Not Irreligious

 

I am quoting from Pages xii and xiii of Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. I will then comment on what I quote.

 

Hoffer (H) after this: “The book concerns itself chiefly with the active, revivalist phase of mass movements. This phase is dominated by the true believer—the man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause—and an attempt is made to trace his genesis and outline his nature. As an aid in this effort, use is made of a working hypothesis. Starting out with fact that the frustrated predominate in the early adherents of all mass movement and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consist basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind.”

 

My response: The core of Hoffer’s book revolves around his concept of frustrated people that populate the mass movement. If someone is frustrated, she is upset that she cannot seem to make headway to make things better in her life. Once she reaches the conclusion that it will never be any better for her, her anger, despair and resent turn to self-loathing. If and when it becomes severe enough, she could seek to lose herself, to annihilate her consciousness by fleeing into the open arms of her selected collective cause; there her anonymity of membership is guaranteed inside the holy cause. This makes her a fanatic or true believer, a willing, eager supporter of the mass movement she belongs to.

 

She is willing to die for her adopted holy cause, which she fanatically pushes upon the rest of the world. Note that (my words not Hoffers) her moral motive is altruistic, complete self-rejection and utter dedication to the service of others, especially co-members of the holy cause. She is devoid of healthy self-esteem and wholesome personal pride: her primary drive is to escape her ruined, frustrated self because her internal unhappy and misery are so intolerable. She will wipe out her independent consciousness by joining the collective they, a most appreciated, effective way to kill of her unwelcome personal consciousness of her blemished self.

 

Note that brilliant Hoffer intuits that the effective way to grow the mass movement is to inculcate the proclivities and responses of frustration in the minds and consciousness of those exterior to the cause. If crises, mass hysteria or a radical’s successful deconstruction of the metanarrative that drives a people and keeps the people relatively content and quiet, can be arranged, then an uprooted populace, bereft of purpose and meaning, become frustrated, and likely converts to a mass movement, whose holy cause offers them meaning and a replacement metanarrative to ensconce themselves inside of.

 

H: “To test the validity of these assumptions, it was necessary to inquire into the ills that afflict the frustrated, how they react against them, the degree to which these reactions correspond to the responses of the true believer, and, finally, the manner in which these reactions can facilitate the rise and spread of a mass movement. It was also necessary to examine the practices of contemporary movements, where successful techniques of conversion have been perfected and applied, in order to discover whether they corroborate the view that a proselytizing mass movement deliberately fosters in its adherents a frustrated state of mind, and that it automatically advances its interest when it second the propensities of the frustrated.”

 

My response: Almost no one would deny that certain cultures reinforce the sovereignty of the individual (America) where other cultures press the people to favor group rights and group identity (Russia). It is my contention, though not Hoffer's, that collectivized, group-living people are semi-frustrated, miserable people kept relatively stable and sane in the society in which they are born and live. People that adhere to altruist-collectivist ethics can live quietly in their traditional collective society for generations. But, should that society and its controlling metanarrative rupture and collapse, the people are kicked loose to fend for themselves, and, in that state of panic and discomfort, personal frustration, suffering and unhappiness make the people ripe for being converted to a passing mass movement.

 

In the first place, if these people were not quiet, altruists and groupists in their quiet phase, they would not be oriented to fall apart and seek collective solutions and holy causes to latch onto in time of catastrophe. We can eliminate or at least mitigate the size and influence of mass movements by rearing the young to live as self-realizing individualists.

 

There is also learned, scientific ways to convert people to join mass movements as Hoffer alludes to above.

 

H: “It is necessary for most of us these days to have some insight into the motives and responses of the true believer. For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.”

 

My response: What I love and admire about Hoffer are two things: his genius is for discovering truth, and, secondly, this self-educated philosopher anticipated that the religious nature of the true believer (I add, in his quiet, law-abiding, middle-class group-living phase as well as his active role as a true believer marching through history with his movement in its active phase of operation). The true believer’s faith in his holy cause is that hyper-enthusiastic fervor of the fundamentalist forwarding his cause by any means, by love or war, by persuasion, by flattery or threats of violence.

