The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads 'The True Believer' by Eric Hoffer Part 2

Episode Date: November 9, 2024

47 MinutesPG-13Pete continues a series reading Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements."The True BelieverPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Antelope Hill - Promo code "peteq" for 5% off - https://antelopehillpublishing.com/FoxnSons Coffee - Promo code "peter" for 18% off - https://www.foxnsons.com/Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Financial Services Ireland Limited, trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. And now this is over the nation-hamsira. Is leargoal to the Glewaih and not great gree in Aundun-Dun. And leant of Gaula to give the tumulta deirin. In Ergrid, we're dig tour chaw-in-vun-ha with funnivin-voin-va. It's a lot of doing to do you have to do with an angoctrachish on as to fide with all the town, gnaw, and people cariffa in the pasty.

There's air of cooctuagin. Full of nis more in Ergrid Ponga'i. If you want to support this show and get the episodes early and add free, head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support. I want to explain something right now. If you support me through Substack or Patreon, You have access to an RSS feed that you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple,

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the support. Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to part two of my reading of The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Let's get right into it. All right. The first part, you could see that there was a lot that I did not agree with Mr. Hoffer. I'm sure we're going to get to some points that he makes some really good points, but let's move on. All right. Part three of, I believe this is part three of chapter one. The interchangeability of mass movements. Hold on. One. second. There we go. I am ready to go. When people are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe for any effective movement and not solely for one with a particular doctrine or program. Where do you think he's going to go? Okay. In pre-Hitlarian Germany, it was often a toss-up whether a restless youth would join the communists or the Nazis. It's actually true. In the

overcrowded pale of Tsarist Russia, the simmering Jewish population was right both for revolution and Zionism. True. In the same family, one member would join the revolutionaries and the other the Zionists. Dr. Haim Weizmann quotes a saying of his mother in those days, whatever happens, I shall be well off. If Shammul, the revolutionary son is right, we shall be happy in Russia. And if Haim, the Zionist, is right, then then I shall go live in Palestine. The receptivity of the to all movements does not always cease, even after the potential true believer, has become the ardent convert of a specific movement.

Where mass movements are in violent competition with each other, there are not infrequent instances of converts, even the most zealous, shifting their allegiance from one to the other. Assault turning into Paul is neither a rarity nor a miracle. In our day, each proselytizing mass movement seems to regard the zealous adherents of its antagonist as its own potential converts. Hitler looked on the German communists as potential national socialist, quoting, the Petit Bourgeois Social Democrat and the trade union boss will never make a national socialist, but the communist always will. Captain Rom boasted that he could turn the reddest communist into a glowing nationalist in four weeks. On the other hand, Carl Radick looked on the brown Nazi shirts, the SA, as a reserve for future communist recruits.

Since all mass movements draw their adherence from the same types of humanity and appeal to the same types of minds, it follows, A, all mass movements are competitive, and the gain of one in adherence is the loss of all the others. B, all mass movements are interchangeable. One mass movement readily transforms into itself into another. A religious movement may develop into a social revolution or a nationalist movement, a social revolution into militant nationalism, or a religious movement, a nationalist movement into a social revolution or a religious movement. It reminds me that Thomas 777 says, there is no third position now in the West. or what when I say the West, I'm just talking about Europe and America.

There's no third position. You're either globalist or anti-globalist. You're either Zionist or you're anti-Sionist. That's it. That's it. The switching back and forth between those? I don't know. It is rare for a mass movement to be wholly of one character.

Usually it displays some facets of other types of movement, and sometimes it is two or three movements. and won. The exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt was a slave revolt, a religious movement, and a nationalist movement. The militant nationalism of the Japanese is essentially religious. The French Revolution was a new religion. It had its dogmas, the sacred principles of the revolution. Liberté is en enevalite. It had its form of worship, an adaptive of Catholic ceremonial, which was elaborated in connection with the civic fetus. Feitz. Fits. It had its saints, the heroes and martyrs of liberty.

At the same time, the French Revolution was also a nationalist movement. The Legislative Assembly decreed in 1792 that altars should be raised everywhere, bearing the inscription, the citizen is born, lives, and dies for La Patry. The religious movements of the Reformation had a revolutionary aspect, which expressed itself in peasant uprisings, and were also nationalist movements. Said Luther, in the eyes of the Italians, we Germans are merely low Teutonic swine. They exploit us like charlatans and suck the country to the marrow. Wake up Germany. The religious character of the Bolshevik and Nazi revolutions is generally

