A long time ago I had a high school history and government teacher who probably forever changed the way I think about the power of identity, especially group identity, in affecting human behavior.
Wow, fantastic post today, thanks! I am going to read your Aeon article, as well as the one on echo chambers that you recommend. Very thought provoking and insightful column today.
Great post; thanks for thinking out loud (I found you via Tara Shepersky). It was actually responding to Hoffer's provocation that informed my current direction (work organized around the concept of "belonging"); more here if of interest: https://citizenstout.substack.com/p/we-only-protect-what-we-love
What a great post, thank you for sharing. I like how you went into questioning whether the assumptions about hatred are really true. I've been wondering that, too, and want to sit with it more, especially thinking more on Chris La Tray's comment below on how to create movement for beneficial purposes. I recently read Rianne Eisler's book "Nurturing Our Humanity" on rediscovering partnership paradigms and abandoning domination ones. She talks a lot about how people who grow up in authoritarian households tend to feel safer with authoritarian leaders.
("Thinking out loud" should probably be the main title of this newsletter.)
A compelling read. As a an author and researcher in media and politics I found the distinction between epistemic bubbles and echo chambers highly relevant. There is a certain feverish intensity to how echo chambers expand and become sustainable features of public discourse.
I go back to that essay over and over. I was just rereading parts of Pankaj Mishra's "Age of Anger," and wondered if his thinking was influenced by some of this, too, in studying populist eruptions over the past few centuries.
I was at the Mitchif Heritage Keepers gathering in Choteau all weekend. This is a celebration of the Métis people in general, but held in Choteau specifically because of the community there that flourished for decades in the nearby Teton Canyon before homesteaders drove them out. Whenever I go to these things, or participate in Little Shell gatherings or activities, or even interact with the Red Nation folks, I'm troubled by the opposite: how DO we build some kind of "mass movement." I know this isn't the point of your piece here but it is what I'm thinking of. Engaging more people to a common cause. Whether that is reaching younger Métis and/or tribal members (I mean, who wants to spend the weekend jig dancing when there are video games that can put you in outer space or wherever) or, on a larger scale, inspiring a mass movement of anti-capitalist, landback warriors? It makes me sad.
It *is* kind of the point, though. It's something I wondered about as I was reading, and he touched on it briefly with Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln. Not how they started movements, but how they were leaders who harnessed the energy of mass movement for good rather than nefarious ends. It's something I'd like to know more about because it's something that troubles me, too. Even something as simple as voting--how do we get people inspired to even care about something that affects their lives so directly?
I'd guess, but don't know, that some of the same elements apply: dissatisfaction with the status quo, something akin to boredom, and a vision of how things could be better; "men of words" (update that language, of course) who can articulate that vision and inspire people with passion and energy and *desire* for that vision. A riposte is: What do you then do with the lack of hatred as a unifying force? I think lots of people have articulated unifying visions that can inspire people with something like hope instead. Extinction Rebellion, Standing Rock, even people like Bernie Sanders and AOC and Naomi Klein (with her book "No Is Not Enough") detailing in smart ways how things *could* be if we structured politics and society from a place of caring and kinship. Not that I necessarily agree with everything all of them stand for, but I don't think there's a question that many see them as leaders and are willing to devote their energy to those causes.
So if we follow Hoffer's thesis (and there's no reason it's necessarily true, though it rings true for me), what is vital are the "men of words" (like, um, writers with vision and passion, like yourself?) and some kind of leader who can inspire and lead without being egotistical and power-hungry. Which I believe *can* exist even if we rarely see them. Like Shelly with CSKT, it seems from my perspective. I gain hope and inspiration from so many things that tribe is able to do, and how much they refuse to give up a vision of what life could and can be. Of what's possible.
I suspect that part of the reason people don't engage is because the weight of what's accepted as a common story of total capitalism and ownership is so heavy and smothering. But it hasn't won yet. People just have to believe that something else truly is possible.
And then there's Hoffer's deeper and much-repeated point that true believers are full of self-loathing, dissatisfaction with their *selves,* who they individually are as humans. It's something that rings true because it always feels to me that it's at the core of ridiculous "jobs vs. the environment" arguments. Someone who's willing to give up their children's health, their clean water and air, and their claim to a free life granted by those things, in order for a job that might last a little while but whose damage will last generations -- that is someone who I tend to think deep down doesn't believe they or their children have a *right* to a decent life. That's a message that few are willing to grapple with because it's so very painful.
Sorry! Truly. My original intention with this newsletter was to do Walking Compositions on Tuesdays and Saturdays, with an essay every other Thursday because I don't want to read big think-y things on Mondays either, but I'm all out of whack.