 

Not how Hoffer the atheist refers to the mid-20^th century as a godless age of science, technology, urban living, and secular ascendancy. What Jordan Peterson and Karl Jung have pointed out is that a people deprive of their religious roots are a frustrated, lost people, and their innate need to worship God will not long tolerate a meaning vacuum. If they cannot believe in God, they will believe in anything, and replacing God and religion with a holy cause (the new religion) and its ruling demagogue (the new deity), often is the consequence. The affiliation to this new religion and deity is radicalized and the believer is converted into a extremist true believer.

 

These active mass movements are peopled by adherent on the march through history, to shape the world in their own image. The influence of these people upon society is huge and pressing, and I regard neo-Marxist postmodernism or secular Leftism as a mass movement that incrementally has taken over much of America, and it remains to be seen if they can be dislodged, moderated, or otherwise defeated.

 

H: “It is perhaps not superfluous to add a word of caution. When we speak of a family likeness of mass movements, we use the world ‘family’ in a taxonomical sense. The tomato and nightshade are of the same family, the Solonaceae. Though the one is nutritious and the other poisonous, they have many morphological, anatomical and physiological traits in common so that even the non-botanist senses a family likeness. The assumption that mass movements have many traits in common does not imply that all mass movements are equally beneficent or poisonous. The book passes no judgments and expresses no preferences. It merely tries to explain; and the explanations—all of them—are in the nature of suggestions and arguments even when they are stated in what seems to be a categorical tone. I can do no better than quote Montaigne: ‘All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.’”

 

My response: When he offers his social theory of mass movements with the cautionary reminder, his moderate nature comes through as he reminds the reader that his suggestions are there for thought. He is not claiming is view is right or the only take on things. He notes that he writes categorically but that he is in fact more self-qualifying than he first comes across as.

 

 

Christian Altruist

 

I watched a snippet online today (12/9/2023) in which Jordan Peterson is talking about human hubris and secular humanist overreach in rebellion against and almost blasphemous towards God. I think Jordan now believes in God and is some sort of Christian, and that he is a conservative altruist.

 

A Marxist altruist is an ultra-fundamentalist collectivist that denies that individuals have any rights, that service to others and self-sacrifice to others and the state is the individual’s only reason for existing.

 

A more moderate Leftist style collectivist will still allow for some weak attention paid to self-care as compatible with and subsumed under the prevalent moral duty to serve others and the state. Group identity, group rights, group ethics and group-living trump individual identity, individual rights, individual ethics and individual-living all day long.

 

Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager, and most Jews and Christians are what I label conservative altruists. They are ethical altruists, but, being Western, they are mildly for egoist ethics and capitalist, democratic individualism as a secondary, tolerable moral motive. Other-care is the individual’s primary moral ideal, and self-care and self-interest are somewhat acceptable if subordinated to primary values objectives: living to serve others, and one must sacrifice one’s interests, needs and desires if they at all conflict with the general good.

 

My Mavellonialist egoism suggests the promotion of enlightened self-interest, self-discipline, and self-self-sacrifice of the pettier, less developed self of today, in favor of becoming a better self tomorrow and into the future, to fulfill one’s telos, to self-develop into a great soul. Christian altruism make service to others the primary moral duty, and self-care is the secondary moral duty.

 

My version of rational egoism is to elevate self-interest as lived individuating to the status of primary moral duty, and to place self-sacrifice in service to others as the secondary moral duty, not much required or necessary, but to be fulfilled by every individual, when the requirement to help others is pressing: this is the personal requirement to contribute to welfare of all.

 

Here is my paraphrase of what Jordan Peterson said to the interviewer in the short video clip: “Instead of the just God itself being the seat of the remark whose self-identity revealed by God to Moses was: that I am what I am. That is great and proper.

