Ayn Rand and Eric Hoffer's True Believer


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Reading in MYWAR:

On page 260 (starting out in a context speaking of Objectivist groups around North America -

Occasionally, I would hear that someone had been "excommunicated" from one of these groups because of some betrayal of OBjectivist standards. It seemed to me that some of these students were more severe than Ayn or I in their condemnation of infractions. "They're more royalist than the king," Ayn would comment wryly. "I guess all intellectual movements have to cope with one aspect or another of the 'true believer syndrome,'" I remarked once. Some years earlier, Ayn had discovered Eric Hoffer's True Believer and had recommended it to Barbara and me. "Because of our emphasis on rationality and independence," Ayn had confidently forecast, "this won't be a problem for us." I now knew that she was overly optimistic as far as our followers were concerned; I did not yet recognize that she was mistaken even about the inner circle.

Interesting, in particular that Rand was at least somewhat familiar with Hoffer's True Believer.

Bill P (Alfonso)

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Bill, it seems that it's much easier to see other people's flaws than one's own. I've known many people -- themselves badly damaged by the true belief syndrome -- who read Hoffer's book and marveled at how perceptive he was about some of their friends. However, as the years passed, some of them did come to see that it was not only their friends he was describing.

I cannot over-stress the value and importance of The True Believer. I'd like to see every Objectivist read it, and indeed everyone committed to a system of ideas, whether philosophical, political, or reiigious. It can function as a warning against the dangers of intellectual commitment, and a corrective if one has not escaped those dangers.

Barbara

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Bill, it seems that it's much easier to see other people's flaws than one's own. I've known many people -- themselves badly damaged by the true belief syndrome -- who read Hoffer's book and marveled at how perceptive he was about some of their friends. However, as the years passed, some of them did come to see that it was not only their friends he was describing.

I cannot over-stress the value and importance of The True Believer. I'd like to see every Objectivist read it, and indeed everyone committed to a system of ideas, whether philosophical, political, or reiigious. It can function as a warning against the dangers of intellectual commitment, and a corrective if one has not escaped those dangers.

Barbara

I agree in your assessment of The True Believer. I was surprised to find this citation (which I had forgotten from previous reading of MYWAR) because I had the impression from somewhere that Rand had never read Hoffer.

Oh - I've fallen into the patterns Hoffer talks about more than once. Including AFTER reading Hoffer, so I can definitely sympathize with your note about selective blindness. I suspect you can sympathize.

Interesting - I just went into my office to look at my copy of The True Believer. It was on the shelf next to The Ayn Rand Column.

Bill P (Alfonso, smiling)

Edited by Bill P
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Bill: "Oh - I've fallen into the patterns Hoffer talks about more than once. Including AFTER reading Hoffer, so I can definitely sympathize with your note about selective blindness. I suspect you can sympathize."

You couldn't be more right. It's remarkahle what the human mind can do to protect itself from unpleasant realizations.

Barbara

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Reading in MYWAR: On page 260 ... Ayn had discovered Eric Hoffer's True Believer and had recommended it to Barbara and me.

Ayn Rand and Eric Hoffer's True Believer

Bill P Jun 18 2008, 06:22 PM

I was surprised to find this citation (which I had forgotten from previous reading of MYWAR) because I had the impression from somewhere that Rand had never read Hoffer.

The Nature of Online Objectivism

Reidy May 9 2008, 09:43 AM

Historical question: did Rand endorse The True Believer?

Barbara Branden May 12 2008, 01:42 AM

Peter: "Historical question: did Rand endorse The True Believer?"

No. I never discussed Hoffer with her, and I don't think she had read him.

Chris: "Were any books by Hoffer in Rand's library?"

No.

Barbara

Aids to memory include myths, chants, and ceremonial songs... The first writing developed from the use of little clay tokens to represent farm goods owed to the city temple (see here)... On my current job, Rule #2 is "Always carry a notebook and pen or pencil." When I was a reporter, that was Rule #1 My wife has her PalmPilot and loads her cellphone with other memorabilia. We all enjoy the internet, which is now a collective memory for humanity. You see people walking around with input-output devices hanging on their ears. The next step is to have the interfaces more directly to the brain. Then, if you want to know anything you can just query. Of course, that may not help you remember whether or not you had jelly on your toast on the morning of June 21, 1967. The point is that memories fail and -- a significant point in the epistemology of criminal justice -- no two people perceive the same event the same way.

Edited by Michael E. Marotta
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  • 5 years later...

I just came across this, and the name Hoffer hit me so hard.

I had read Hoffer's book before I met my husband, who was in fact a sort of longshoreman in that he commenced his working life at age 15 on the Glasgow docks. He never read Hoffer. Yet he thought, knew and embodied so much that Hoffer knew . He had lived so many lives before I met him and always been himself.