Don't apologize, I appreciate your efforts and your brain! I just need some more coffee is all! I'm going to come back to this later because it deserves more attention than I've been able to give it this AM.
I'm pushing my caffeine time limit for the day (it's now 11am) but aren't you ahead of me? I'm waiting for my spouse to get off a ca1ll and go be useful making more coffee so I don't have to stop working
It's noon here, but I'm a former barista so my social norms for coffee are completely FUBAR. It sounds like you have a pretty slick personal barista situation going right now!
It's one I had to slow myself down on a bit, just to forewarn you. As in, it feels like a fast read but I had to keep going back to reread because I missed stuff.
You always have such incredible recommendations, Kat! While reading The True Believer I kept coming back to Curtis's documentary. I didn't bring this up in an already super-long piece, but Hoffer also talks about how individualism fails in the end because it can never provide people with what group solidarity can (withstanding torture was an extreme example). I wonder if Curtis was influenced at all by him?
Which means, of course, this movie is going to be something I watch very soon, thanks!
May I recommend Adam Serwer's new book The Cruelty Is The Point. As someone who wore out two copies of The True Believer, I think Serwer's essays also gives one much to consider when thinking about mass movements in America today.
I kept a framed copy of this Hoffer aphorism on my work desk for over thirty years: "It is futile to judge a kind deed by it's motive. Kindness can become it's own motive. We are made kind by being kind." As you alluded to in your essay showing kindness may be the answer.
That's a great quote! I've been thinking I should look into reading some of his other books -- is it from one of those?
I thought a lot about The Cruelty Is the Point while writing this, and wondered if I should actually read it. In general I avoid current politics-adjacent books purely because I'm only one person with so much time, and know plenty of other people who read these books (Serwer's is one I recommended to my dad, who does read modern political thought books). But if you're recommending it and also wore out two copies of True Believer, maybe it's one I need to pick up.
I can see wearing out copies, by the way. I had to keep pausing and going back to reread and then underlining different passages each time. There's so much in there that it's easy to focus on a different theme on each read.
My original copies of Hoffer's books bit the dust in the early 90s, unfortunately, crispy, old paperbacks eventually get older and crispier.
I believe the quote came from either "The Passionate State Of Mind" or "First Things Last Things" or "Reflections On The Human Condition". I believe each of these are collections of aphorisms and still in print.
If my memory serves, "The True Believer" made the best seller list after 9/11 and again during the Isis terror in the Levant. I've reread it during those frightening time and once again when Trumpism arrived on the scene.
Well, thanks to you and your essay, I'll be on the hunt to replace my other Hoffer titles,
and, thanks for stimulating my gray matter. I'm glad Ed Roberson put me on to your work.
I think I must not have owned it before, which would make sense as it would have been a school copy. Sounds like I'm going to have to get some more copies of his works. (Speaking of which, I came across a few mentions of a 9-part series that PBS did with him in maybe the 1970s. I'd love to watch that if you or anyone else finds a way to access it online.)
It seems like The True Believer gets to be the unfortunate role of perennially being one of "those who do study history are doomed to watch everyone else repeating it."
I'm very grateful to Ed for sharing this newsletter! And for his own work. I first listened to his podcast via Alexis Bonogofsky's interview and it's been one of my most regular listens ever since then. I'd hazard to say that we seem to have a similar interest in roaming around looking for people and ideas that can help us better be human, though I think he's better and more energetic at it than I am :)
It is sad to let go of crumbling old paperbacks. I recently had to give up some fiction books that have been with me since childhood, but they just weren't holding up any longer.
Yes, that last point -- I've been digging a lot (but probably barely scratching the surface) into the realities of peasantry, serfdom, and villeinage in Europe up through the mid-1800s. It's what I mean when I say that my ancestors, among hundreds of thousands of others, were fleeing something. Serfdom might have ended but the structures that enabled it were intact.
Riane Eisler also talks about retraumatizing in Nurturing Our Humanity. She writes a lot about people who grow up in authoritarian households becoming adults who only feel safe with authoritarians in power. It's trauma all over again, but at least it's a known and predictable trauma.
I'm looking forward to Sheldrake's book! Finally bought it because it's so widely recommended. It's only shelf for pleasure reading :)
Wow, fantastic post today, thanks! I am going to read your Aeon article, as well as the one on echo chambers that you recommend. Very thought provoking and insightful column today.
Thanks, Paul! The echo chambers one I go back to repeatedly. It's just such a helpful way for me to think.
Yes, the fact that you said you go back to it repeatedly immediately made it zoom to the top of my list. Happy Sunday!
