His Origins

 

 

From Pages 143 to 145 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer writes of the origin of fanatics, the men of action that make a mass movement a going concern. I quote him and comment on his content.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                                  111

 

Whence come the fanatics? Mostly from the ranks of the noncreative men of words. The most significant division between men of words is between those who can find fulfillment in creative work and those who cannot. The creative man of words, no matter how bitterly he may criticize and deride the existing order, is actually attached to the present. His passion to reform and not destroy. When the mass movement remains wholly in his keeping, he turns it into a mild affair. The reforms he initiates are of the surface, and life flows on without a sudden break. But such a development is possible only when the anarchic action of the masses does not come into play, either because the old order abdicates without a struggle or because the man of words allies himself with strong men of action the moment chaos threatens to break loose. When the struggle with the old order is bitter and chaotic and victory can be won only by utmost unity and self-sacrifice, the creative man of words is usually shoved aside and the management of affairs falls into the hands of noncreative men of words—the eternal misfits and fanatical contemners of the present.”

 

My response: Hoffer has written elsewhere that the common people are lumpy with talent that they never develop as the individuals possessing it, let alone self-realizing as their final cause. I accept that all people are endlessly gifted and talented, some more than others, but all are remarkably talented. If humans are equal it is in their natural right to be treated equally under the law, and by God on Judgment Day; they are all equal in that they are equally, universally enjoying the blessing of natural talent, though some are more gifted than others, but the base line giftednness of the less talented is so open-ended, original and powerful, almost infinite, that people more or less are equal in talent.

 

That being said, I do not accept that noncreative men of words need to be fanatics, eternal misfits and fanatical contemners of the present. They never lacked creative talent: they just gave up on themselves too soon, or did not try hard enough, long enough (Be creative and self-realizing until your last day on earth—that is the life that the Good Spirits have commanded us to lead.).

 

Noncreative leaders of mass movements and the true-believing followers are all guilty of being noncreative, nonindividuating and non-individualistic. They all had a bottomless gift from God, if they just believed in God, believed in this command to self-realize from God, and faced their demons as autonomous, self-directing individuals and struggled upward for a lifetime to be as artistically, innovatively, intellectually, morally and spiritually talented as they could be if they had chosen to be living angels. There is nothing about noncreative men of words running mass movements with thousands or millions of nonindividuating groupists running from themselves into the communal shelter that is necessary or unavoidable. All chose such an immoral, stupid, wasteful, painful, malevolent, inferior lifestyle.

 

Once the noncreative nonindividuators are discontented, and their social order falls apart due to the carping, fault-finding men of words nagging to sever the attachment the masses have to their dispensation then we have this evil circus of men of action, demagogues and guru scoundrels, hatching their mass movements to smash civilization and bring totalitarian hell to their country. That the old dispensation was upheld by discontented nonindividuators, quietly fanatical and quietly destructive, but held back and asleep by their social order’s numbing effect on their inner discontent. That the old order was run by and for passive, quiet nonidividuators.For those people, constant needed, incremental form was prevented from occurring, and keeping the dispensation intact and conservative but still ever changing gently in the present to make  a mass movement unnecessary and avoidable.

 

 Any individual is a misfit because he refused to believe in himself and he settled for being a discontented mediocrity. Once he settled for being nothing, then his self-esteem can bottom out, and he feels like an unlucky victim and it is not his fault, and the world is to blame, perhaps God is against him. Now he has a grievance against the world, and he hates the world, people and cosmos, and his only fanatical, nihilist craving is to find a holy cause to disappear into to escape his legitimately guilty conscience. Once inside that movement run by a radical fanatic that wants to burn the world down, the true believer will work in complete unity with his brothers and sisters in the movement to see the leader’s destructive plan carried out, and he will sacrifice himself for a cause that is trash and not worth living for let alone dying for, though the lying true believer has convinced himself that it is the absolute truth, the noblest cause ever.

 

H: “The man who wants to write a great book, paint a great picture, create an architectural masterpiece, become a great scientist, and knows that never in all eternity will he be able to realize this, his innermost desire, can find no peace in a stable social order—old or new. He sees his life as irrevocably spoiled and the world perpetually out of joint. He feels at home only in a state of chaos. Even when he submits to or imposes iron discipline, he is but submitting to or shaping the indispensable instrument for attaining a state of eternal flux, eternal becoming. Only when engaged in change does he have a sense of freedom and the feeling that he is growing and developing. It is because he can never be reconciled with himself that he fears finality and a fixed order of things. Marat, Robespierre, Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler are outstanding examples of fanatics arising from the ranks of noncreative men of words. Peter Viereck points out that most of the Nazi bigwigs has artistic and literary ambitions which they could not realize. Hitler tried painting and architecture; Goebbels, drama, the novel and poetry; Rosenberg, architecture and philosophy; von Shirach, poetry; Funk, music; Streicher, painting. ‘Almost all were failures, not only by the usual vulgar criterion of success but by their own artistic criteria.’ Their artistic and literary ambitions ‘were originally far deeper than political ambitions: and were integral parts of their personalities.’”

 

My response: Let me repeat: fanatics gave up on themselves and quit too soon. If they lived by a morality of egoism-individualism rather than altruism-collectivism; if they individuated rather than wasting their days nonindividuating; if they thought of the Good Spirits as divine angels and individuators that love to guide humans to be creative living angels getting it done; if they did these things, in most instances, most people would know success and talented release and improvement so they would not have to conclude that their lives are irremediably  ruined, that there is for them not future, and they will never have a chance again.

 

None ever had to choose a life of self-denunciation, chaos, destruction.

 

H: “The creative men of words is ill at ease in the atmosphere of an active movement. He feels that its whirl and passion sap his creative energies. So long as he is conscious of the creative flow within him, he will find fulfillment in leading millions and winning victories. The result is that, once the movement starts rolling, he either retires voluntarily or is pushed aside. Moreover, since the genuine man of words can never wholeheartedly and for long suppress his critical faculty, he is inevitably cast in the role of the heretic. Thus unless the creative man of words stifles the newborn movement by allying himself with practical men of action or unless he dies at the right time, he is likely to end up a shunned recluse or in exile or facing a firing squad.”

 

My response: No mass movement has any room or tolerance for a creative individualist or heretic.