Sept. 20 was his birthday. On that day his son wrote on his facebook, "Happy birthday Dad, RIP. The older I get the more I know that the lessons you taught me were the important ones."

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Here's a note to anyone who wants to read The True Believer.

The vocabulary Hoffer uses is a bit elevated in comparison to normal O-Land writing, so make sure you have a dictionary handy. This surprised me when I first opened The True Believer because Hoffer's identity story hammers the longshoreman angle.

I haven't finished reading it yet (I got interrupted back when I started), but I agree, it's a great book. I intend to finish it and probably reread it a couple of times.

As I was writing this post, I looked at his bio and Wikipedia article Eric Hoffer mentioned some TV interviews with him. I looked on YouTube and found "Eric Hoffer: The Passionate State of Mind" with Eric Sevareid, CBS, September 19, 1967. I have only listened to the first video so far, but I am hooked. I had to get this up so you guys can have it before I listen to the rest, which will be immediately.

What a charming dude.

Michael

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I just finished watching the interview.

I was a fan before, but now I'm a groupie. :smile:

For those who don't know, some of Hoffer's political views might raise a few eyebrows. For example, he thought Lyndon Johnson was going to be remembered as one of the greatest American Presidents. :smile: But amid all that wisdom I just witnessed, I can forgive him an extravagant opinion or two. He judged the world by who came from the producer class, which he saw as mostly the blue-collar working class, and everybody else. Johnson was a man who came from the working class, so Hoffer identified with him.

I love his portrayal of intellectuals. He thinks they should be taken care of, pampered, and so on, because they give us our poetry, but intellectuals should be prohibited from ever gaining power. An intellectual is not like a man of action, who just wants to rule. The intellectual in power wants subjects to fall on their knees and worship the things intellectuals come up with that make people love what they hate and hate what they love.

Well, I love that observation. It's a very, very good one. His observations about the nature of America are spot-on, too.

I think Hoffer's value is more psychological than moral. It's almost inconceivable to me how he missed the deep insidious moral attraction of collectivism (even to working class people), but I was intellectually brought up on Ayn Rand and libertarianism. Look at what was popular in the intellectual culture he lived in. He got his ideas from introspection, the library, and talking things over with other longshoremen.

The wonder to me is not what he got wrong. It's how much he got right, especially the stuff professional intellectuals did not and still don't.

What a way to start a Saturday morning! I love the Internet. I was able to meet and visit with Eric Hoffer at my leisure.

It's going to be a great day.

Michael

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Carol,

You may not realize it, but Sarah Palin is union.

Of course many good people come from unions.

My problem is with the power-mongers who want to run everybody's business, steal from collective coffers, and destroy people they don't like or no longer have use for.

The power-monger class is in every political orientation. But so are good people.

Michael

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In 1972, Edwin Newman interviewed Ayn Rand for his show “Speaking Freely” on NBC-TV. Among other statements, Ayn Rand said: “I am not an enemy of labor unions. Quite the contrary. I think that they are the only decent group today, ideologically. I think they are the ones who will save this country, and save capitalism, if anybody can.” She went on to say: “But the one flaw is that labor unions are government-enforced and become a monopoly and can demand higher wages than the market can offer. This union power creates the unemployable. It creates this vast group of people, the unskilled laborers who have no place to go for work. The artificial boosting of the skilled laborer’s income causes unemployment on the lower rungs of society. Every welfare measure works that way. It doesn’t affect the so-called rich, if that the humanitarians are worried about it, always affects the poor.”


As for Hoffer, The True Believer can stand on its own merits as a work of insight and suggestion. It is a book that merits deep and committed discussion. Hoffer's being 100% right only opens the door to understanding why he is 100% wrong. Or maybe, more to the point, Hoffer remains 100% right but those who quote him are not so perceptive.


When MSK has read the book, we will take this up...
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What a wonderful quote from Rand! Most union members admire and respect capitalism, as they do the management supervisors who work with them to turn out the best product possible. The ones who work with them to simply exert power, especially those who have less technical expertise than the workers do, of course they do not respect. Such shop floor dynamics are the trigger for many labour disputes and strikes, perhaps more than simply wage demands.

My current supervisor was my strike captain in the last teachers' strike. She is now the best manager in the district. She facilitates us doing our jobs the best we can.

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Ever read RUR: Rossum's Universal Robots? I saw it performed by a Shakespeare troupe.

Comes the Revolution, comrade, the workers and the factory owners are going to unite; and the middle managers and bureaucrats are going to be lined up and shot.

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jVR has just pushed between the D TO TIE THE GAME!