 

Now along comes human individual, adapting and adopting God’s self-description for himself, brazenly, breezily pronouncing, I am what I am. I define myself as the source of all wisdom and revelation in my brain, my psyche, my subjectivity.

 

This individual has no humility, and it is a devastating cultural impropriety. It elevates subjective intellect to the status of God. It is a Luciferian crime.”

 

I am most an egoist and a bit an altruist. Peterson is an altruist that is a bit an egoist. This brilliant altruist is incorrect in the following ways.

 

First, Ayn Rand got it right: selfishness is good, and selfless is evil. Altruists, whether strong altruists like Marxist or weaker altruists like democratic Leftists insist that selfishness is evil, and selflessness is good. Christians like Peterson also accept that selfishness is evil, and altruism is good, though they make room for individualism and freedom of conscience, that the self can be held accountable, thus found praiseworthy or blameworthy by humans in this world, and God in this word and in the next world.

 

Peterson has said publicly elsewhere that there can be no collective guilt or praise for responsibility is always individual. This conclusion could lead to egoist ethics, but it did not in Peterson’s case.

 

Embedded in this would be the implication that group-living joiners lack free will, are mostly determined, so these slightly free robot would not much be blamed or blamed for their moral choices.

 

Second, Christians like Peterson assume that Jesus the Shepherd is head collectivist of the flock of sheep that he lovingly tends, and that is true. A singular Christian like I am concludes that good deities like Jesus, the Father, the Mother, the Holy Spirit and the Good Spirits are the Supreme Individualists and Individuators, those Greatest Souls that lead their flock by teaching the divine principles of self-care and some other-care to each individual human so each can meet his divine destiny to maverize as a mini-creator, strengthening and expanding the kingdom of God in this world and in the supernatural world.

 

Third, Peterson assumes that if a human asserts his worth, especially merited self-pride based upon self-sacrifice and loving positive service to God, the self, and others as a maverizer, that his humanism is an affront to God. That is incorrect.

 

It seems implicit here that God is objective, that God is the Only or Supreme Individualist because God is eternal, necessary, absolute, and omnipotent.

 

Now comes along puny, subjective, upstart humans, corrupt, foolish, emotional, not very bright, ignorant, and outrageously swelled up and self-important, laughably declaring they are the source of all wisdom and revelation in their brains, their psyches, and their subjectivity, all because human knowledge, technology and civilization have advanced somewhat.

 

These pathetic, naïve, contingent, imperfect, limited, mortal, temporal and weak creatures vainly announce without humility that they are what they are, the equals, the better than and replacers of God with themselves as gods incarnate.

 

Their humanistic rebellion and opposition to God is a devastating cultural impropriety, elevating the subjective intellects of abject sheep to Olympian heights where God is and resides as Supreme Being, Supreme Individualist, Supreme Ruler of all.

 

Humans sin against God goes way beyond secular narcissism, social pathology, and popular pathology: it is now a Luciferian crime of blasphemy against God, and God will rise up and wipe out wicked humanity with another Flood sent to humble self-exalting humanity.

 

Fourth, Peterson accuses secular humanists of a sinful, excessive pride (the pride of obsessive exalting of the self, so self-absorbed and conceited that the self worships the self and does not regard God as existing or if God does exist, God is not worth paying homage and obedience to.

 

A modest, Christian pride of the job well done as serving others and becoming competent, skilled, and responsible is acceptable.

 

LUCIFER the supremely confident individualist competed with God instead of being a contented, non-ambitious elite member of the collective sheep not vying with the Shepherd, and that is what blasphemy is: competing with and rivaling God—always doomed to fail anyway.

 

But, Satan is not an individualist or individuator but is a brilliant, handsome, charismatic leader of the pack, who settles for the dissatisfying power of powerlessness, as dictator or guru leading the herd. His selflessness and wickedness are cruel, pure self-hatred and other-hatred in action. God is a pure individualist, a loving self-realizer and creator but Satan is a pure joiner, collectivist, selfish, self-destroying Destroyer of all that is good, beautiful, and true.

