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A Macat Analysis of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Eric Hoffer’s The True Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is one of the most widely read works of social psychology written in the 20th-century. It exemplifies the powers of creative thinking and critical analysis at their best, providing an insight into two crucial elements of critical thinking.
Hoffer is likely to go down in history as one of America’s great creative thinkers – a writer not bound by standard frameworks of thinking or academic conventions, willing to beat his own path in framing the best possible answers to the questions he investigated. An impoverished, largely unschooled manual laborer who had survived the worst effects of the Great Depression in the United States, Hoffer was a passionate autodidact whose philosophical and psychological education came from omnivorous reading. Working without the help of any mentors, he forged the fearsomely creative and individual approach to problems demonstrated in The True Believer.
The book, which earned him his reputation, examines the different phenomena of fanaticism – religious or political – and applies Hoffer’s analytical skills to reveal that, deep down, all ‘true believers’ display the same needs and tendencies, whatever their final choice of belief. Incisive and persuasive, it remains a classic.
Hoffer is likely to go down in history as one of America’s great creative thinkers – a writer not bound by standard frameworks of thinking or academic conventions, willing to beat his own path in framing the best possible answers to the questions he investigated. An impoverished, largely unschooled manual laborer who had survived the worst effects of the Great Depression in the United States, Hoffer was a passionate autodidact whose philosophical and psychological education came from omnivorous reading. Working without the help of any mentors, he forged the fearsomely creative and individual approach to problems demonstrated in The True Believer.
The book, which earned him his reputation, examines the different phenomena of fanaticism – religious or political – and applies Hoffer’s analytical skills to reveal that, deep down, all ‘true believers’ display the same needs and tendencies, whatever their final choice of belief. Incisive and persuasive, it remains a classic.
94 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 5, 2017
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January 30, 2022
(Audiobook) This work is an audio Cliff Notes of a key work from the mid-20th century, looking at why people join cult/extremist movements. It takes a super-positive view of the work, and the primary thesis (that people join these movements because of their issues in their own lives, losing their own self worth and joining other movements to find what they had lost) is repeated ad nauseam. The work did see a renewal after the 9/11 attacks, and will probably see another renewal after the polarization of America. If nothing else, I might recommend reading the actual work, as this gave you a brief idea, but not much more beyond that (yes, it had biographical information/etc, but it was too annoying after a short while).
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