Great post; thanks for thinking out loud (I found you via Tara Shepersky). It was actually responding to Hoffer's provocation that informed my current direction (work organized around the concept of "belonging"); more here if of interest: https://citizenstout.substack.com/p/we-only-protect-what-we-love
What a great post, thank you for sharing. I like how you went into questioning whether the assumptions about hatred are really true. I've been wondering that, too, and want to sit with it more, especially thinking more on Chris La Tray's comment below on how to create movement for beneficial purposes. I recently read Rianne Eisler's book "Nurturing Our Humanity" on rediscovering partnership paradigms and abandoning domination ones. She talks a lot about how people who grow up in authoritarian households tend to feel safer with authoritarian leaders.
("Thinking out loud" should probably be the main title of this newsletter.)
A compelling read. As a an author and researcher in media and politics I found the distinction between epistemic bubbles and echo chambers highly relevant. There is a certain feverish intensity to how echo chambers expand and become sustainable features of public discourse.
I go back to that essay over and over. I was just rereading parts of Pankaj Mishra's "Age of Anger," and wondered if his thinking was influenced by some of this, too, in studying populist eruptions over the past few centuries.
I was at the Mitchif Heritage Keepers gathering in Choteau all weekend. This is a celebration of the Métis people in general, but held in Choteau specifically because of the community there that flourished for decades in the nearby Teton Canyon before homesteaders drove them out. Whenever I go to these things, or participate in Little Shell gatherings or activities, or even interact with the Red Nation folks, I'm troubled by the opposite: how DO we build some kind of "mass movement." I know this isn't the point of your piece here but it is what I'm thinking of. Engaging more people to a common cause. Whether that is reaching younger Métis and/or tribal members (I mean, who wants to spend the weekend jig dancing when there are video games that can put you in outer space or wherever) or, on a larger scale, inspiring a mass movement of anti-capitalist, landback warriors? It makes me sad.
Makes me sad, too, Chris.
It *is* kind of the point, though. It's something I wondered about as I was reading, and he touched on it briefly with Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln. Not how they started movements, but how they were leaders who harnessed the energy of mass movement for good rather than nefarious ends. It's something I'd like to know more about because it's something that troubles me, too. Even something as simple as voting--how do we get people inspired to even care about something that affects their lives so directly?
I'd guess, but don't know, that some of the same elements apply: dissatisfaction with the status quo, something akin to boredom, and a vision of how things could be better; "men of words" (update that language, of course) who can articulate that vision and inspire people with passion and energy and *desire* for that vision. A riposte is: What do you then do with the lack of hatred as a unifying force? I think lots of people have articulated unifying visions that can inspire people with something like hope instead. Extinction Rebellion, Standing Rock, even people like Bernie Sanders and AOC and Naomi Klein (with her book "No Is Not Enough") detailing in smart ways how things *could* be if we structured politics and society from a place of caring and kinship. Not that I necessarily agree with everything all of them stand for, but I don't think there's a question that many see them as leaders and are willing to devote their energy to those causes.
So if we follow Hoffer's thesis (and there's no reason it's necessarily true, though it rings true for me), what is vital are the "men of words" (like, um, writers with vision and passion, like yourself?) and some kind of leader who can inspire and lead without being egotistical and power-hungry. Which I believe *can* exist even if we rarely see them. Like Shelly with CSKT, it seems from my perspective. I gain hope and inspiration from so many things that tribe is able to do, and how much they refuse to give up a vision of what life could and can be. Of what's possible.
I suspect that part of the reason people don't engage is because the weight of what's accepted as a common story of total capitalism and ownership is so heavy and smothering. But it hasn't won yet. People just have to believe that something else truly is possible.
And then there's Hoffer's deeper and much-repeated point that true believers are full of self-loathing, dissatisfaction with their *selves,* who they individually are as humans. It's something that rings true because it always feels to me that it's at the core of ridiculous "jobs vs. the environment" arguments. Someone who's willing to give up their children's health, their clean water and air, and their claim to a free life granted by those things, in order for a job that might last a little while but whose damage will last generations -- that is someone who I tend to think deep down doesn't believe they or their children have a *right* to a decent life. That's a message that few are willing to grapple with because it's so very painful.
Thank you, Nia.
Talk about a light read for your Monday morning, sheesh!
Sorry! Truly. My original intention with this newsletter was to do Walking Compositions on Tuesdays and Saturdays, with an essay every other Thursday because I don't want to read big think-y things on Mondays either, but I'm all out of whack.