recognized. The hammer and sickle and the swastika are in a class with the cross. The ceremonial of their parades is as the ceremonial of a religious procession. They have articles of faith, saints, martyrs, and holy sepulchers. The Bolshevik and Nazi revolutions are also full-blown nationalist movements. The Nazi revolution had been so from the beginning while the nationalism of the Bolsheviks was a late development. Okay, good. I agree with them there. Zionism is a nationalist movement and a social revolution. To the Orthodox Jew, it is also a religious movement. Irish nationalism has a deeply, deep religious tinge. The present mass movements in Asia are both nationalist and revolutionary. The problem of stopping a mass movement is often a matter of substituting one

movement for another. The social revolution can be stopped by promoting a religious or nationalist movement. Thus, in countries where Catholicism has recaptured its mass movement spirit, it counteracts the spread of communism. In Japan, it was nationalism that canalize all movements of social protest. In our south, the movement of racial solidarity acts, as a preventive of social upheaval. A similar situation may be observed among the French in Canada and among the Boers in South Africa. None anymore.

The method of stopping one movement by, well, not going to say that, but the movement that he was talking about at this time. The method of stopping one movement by substituting another for it is not always without danger, and it does not usually come cheap. It is well for those who hug the present and want to preserve it as it is not to play with mass movements. So I think that's an important sentence right there.

It is well for those who hug the present and want to preserve it as it is not to play with mass movements. So if you see, if you see our guys like on social media on Twitter and we're pushing for change, and somebody who is aligned with us or, I mean, could be, you know, associated with us. And they're trying to pump the brakes. They're trying to play gatekeeper. There's, they are hugging, they're hugging the present and wanting to preserve what they have. I always look at something like that as a fear of loss. whereas my fear of loss is always in staying in what is at the moment threatening to take away from me.

You know, some people just have, they have enough that some could get taken away and they could be perfectly fine and comfortable. Not everyone's like that. For it always fares ill with the present when a genuine mass movement is on the march. In pre-war Italy and Germany, practical businessmen acted in. in an entirely logical manner when they encouraged a fascist and a Nazi movement in order to stop communism. But in doing so, these practical and logical people promoted their own liquidation. Not necessarily. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you, even before you

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eventually because the world decided that they couldn't exist. There are other safer substitutes for a mass movement. In general, any arrangement with either discourages atomistic individualism or facilitates self-forgetting or offers chances for action and new beginnings tend to counteract the rise and spread of mass movements.

These subjects are dealt with in later chapters. Here we shall touch upon one curious substitute for mass movements, namely migration. emigration offers some of the things that the frustrated hope to find when they join a mass movement, namely change and a chance for a new beginning. The same types who swell the ranks of a rising mass movement are also likely to avail themselves of a chance to emigrate. Thus, migration can serve as a substitute for a mass movement. It is plausible, for instance, that had the United States and the British Empire welcome

mass migration from Europe after the First World War, there might have been neither a fascist nor a Nazi revolution. In this country, free and easy migration over a vast continent contributed to our social stability. In this country, free and easy migration over a vast continent contributed

to our social stability. Really? That's what we're going to know? Are we socially stable? I mean, we're they importing the third world after the first world war?

Or are we talking about people within, or is he talking about people within the country being able to move and go where they wish? Which, I don't know that that creates social stability because, you know, in my opinion, people should be tied to where their family is, that they are better off and there their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be better off having a solid foundation in one place, rather than searching the country for riches, wealth, and the best zip codes own a house in. Compare one to the other. Compare the 19th century to the 20th century.

If you could have the technological advances in the 19th century, but to keep the 19th century culture. Seems better to me. Although, you know, the argument can also be made that technology is what adds to a lot of this. Then we start Uncle Ted posting again. However, because of the quality of their human material, mass migrations are fertile ground for the rise of genuine mass movements. It is sometimes difficult to tell where a mass migration ends and a mass movement begins,

and which came first. The migration of the Hebrews from East, Egypt developed into a religious and nationalist movement. Migrations of the barbarians in the declining days of the Roman Empire were more than mere shifts of population. The indications are that the barbarians were relatively few in number, but once they invaded a country, they were joined by the oppressed and dissatisfied in all walks of life.

Quote, it was a social revolution started and massed by a superficial foreign conquest. Something's taken to consideration there. The indications are that the barbarians were relatively few in number, but once they invaded a country, or they just walked over the border, they were joined by the oppressed and dissatisfied in all works of life. It helps if you have been creating a class of people, a large group of people who feel that they've been oppressed and dissatisfied in all their walks of life. because then it turns into it was a social revolution started en masse by a superficial foreign conquest. We don't want to call it a conquest. Every mass movement is in a sense of migration, a movement toward a promised land, and when feasible and expedient, an actual migration takes place. This happened in the case of the Puritans, Anabaptists, Mormons, Ducobors, and Zionists. Migration in the mass strengthens the spirit and unity of the movement.

movement, and whether in the form of a foreign conquest, crusade, pilgrimage, or settlement of a new land, it is practiced by most mass-active, most active movements. Part 2. The Potential Converts The Role of the Undesirables in Human Affairs There's a tendency to judge a race, a nation, or any distinct group by its least worthy members. though manifestly unfair, this tendency has some justification. For the character and destiny of a group are often determined by its inferior elements. That's a paragraph right there.

