From Page 94 through Page 96 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer writes of how we hae more deeply those we admire than those we admire less, or not at all and this is another one of his paradoxes unfolding. We should love more those that we admire, one would think, but we do not naturally feel good about ourselves so we hate more those we should not hate than those we more legitimately hate. Wow! Here is Hoffer whom I quote and then respond to.
Hoffer (H after this): “ 73
It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise. The Japanese had an advantage over us in that they admired us more than we admired them. They could hate us more fervently than we could hate them. The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners. It is of interest that the backward South shows more xenophobia than the rest of the country. Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.”
My response: I could seek woke Leftists having a meltdown over this paragraph. First, it seems that we hate more the enemy with much good in him than one that is more bad, so the more superior someone is to us or is perceived to be to us by us (We are all naturally made equal by God, so if there is superiority or inferiority in intelligence, talent, or character it is based on hard work and effort, not much attributable to genetic gift.), the we target for pain and hurt that someone. That superior someone is somewhat that we hate more than someone that is inferior to us or whom we categorize as inferior to us.
This is an altruistic, unexpected, warped, twisted thinking pattern. If we loved ourselves, and were self-realizing, we would not need to hate ourselves or anyone else, and we would be improving ourselves, and not much concerned with worrying about what others are doing, whether their merited status is superior or inferior to our own. Where we are group-oriented, that is where hatred comes in and all these weird, conflicted views about others and ourselves get all bound up, and this is what Hoffer seems to be saying.
Hoffer is not claiming that Americans naturally are superior to foreigners or the Japanese (or not much); what he is laying out is that the democratic, individualistic culture of America makes this country superior, and that people from any other nation could compete just fine if they come to America or adopt at home its political framework, constitution, economic theory and practice, making its culture and way of life, their own. It not that Americans are inherently superior to the Japanese or the foreigners, but the American individualistic and capitalist culture is very superior, and that is why Americans feel superior and should, but it is a bit better behavior on average based on culture not racial or ethnic natural superiority.
If everywhere people were maverizers, then they would not have to feel inferior anyone, so their attitude towards others domestically or foreign, would be more impartial, less wound up, more objective, more fair, less hateful, and less biased for or against anyone, than what is their behavior and character as it is, as we can judge with color-blind detachment. I think Hoffer would agree that contented individuators would not make frustrated true believers, and that the world would be a better place for the transition and transformation.
Hoffer’s way of writing could be construed as racist, sexist, Islamophobic or chauvinistic, and there may be a trace of that in his thinking, but I am convinced that he believes that people are fundamentally equal, but they need to express themselves mostly as individuals not joiners. All the strange lies and jealous destructive behaviors that he is describing and cataloguing in The True Believer are consistent with a race of intelligent beings that are born sick and groupist, and live group-oriented lives, and their pathologies and wasted games stem from their not knowing how to live, in accordance with their altruistic-collectivist morality that , ironically, makes them unenviable, sub-performing, crowd-hugging, fantasy-embracing, selfish, conformist narcissists.
H: “The undercurrent of admiration in hatred manifests itself in the inclination to imitate those we hate. Thus every mass movement shapes itself after its specific devil. Christianity at its height realized the image of the antichrist. The Jacobins practiced all of the evils of the tyranny they had risen against. Soviet Russia is realizing the purest and most colossal example of monopolistic capitalism. Hitler took the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion for his guide and textbook; he followed them ‘down to the veriest detail.’”
My response: Here is another paradox and it is bone-chilling in its ramifications. It seems that Hoffer is pointing out that those that the mass movement or group of haters most admire are the ones it will grudgingly imitate and be obsessed with, but the mob will also identify that superior (superior by merit not nature, no natural elitism at work here) element is the hated devil, and they will destroy their target, this target, while grudgingly imitating them.
An individuators, unlike the mediocre joiner, is able to learn from someone smarter, kinder and more talented without needing to justify mistreating that person emulated—as is customarily engaged in by the mean, jealous joiners-- by socially gaining revenge by accentuating that this superior someone’s objective excellence is proportional to her subjective, social inferiority to the mediocre joiner. The joiners get revenge on the superior person by scapegoating onto her in the social arena, where she lacks standing commensurate to the socially superior nonindiviuator. And the joiner is right: the individual can be superior in intelligence, wisdom work performance, artistic creativity, and moral integrity, but that very superiority has a reverse downside in the world of social interplay and existing: there, in that arena, the superior individual will not fit in and there the superior person is locally inferior in terms of social rank and popularity. These two metrics are the only ones that matter for nonindividuating joiners, for social rank is all they live for and is all they think matters. Socially they are superior to successful individuators, individuals and other ethnic groups that achieve more than one own ethnic group.
