Good And Bad

 

On Pages 151 to 153 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer writes of good and bad mass movements. I quote him and then comment on his comment.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                             XVIII

 

                                      Good and Bad Mass Movements

 

                        The Unattractiveness and Stability of the Active Phase

 

                                                                117

 

This book concerns itself chiefly with the active phase of mass movements—the phase molded and dominated by the true believer. It is in this phase that mass movements of all types often manifest the common traits we have tried to outline. Now it seems true that no matter how noble the original purpose of a movement and however beneficent the end result, its active phase is bound to strike us as unpleasant if not evil. The fanatic who personifies this phase is usually an unattractive human type. He is ruthless, self-righteous, credulous, disputatious, petty and rude. He is often ready to sacrifice relatives and friends for his holy cause. The absolute unity and readiness for self-sacrifice which give an active movement its irresistible drive and enable it to undertake the impossible are usually achieved at a sacrifice of much that is pleasant and precious to the autonomous individual.”

 

My response: Ayn Rand is ridiculed for promoting human selfishness, and likely she does do some degree, but mostly I think what she refers to as selfishness is rationally egoistic or enlightened self-interest. She is little interested in or promoting petty, mean, personal selfishness.

 

People do condemn her too for referring to altruism as evil because it requires sacrifice one’s own interest and even one’s life in service to others and their interests.

 

What I do not hear the proponents of altruist-collectivist morality taking responsibility for admitting to the moral flaws of altruist theory: how can altruism be beneficent when a fanatic is willing to sacrifice his family and friends for his holy cause, and it is well known that this betrayal of family and friends for the sake of Communism and Father Joe did take place routinely in Stalinist Russia?

 

Mass-movementized true believers are capable of vicious acts, including giving their lives for a meretricious cause. This drastic self-sacrifice for the sake of a mediocre cause is ghastly. Why is there so little prominent altruist stinging condemnation of altruist excesses, sins and corruption, as instantiated among group-oriented members of society, in the active phase of a mass movement?

 

 

H: “No mass movement, however sublime its faith and worthy its purpose, can be good if its phase is overlong, and, particularly, if it is continued after the movement is in undisputed possession of power.”

 

My response: One thinks of Mao and his Cultural Revolution that he kicked loose in 1966 as an example of a terribly destructive mass movement revitalized long after Mao and Communism were dominant in China.

 

H: “Since mass movements as we consider more or less beneficent—the Reformation, the Puritan, French and American Revolution, and many of the nationalist movements of the past hundred years—had active phases that were relatively short, though while they lasted they bore, to a greater or lesser degree, the imprint of the fanatic. The mass movement leader who benefits his people and humanity knows not only how start a movement, but, like Gandhi, when to end its active phase.”

 

My response: Here seems to be historical and sociological proof that fanaticism, revolution, social order destruction, lawlessness and chaos—all introduced into society by a mass movement—are evil by nature, and turn cruelly, irrationally evil if the movement goes on to long.

 

This reminds us that moderation is generally good and that extremism is generally evil, and it also reveals that America and Hoffer are generally moderate, classical liberals, not liking fanaticism and revolution for its own sake, nor mass movements.

 

H: “Where a mass movement preserves for generations the pattern shaped by its active phase (as in the case of the militant church through the Middle Ages), or where by a successive accession of fanatical proselytes its orthodoxy is continually strengthened (as in the case of Islam), the result is an era of stagnation—a dark age. Whenever we find a period of genuine creativeness associated with a mass movement, it is almost always a period which either precedes or, more often, follows the active phase. Provided the active movement is not too long and does not involve excessive bloodletting and destruction, its termination when it is abrupt, often releases a burst of creativeness. This seems to be true both when the movement ends in triumph (as in the case of the Dutch Rebellion) or when it ends in defeat (as in the case of the Puritan Revolution). It is not the idealism and the fervor of the movement which are the cause of any cultural renascence which may follow it, but rather the abrupt relaxation of collective discipline and the liberation of the individual from the stifling atmosphere of blind faith and the disdain of his self and the present. Sometimes the craving to fill the void left by the lost and deserted holy cause becomes a creative impulse.”