For the character and destiny of a group is often determined by its inferior elements. Why? Because the inferior amongst a group, they stand out because they cause negative consequences. they're not going to, and in most cases, they're not only going to cause negative consequences inside the group, but they're going to cause negative consequences outside the group, and then people are going to start to notice. The inert mass of a nation, for instance, is in its middle section. The decent average people who do the nation's work in cities and on the land are worked upon

and shaped by minorities at both ends, the best and the worst. There's like some high-low middle stuff here. The superior individual, whether in politics, literature, science, commerce, or industry plays a large role in shaping a nation. But so do individuals at the other extreme. The failures, misfits, outcast criminals, and all those who have lost their footing or never had one in the ranks of respectable humanity. The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority

in the middle. The reason that the individual is... inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are holy without reverence toward the present. They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy, and they're ready to waste and wreck both. Hence, their recklessness and their will to chaos and anarchy. It's like short time, low time preference versus high time preference. They also cave to dissolve their spoiled, meaningless selves in some soul-stirring, spectacular communal undertaking, hence their proclivity for united action. Thus, they are among the early

recruits of revolutions, mass migrations, and of religious, racial, and chauvinist movements, and they imprint their mark upon these upheavals and movements which shape a nation's character in history. I don't really talk much about him anymore, but this is the argument that that is Russell made in his book, Renegate History of the United States, was that the lowest class, the misfits and the outcasts and the degenerates are the ones that actually make our culture. And when you think about it, when you think about our culture comes out of Hollywood and music and entertainment, I guess the argument is there. The discarded and rejected are often the raw material of a nation's future. The stone the builders reject becomes the

cornerstone of a new world. A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, decent, peaceful, and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come. It was not the irony of history that the undesired in the countries of Europe should have crossed an ocean to build a new world on this continent. Or they could do it. Well, I don't know that they were undesired in the countries of Europe. But they certainly wanted to break away because there could have been tensions there. There could have been numerous things happening. And did they help to build a new world on this continent? Well, yeah. The question is, is where did it go wrong? Though the disaffected are found in all walks of life, they are most frequent in the following categories. The poor,

misfits, outcast, minorities, adolescent youth, the ambitious, whether facing insurmountable obstacles or unlimited opportunities, those in the grip of some vice or obsession, the impotent and body and mind, the inordinately selfish, the bored, the sinners. Session 20 through 42 deals with some of these types. New heading, the poor. The new poor. Not all who are poor or frustrated. Some of the poor stagnating in the slums of the cities are smug in their decay. They shudder at the thought of life outside their familiar cesspool. Even the respectable poor, when their poverty is of longstanding, remain inert. They are awed by the immutability of the order of things.

It takes a cataclysm, an invasion, a plague, or some other communal disaster to open their eyes to the transitoryness of the eternal order. Ready for huge savings? Well mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November.

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Oh, sorry. At Speck Savers, we've got all sorts of unmissable Black Friday deals. Like up to 70 euro off one pair of designer glasses. Offer ends on 7th of December 2025. Conditions apply. Ask in store for details. It is usually those whose poverty is relatively recent, the new poor who throb with the ferment of frustration.

The memory of better things is as fire in their veins. There are the disinherited and dispossessed who respond to every rising mass movement. It was the new poor in the 17th century, England, who ensured the success of the Puritan Revolution. During the movements of enclosure, Section 5, thousands of landlords drove off their tenants and turned their fields into pastures. Strong and active peasants, enamored of the soil that nurtured them, were transformed into wage workers or sturdy beggars. City streets were filled with paupers.

It was this mass of the dispossessed who furnished the recruits for Cromwell's new model army. In Germany and Italy, the new poor coming from the ruined middle. class formed the chief support of the Nazi and fascist revolutions. The potential revolutionaries in present-day England are not the workers, but the disinherited civil servants and businessmen. This class had a vivid memory of affluence and dominion and is not likely to reconcile itself to straighten conditions and political impotence. Well, so much for World War II benefiting everyone, right? There have been of late both here and and other countries' enormous periodic increases of a new type of new poor, and their appearance

undoubtedly has contributed to the rise and spread of contemporary mass movements. Until recently, the new poor came mainly from the property class, whether in cities or on the land, but lately, and perhaps for the first time in history, the plain working man appears in this role. So long as those who did the world's work lived on a level of bare subsistence, they were looked upon and felt themselves as traditionally poor. They felt poor in good times and bad. Depressions, however severe, were not seen as aberrations and enormities. But with the wide diffusion of a high standard of living, depressions and the unemployment they bring assumed a new aspect. The present-day working man in the Western world feels unemployment as a degradation. He sees himself

disinherited and injured by an unjust order of things, and is willing to listen to those who call for a new deal. The abjectly poor. The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. The goals are concrete and immediate. Every meal is a fulfillment. To go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph, and every windfall a miracle. I don't know. I don't know that we can talk about anyone in the country like this now. It just doesn't make sense, considering the entitlements that are out there.

