To Believe | The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classic.)

The Optimistic Jew | The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classic.) | Eric Hoffer

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	• The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classic.) Eric Hoffer Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2002 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 125 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Only for the serious student of nutcases

I read a review of this in the Marine Corp Gazette and it spawned my interest in the subject of today's suicide bombers and the like so I bought it. Well, it is a serious and detailed look at mass movements as the author calls it. It was written some time ago and certainly applies today. But it requires the reader to be very serious about the subject. I started out okay but soon I was having to make myself go on. It is probably the most in depth look at the subject but a tough read.

To Believe

Read this book in 1992...changed the way that I looked at the world and organized religion. Really helps in understanding anything that deals with politics, religion, and any other mainstream ideology.

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The Optimistic Jew

This is a companion piece to Erich Fromm's "Escape From Freedom". It is an analysis of fanatics - human beings that are compelled to join causes no matter what the cause. By extension it is an investigation of mass movements from early Christianity up to Fascism and Communism. This book is a cautionary against dangerous trends in the Zionist Enterprise (notice I use the term Enterprise and not Movement). Fanatic selfless idealism - whether of right wing settlers or of leftwing social reformers is dangerous. The arrogant self-righteousness of both can justify corruption, breaking the law and horrendous crimes.
As Hoffer puts it: "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". In the Jewish context we are not post-Zionist we are post Zionist Movement and well into the Zionist Enterprise. I celebrate the maturing of Zionism from a Movement into an Enterprise. The so called solidarity of the past stifled individual self-actualization. Today the Zionist Enterprise offers many opportunities to individuals to actualize themselves as human beings and as Jews. I believe this is admirable and not to be regretted. My book "The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century" reflects this view.

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Hoffer at The Eye of the Storm

Here is the first thing anyone needs to know about reading "The True Believer": Eric Hoffer is not on your team, whatever your team may be, whether right, left, moderate, secular or non-secular, or whatever. If anyone ever attempts to sell you on an ideology with a quote from "The True Believer", please know that Hoffer is tumbling in his grave.

If you are looking to pump your fist in the air at the moment that Hoffer skewers the ideology you oppose, yes, you will have that moment, but please know that you're going to turn the page and find Hoffer is skewering your ideology on the next. There's no escape from "The True Believer" because Hoffer seems to demand that we be something more than de -politicized know-nothings, but makes the additional demand that we not become ideological sheep in the process.

This may, in part, be why "The True Believer" may be the most popular book of its kind that no one has ever heard of. (Oxymoron intended.) No writer is objective, but Hoffer gets as close to it as anyone and then pulls off something quite amazing; he throws bombs everywhere, reducing any kind of ideological proponent to what they really are; an individual caught up in a phenomena larger than themselves. There are great metaphysical implications in this, but Hoffer doesn't entertain them. He's reporting from a rowboat at the peaceful eye of an ideological hurricane of mass movements, and he's not happy about what he sees and he let's it be known.

"The True Believer" is not wordy in the least, and it's quite short, about 120 pages, but it's a bit hard to get through if you're unprepared because Hoffer writes in a manner that makes one feel they should be scribbling each line down as a quotation to keep in mind. It's a very assertive book and Hoffer doesn't say things, he proclaims them, in almost every sentence. You're just recovering from the impact of one sentence, and then you find you've had a head on collision with the next. You quickly realize that you understood every word, very much so, but you're boxing with a tough s.o.b. This also makes the book very quotable for someone looking to sell an ideology, a practice which indicates that they've read the book, but not understood it.

It's important to keep in mind that Hoffer isn't looking for a good guy or bad guy. Hoffer's subject is "Mass Movements". If you read the book with the "eye of the storm" perspective in mind, you'll find it fascinating and compulsively readable. If you read it seeking an affirmation of your own worldview, you're likely to find yourself shipwrecked at page 30 or so.

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An Essential Book for Educated People

Hoffer's 150-page book is a classic that applies perfectly to our times. Hoffer hits the mark again and again with "Machiavellian detachment" as one reviewer said. Of fanatics, Hoffer wrote:

"The effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is."

"The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude."

"It is obvious, therefore, that in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength." (quotations from page 76)

Very powerful and convincing reasoning!

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