Substitutes

 

Eric Hoffer in his book, The True Believer, Pages 12 and 13, addresses what occurs when people in a mass movement are seeking substitutes. I will record his paragraphs and then comment on them.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “ II     The Desire for Substitutes

 

                                                            7

 

There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement and its appeal is mainly to self-interest. On the other hand, a mass movement, particularly in its active, revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent of bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.”

 

 

My response: People are attracted to what appeals to them, and people motivated by self-esteem, self-interest, and self-advancement, they will join practical organizations to make money, find meaning for their lives and to change what needs to be changed in their lives, and for the community, the government, and the country. When most people believe in the metanarrative and culture that their stable society holds, their self-esteem generally is intact, and they operate at room temperature.

 

When people, naturally discontented, no longer share or believe in the culture, the traditions, the mores, the metanarrative promulgated by their community or country, they take refuge in a replacement metanarrative and new way of life, which the mass movement personifies, or at least is a promising vehicle that will carry the frustrated masses to their destination, a better, rewarding future.

 

The masses, lacking self-esteem under the discredited, abandoned status quo, seek to escape from freedom and their utterly blemished selves, to leave these unwanted, nauseating selves behind by scurrying into and hiding from the accusatory selves, ensconced in the oblivion of the collective, the mass movement. The mass movement appeals to the masses because self-renunciation they are fleeing their miserable personal existences.

 

If one is an egoist like I am, one equates the collective with evil, and the individual with goodness; in this light, masses of people seeking self-renunciation by escaping into a passing mass movement is scary and destructive, and it does not make me feel warm and fuzzy about mass movements and its hordes on the march making history their way.

 

H: “People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worth-while purpose in self-advancement. The prospect of an individual career cannot stir them to a mighty effort, nor can it invoke in them faith and a single-minded dedication. They look on self-interest as something tainted and evil; something unclean and unlucky. Anything undertaken under the auspices of the self seems to them foredoomed. Nothing that has its roots and reasons in the self can be good and noble. Their innermost craving is for a new life—a rebirth—or, failing this, a chance to acquire some new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by identification with a holy cause. An active mass movement offers them opportunities for both. If they join the movement as full converts they are born to a new life in its close-knit collective body, or if attracted as sympathizers they find elements of pride, confidence and purpose by identifying themselves with the efforts, achievements and prospects of the movements.

 

To the frustrated a mass movement offers substitutes either for the whole self or for the elements that make life bearable and which they cannot evoke out of their individual resources.”

 

My response: Hoffer is not an egoist in moral theory, but he anticipates egoism-individualism that I espouse. He is a cultural believer in Judeo-Christian morality, but he is for egoism enough to appreciate that self-interest and individualism are important to happy, well-functioning adulthood.

 

The frustrated cannot find meaning and satisfaction through self-advancement. Their single-minded dedication to and faith in their holy cause, and the mass movement that carries it forth, is their substitute for self-interested living as a separate individual. They substitute membership in the mass movement for a fulfilling life as an individual, so their ethical system is hyper-altruistic and collectivist.

 

I wish to assure any reader that no one is without talent or the potential to lead a rich, full, satisfying, loving, happy life as an accomplished individual, especially if she self-actualizes. She never lacked the talent and possibility of leading a fulfilling personal life, but, she made poor choices often enough, that she gave up on herself, and quit trying to grow and excel on her own, so she concluded that renouncing the self, and running off to live as an acolyte of the mass movement selected was her only option. It never was her only option, but she believes that it is and times of historical upheaval and uncertainty, can make many like her seek escape from the self and from freedom by hiding in the nearby mass movement.

 

Her substitute life, her being reborn as a group myrmidon, are the ambitions of a shattered personality, broken, incompetent to cope on her own, feeling helpless and worthless.

 

H: “It is true that among the early adherents of a mass movement there are also adventurers who join in hope that the movement will give a spin to their wheel of fortune and whirl them to fame and power. On the other hand, a degree of selfless dedication is sometimes displayed by those that join corporations, orthodox political parties and other practical organizations. Still the fact remains that a practical concern cannot endure unless it can appeal to and satisfy self-interest, while the vigor and growth depends on its capacity to evoke and satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. When a mass movement begins to attract people who are interested in their individual careers, it is a sign that it has passed its vigorous stage; that it is no longer engaged in molding a new world but in possessing and preserving the present. It ceases then to be a movement and becomes an enterprise. According to Hitler, the more ‘posts and offices a movement has to hand out, the more inferior stuff it will attract, and in the end these political hangers-on overwhelm a successful party in such number that the honest fighter of former days no longer recognizes the old movement . . . . When this happens, the ‘mission’ of such a movement is done for.”

