news of a Savior to a people who for the most part have no real sense of sin.’ An effective mass movement cultivates the idea of sin. It depicts the autonomous self as barren and helpless but also vile. To confess and repent is to slough off one’s individual distinctness, and salvation is found by losing oneself in the holy oneness of the congregation.”

 

My response: This is another rich, complex paragraph that requires some thought, qualifying and explaining. We are all sinners and should repent our sins (I ask the Good Spirits every day to forgive my sins against them and the benevolent deities.).

 

The leaders of a mass movement treat the members as if they wer major products of sin, either as a sinner or sinned against. The role of sin and sinning is overemphasized, exaggerated, and dramatized, to put group pressure upon each member to confess his sins, real or imagined, and often just minor, venial sins, as if they were major, mortal sins.

 

Mass movements, like religious pastors at a revival, seek to instill in each attendee a morbid even profound sense of sin so that this instilled malady requires joining the movement or faith wholly as a cure.

 

This collectivist game for breaking each autonomous newcomer is great for filling the ranks of the mass movement or the religious denomination but it does little for the spiritual or mental health of the person that this cruel, soul-raping game is inflicted on. And it increases the likelihood that the sinner and one sinned against will sin again, more often and more cruelly. Since selflessness is evil and self-loathing, playing and beating up the newcomer by attacking them with this sadomasochistic sin-obsessed game must backfire.

 

Sin is real, and demons are real, and God hates sin, both spiritual and moral in nature, but God is gentle and merciful and understanding. God as the Father and Mother, Jeus, the Holy Spirit and the Good Spirits are individuals and individuators, so they want humans not to sin, but after laying on a little guilt, getting or urging people to repent, and then the deities forgive them, then it is time to quit obsessing about sin, or the obsessors are making people more sinful.

 

We do not want people to sin militantly and unrepentantly, but nor do we want those that have repented and are trying to live more ethical and spiritually worthy lives to be beaten down constantly as sinners, lest they internalize all this guilt-tripping, hate themselves more and just give up, quit trying, and just become frustrated, even join a mass movement or religious cult.

 

To fight the rise and spread of mas movements and religious cults, we want people to love themselves and love a good deity, and repent their sins, expect salvation in the next world, and then sin no more or at least much less, less severely, less often. We are not perfect and never will be, but that is too high and too unreasonable an expectation for any human being to have about herself. She must be able to maintain her high self-esteem so she can love herself.

 

We want individuators and egoists to be religious and recognize openly that they sin, but if their approached mass movement or congregation is obsessed with their “guilt,” and seek to suffuse them with a sense of sin, that the autonomous self is barren, helpless and vile, that accusation and assault is evil and a lie.

 

Good people, relatively sin free and devoted to a good deity, are individuals and individuators, that revere their autonomous self as proud, worthy, and desirable, even commanded to individuate and individual-live by the Divine Couple.

 

To dismiss and accuse the autonomous individual of being vile for refusing to confess, surrender and grovel before the leaders of the mass movement or grovel before the preacher in a revivalist tent, or guru’s meeting, those accusers and attackers are satanic and demonically cruel.

 

It is great to go to church and to enjoy political meetings uniting for political action, but it should never be at the price of self-renunciation as a sinner, commanded to acquire accolades and salvation from the leaders of the holy cause or the pastor guru of the congregation in exchange for self-surrender and emotionally losing oneself into the holy oneness of the mass movement or the congregation. That must not occur, or the cause of evil will grow and expand in our country.

 

H: “There is a tender spot for the criminal and an ardent wooing of him in all mass movements. St. Bernard, the moving spirit of the Second Crusade, thus appealed for recruits: ‘For what is but an exquisite and priceless chance of salvation due to God alone, that the omnipotent should deign to summon to His service, as though they were innocent, murderers, ravishers, adulterers, perjurers, and those guilty of every crime?’ Revolutionary Russia too has a tender spot for the common criminal, though it is ruthless with the heretic—the ‘ideological deviationist.’ It is perhaps true that a criminal that embraces a holy cause is more ready to risk his life and go to extremes in its defense than people who are awed by the sanctity of life and property.”

 

My response: It is almost as if major sinners and the victims of these sinners are both traumatized and made frustrated, groupist and selfless by excess sin in their lives, so they are more group-oriented than normal in quiet times, and in times of social upheaval, they are ready converts to join, fight and die for their accepted mass movement.

 

People that are more modestly sinning as sinner or sinned against, that remain autonomous, integrated individuals, not regarding the present, the status quo or themselves as private persons, as irremediably ruined and in need of abandonment.

 

Sinners and those sinned against will join or at least conform with or not fight the dictates and doctrines of an active mass movement, but individuals and individuators, critical thinkers, that still love themselves, the present, life and property, would be willing to challenge the official version of things promulgated by the mass movement or religious cult, so they would be purged as deviationist heretics.

 

H: “Crime is to some extent a substitute for a mass movement. Where public opinion and law enforcement are not too stringent, and poverty is not absolute, the underground pressure of malcontents and misfits often leaks out in crime It has been observed that in the exaltation of mass movements (whether patriotic, religious or revolutionary) common crime declines.”

 

My response: It would seem that criminals are selfless and selfish, but they are countercultural misfits and collectivists with no active mass movement to join. It reminds me that if we rear up a generation of maverizing supercitizens, crime would go way down.