I think if you're like this, you just want to be. What need could they have for an aspiring super individual goal, which would give meaning and dignity to their lives? They are immune to the appeal of a mass movement. Angelica Balabanov describes the effect of abject poverty on the revolutionary ardor of famous radicals who flock to Moscow in the early days of the Bolshevik revolution. Quoting, Here I saw men and women who had lived all of their lives for ideas, who had voluntarily renounced material advantages, liberty, happiness, and family affection for the realization of their ideals, completely absorbed by the problem of hunger and cold. where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living,

they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams. One of the reasons for the unrebelliousness of the masses in China is the inordinate effort required there to scrape together the means of the scantius subsistence. The intensified struggle for existence is a static rather than a dynamic influence. So basically he's saying if you're working all the time just to eat, you don't have any time to entertain these ideas or participate in it. So it's people who, it's going to be people who are, you know, pretty well off or were well off and desire to be well off again, who are most open and will have the time, I guess,

as long as you're not to the point where you have to, every second of every day is to figure out how you're going to survive. Misery does not automatically generate discontent, nor is the intensity of discontent directly proportionate to the degree of misery. Discontent is likely to be highest when misery is bearable, when conditions have so improved that an ideal state seems almost within reach. Agreements is most poignant when almost redressed. De Tocqueville and his researches into the state of society in France before the revolution was struck by the discovery that in no one of the periods which have followed the revolution of 1789 has the national prosperity of France augmented more rapidly than it did in the 20 years

preceding that event. He was forced to conclude that the French found their position, the more intolerable, the better it became. Really, if that be true, there's just another difference between the French and the American Revolution. The American Revolution was different, but the French Revolution was a real winner, because even the spirit of that revolution spread here. In both France and Russia, the land-hungry peasants owned almost exactly one-third of the agricultural land at the outbreak of revolution,

and most of that land was acquired during the generation or two preceding the revolution. It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt. A popular upheaval in Soviet Russia is hardly likely before the people get a real taste of the good life. The most dangerous moment for the regime of the Politburo will be when a considerable improvement in the economic conditions of the Russian, Russian masses has been achieved and the iron totalitarian rule somewhat relaxed. It is of interest that the assassination in December 1934 of Stalin's closest friend Kirov happened not long after Stalin had announced the successful end of the first five-year plan in the beginning of a new prosperous, joyous era.

Hmm. 1934 success. Killing you. killing millions of Ukrainians, I guess is a success. The intensity of discontent seems to be an inverse proportion to the distance from the object fervently desired. This is true whether we move toward our goal or away from it. It is true both of those who have come within sight of the promised land and of the disinherited who are still within sight of it, both of the about to be rich, free, et cetera, and of the new poor,

and those recently enslaved. Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing. We dare more when striving for superfluities. Why is that word killing me? We dare more when striving for superfluities than for superfluities than for, for necessities. Often when we renounce superfluities, we end up lacking in necessities. There is a hope that acts as an explosive and a hope that disciplines and infuses patience.

The difference is between the immediate hope and the distant hope. A rising mass movement preaches the immediate hope. It is intent on stirring its followers to action, and it is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to act. Rising Christianity preached the immediate end of the world in the kingdom of heaven around the corner. Muhammad dangled loot before the faithful. The Jacobins promised immediate liberty and equality. The early Bolsheviks promised bread and land. Hitler promised an immediate end to Versailles bondage and work and action for all.

Later as the movement comes into the possession of power, the emphasis is shifted to the distant hope, the dream, and the vision. For an arrived mass movement is preoccupied with the preservation. of the present, and it prizes obedience and patience above spontaneous action, and when we hope for that we see not, then do we, then do we with patience wait for it? Every established mass movement has its distant hope, its brand of dope to dull the impatience of the masses, and reconcile them with their lot in life. Stalinism is as much an opium of the people as are the established religions.

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Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbiog, Kush Faragea. The free poor. Slaves are poor, yet where slavery is widespread and long established, there is little likelihood for the rise of a mass movement. The absolute equality among the slaves and the intimate communal life in slave quarters preclude individual frustration. In a society with an institution of slavery, the troublemakers are the newly enslaved and the freed slaves. In the case of the latter, it is the burden of freedom, which is at the root of their discontent. Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration.

Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual, and as freedom encourages a multiplicity of attempts, it unavoidably multiplies failure and frustration. Freedom alleviates frustration. by making available the palletives of action, movement, change, and protests. Unless a man has to tell us to make himself of something, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual. We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility,

or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, to be free from freedom. It was not sheer hypocrisy to be able to be. free from freedom. Well, what kind of freedom? I mean, we're told that we have freedom now. The freedom to do what? Destroy our culture? Destroy order? Destroy religion. Destroy faith. Destroy cohesiveness of people. I'm going to need more. It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank and foul Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility.

for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from, had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility? I mean, I don't think so. I think anybody joins a movement to be free from responsibility. He's saying that people join movements to be free from the responsibility of being an individual because he prizes individuality amongst collectivism.

This is what I'm. I'm reading it. Some can argue differently. This is how I'm seeing it. And five, six years ago, I probably would agree with 100%. I just don't anymore. I see what individualism

or radical individualism has wrought. And it's brought us to where we are. It's not the answer. It's where we are. It would seem that the most fertile ground for propagation of a mass movement in a society with considerable freedom, but lacking the palliatives of frustration.

It was precisely because the peasants of 18th century France, unlike the peasants of Germany and Austria, were no longer serfs and already owned land that they were receptive to the appeal of the French Revolution, nor perhaps would there have been a Bolshevik revolution if the Russian peasant had not been free for a generation or more and had had a taste of the private ownership of land. Even the mass movements which rise in the name of freedom against an oppressive order do not realize individual liberty once they start rolling. So long as a movement is engaged in a desperate struggle with the prevailing order or must defend itself against enemies within or without, its chief preoccupation will be with unity and self-sacrifice, which require the surrender of the individual's will, judgment, and advantage.

according to Robespierre, the revolutionary government was the despotism of liberty against tyranny. The important point is that in for, so if that is true, well, what is it, the despotism of individualism against collectivism? How that work out? The important point is that in forgetting or postponing individual liberty, the active mass movement does not run counter to the inclinations of a zealous following. Fanatics, says Renan, fear liberty more than they fear persecution. It is true that the adherence of a rising movement have a strong sense of liberation, even though they live and breathe in an environment of strict adherence to tenets and commands. What liberty, what sense of liberation is he even talking about?

He's selling, it's almost like he's selling individualism as just, you either have that, or you just have tyranny and you have your followers and you have, you know, you're the quote unquote true believer, I guess. I guess you don't believe anything if you're an individual? Or you just believe in yourself? The sense of liberation comes from having escaped the burdens, fears, and hopelessness of an untenable individual existence. It is this escape which they feel as a deliverance and redemption.

The experience of vast change, too, conveys a sense of, of freedom, even though the changes are executed in a frame of strict discipline. It is only when the movement has passed its active stage and solidified into a pattern of stable institutions that individual liberty has a chance to emerge. The shorter the active phase, the more will it seem that the movement itself, rather than its termination, made possible the emergence of individual liberty. This impression will be the more pronounced, the more tyrannical the dispensation, which the mass movement overthrew and supplanted.

Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted grave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor... I don't know about equality... I don't know how he's defining equality in this sentence. Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted grave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. Sure, fraternity, but what does equality mean?

If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. the passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity. To be one thread of the many, which make up a tunic, one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others, and expose our inferiority. You have elites amongst every group, even if you have a group that gets together for a certain purpose.

The leaders are going to be obvious. This is indisputable. It's throughout history. It's human. They who clamor loud as for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually, their innermost desire is for an end to the free-for-all. They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society. once again, he is elevating into an individual individuals in a free society above groups, collectives. And the thing here is,

you'll even have some people say, well, I don't care if you collectivize as long as you do it voluntarily. He seems to be shitting on that, too. Although he seems to think that people don't do that voluntarily. They have a reason for doing it, and their reason is discontent in something. Now, that may be my, could be my reason. I'm discontentive. The culture does not represent me at all. But there are people who are born into the culture who never

leave the culture, who are, they don't know anything else. Whereas I was born into a culture. which was very much about the individual and a free society. Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority. Equality without freedom creates a more stable social pattern than freedom without equality. No one is... This is almost like a straw man. or he's saying that anybody who wants to be a part of a group

wants everybody in that group to be equal. That's not even close. That's not even close. The creative poor. Poverty when coupled with creativeness is usually for your frustration. This is true of the poor artisans skilled in his trade and of the poor writer, artist, and scientist in the full possession of creative powers.

Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciling reconciles us with ourselves as a continuous ability to create, to see things grow and develop under our hand, day and day out. The decline of handicrafts in modern times is perhaps one of the causes of the rise of frustration and the increased susceptibility of the individual to mass movements. I'm going to save my comments until I read this. It is impressive to observe how with the fading of the individual's creative powers, there appears or pronounced the inclination toward joining a mass movement. Here the connection between the escape from an ineffectual self and a responsiveness to mass movements is very clear. The slipping author, artist, scientists, slipping because of a

drying up of the creative flow within, drift sooner or later into the camps of ardent patriots, race mongers, uplift promoters, and champions of holy causes. Perhaps the sexually impotent are subject to the same impulse. The role of the non-creative in the Nazi movement is discussed in basically there's the only groups that the failed author, artist, scientist go into is a government, is the state, state jobs. Because they have no, there's no demand for them. They're not artisans. They don't build houses. They don't do, no.

They become, the state. that progressive arm of the state, that's where they run to. I don't know that at this time he's writing this in 1950, really at 151 and probably started writing it 48, 4950. Could be even earlier. I don't know how much patronage there was out of the state at that point. This would be an interesting little section to update. The Unified Poor.

The Poor Human Members of a Compact Group, a Tribe, a close-knit family, a compact, racial, or religious group, are relatively free of frustration and hence almost immune to the appeal of proselytizing mass movements. You go to small towns and places where people's families have lived there forever. Yeah, usually they're worried about overreach from the federal government, but usually locally, they're apolitical. Pretty much apolitical locally, which also makes them open for infiltration. The lesser person sees himself as an autonomous, incapable individual.

Let me just start that again. The lesser person sees himself as an autonomous individual capable of shaping his own course and solely responsible for his station in life, the less likely he is to see his poverty as evidence of his own inferiority. A member of a compact group has a higher revolting point than an autonomous individual. It requires more misery and personal humiliation to go to him to revolt. The cause of revolution in totalitarian society is usually a weakening of the totalitarian framework rather than resentment against oppression and distress.

Sorry, just reading this again to try to see where he's going. Like I said, I haven't read this before. I'm reading this with you for the first time. I said that the first episode, if you're just sitting into this one. Please go back and do the first one. The strong family ties to the Chinese probably kept them for ages relatively immune to the appeal of mass movements. The European who dies for his country has behaved in a manner that is unintelligible to a Chinaman, because his family is not directly benefited, is indeed damaged by the loss of one of its members.

On the other hand, he finds an understandable and honorable when a Chinaman, in consideration of so much paid to his family, consents to be executed as a substitute for a condemned criminal. It is obvious that a proselytizing mass movement must break down all existing group ties if it is to win a considerable following. The ideal potential convert is the individual who stands alone, who has no collective body he can blend with, and lose himself in, and so mask the pettiness, meaningless, and shabbiness of his individual existence. It's just so sure the individual is easier to pick off, but then you should be arguing against

individualism. But then he says that the reason the individual is drawn to these mass movements is because they can't survive as an individual, and they're just looking for someone else to blame it on. That's why I'm reading this. If anybody else, please comment if you think I'm reading this wrong. I'm welcome to be, as long as you're respectful, I'm welcome to be, to have a conversation about this. Where a mass movement finds a corporate pattern of family, tribe, country, etc., in a state of disruption and decay, it moves in and gathers to harvest. Where it finds the corporate pattern in good repair, it must attack and disrupt.

On the other hand, when, as in recent years in Russia, we see the Bolshevik movement bolstering family solidarity and encouraging national, racial, and religious cohesion. It is a sign that the movement has passed its dynamic phase, that it has already established this new pattern of life, and that its chief concern is to hold and preserve that which it has attained. In the rest of the world where communism is still a struggling movement, it does all it can to disrupt the family and discredit national, racial, and religious ties. The attitude of rising mass movements towards the family is of considerable interest. Almost all our contemporary movements showed in their early stages the high, hostile attitude toward the family, and did all they could to discredit and disrupt it.

They did it by undermining the authority of the parents, by facilitating divorce, by taking over the responsibility for feeding, educating, and entertaining the children, and by encouraging illegitimacy. Crowded housing, exile, concentration camps, and terror also helped to weaken and break up the family. Still, not one of the contemporary movements was so outspoken in its antagonism towards a family, as was early Christianity. Jesus meant no words. Quote,

Fryam comes to set a man at variance against his father and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he that loveeth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. When he was told that his mother and brothers were outside, desiring to speak with him, he said,

who is my mother and who are my brethren, and stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, behold, my mother and my brethren. When one of his disciples asked to leave to go and bury his father, Jesus said to him, follow me, and let the dead bury their dead. He seemed to sense the ugly family conflicts. His movement was bound to provoke, both by its proselytizing and by fanatical hatred of its antagonists, and the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and, the brother to death, and the father the child, and the children shall rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death. It is strange but true that he who preaches brotherly love also preaches against love of mother, father, brother, sister, wife, and children. The Chinese sage, Mozu, who advocated brotherly love, was rightly condemned by the Confucianists who cherished the family above all.