Don't apologize, I appreciate your efforts and your brain! I just need some more coffee is all! I'm going to come back to this later because it deserves more attention than I've been able to give it this AM.
I also need more coffee ;)
We are pushing the catatonic line this Monday, so it might be necessary to turn to the espresso dark arts.
I'm pushing my caffeine time limit for the day (it's now 11am) but aren't you ahead of me? I'm waiting for my spouse to get off a ca1ll and go be useful making more coffee so I don't have to stop working
It's noon here, but I'm a former barista so my social norms for coffee are completely FUBAR. It sounds like you have a pretty slick personal barista situation going right now!
Thank you! Adding True Believer to my TBR...
It's one I had to slow myself down on a bit, just to forewarn you. As in, it feels like a fast read but I had to keep going back to reread because I missed stuff.
We watched a 1981 TV movie called “The Wave” at my middle school. It’s retro! Seems relevant. It’s on YouTube: https://youtu.be/pEUHXxis0Cg
yoooo I remember this!
You always have such incredible recommendations, Kat! While reading The True Believer I kept coming back to Curtis's documentary. I didn't bring this up in an already super-long piece, but Hoffer also talks about how individualism fails in the end because it can never provide people with what group solidarity can (withstanding torture was an extreme example). I wonder if Curtis was influenced at all by him?
Which means, of course, this movie is going to be something I watch very soon, thanks!
May I recommend Adam Serwer's new book The Cruelty Is The Point. As someone who wore out two copies of The True Believer, I think Serwer's essays also gives one much to consider when thinking about mass movements in America today.
I kept a framed copy of this Hoffer aphorism on my work desk for over thirty years: "It is futile to judge a kind deed by it's motive. Kindness can become it's own motive. We are made kind by being kind." As you alluded to in your essay showing kindness may be the answer.
That's a great quote! I've been thinking I should look into reading some of his other books -- is it from one of those?
I thought a lot about The Cruelty Is the Point while writing this, and wondered if I should actually read it. In general I avoid current politics-adjacent books purely because I'm only one person with so much time, and know plenty of other people who read these books (Serwer's is one I recommended to my dad, who does read modern political thought books). But if you're recommending it and also wore out two copies of True Believer, maybe it's one I need to pick up.
I can see wearing out copies, by the way. I had to keep pausing and going back to reread and then underlining different passages each time. There's so much in there that it's easy to focus on a different theme on each read.
My original copies of Hoffer's books bit the dust in the early 90s, unfortunately, crispy, old paperbacks eventually get older and crispier.
I believe the quote came from either "The Passionate State Of Mind" or "First Things Last Things" or "Reflections On The Human Condition". I believe each of these are collections of aphorisms and still in print.
If my memory serves, "The True Believer" made the best seller list after 9/11 and again during the Isis terror in the Levant. I've reread it during those frightening time and once again when Trumpism arrived on the scene.
Well, thanks to you and your essay, I'll be on the hunt to replace my other Hoffer titles,
and, thanks for stimulating my gray matter. I'm glad Ed Roberson put me on to your work.
I think I must not have owned it before, which would make sense as it would have been a school copy. Sounds like I'm going to have to get some more copies of his works. (Speaking of which, I came across a few mentions of a 9-part series that PBS did with him in maybe the 1970s. I'd love to watch that if you or anyone else finds a way to access it online.)
It seems like The True Believer gets to be the unfortunate role of perennially being one of "those who do study history are doomed to watch everyone else repeating it."
I'm very grateful to Ed for sharing this newsletter! And for his own work. I first listened to his podcast via Alexis Bonogofsky's interview and it's been one of my most regular listens ever since then. I'd hazard to say that we seem to have a similar interest in roaming around looking for people and ideas that can help us better be human, though I think he's better and more energetic at it than I am :)
It is sad to let go of crumbling old paperbacks. I recently had to give up some fiction books that have been with me since childhood, but they just weren't holding up any longer.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eric+hoffer+interview
That is awesome, though you! (Also: there goes my weekend ...)
Yes, that last point -- I've been digging a lot (but probably barely scratching the surface) into the realities of peasantry, serfdom, and villeinage in Europe up through the mid-1800s. It's what I mean when I say that my ancestors, among hundreds of thousands of others, were fleeing something. Serfdom might have ended but the structures that enabled it were intact.
Riane Eisler also talks about retraumatizing in Nurturing Our Humanity. She writes a lot about people who grow up in authoritarian households becoming adults who only feel safe with authoritarians in power. It's trauma all over again, but at least it's a known and predictable trauma.
I'm looking forward to Sheldrake's book! Finally bought it because it's so widely recommended. It's only shelf for pleasure reading :)