What I think he, too, might say about the "freedom" of thought in the Freeper cult.
"There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They asked to be deceived. "
"Unless a man has 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.'"
"To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief from the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility."
"I doubt if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and for power – power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate."
"It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable."
"Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true."
"There can be no freedom without freedom to fail."
"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both. "
http://www.erichoffer.net/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer"Eric Hoffer was a self-educated longshoreman who came to fame in the 1950's with the publication of his first book, The True Believer. A caustic analysis of the nature of mass movements and those who are driven to join them, The True Believer did what few other books of the mid-twentieth century could: it helped expose the hidden causes of the tumultuous events that nearly destroyed our world at that time. Hoffer said of the 1930's, "It colors my thinking and shapes my attitude toward events. I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac."
The True Believer, though, is not solely concerned with the rise of Nazi Germany, but with the origination of all mass movements, destructive or creative. And more importantly, it is concerned with the main ingredient of such movements, the frustrated individual. The book probes into the psychology of the frustrated and dissatisfied, those who would eagerly sacrifice themselves for any cause that might give their meaningless lives some sense of significance. The alienated seek to lose themselves in these movements by adopting those fanatical attitudes that are, according to Hoffer, fundamentally "a flight from the self."
http://www.erichoffer.net/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