 

My response: Hoffer’s research and insights can teach us about human nature. Practical concerns are more peaceful, less violent, not fanatical, whose members are driven by self-interest and rational desire, not fervency, passion, radicalism, and idealism. The practical members are moderates, interested in the present and are reconciled to the present and themselves; the true believers have renounced the present, renounced themselves for total self-sacrifice to bring about a wonderful future visionary society which might well be a disappointing hell. Once a movement is taken over by careerists, it is run for the sake of present gain, not future sacrifice.

 

H on Pages 13 and 14: “The nature of the complete substitute offered by conversion is discussed in the chapters of self-sacrifice and united action in Part III. Here we shall deal with partial substitutes.”

 

                                                            8

 

H: “Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the loss of faith in ourselves.”

 

My response: We can remain individualists and even individuators and still be heroic and self-sacrificing in service of a cause or humanity, but it cannot be the fanatical, passionate, idolatrous worship of a cause, now a god-substitute made holy; the individualist can follow his ideals and values, but he must not renounce his own dignity and personhood, subsuming his independence and very identity to the festishized abstraction that is now the devotees identity and reason for living.

 

Faith in a holy cause is an altruistic self-renunciation and self-immolation, and the self is a sacrificial offering to the religious substitute, the leader or holy cause that one is idolizing.

 

One can and must retain one’s self-love and faith in oneself while worshiping God and this is a healthy relationship and is egoistically motivational on the part of the worshiping human. When one worships an abstraction as a substitute for lost faith in oneself, one’s motivation is altruistic, and it is a sick side of altruism on display here.

 

H:  “                                                     9

 

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race, his holy cause.”

 

My response: Why Hoffer did not come out as an avowed egoist, I will never know, but he nailed it when indicating that the incompetent, bumbling, insecure and self-doubting man has given up on himself, then he will selflessly devote himself to advancing his religious substitute beyond his flawed self, and his service to this holy cause is a religious substitute, to compensate for the absence of a strong, healthy, binding and mutual relationship between the believer and some benevolent deity.

 

H: “                                                      10

 

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.

 

This minding of other people’s business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor’s shoulder or fly at his throat.”

 

My response: The altruist can be motivated by kindness, compassion, and a passion for justice for all under the law, but much of altruism is meddling in other people’s affairs. I believe the benevolent deities are Individualists and Individuators, and that loving ourselves, them and others is best expressed and exemplified by a lifetime of self-realization. That requires no more evil altruism, meddling in the affairs of others, no more bossing them around, no more holding them down and back in group-living and non-individuation.

 

H: “                                                      11

 

The burning conviction that we have a holy duty towards others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like giving a hand is often holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.”

 

My response: If we love others, we let them go so they can run their own lives, to think, create, invent and build, as creators building the cosmos and dedicating the good deities, thereby growing the size of the divine kingdom. That is the human mission on earth.

 

If all did this, there would be no puny or meaningless lives lived, and, for God, it matters not how far one gets, but that one is consistently working to grow and develop the self—this is key.

 

The fanatic is completely selfless and his vanity, gargantuan self-esteem as one of the Elect is not genuine self-esteem of a maverizer. The ego and self-esteem of the individuators is strong and confident but contained and modest. He does not take himself too seriously and can laugh at himself.

 

H on Page 13 and 14: “                         12

 

One of the most potent attractions of a mass movement is its offering of a substitute for individual hope. This attraction is particularly effective in a society imbued with the idea of progress. For in the conception of progress, ‘tomorrow’ looms large, and the frustration resulting from having nothing to look forward to is the more poignant, Hermann Rauschning says of pre-Hitlerian Germany that ‘The feeling of having come to the end of all things was one of the worst troubles we endured after that lost war.’ In a modern society a people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath when kept hustling. The despair brought by unemployment comes not only from the threat of destitution, but from the sudden view of a vast nothingness ahead. The unemployed are more likely to follow the peddlers of hope than the handers-out of relief.

 

Mass movements are usually accused of doping their followers with hope of the future while cheating them of the enjoyment of the present. Yet to the frustrated the present is irremediably spoiled. Comforts and pleasures cannot make it whole. No real content or comfort can ever arise in their minds but from hope.”

 

My response: There is much going on in these two powerful paragraphs. People are attracted to mass movements if they lose hope, individual hope. If they can be offered the hope of a system of good values, healthy religion, or the ethos of self-realization, then they will not lose hope in themselves now or in the future, with no incentive to join a mass movement to find some sense of a better tomorrow being forthcoming.

 

The postmodernists and Leftists instinctively recognize that, by endlessly deconstructing and gaslighting the American and Western way of life and its culture, if they can divorce the people from the traditional metanarrative, they will have made them disaffected, anxious and frustrated enough to be attractive to the peculiar hope of a coming socialist utopia just around the bend.

 

There is also a hint here that people in Western or industrialized societies, used to progress and change, bereft of individual hope, will be tempted to seek substitute, negative, unfulfilling hope in a mass movement.