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fervor of united action and group consciousness.
Experience shows that production is at its best when the workers feel and act as members of a team.
A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves
Hitler’s
He knew that the chief passion of the frustrated is “to belong,” and that there cannot be too much cementing and binding to satisfy this passion.
Reformation people “objected not to the church’s power, but to its weaknesses…. Their movements against the church, within it and without, were movements not for release from a religious control, but for a fuller and more abundant religious control.”
When people revolt in a totalitarian society, they rise not against the wickedness of the regime but its weakness.
renouncing individual will, judgment and ambition, and dedicating all their powers to the service of an eternal cause, they are at last lifted off the endless treadmill which can never lead them to fulfillment.
The most incurably frustrated—and, therefore, the most vehement—among the permanent misfits are those with an unfulfilled craving for creative work.
The fiercest fanatics are often selfish people who were forced, by innate shortcomings or external circumstances, to lose faith in their own selves. They separate the excellent instrument of their selfishness from their ineffectual selves and attach it to the service of some holy cause. And though it be a faith of love and humility they adopt, they can be neither loving nor humble.
failure intensifies the feeling of not belonging.
minority who attain fortune and fame often find it difficult to gain entrance into the exclusive circles of the majority.
the least and most successful among the Blacks are the most race conscious.
without abilities or opportunities for creative work or useful action, there is no telling to what desperate and fantastic shifts they might resort in order to give meaning and purpose to their lives.
Remorse and a sense of grievance seem to drive people in the same direction.
An effective mass movement cultivates the idea of sin. It depicts the autonomous self not only as barren and helpless but also as vile. To
Their uniforms, flags, emblems, parades, music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death.
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience—
We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory self for the imaginary eternal self
the present is driven back as if it were an unclean thing and lumped with the detested past.
To lose one’s life is but to lose the present;
Faith in miracles, too, implies a rejection and a defiance of the present.
A pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic change. We cling to what we call our common sense, our practical point of view.
The radical and the reactionary loathe the present.
prophets, too, were a blend of the reactionary and the radical. They preached a return to the ancient faith and also envisaged a new world and a new life.
Such delight cannot come from the mere venting of a grievance. There must be something more—and there is. By expatiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation.
advocacy of the impracticable and impossible
Those who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible.
from the means a mass movement uses as from the ends it advocates.
People who live full, worthwhile lives are not usually ready to die for their own interests nor for their country nor for a holy cause.9 Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
It is strange, indeed, that those who hug the present and hang on to it with all their might should be the least capable of defending it. And that, on the other hand, those who spurn the present and dust their hands of it should have all its gifts and treasures showered on them unasked.
The successful businessman is often a failure as a communal leader because his mind is attuned to the “things that are” and his heart set on that which can be accomplished in “our time.” Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
And it is perhaps fortunate that some proud natures when suffering defeat in the practical world do not feel crushed but are suddenly fired with the apparently absurd conviction that they are eminently competent to direct the fortunes of the community and the nation.
that their daring and reckless readiness for self-sacrifice sprang not from despair but from their fervent preoccupation with the revival of an ancient land and an ancient people. They, indeed, fought and died for cities yet to be built and gardens yet to be planted.
self-sacrifice is an unreasonable act. It cannot be the end-product of a process of probing and deliberating.
the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it.
What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.
The fanatical Communist refuses to believe any unfavorable report or evidence about Russia,
the certitude of his infallible doctrine that renders the true believer impervious to the uncertainties, surprises and the unpleasant realities of the world around him.
“contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure.
The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude.
in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in.
We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible.
The inability or unwillingness to see things as they are promotes both gullibility and charlatanism.
sense of security is derived from his passionate attachment and not from the excellence of his cause.
his desperate need for something to hold on to.
need for passionate attachment which
a holy ...
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The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his ...
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