Decadent?

 

From Pages 161 to 163 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer writes of useful mass movements. I quote him and then comment on his content.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                Useful Mass Movements

 

                                                                 124

 

In the eyes of the true believer, people who have no holy cause are without backbone and character—a pushover for men of faith.”

 

My response: Individualists without a holy cause possess both backbone and character, for they stand on their own, and face reality without a crowd around them to give them confidence and strength.

 

If we rear up the young to be individuating supercitizens, then their grit and iron will will become evident right away to both their individualistic and fanatical opponents.

 

H: “On the other hand, the true believers of various hues, though they view each other with mortal hatred and are ready to fly at each other’s throats, recognize and respect each other’s strength. Hitler looked upon the Bolsheviks as his equals and gave orders that former Communists should be admitted to the Nazi party at once. Stalin in his turn saw in the Nazis and the Japanese the only nations worthy of respect. Even the religious fanatic and the militant atheist are not without respect for each other. Dostoevsky puts the following words in Bishop Tihon’s mouth: ‘outright atheism is more to be respected than worldly indifference . . . the complete atheist stands of the penultimate step to most perfect faith . . . but the indifferent person has no faith whatever except a bad fear.”

 

My response: Notice how evil and weak true believers (Yes, they are united and willing to die for their cause, and their radical, enthusiastic personal and group will to advance their beliefs makes them strong and courageous in a way.) ascribe courage and virtue to themselves, while attributing cowardice, emptiness, hedonism and a lack of commitment for those of temperate, rational dispositions without a holy cause to live for.

 

The true believers are wicked and weak, but regard themselves as virtuous, while the moderate and sensible individualists are considered by the true believers to be morally inferior, poltroonish, lessere people. Always the wicked and the true believers lie.

 

I would rear up a generation of indidivudating supercitizens who would be armed warriors, for peace and lawfulness, but unwilling to be dominated and pushed around by no one. If aggressive, bullying true believers encountered such strong, capable individualistic fighters, they would no longer regard them as weak pushovers, vacillating and vulnerable.

 

H: “All the true believers of our time—whether Communist, Nazi, Fascist, Japanese or Catholic—declaimed volubly on the decadence of Western democracies. The burden of their talk is that in the democracies the people are too soft, too pleasure-loving and too selfish to die for a nation, a God, or a holy cause. This lack of a readiness to die, we are told, is indicative of an inner rot—a moral and biological decay. The democracies are old, corrupt and decadent. They are not match for the virile congregations of the faithful who are about to inherit the earth.”

 

My response: It is true that democratic peoples, free, prosperous happy but middle class nonindividuators can become sluggish, decadent, and weak, but the same group, with maverization and supercitizen training, might show these traits at time but they would immediately when needed rise to the occasion, and withstand any attack internally or externally from true-believing enemies. Supercitizen warriors would give their lives for their nation, their God, and their way of life, but that would occur only, when necessary, for the moral individualist is about realizing his own talents and interests by staying alive, but he will sacrifice himself and even die for his people, should the need demand it, but it is not his first preference or choice. Fanatics underestimate how principled and courageous and feisty moderate individuators can become when the chips are down.

 

H: “There is a grain of sense and more than a grain of nonsense if the declamations. The readiness for united action and self-sacrifice is, as indicated in Section 41, a mass movement phenomenon. In normal times a democratic people is an institutionalized association of more or less free individuals. When its existence is threatened, and it has to unify its people  and generate in them a spirit of utmost self-sacrifice, the democratic nation has to transform itself into something akin to a militant church or revolutionary party. This process of religiofiction, though often difficult and slow, does not involve deep-reaching changes. The true believers themselves imply that the ‘decadence’ they declaim about so volubly is not an organic decay. According to the Nazis, Germany was decadent in the 1920’s and wholly virile in the 1930’s. Surely a decade is too short a time to work significant biological or even cultural changes in a population of millions.

 

It is nevertheless true that in times like the Hitler decade the ability to produce a mass movement in short order is of vital importance to a nation. The mastery of the art of religiofication is an essential requirement in the leader of a democratic nation, even though the need to practice it might not arise. And it is perhaps true that extreme intellectual fastidiousness or a businessman’s practical mindedness disqualifies a man for national leadership. There are also perhaps certain qualities in the normal life of a democratic nation which can facilitate the process of relgiofication in time of crisis and are therefore the elements of a potential national virility. The measure of a nation’s potential virility is as the reservoir of its longing. The saying of Heraclitus that ‘it would not be better for mankind if they were given their desires’ is true of nations as well as individuals. When a nation ceases to want things fervently or directs its desires toward an ideal that is concrete and limited, its potential virility is impaired. Only a goal which lends itself to continued perfection can keep a nation potentially virile even though its desires are continually fulfilled. The goal need not be sublime. The gross ideal of an ever-rising standard of living has kept this nation fairly virile. England’s idea of the country gentleman and France’s ideal of the retired rentier are concrete and limited. This definiteness of their national ideal has perhaps something to do with the lessened drive of the two nations. In America, Russia and Germany the ideal is indefinite and unlimited.”

 

My response: My sense of it is that a people can remain virile, growing, and enthusiastic to apply their logos to chasing after an indefinite and unlimited ideal of personal and national development and improvement that is optimistic and open-ended.

 

This can all be achieved with a citizenry that are individuators supercitizens, for true believers, gurus and mass movement are needed to foment change, energy, and virility in a people no longer.