Unified

 

From Page 123 through Page 125 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer discusses unification and mass movements. I quote him and then comment on his content.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “Thorough unification, whether brought about by spontaneous surrender, persuasion, coercion, necessity or ingrained habit, or a combination of these, tends to intensify the inclinations and attitudes which promote unity. We have seen that unification intensifies the propensity to hatred (Section 77),”

 

My response: Note Hoffer’s implicit support of my moral theory that selfishness—especially construed as rational or enlightened self-interest—is good and selflessness—especially when one is willing to sacrifice oneself and one’s moral sense to expand the power and reach of one’s beloved collective entity—is bad: he writes that unification intensifies the propensity to hatred, and I would argue that training the young to self-realize as individuating supercitizens will intensify their propensity to love—to love God, themselves and others.

 

H: “and the imitative capacity (Section 82). It is also true that the unified individual is more credulous and obedient than the potential true believer who is still an autonomous individual. Though it is true that the leadership of a collective body usually keeps hatred at a white heat, encourages imitation and credulity and fosters obedience, the fact remains that unification by itself, even when not aided by the manipulations of the leadership, intensifies the reactions which function as unifying agents.

 

This is at first sight a surprising fact. We have seen that most unifying factors originate in the revulsion of the frustrated individual from an unwanted self and an untenable existence. But the true believer who is wholly assimilated into a compact collective body is no longer frustrated. He has found a new identity and a new life. He is one of the chosen, bolstered and protected by invincible powers, and destined to inherit the earth. His is a state of mind the very opposite of the frustrated individual; yet he displays, with increased intensity, all the reactions which are symptomatic of inner tension and security.”

 

My response: It seems as if the frustrated individual, without absorption and total unification in his holy cause’s mass movement, is still frustrated, but once wholly unified with the movement, he is no longer frustrated, for he is a pure joiner, a state of negative bliss so to speak.

 

H: “What happens to the unified individual?

 

Unification is a process of diminution rather than addition. In order to be assimilated into a collective medium a person has to be stripped of his individual distinctness. He has to be deprived of free choice and independent judgment. Many of his natural bents and impulses have to be suppressed or blunted. The elements which apparently are added—faith, hope, pride, confidence—are negative in origin. The exaltation of the true believer does not flow from reserves of strength and wisdom but from a sense of deliverance: he had been delivered from the meaningless burdens of an autonomous existence. ‘We Germans are so happy. We are free from freedom.’ His happiness and fortitude come from his no longer being himself. Attacks against the self cannot touch him. His powers of endurance when at the mercy of an implacable enemy or when facing unsupportable circumstances are superior to those of an autonomous individual.”

 

My response: For the individuators, the adventure and joy of his life is to take up the burden of figuring out who he is, what is his life quest, and then he spends the rest of his life becoming a living angel. A life cannot hold more joy and happiness than so living.

 

If the individuating supercitizen is alert, courageous and disciplined, he can stand alone against secret police and their torture chamber, or an opposing army that is coming to kill him. He prefers to live, but will die for his God, his country, and his cause, if duty requires it.

 

H: “But this invincibility depends on the life line which connects him with the collective whole. As long as he feels himself part of that whole and nothing else, he is indestructible and immortal. All his fervor and fanaticism, are, therefore, clustered around this life line. His striving for utmost unity is more intense than the vague longing of the frustrated for an escape from an untenable self. The frustrated individual still has a choice: he can find a new life not only by becoming part of a corporate body but also by changing his environment or by throwing himself wholeheartedly into some absorbing undertaking. The unified individual, on the other hand, has no choice. He must cling to the collective body or like a fallen leaf wither and fade.  It is doubtful whether the excommunicated priest, the expelled Communist and the renegade chauvinist can ever find peace of mind as autonomous individuals. They cannot stand on their own, but must embrace a new cause and attach themselves to a new group.

 

The true believer is eternally incomplete, eternally insecure.”

 

My response: We have already discussed that Hoffer uses the technical adjective of discontented to describe the average citizen, a joiner in one of many intact social compacts. When that compact disintegrates or is blown to smithereens by outside forces, the frightened, bewildered, lost joiner desperately seeks a mass movement to join to escape from his unwanted self and his spoiled life: to this unhappy phases of living for the desperate individual, Hoffer applies to technical adjective frustrated to describe this lost fanatic.

 

Now in this section of his book about unification, he has introduced another technical adjective: the unified individual. The unified individual no longer exists as an individual; his soul, his consciousness, his identity is the group soul, the group consciousness, the group identity. It is unlikely that a true believer that morphs into being a unified individual will ever be able to exist as an autonomous individual, should his mass movement collapse and disband.

 

Now I add to his three technical adjectives, one of my own: the contented individual, that individuating supercitizen that is pretty happy and satisfied with how he is living, and how his life has turned out, as he continues to develop and grow creatively, spiritually, ethically, emotionally, and intellectually as long as he lives.

 

H: “                                                         103

 

It is of interest to note the means by which a mass movement accentuates and perpetuates the individual incompleteness of its adherents. By elevating dogma above reason, the individual’s intelligence is prevented from becoming self-reliant. Economic dependence is maintained by centralizing economic power and by a deliberately created scarcity of the necessities of life. Social self-sufficiency is discouraged by crowded housing or communal quarters, and enforced by daily participation in public functions. Ruthless censorship of literature, art, music and science prevents even the creative few from living self-sufficient lives. The inculcated devotions to church, party, country, leader and creed also perpetuate a state of incompleteness. For every devotion is a socket which demands the fitting in of a complimentary part from without.

 

Thus people raised in the atmosphere of a mass movement are fashioned into incomplete and dependent human beings even when they have within themselves the making of self-sufficient entities. Though strangers to frustration and without a grievance, they will yet exhibit the peculiarities of people who crave to lose themselves and be rid of an existence that is irrevocably spoiled.”