They argue that the principle of universal love would dissolve the family in destroy society. The proselytizer who comes and says, follow me, is a family wrecker, even though he is not conscious of any hostility toward the family, and has not the least intention of weakening of solidarity. When St. Bernard preached his influence was such that mothers are said to have hid their sons from him and wives their husbands, lest he should lure them away. He actually broke up so many homes that the abandoned wives formed a nunnery. Jesus' apostles when they left. to go with him.

Jesus knew that they'd be going back after a certain amount of time. As one would expect, a disruption of the family, whatever it causes, fosters automatically a collective spirit and creates a responsiveness to the appeal of mass movements. The Japanese invasion undoubtedly weakened the compact family pattern of the Chinese and contributed to their recent increases responsiveness to both nationalism and communism. In the industrialized Western world, the family is weakened and destroyed. mainly by economic factors. Economic independence for women facilitates divorce.

Economic independence for the young weakens parental authority and also hastens an early splitting up of the family group. The drawing power of large industrial centers on people living on farms and in small towns, strains, and breaks family ties. By weakening the family, these factors contributed somewhat to the growth of the collective spirit in modern times. Hitler's lunatic shifting of entire populations during the Second World War and his fantastic feats of extermination must have minced and scrambled millions of families in a large part of Europe. At the same time, the Anglo-American, I mean, I guess starting the war had nothing to do with it, right?

I wouldn't add this if he didn't start other people, he didn't start the war. when you have a, when you have the kind of, when you're at war at the scale that was happening, what do you, what do you think's going to happen? He didn't want war. He just knew it was coming. What was he supposed to do, just let the Russians invade? Unfuck unbelievable. At the same time, the Anglo-American air raids, the expulsion of nine million Germans from the east and south of Europe,

and the delayed repatriation of German prisoners of war. its Germany what Hitler had done to Europe. It is difficult to see how, even under optimal, economic, and political conditions, a continent stream with the odds and ends of family could settle into a normal, conservative social pattern. The discontent generated in backwards countries by their contact with Western civilization is not primarily resentment against exploitation by domineering foreigners. It is rather the result of a crumbling or weakening of tribal solidarity and communal life. I'm going to go back to that part where he's talking about Christ and some of the things

that Christ said. Let's remember that he had an audience back then. One of the things that I learned when I was in seminary was that there was actually a people in the first century that he was speaking to and that we're reading other people's male. Okay? It was a revolutionary time back then. It wasn't always going to be a revolutionary time, which is why the church set up covenants within the family and yada yada, all down the road. He's, I can stand to do a whole show shows on this. So, all right, where was I? blah, blah, blah. Okay. Yeah, at the same time, the Anglam Area, it is difficult to see how even under optimal economic and political conditions a continent strewn with the odds and ends of families could settle into a normal conservative social pattern. The disconsent generated in backward countries by their contact with Western civilization is not primarily resentment against exploitation by domineering foreigners. It is rather the result of a crumbling or weakening of tribal solidarity and communal life. The ideal of self-advancement with the civilizing West,

offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of a communal existence. Even when the Westernized Native attains personal success becomes rich or masters a respected profession, he is not happy. He feels naked and orphan. He feels naked and orphan. The nationalist movements in the colonial colonies are part of striving after group existence and an escape from Western individualism. Nobody was seeking to destroy families when this country was founded. This is written in 1951, and he's writing to a modern audience.

He's, I can't see him taking that into consideration here. Because saying all the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of a communal existence, even when the Westernized native attains personal success becomes rich, or the ideal of self-advancement, which to civilizing West offers to backward populations, brings with it the plague of individual frustration. Well, the first thing you have to do with a backward population is civilize them.

That doesn't mean that they have to lose their identity as a people. That's on us, if that happens. That that wasn't the, it wasn't to turn, to go in. The original goal wasn't to go in and turn these people into individuals. Turn them into Christians, turned them into French. It didn't work. But it wasn't to turn them into...

Oh, now you're going to become deracinated little annuities that are going to run through life. That's just not what it was. The Western colonizing powers offer the native, the gift of individuals. individual freedom and independence. They try to teach himself reliance. What it actually amounts to is individual isolation. It means the cutting off of an immature and poorly furnished individual from the corporate hole and releasing him in the words of Komyakov to the freedom of his own impotence.

