Unsettled

 

Eric Hoffer, on Page 1 of his classic, The True Believer, lets the reader know that this is PART One, The Appeal of Mass Movements. I will copy each paragraph and then comment on them.

 

He starts the book on Page 3 (H for Hoffer after this): “I ________The Desire for Change: It is a truism that many who join a rising revolutionary movement are attracted by the prospect of sudden and spectacular change in the conditions of their lives. A revolutionary movement is a conspicuous agent of change.”

 

My response: Dennis Prager has repeatedly pointed out that secularism and affluence make modern Americans bored to death, and people with ease, plenty, leisure, education, and luxury without purpose, cannot long stomach the dearth of meaning in their lives. They will invent meaning and purpose to fill that religious and cultural void; the horror and crime of it all is the ism they select is often destructive and malevolent; if they elevate its status to a holy cause, that deserves a mass movement to move this cause along, then change, excitement and purpose enrich the empty lives of this barren souls. Their mass movement provides them with the change they seek, and its moving has the potential to shake society to its foundations.

 

H: “Not so obvious is the fact that religious and nationalist movements too can be vehicles of change. Some kind of widespread enthusiasm or excitement is apparently needed for the realization of vast and rapid change, and it does not seem to matter if the exhilaration is derived from an expectation of untold riches or is generated by an active mass movement. In this country the spectacular changes since the Civil War were enacted in an atmosphere charged with enthusiasm born of fabulous opportunities for self-advancement. Where self-advancement cannot, or is not allowed to, serve as a driving force, other forces of enthusiasm have to be found if momentous changes, such as the awakening and renovation of a stagnant society or radical reforms in the character and pattern of life of a community, are to be realized and perpetuated. Religious, revolutionary and nationalist movements are such generating plants of general enthusiasm.”

 

My response: Change is inevitable and is often desirable, so we might has well try to control the rate, pace and direction of change as best we can to obtain the outcome most beneficial to the individual and to society. 

 

It seems that Hoffer has contrasted two kinds of catalysts or drivers of aroused enthusiasm to propel the people to bring about large-scale change. The first is rare and American, where 19^th century Americans after 1865 were excited by fabulous opportunities for self-advancement. The more common catalyst driving peoples to bring about momentous change are the three kinds of mass movements that Hoffer highlights.

 

The capitalist American, a constitutional republic, where citizens and immigrants were already middle class and individualistic, were able to set up a wealthy, free mass culture where self-advancement was accepted, even expected, and rewarded. The increased sense of self-esteem and pursuit of life, liberty, happiness, and property gives rise to a moderated but pervasive, civilized but powerful enthusiasm that drives change. Change is brought about constantly, incrementally, and nonviolently over the decades.

 

The mass movement kind of catalyst is more extreme: the sleeping masses have no tradition or nudging to push self-advancement, so they remain meek, passive, submissive and selfless followers of the old order. They cannot generate the will or enthusiasm to facilitate needed change. It requires a mass movement and a most powerful but collective, often dangerous enthusiasm to jump start the people to get moving and transition.

 

Where people lack opportunities for self-advancement, growing prosperous, they remain stagnant. What would be ideal would be to trigger constant change, without such wild bouts of no enthusiasm or excessive, tough to calm enthusiasm, or such violent change running rough shod over everyone by a mass movement on the go.

 

I envision that change enthusiastically should be implemented by united, judicious individuators, and, where mass movement do arise, that these individuators speak up and take leadership positions to keep the mass movement from going too far, and to modulate the level of enthusiasm to keep it moderate and manageable. If we could educated the masses to maverize and to recognize the rise of mass movements, and engender in these supercitizens the duty and willingness to calibrate and civilize mass movements without killing the enthusiasms of the populace for effecting change, the excesses and destruction done to society by out-of-control mass movements could be minimized or eliminated.

 

H on Page 3 & 4: “In the past, religious movements were conspicuous vehicles of change. The conservatism of a religion—its orthodoxy—is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap. A rising religious movement is all change and experiment—open to new views and techniques from all quarters. Islam when it emerged was an organizing and modernizing medium. Christianity was a civilizing and modernizing  influence among the savage tribes of Europe. The Crusades and Reformation both were crucial factors in shaking the Western world from the stagnation of the Middle Ages.

 

In modern times, the mass movements involved in the realization of vast and rapid change are revolutionary and nationalist—singly or in combination. Peter the Great was probably the equal, in dedication, power and ruthlessness, of many of the most successful revolutionary or nationalist leaders. Yet he failed in his chief purpose, which was to turn Russia into a Western nation. And the reason he failed was that he did not infuse the Russian masses with some soul-stirring enthusiasm. He either did not think it was necessary or did not know how to make his purpose a holy cause. It is not strange that the Bolshevik revolutionaries who wiped out the last of the Czars and Romanovs should have a sense of kinship with Peter—a Czar and Romanov. For his purpose is now theirs, and they hope to succeed where he failed. The Bolshevik revolution may figure in history as much an attempt to modernize a sixth of the world’s surface as an attempt to build a Communist economy.”

 

My response: I like how Hoffer contrasts Peter the Great and Lenin: the difference may have been that Peter did not know how to make modernization and change a holy cause, while Lenis did, or that Russians were ready for holy causes, masse movements and enthusiastically in the early 20^th century, whereas they were still too feudal, rural, agrarian and medieval at the time of Peter the Great to be receptive to his call to enthusiastically modernize.

 

H on Pages 4 & 5: “The fact that both the French and the Russian revolutions turned into nationalist movements seems to indicate that in modern times nationalism is the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm, and that nationalist fervor must be tapped if the drastic changes projected and initiated by revolutionary enthusiasm are to be consummated. One wonders whether the difficulties encountered by the present Labor government in Britain are not partly due to the fact that the attempt to change the economy of the country and the way of life of 40,000,000 people has been initiated in an atmosphere singularly free from fervor, exaltation and wild hope. The revulsion from the ugly patterns developed by most contemporary mass movements have kept the civilized and decent leaders of the Labor party shy of revolutionary enthusiasm. The possibility still remains that events might force them to make use of some mild form of chauvinism so that in Britain too ‘the socialization of the nation 9might have) as its natural corollary the nationalization of socialism.”

 

My response: Hoffer recognizes that nationalist fervor, when yoked to revolutionary fervor, can begat mass movements powerful and enthusiastic, and whose leaders, if sufficiently uncivilized and unscrupulous, can rock the world—a scenario unlikely to play out in Britain with its political and cultural mood of decency and temperateness.