The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads 'The True Believer' by Eric Hoffer - The Abrupt Finale

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

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Lidl, more to value. And now, this is over the same to himshire. It's leargoal to doer Glewere and not yet Gereena in Aundun, and leant to Gaela to give a time of Gawainan. In Ergird, we're taking tour chaw-in-voin-hae to find of unwa-oomof. It's a usherad, a young-lectricer, on as good people, people, tariff in one-stash-o-people, I want to welcome

Ruffer Wants'est to Wagon. I want to welcome everyone back to part four of my reading of Eric Hoffer's True Believer A reminder about Thomas and my watching movies and reviewing them head on over to free man beyond the wall.com for slash movies.

Do you see the movies that we've done? The last one was Fantas. We did that for Halloween. and we are getting ready to record our next. Keep it a secret as to what it is right now. All right. Let's see where Hoffer goes with Part 3. United Action and Self-Sacrifice.

And he has a preface to this one. The vigor of a mass movement stems from the propensity of its followers for United Action and Self-Sacrifice. When we ascribe the success of a movement to its faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, ruthlessness, and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice. It is perhaps impossible to understand the nature of mass movements unless it is recognized that the chief preoccupation is to foster, perfect, and perpetuate a facility for united action and self-sacrifice. Correct, but there is an ends as well.

And self-sacrifice here, what he, the way I, I have to read this as to what I've been reading, what I've read so far is that that's a bad thing, that people should be individuals, and by joining a movement, you've given up your individuality and embraced collectivism. To know the processes by which such a facility is engendered is to grasp the inner logic of most of the characteristic attitudes and practices of an active mass movement. With few exceptions, any group or organization which tries, for one reason or another, to create and maintain compact unity and a constant readiness for self-sacrifice usually manifest the peculiarities, both noble and base, of a mass movement. On the other hand, a mass

movement is bound to lose much, which distinguishes it from other types of organizations when it relaxes its collective compactness and begins to count in its self-interest as legitimate motive of activity. Okay. In times of peace and prosperity, a democratic nation and an institutionalized association of more or less free individuals. Okay, let me read that again. In times of peace and prosperity, a democratic nation is an institutionalized association of more or less free individuals. On the other hand, in times of crisis, when the nation's existence is threatened, and it tries to reinforce its unity and generate in its people a readiness for self-sacrifice. It almost always assumes, in some degree, the character of a mass movement.

All right. In times of peace and prosperity, a democratic nation is an institutionalized association of more or less free individuals. Correct. Democracy promotes and champions individualism. And when that starts to fail, because it's going to fail, people revert back to collectivism, coming together people of like-mind who look alike, who share the same language, share the same ethnicity, and he calls that a mass movement. The same is true of religious and revolutionary organizations.

Whether or not they develop into mass movements depends less on the doctrine they preach, and the program they project that on the degree of their preoccupation with unity and the readiness for self-sacrifice. Any religious is going to be about a group. A revolutionary organization? I mean, depends on how you define revolutionary.

The important point is that in the poignantly frustrated, the propensities for united action and self-sacrifice arise spontaneously. I spontaneously? Okay. It should be possible, therefore, to gain some clues concerning the nature of these propensities and the technique to be employed for their deliberate inculcation by tracing their spontaneous emergence in the frustrated mind. The frustrated mind, I would, so far, if I were to define frustrated mind by what I've read

so far, is the mind that realizes even subconsciously that collarsely that collarsely that collectivism is natural and is being forced into individualism, and individualism is causing everything to fall apart, because that's what it does. What ails to frustrated, it is the consciousness of an irredeemably blemished self. See, that's, this is where he's just wrong. And I really, like, everybody listening to this has picked up a book, read half of it, and stopped reading. whether because they just were like, I don't, I'm not going to, this is garbage, I'm not going to read any more of it, or just because you, most of the time is distracted by another book.

Many such cases, my correct. At this point, if I was reading this alone, I'd probably just put it aside. Because, I mean, it's, it's insane. And tell me, if you're listening to this, tell me if you think I should just stop. reading this. If you've heard enough, if it is through the fourth episode, this is the fourth episode, I'm going to finish the fourth episode. Tell me if you think you've heard enough, you don't need to hear anymore, or if you want me to finish this. I usually don't do this. I usually do things because I want to, but I want to get your opinion on this as the people

who are listening to it. Some of you may just be at the point where you don't, you're like, I'm not even going to listen to any more of this. Pete, you know, Pete's kind of wasting his time. You might believe that, and maybe I am. But give me your opinion. Should I finish this book? Probably it would be, I was counting five or six more episodes. Tell me if you've heard enough. All right, I'm going to keep going.

Their chief desire is to escape the self. Again, this, Hoffer is it radical individualists. And it is this desire, which, manifests itself in a propensity for united action and self-sacrifice. Yeah, family, ethnicity, things that he seems to, you know, not put much in, not put much importance in. The revulsion from an unwanted self and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off, and lose it, produce both the readiness to sacrifice to self and willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.

Moreover, the estrangement from the self is usually accompanied by a train of diverse and seemingly unrelated attitudes and impulses, which a closer probing reveals to be essential factors in the process of unification and of self-sacrifice. In other words, frustration not only gives rise to the desire for unity and the readiness for self-sacrifice, but also creates a mechanism for their own. realization. Such diverse phenomena as a deprecation of the present, a facility for make-believe, a proneness to hate, a readiness to imitate, credulity, a readiness to attempt the impossible, and many others which crowd the minds of the intensely frustrated are, as we shall see,

unifying agents and prompters of recklessness. In sections 44-103, an attempt will be made to show that when we set out to inculcate in people a facility for united action and self-sacrifice, we do all we can, whether we know it or not, to induce and encourage an estrangement from the self, and that we strike to evoke and cultivate in them many of the diverse attitudes and impulses, which accompany the spontaneous estrangement from the self in the frustration. In short, we shall try to show that the technique of an active mass moving consists basically in the inculcation and cultivation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind. I'm going to make an executive decision here and say, I'm done with this book. If you made it this far, God bless you. You're amazing. But this is just insulting horseshit from a radical individualist who, who I really can't find much out there about his background,

but I'm pretty sure I know what it is. And to the people who have recommended this book to me because they like it, we probably don't have much in common at all. All right. Take care, y'all. And, yeah, I'll just find another book and start reading.