 

The Divine Couple work in mysterious ways, and I think they have a wonderful sense of humor: it is militant atheist, secular humanist and flawed female guru of her Objectivist groupies (If I read correctly, she was not always clean, and her years-long affair with Nathaniel Branden while making her husband Frank and Nathaniel’s wife Barbara live with these open-marriage debacle, was sad, outrageous and degrading for all involved.), Ayn Rand, who shows us God’s nature, our nature, and the egoist-Objectivist value set that will save the world here, and open up the way to heaven for ailing humanity. I am sure she is in heaven for the good service she has unwittingly provided for God and humans. She was a very smart, wise, good lady, despite her personal sinning.

 

Fifth, Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager have wisely, correctly identified the Objective as where was is good, right, and beautiful derive from, and in pursuit of these Forms. All the striving, the efforts, and the activities of humans, individually and collectively, should be directed towards the Objective or God.

 

These two ethicists define the subjective as bad, or less preferred, wrong, and ugly (ugly morally and spiritually). They define the subjective being as the isolated, insignificant individual. The Objective is God, universal, omniscience and wondrous. The human needs to leave the subjective (the self-interested, self-obsessed self) behind, downgrading the self while, through worship and reverence, exalting and showing self-humility at the same time people personally and collectively express pride in God, God’s perfection, excellence, and love. By abasing the self and eschewing self-interest, by serving the familial, communal, state, and global, and God in the other world, the latter acts of unselfish service to the latter is noble and good, avoiding self-regard in homage to the Objective the Good.

 

I agree that the subjective is bad or less preferable and that the objective is better and more worth living for, but I define God the Self-Realizer and each individual human, the self-realizer as objective. God takes care of the flock through De’s enlightened self-interest, and humans are to take care of themselves, others around them, and the creatures of nature through a primary mode of enlightened self-interest as the primary moral motive. If humans do their job as commanded by God, to self-realize, then they can feel proper pride and proper self-esteem, based upon performing, and they will be esteemed, approved of, and rewarded by God in this world and the next for doing as was commanded of them. They will worship God, work for and love God, but they will be extending God’s kingdom in a mode of sacred humanism, and that has everything to do with Jesus and nothing to do with the Supreme Collectivist Autocrat, Satan.

 

Sixth, Max Stirner, over 100 years ago, in his masterpiece, wrote that the prince, the church and God were considered the supreme, Objective Individualists or Egoists to be worshiped by collectivized, self-loathing, humbled self-depreciating, selfless altruists, or duped egoists that is human subjects.

 

Stirner was a psychological egoist, and wanted each person to be his own Egoist, and worship none of these nonexistent, Objective abstractions, ghosts that burdened deceived, subjugated humankind.

 

I would recommend conservative Western altruists like Peterson and Prager to adopt one idea from Stirner.

 

If each person, as an egoist (an objective Randian egoist not a Stirnerian subjective egoist) would refuse to worship any abstraction--as a prostate, groveling, egoless servant--as the only Individualist or Ego deserving homage: the state, the king or autocrat, the holy cause, the ideology, the fetishized abstraction, or God, that egoist would lead a full interesting life as the Individualist or Ego to be served.

 

I hasten to explain we do not want to ever, as an egoless collectivist groveler, or as a skilled, rational, proud, independent egoist and maverizer, serve any abstraction, the state or any dictator as our ideologicalized holy cause and religious substitute for worshiping a benevolent deity, but we can and should serve that good-deity, if we freely choose to do so, not as a dry abstraction, but as our boss, the head Individuator that we are proud of, obey and are friends with. The Divine Couple and Jesus expect no less.

The Readiness

 

On Page xi of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer notes that mass movements can be social, national or religious. Here is what he writes about their family likeness: “All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand bling faith and singlehearted allegiance.”