The feverish desire to band together and coalesce into marching masses so manifest both in our homelands and in the countries we colonize as the expression. of a desperate effort to escape this ineffectual, purposeless individual existence. It is very possible, therefore, that the present nationalist movement in Asia may lead, even without Russian influence, to more or less collectivist rather than democratic form of society. The policy of an exploiting colonial power should be to encourage communal cohesion among the natives. It should foster equality and a feeling of brotherhood among them, for by how much the

ruled blend and lose themselves into a compact hole by so much is soften the poignancy of their individual futility, and the process which transmutes misery into frustration and revolts is checked at the source. The device of divide and rule is ineffective when it aims at a weakening of all forms of cohesion against the rule. The breaking up of a village community, a tribe, or a nation into autonomous individuals does not eliminate or stifle the spirit of rebellion against a ruling power. An effective division is one that fosters a multiplicity of compact bodies, racial, religious, or economic, vying with, and suspicious of each other. Let's get more into this encouraging people to be in cohesive groups. Even when a colonial power is wholly philanthropic,

and its sole aim is to bring prosperity and progress to a backward people, it must do all it can to preserve and reinforce the corporate pattern. It must not concentrate on the individual, but inject the innovations and reforms into tribal or communal channels, and let the tribe or community progress as a whole. It is perhaps true that the successful modernization of a backward people can be brought about only within a strong framework of united action. Spectacular modernization of Japan was accomplished in an atmosphere charged with the fervor of united action and group consciousness. Soviet Russia's advantage as a colonizing power, aside from her lack of racial bias,

is that it comes with a ready-made and effective pattern of United Action. And he didn't stick around long enough, huh? Should have wrote this a couple of years later. It can disregard it indeed deliberately, I mean, and lack of racial bias. I mean, they, I guess when you kill tens of thousands of polls and tens of thousands of, of Germans, you execute them in the forest because they're a diaspora group and they're scared that they might collude with their home country. Sure, that's not a racial bias. Not technically, it's not like saying, oh, we think that we're better than Germans. Still not good. And if you

want to play complete real policy, sure, you can understand. But still, better to let them go home. The device of encouraging communal cohesion as a preventative of colonial unrest can also be used to prevent labor unrest in the industrialized colonizing countries. The employer whose only purpose is to keep his workers at their task and get all he can out of them is not likely to attain his goal by dividing them, playing off one worker against the other. It is rather in his interest that the workers should feel themselves part of a whole, and preferably a hole which comprises the employer too. A vivid feeling of solidarity, whether racial, national, or religious, is undoubtedly an effective means of preventing labor unrest. Even when the type of solidarity is such that it cannot comprise the employer, it nevertheless tends to promote labor contentment and efficiency. I guess when you figure that out, that's why it's like, okay, we're going to allow, we'll allow them to have unions. We still have power over them.

We can fire them, but they have cohesion. Experience shows that production is at its best when the workers feel enact as members of a team. Any policy that disturbs and tears apart the team is bound to cause severe trouble. That's why you can have such great production during times of war because people have come together, people have come together for a cause. Incentive wage plans that offer bonuses to individual workers do more harm than good. Group incentive plans in which the bonus is based on the work of the whole team, including the foreman, are much more likely to promote greater productivity and greater satisfaction on the part of the workers. A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises,

but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness, and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly, frustrated, not by conferring on them an absolute truth, or by reminying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by feeding them from their ineffectual selves, and it does this by unfolding and absorbing them in a closely knit and exulting corporate whole. He makes it sound like a bad thing, and he makes it sound nefarious.

It is obvious, therefore, in order to succeed, a mass movement must develop at the earliest moment a compact corporate organization and a capacity to absorb and integrate all comers. It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises, what has to be judged as corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated, where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace,

the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins. Of all the cults and philosophies which competed in the Greco-Roman world, Christianity alone developed from its inception a compact organization. No one of its rivals possessed so powerful and coherent a structure as did the church. No other gave its adherence quite the same feeling of coming into a closely-knit community. The Bolshevik movement outdistance all of the Marxist movements in the race for power because of its tight collective organization. The National Socialist Movement, too, won out over all other folkish movements, which pululated in the 1920s because of Hitler's early recognition that a rising mass movement can never go too far in advocating and promoting collective goals. He knew that the chief passion of the frustrated is to belong, and that there cannot be too much

cementing and binding to satisfy this passion. And what I will say is, it's not only when you take out brainwashing of radical individualism from an early age, the chief, collectivism is not accepted by the frustrated. It's accepted, it's accepted by everyone. That should be painfully obvious. Brought up in a family, and, I mean, for how long did you have two and three generation households? That's who you were. You were who your family was.

Individualism and radical individualism makes it a bad thing. And then he's complaining that radical individualism, while those who fail at radical individualism, just run right back to collectivism. Like, that's a bad thing. No, it's human. All right. Stop it right there and be back for part three in a couple days. Like I said, leave any comments.

I'm reading this along with you guys. Take care. Bye.