Where one lands along a spectrum of political outlook leads to differing outlooks about the present. Eric Hoffer writes of this in his book, The True Believer, from Pages 72 to 74. I quote what he wrote there and then comment on it.
Hoffer (H after this): “ 52
It is of interest here to compare the attitudes toward the present, future and past shown by the conservative, the liberal, the skeptic, the radical and the reactionary.
The conservative doubts the present can be bettered, and he tries to shape the future in the image of the present. He goes to the past for assurance about the present: ‘I wanted the sense of continuity, the assurance that our contemporary blunders were endemic in human nature, that our new fads were very ancient heresies, that beloved things which were threatened had rocked not less heavily in the past.”
My response: I am a conservative, but the present can always been improved upon, so we should sift through each new fad, separating the wheat from the chaff as best we can. Then what is new but beneficial can be brought into the main culture. What is destructive should be rejected out of hand to render it less dangerous, and what is incoming but harmless, that can be allowed.
One can be a conservative but still be progressive in the best sense of the world.
H; “How, indeed, like the skeptic is the conservative? ‘Is there anything new whereof it may be said, See this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us.’ To the skeptic the present is the sum of all that has been and shall be. ‘The thing that hath been, it is that which will be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.’ The liberal sees the present as the legitimate offspring of the past and as constantly growing and developing toward an improved future: to damage the present is to maim the future. All three then cherish the present, and, as one would expect, they do not take willingly to the idea of self-sacrifice. Their attitude toward self-sacrifice is best expressed by the skeptic: ‘for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know they shall die: but the dead know not anything . . . neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun.”
My response: It is interesting how Hoffer sets this up. The conservative, the skeptic and the liberal all have slightly different approaches to change, but they all revere and live in and wish to preserve the present. They are individuals and contented, more or less. Self-sacrifice or giving up one’s life and pleasant, fitting present life for the sake of dying or suffering for the sake of some nebulous or fantastic, even frightening holy cause that will smash the compact order where people live in the present time, and overturn everything for the sake of some new social order, predicted to be wonderful in some utopian way, in the unpredictable future, and one is to give up everything, join the movement and sacrifice even one’s life to bring about the new dispensation. This seems like madness and foolish, lethal wickedness to the conservative, the skeptic and the liberal, and they are right more than not. To overthrow America is what the Left craves mightily, but they are sick and misguided fools.
To overthrow the governments of Iran or China might be desirable, but, often the new order will be as cruel and totalitarian as the one overthrown.
H: “The radical and the reactionary hate the present. They see it as an aberration and a deformity. Both are ready to proceed ruthlessly and recklessly with the present, and both are hospitable to the idea of self-sacrifice. Wherein do they differ? Primarily in their view of the malleability of man’s nature. The radical has a passionate faith in the infinite perfectibility of human nature. He believes by changing man’s environment and by perfecting a technique of soul-forming, a society can be wrought that is wholly new and unprecedented. The reactionary does not believe that man has unfathomed potentialities for good in him. If a stable and healthy society is to be established, it must be patterned after the proven models of the past. He sees the future as a glorious restoration rather than an unprecedented innovation.”
My response: The radical is a Communist and the reactionary is a Fascist, but both are true-believers, destroyers, haters of the present. They demand and command and coax all to join their mass movement, to serve their guru, Party, or holy cause. They are both terrorists that will destroy Western, bourgeois democracy.
As to the human nature being infinitely plastic and malleable, as a conservative essentialist, I know that is not so. The state out to remake the human nature of each citizen is an excuse for totalitarian strong men and their secret police to practice soul-raping on the people like Stalin used to perform.
Reactionaries pretend to be conservative, but they are authoritarian and collectivist, so they are almost twins to the Communist thugs.
H: “In reality the boundary line between radical and reactionary is not always distinct. The reactionary manifest radicalism when he comes to recreate his ideal past. His image of the past is based less on what it actually was than on what he wants the future to be. He innovates more than he reconstructs. A somewhat similar shift occurs in the case of the radical when he goes about building his new world. He feels the need for practical guidance, and since he has rejected and destroyed the present he is compelled to link the new world with some point in the past. If he has to employ violence in shaping the new, his view of man’s nature darkens and approaches closer to that of the reactionary.
The blending of the reactionary and the radical is particularly evident in those engaged in a nationalist revival. The followers of Ghandi in India and the Zionists in Palestine would revive a glorified past and simultaneously create an unprecedented Utopia. The prophets, too, were a blend of the reactionary and the radical. They preached a return to ancient faith and also envisaged a new world and a new life.
53
That the deprecating attitude of a mass movement toward the present seconds the attitude of the frustrated is obvious. What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as they decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come from the mere venting of a grievance. There must be something more—and there is. By expatiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation. It is as if they said, ‘Not only our blemishes selves, but the lives of all our contemporaries, even the most happy and successful, are worthless and wasted.’ Thus by deprecating the present they acquire a vague sense of equality.”
My response: That the frustrated feel overjoyed to deprecate the present and all living now, they feel a vague sense of reassurance that all are failures, equally, even though it is not so. One may have failed often in one’s life, but one is only a failure or loser, in any substantive way, if one actually believes one is a failure, and refuse to try improving oneself any longer. It need not have ended up that way, but that is what the frustrated settle for, so, rather than blame themselves for their cowardice, they blame the world, and work mightily to burn it all down.
H: “The means, also, a mass movement uses to make the present unpalatable (Section 48) strike a responsive chord in the frustrated. The self-mastery needed in overcoming the appetites gives them an illusion of strength. They feel that in mastering themselves they have mastered the world. The mass movement’s advocacy of the impracticable and impossible also agrees with their taste. Those who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. It is a device to camouflage their shortcomings. For when we fail in attempting the possible, the blame is solely ours; but when we fail in attempting the impossible, we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task. There is less risk in being discredited when trying the impossible than when trying the possible. It is thus that failure in everyday affairs often breeds an extravagant audacity.
One gains the impression that the frustrated derive as much satisfaction—if not more—from the means a mass movement uses as from the ends it advocates. The delight of the frustrated in chaos and in the downfall of the fortunate and prosperous does not spring from an ecstatic awareness that they clearing the ground for the heavenly city. In their fanatical cry of ‘all or nothing at all’ the second alternative echoes perhaps a more ardent wish than the first.”
My response: The contented, successful individual does not fail much at running his own affairs, and he learns from his mistakes ordinarily, and gets it right. His approach to living and working is practical, rewarding, sensible, rational, and effective. The frustrated failed at making it in the mundane world of the possible, so they sees themselves as entitled, authorized and able, as failures, to be self-promoted to run the affairs of all. When the personal life of the social justice warrior is a total mess, she feels therefore qualified to run society.
There is a lot of malice and envy in the minds and souls of the true believers, so seeing chaos created and everything falling apart, including the downfall of the fortunate and prosperous, well that just fills them with a warm inner glow.
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