Many thanks to those who recommended the book "The True Believer - Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements - Eric Hoffer (1951). Truly an excellent read! Although by the author's admissions he is not an 'expert' he makes some very keen observations on people and their desire for being controlled . Needless to say many of his thoughts reminds me of the BORG and its members. This book also helps people to see that the religion or the cause isn't the real issue, but the real issue is with self. Below are some excerpts I particularly enjoyed - I hope you enjoy it as well.
"Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves."
"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."
"There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless."
"Mass movement are usually accused of doping their followers with hope of the future while cheating them of the enjoyment of the present."
"When our individual interest and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need of something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives. Hence the embracing of a substitute will necessarily be passionate and extreme...A substitute embraced in moderation cannot supplant and efface the self we want to forget."
"All mass movements are competitive."
"Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, 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.""
'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, meaninglessness and shabbiness of his individual existence."
"It is strange but true that he who preaches brotherly love also preaches against love of mother, father, brother, sister, wife and children...The proselytizer who comes and says "Follow me" is a family-wrecker, even though he is not conscious of any hostility towards the family and has not the least intention of weakening its solidarity."
"They demonstrate the fact that we can never have enough of that which we really do not want, and that we run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves."
"The segregated Negro in the South is less frustrated than the nonsegregated Negro in the North....Those of a minority who attain fortune and fame often find it difficult to gain entrance into the exclusive circles of the majority"
"When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored."
"Fervent patriotism as well as religious and revolutionary enthusiasm often serves as a refuse from a guilty conscience. It is a strange thing that both the injurer and the injured, the sinner and he who is sinned against, should find in the mass movement as escape from a blemished life."
"It is the consciousness of an irremediably blemished self. Their chief desire is to escape that self-and it is the desire which manifest itself in a propensity for united action and self sacrifice. The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole."
"Above all, he must never feel alone. Though stranded on a dessert island, he must still feel that he is under the eyes of the group. To be cast out from the group should be equivalent to being cut off from life."
"To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefor unreal) performances that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act to make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main task of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or light-hearted dramatic performance."
"It views ordinary enjoyment as trivial or even discreditable, and represents the pursuit of personal happiness as immoral. To enjoy oneself is to have truck with the enemy-the present. The prime objective is the ascetic ideal preached by most movements is to breed contempt for the present...The present is a shadow and an illusion."
"Those who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. It is a device to camouflage their shortcomings."
"It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something worth fighting for." they do not feel like fighting. People who live full, worthwhile lives are not usually ready to die for their own interest nor for their country nor for a holy cause...Dreams, vision and wild hopes are mighty weapons and realistic tools"
"No faith is potent unless it is also faith in the future; unless it has a millennial component. So too, an effective doctrine: as well as being a source of power, it must also claim to be a key to the book of the future."
"For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power."
Peace - LL
