A Book Review: The True Believer

With Sage in the wilderness of North Carolina and unable to play on his computer much this week, I thought I would invoke his spirit and read one of the few books that I have on my 'to be read' list that I got from his blog (actually, I'm just blowing sunshine up his bum. This book happened to arrive at the time where I had finished the one that I had been reading and his week in N.C. but it sounded good, didn't it?).

Not surprisingly, a book about why people join mass movements was difficult to get into. It wasn't until Hoffer started in on what types of people join (basically the frustrated who are that way for a number of reasons - poverty, misfits, outcasts, minorities, etc.) and I realized how things haven't changed much since the book was originally published in 1951 that it became interesting.

Some quotable highlights:

* The discarded and rejected are often the raw material of a nation's future. This quote made me reflect on Ed's favorite topic of late - the immigration bill.

* Not all who are poor are 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 of th eir familiar cesspool. This sort of answers the occasional wondering I have had about how generations of a same family can be on government assistance.

* Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. Hoffer writes that the poor who live on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. The goals are concrete and immediate. Every meal is a fulfillment; to go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph. I like observations like these because it reminds me how lucky (blessed?) I am. Something I forget that in the normal day-to-day stuff.

* The poor who are members of a compact group - a tribe, a closely knit family, a compact racial or religious group - are relatively free of frustration and hence almost immune to the appeal of a proselytizing mass movement. He goes on to say that the ideal potential convert is the individual who stands alone. It was here where I realized that what he is saying could be applied to what is going in the Middle East and I reflected on the movie Syriana. There were two boys who became suicide bombers after seeing friends from the old neighborhood prospering. The two most memorable scenes I have ever seen in movies oddly are about a similar thing. In this one, it was of the two boys on a small boat filled with explosives, heading out to a larger ship which was the intended target. The camera cut away just as the small boat was within feet of the larger one. The second memorable movie moment is in Fahrenheit 9/11 where the screen goes black and all you hear is the sound of the low flying plane heading for the World Trade Center.

* In the industrialized Western world the family is weakened and disrupted 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.

* Marriage has for women many equivalents of joining a mass movement. It offers them a new purpose in life, a new future and a new identity (a new name). He goes on to say that Hitler was financed by the wives of some of the great industrialists long before their husbands had heard of him. The same with the French Revolution because wives were usually bored and appreciated innovation. This part reminds me of The Awakening that I recently finished reading. Thankfully, present day women have the Food Channel to occupy their time or the aforementioned economic independence. That one seems to be a bit contradictory though. Women got bored because they were home all day, doing nothing worthy while now, they are out working and feeling independent (which probably increases their feeling of self-worth) yet that supposedly leads to divorce.

There are so many more of what he writes that is worthy of sharing, such as his view of the military as being a form of a mass movement, but for the sake of boring the reader, I will just end it there and encourage you to read it with a highlighter in hand. I am now passing this on to Big A who, after having read him a few sections, is extremely interested in reading more. This is the first book in the 7.5 years that I have known him which we have both read.


Postscript: I posted this view not only on my birthday but also on my first day of a 10 day vacation. That's how much I enjoyed it...although I am looking to return to fiction and beginning the first book for the Southern Reading Challenge.