 

My response: Altruism-collectivism ethos is at is most toxic and virulent when animating true believers in a mass movement. These adherents are not rugged individualists, nor self-actualizers. Individualissts will die for their country or a good cause, but they would much rather dot their own thing, enjoy life and be happy. It is the unhappy and frustrated that are willing to give their life for their cause, their bare lives is all they can gather to themselves any longer to offer their leader.

 

Their utter unity is the source of their mighty power in crushing dissent and opposition to their cherished holy cause. The social force that they can bring to bear can topple governments or societies whole.

 

They demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance from their zombie followers and receive it wholeheartedly. Their doctrines and programs breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred, and intolerance. None of these true believers are kind, happy or nice people. They are the children of darkness.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “All movements, however different in doctrine and aspiration, draw their early adherents from the same types of humanity; they all appeal to the same types of mind.

 

Though there are obvious differences between the fanatical Christian, the fanatical Mohammedan, the fanatical nationalist, the fanatical Communist and the fanatical Nazi, it is yet true that the fanaticism which animates them may be viewed and treated as one. The same is true of the force which drives them on to expansion and world dominion. There is a certain uniformity in all types of dedication, of faith, and pursuit of power of unity and self-sacrifice. There are vast differences in the contents of holy causes and doctrines, but a certain uniformity in the factors that make them effective. He who, like Pascal, finds precise reasons for the effectiveness of the Christian doctrine has also found the reasons for the effectiveness of Communist, Nazi and nationalist doctrine. However different the holy cause people die for, they perhaps basically die for the same things.”

 

My response: Hoffer is suggesting that those that would study mass movements must realize that the program or doctrines espoused by rival holy causes that individual mass movements propel forward may differ, but the motives, purity of thought, and totalism of world view and level of enthusiastic adherence that all these movements exhibit are identical.

 

This uniformity of thought that excites such utter unity and appetite for self-sacrifice in these followers out for world dominion for the holy cause they are eager and willing to die for, is a uniformity that is commonly shared by all.

 

Mass movements and holy causes are social and historical phenomenon to be taken seriously, to be recognized for what they are when occurring, and to be vigorously opposed by those that would remain free, independent and happy, devoid of control by unhappy ideologues whose millions are on the march.

The Flock

 

I am going to copy out the short homily printed, on November 22, 2023, on Page 7 of The Cavalier Chronicle, entitled, Counting Sheep. I will comment on the homily. It is for Sunday, November 26, 2023. It is from the 1992 Revised Common Lectionary.

 

Homily: “God compares the vulnerable to sheep. God defends the weak sheep. God will destroy the sheep that harm weaker sheep. There will be justice. And God will provide a good shepherd, a Savior. Join the rest of the flock this week in church. ‘I will save my flock’ . . . Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24.”

 

My response: Jesus, the Good Shepherd and Savior, will save, defend, and protect his flock, the vulnerable from predatory other sheep, wolves, bad shepherds, and prowling Satan.

 

This imagery refers to humans as sheep in a flock, vulnerable, helpless and in need of protection, unable to fend for themselves. The elite, whether their Savior, or unjust overlords tyrannizing, exploiting, and oppressing them, do run the destinies of these sheep.

 

My suggestion is to welcome Jesus and the other just deities to continue to serve in their loving capacity as protectors. I would also like to envision the sheep, the children of light, self-transform themselves into fearless, armed, trained, prince and princess warriors that enslave none and stomach abuse and enslavement from none, with give me liberty or death as their motto.

Avoid It

 

 

One of the best ways to live well and prosper is to avoid getting into trouble in the first place. This requires not doing what is corrosive and corrupting, and then doing what promotes healing and hope.

 

Whether it is an individual, or an entire nation, one of the worst things a person can do is invert one’s sensible belief system or creed into an ideology, a set of beliefs distilled down to a term, a fetishized abstraction, a radicalized holy causes whose backers are willing to die for or fight for to the death.