Where was I? Oh yes, Peter Keating was an entrepreneur. He negotiated between the consumers (buyers of good architecture) and the producer of good architecture, disguised as himself by mutual agreement with Roark. What is so immoral about that?

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Oh, gee whiz! Was this from DENSE Lynam?

Read the Courtroom Speech. Read Ludwig von Mises. Capitalism and free market is only better than the alternative: it is not a guarantee. People are shallow. Cupidity rules. But the alternative is worse.

"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived, and he lifted darkness off the earth.
Throughout the centuries, there were men who took first steps down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. The great creators - the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors - stood alone against the men of their time. Every new thought was opposed; every new invention was denounced. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered, and they paid. But they won.
No creator was prompted by a desire to please his brothers. His brothers hated the gift he offered.
His truth was his only motive.
His work was his only goal.
His work - not those who used it.
His creation - not the benefits others derived from it - the creation which gave form to his truth.
He held his truth above all things and against all men. He went ahead whether others agreed with him or not, with his integrity as his only banner. He served nothing and no one. He lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement."
The Creative Genius
Far above the millions that come and pass away tower the pioneers, the
men whose deeds and ideas cut out new paths for mankind. For the pioneering
genius12 to create is the essence of life. To live means for him to create.
The activities of these prodigious men cannot be fully subsumed under
the praxeological concept of labor. They are not labor because they are for
the genius not means, but ends in themselves. He lives in creating and
inventing. For him there is not leisure, only intermissions of temporary
sterility and frustration. His incentive is not the desire to bring about a result,
but the act of producing it. The accomplishment gratifies him neither
mediately nor immediately. It does not gratify him mediately because his
fellow men at best are unconcerned about it, more often even greet it with
taunts, sneers, and persecution. Many a genius could have used his gifts to
render his life agreeable and joyful; he did not even consider such a
possibility and chose the thorny path without hesitation. The genius wants
to accomplish what he considers his mission, even if he knows that he moves
toward his own disaster.
Von Mises, Human Action, "Action Within the World" (1966 ed., pg 139)
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Well... that sent me to Wikipedia... I have seen perhaps six hockey games - minor league: the Albuquerque Scorpions. But it was just a bunch of guys chasing a puck between fights. I had no idea that they were following rules.

Hoffer's taxonomy of the True Believer does not apply to sports fans. I cannot even imagine an extreme case. Ideologies and religions explain the place of the individual believer in the grand scheme of things. They offer historical narratives and predict a future that can be created. They provide solace. True Believers do not join winning movements. Those late bloomers are joining to cash in on a good thing, and are not the faithful. Success must be possible, of course, but the farther away and harder to achieve, the better it is.

Like communism and Christianity, Objectivism is centered on an Eden Myth. Once upon a time, we had a (nearly) perfect world of limited government and free enterprise. But the evil progressives took over the universities and public education and tricked the masses of people into accepting piecemeal "reforms." The huge bureaucracy with laws and regulations, direct election of senators, the income tax and Federal Reserve, were the sins into which the people were seduced. But now we the special philosophers of freedom have a book that explains the truth. Millions of copies have been sold. We can win back the glorious past and even do better to create a (near) paradise in the (near) future. We might not live to see it, but we can do it for our children.

The problem with all of that - and with Hoffer's thesis - that it really is true that most people simply do not care to know. Hoffer's perfect world is one in which wars are fought for proximate causes like land. In the world of the unbeliever, power does not corrupt. The best and the brightest rise to the tops of all professions. Voters make intelligent choices. Capable people are hired via competitive civil service examinations to perform important tasks in the government. Businesses compete to sell what people want. People earn the money to buy those goods and services by working at jobs provided by companies that make other goods and services. To get a good job, get a good education, whether in a craft or trade or profession. Save your money. Retire. Die happy. Remember to get married, have children; they make you a grandparent. You die very happy.

Myself, I have found that true believers exist along a scale or axis. We have people here - other Objectivish boards have more - who are closed to any idea that does not come from their chosen guides. However, I also have met others whose true beliefs are different from mine but who themselves are interesting, informed, and informative. They care about the wider world and have an explanation for social facts and events whose effects they know but the causes of which they can only speculate over.

While Hoffer was accurate in drawing a picture of the unsuccessful person for whom their True Belief explains the other people who keep them down, Hoffer cannot explain the commercially successful person with extreme or marginalized opinions, except to make them the demagogues who callously pander to the rabble. That Mark Levin actually believes what he claims - and probably always did in some form - would remain true, even if Levin had a career as a corporate lawyer negotiating oil leases.

And how would that be different from Thomas Edison's campaign against alternating current?

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