 

My response: This paragraph is very rich in terms of validating the historical law of moderation. If the active phase of a mass movement is not too bloody, excessive, or prolonged, before and after it could be a time of creative renascence in a society: one cultural extreme (destruction) leads to cultural creativity.

 

 

Note that hyper-collectivism (the pure nonindiviudating and total group-living) is directly linked to mass movements and moral and cultural destruction; in other words, collectivism and excessive altruism are anti-individualistic, anti-love and is pure evil.

 

Here is another Hofferian paradox: Things get better and more creative as the active phase of the mass movement wanes; it is not idealism and fervor of the moment that leads to creative outburst, as one would intuitively presume and conclude; rather, the creative outburst is produced and is a direct product of the abrupt ending of mass movement frenzy and the societal-wide relaxation of collective discipline and mass lust for destruction, chaos, lawlessness, and violence; the individual is liberated from hyper-group living and utter nonindividuating, so the free, creative, rational, moderated individual can again gain in self-acceptance, independent thought and being reconciled to himself and his conscious agency in the present. This leads to creative outburst and love of self and love generally.

 

The loss of personal blind faith in the lost holy cause now requires the frustrated individual, left alone again, to be reconciled with the self, and create meaning in her life, to fill the value and myth void in her life and soul.

 

H: “The active phase itself is sterile. Trotsky knew that ‘Periods of high tension in social passions leave little room for contemplation and reflection. All the muses—even the plebian muse of journalism in spite of her sturdy hips—have hard sledding in the times of revolution.’”

 

My response: The active phase of a mass movement is intellectually and creatively sterile because individualism and personal consciousness, separate from collective, communal consciousness, has been eliminated. Individuals in society and society globally cannot be creative unless people are allowed to individuate apart from enforced conformity to self-forgetfulness, and self-sacrificing one’s own joys, pursuits, and projects for the sake of being one in voice, thought and spirit with the collective consciousness of the group, and its will.

 

Now activity, especially among capitalist individualists, merchants, professionals or blue collar workers, is one one kind and is not inconsistent with heading personally down the path of personal self-realization.

 

But mindless but intense, focused pack action, performed to obtain the goals of the holy cause, and the resultant, complete immersion of the self into the collective consciousness and its enforced will, especially in the active phase of a mass movement, leads to a deadening and stifling of personal muse.

 

Self-realization is more fecund, original, present, bursting, and potential if the individual seeking to maverize is a person that is an active capitalist that still spends three hours a day (every day) in quiet, uninterrupted, personally directed, open-ended contemplation and reflection. The maverizer, that living paradox of commercial action and intellectual and artistic endeavoring, will astound herself and the world with her creative production, God will be pleased that she is living as commanded by God to live.

 

H: “On the other hand, Napoleon and Hitler were mortified by the anemic quality of literature and art produced in their heroic age and clamored for masterpieces that would be worthy of the mighty deeds of the times. They had not an inkling that the atmosphere of an active movement cripples or stifles the creative spirit. Milton, who in 1640 was a poet of great promise, with a draft of Paradise Lost in his pocket, spent twenty sterile years of pamphlet writing while he was up to his neck in the ‘sea of noises and hoarse disputes’ which was the Puritan Revolution. With the Revolution dead and himself in disgrace, he produced Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.”

 

My response: The Napoleons and Hitlers of the world cannot have it both ways: they can run a mass movement, or lead a society that rewards maximal personal expression, so that maverizing free individuators can produce great art and great culture, a credit to a freed, individuating people.

 

If we want a time of peace, lawfulness, cooperation, prosperity and freedom, a society of supercitizen individuators would be a society of great moral and spiritual goodness, and powerful production of innovation and artistic excellence.