 

When thousands or millions of followers goose-step with one one-voice, one mindset, uniformly chanting the empty slogans that epitomize their revered holy cause, they are now devil worshipers spreading violence, destruction, tyranny, war and totalitarian across the world, inflicted upon weary humanity.

 

Humans must have meaning in their lives to stay sane, be moral and be happy. They require a story or narrative that weaves together the body of concepts that they have adopted to explain the world and their place in it.

 

If this body of concepts is built upon good values like rational egoism, individual-living, self-realizing, reasonable altruist volunteering, citizen volunteering, self-sacrifice, and promoting a cooperative and civil society wrapped around constitutional republicanism and a free market economy, and a personal faith in some benevolent deity, these good values will serve to underpin and frame the set of beliefs as the operating philosophy of the people holding these beliefs.

 

Even this body of concepts, grounded in great values, can deteriorate into an ideology, a perversion of wise ideals and good values, by deconstructing them into an ism to worship fanatically, and peddled by mob thugs who use terror and aggression to force unwilling outsiders to join this holy cause.

 

If people are emotional, group-oriented joiners, run in packs and are splitters, seeing themselves as noble, superior and always correct while dismissing and gaslighting their foes as stupid, wicked enemies to be crushed, they will have converted their bad set of altruist-collectivist values into a belief system or ideology that is now a mass movementized holy cause, a cruel, hostile, nihilistic narrative whose true believers move to gain power across the world.

 

How to live: we need good values and with them, we weave a human narrative or story, and this reasonable body of values is what we base our lives on, find meaning, and our identity is practicing this narrative in action in many ways that renders such actions as a prayer extended to heaven to please the benevolent deities that we serve and adore.

 

When a personal set of beliefs is healthy and sensible, it is built upon such axiom as respected freedom of choice, intellectual independence, freedom of belief, independent speech, tolerance, coexistence, voluntary acceptance, or rejection of said set of beliefs without any negative repercussions felt whatsoever.

 

This privately held doctrine should never be able to be transferred into a dangerous ideology.

Upstream

 

I get subscription updates online from Chris Rufo. In one of his recent articles to subscribers he was noting how gratifying it was to hear from retired Professor Paul Gottfried who lived through times of the 60s radicals, was a graduate student of Herbert Marcuse, and noted how the Leftist revolution in America from the 60s has supplanted the liberal Protestant culture that once held sway here.

 

Gottfried anticipated much of what Rufo wrote of in his recent book, and congratulated Rufo on his fine scholarship. They both noted how Academia has lost its primary mission to foster learning and scholarship, and now has been reduced to cranking out social justice warriors and activists.

 

The Leftist cultural revolution now permeating all American society was inaugurated in Academia.

 

Rufo makes the connection that ideas are upstream from culture and politics, so we must take back the educational and other institutions, public, private, religious, and military, and teach the lessons of Western civilization once more.

 

To contribute to this upstream counterrevolution, I would like to introduce Mavellonialist egoism into the brew to give the young something to build on.

Demons

 

I saw an online clip from some interview that Jordan Peterson gave years ago—today is 1272023—and he was saying that Freud thought humans were haunted by ghosts, but Jng thought instead we were haunted by demons.

 

I think Jordan and I agree with this startling belief. We are beasts and demons at the core of our biology and consciousness, and this fallen nature is the human albatross to bear.

 

We cannot lead moral or happy lives until we accept what we are. Then we need to decide what to do about it.

 

Peterson’s answer nowadays seems to be for us to return to Christian altruism to lead good and meaningful lives. That restoration ethically is essential and necessary, but it is not sufficient to bring about moral restoration, let alone moral advancement.

 

All the totalitarianism, barbarism, poverty, hunger, suffering, genocide, war,and injustice that afflicted people in the 20^th century occurred because group ethics was not working, and indeed failed miserably.

 

We must keep that foundational morality and restore it, but we must add to a patten of citizens that maverize and are cognizant that their personal telos is to do their own thing in an original and magnificent way; this will please God and lead to moral advancement. Mavellonialism and egoism are the future.