Individuators can learn from someone superior without needing to exact any revenge on that neighboring person, who by their mere existence by propinquity, make the nearby joiner feel inferior because he is. He needs to up his game and catch up with his superior neighbor. The inferior joiner can catch up, but it takes will, confidence and a lot of hard work, so it is just easier to deny the whole thing (the requirement that the joiner adjust and grow), and afterward resort to a return to what the joiner does excel at, social ranking and scapegoating games.
By contrast, the excelling loner, is under no compulsion to inflict upon the superior person that he has met and will emulate, the need not pay for being identified as and actually being superior in some way to the individuator that recognizes this actuality in the superior person, for making the individuator feel inferior. The individuators recognizes that he is inferior to the superior person in some way, but is not overly bothered by this accurate comparison, because he is confident enough to know this and learn from it without exacting revenge on her that is superior to him.
We do not want to send the message that becoming superior by merit is an action that will be punished by the mob that admires but resent one that stands out and betters herself. We want to reward and encourage excellence and sensible risk-taking.
In other words, those that dare to leave the group, and become successful individuals in some way to some degree, are the most unpopular and hated, marginalized element of society, and they are given special negative attention, ostracized, attacked, ghettoized socially but also sometimes geographically, and them sometimes liquidated as an individual or class. Some reward for becoming exceptional.
We will not be civilized until we tolerate and approve of superior individual effort, uniqueness, and separate values. We become more civilized when we are rewarding liberty over enforced equality, and we do not worry about what neighbors are doing. We must treat everyone largely the same, not where and when some groups are put on a pedestal and some groups are outcasted, marginalizes or assigned lower caste, untouchable status.
H: “It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors. That the evil men do lives after them is partly due to the fact that those that have reason to hate the evil most shape themselves after it and thus perpetuate it. It is obvious, therefore, that the influence of the fanatic is bound to be out of all proportion to his abilities. Both by converging and antagonizing, he shapes the world in his image. Fanatic Christianity put its imprint upon the ancient world both by gaining adherents and by evoking in its pagan opponents a strange fervor and a new ruthlessness. Hitler imposed himself upon the world by promoting Nazism and by forcing the democracies to become zealous, intolerant and ruthless. Communist Russia shapes both its adherents and its opponents in its image.”
My response: It is almost impossible to comprehend, without updated Mavellonialist perspective, how rich and multifaced, on many layers, was what Hoffer wrote in the True Believer in just a single sentence like this one from Page 95: It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors.
The act of oppressing, especially if the abuser or oppressor is a class of haves oppressing, abusing, degrading, tyrannizing, and exploiting as class of have-nots, perhaps of a different race, ethnic background, or denomination, is often a group effort with group identity more than the abuser being an isolated individual, though that occurs too.
The oppressed are genuinely suffering, and they hate their masters and mistresses but imitate them. Their attitude is: I will not learn anything positive from you, but will just incorporate into our group-identity your worst practices: I will revolt, overthrow you oppressors, and then I will be the new oppressor, and inflict the corruption, mistreatment, injusctice and malevolent hurt upon you, the new and now vanquished, lower class, and now you shall pay for your centuries of abuse.
We see this with the proponents of CRT: the post-1965 legal status of national color-blindness and fair, equal treatment of each individual American, regardless of race, gender, gender-orientation, color or creed or class, is not enough. The woke racialists aspire to take over; they want to rule as an elite group going forward: they want to do unto whitey what was done onto them in America until the 1960s. Social justice is not about gaining equality: it is about pure revenge, minority supremacy in America and reverse discrimination, and they might well eventually put whites into concentration camps and gas chambers. They are totalitarian haters with the worst, vile Nazi instincts imaginable.
The oppressed can only not imitate their oppressors if they refuse to imitate them, saying I will not do unto you as you did unto me or my ancestors. I will be an anarchist-individuator supercitizen so that the caste system rule by elites with oppression, exploitation, tyranny, power struggle, conflicts, and violent competition between rival tribes’ ceases.
It needs to be replaced by peace, cooperation in a political and social atmosphere of much individual liberty, commerce and free-trading, with tolerance and coexistence guaranteed and desired between all gently competing individuals in that community or society, where none oppress anyone, and none accept being oppressed by anyone. I think this was all implicit in this sentence from Hoffer, which I quoted above.
It is groups of the oppressed that that perpetuate evil by imitating it rather than learning from it, and fanatics are wicked oppressors and aggressors, so the whole world reacts to them and is lowered and become more zealous, intolerant and ruthless as a result. We are affected by what our mass-movementized neighbors do and pull.
H: “Thus, though hatred is a convenient instrument for mobilizing a community for defense, it does not, in the long run, come cheap. We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out to defend.
Hitler, who sensed the undercurrent of admiration in hatred, drew a remarkable conclusion. It is of utmost importance, he said, that the National Socialist should seek and deserve the violent hatred of his enemies. Such hatred would be proof of the superiority of the National Socialist faith. ‘The best yardstick for the value of his (the National Socialist’s) attitude, for the sincerity of his conviction, and the force of his will is the hostility he receives from the . . . enemy.’”
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