The True Believer

So, I'm reading this book called "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer. If you haven't heard of him you should check him out and peep his story. Anyways, this book is basically reflecting on the nature of mass movements and breaking them down from different angles. I just read this section and it made a lot of sense to me as an artist trying to influence people around me. Check it out...

"...dying and killing seem easy when they are part of a ritual, ceremonial, dramatic performance or game. There is need for some make-believe in order to face death un-flinchingly. To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged ( and therefore unreal) performance that death loses it's frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or light-hearted dramatic performance. Hitler dressed eighty million Germans in costumes and made them perform in a grandiose, heroic and bloody opera. In Russia, where even the building of latrine involves some self sacrifice, life has been an uninterrupted soul-stirring drama going on for thirty years, and it's end is not yet. The people of London acted heroically under a hail of bombs because Churchill cast them In a roll of heroes. They played their heroic roll in front of a vast audience and on stage lighted by a burning world city and to the music of barking guns and screaming bombs. It is doubtful whether in our contemporary world, with it's widespread individual differentiation, and measure of general self-sacrifice can be realized without theatrical hocus-pocus and fireworks..."

•.food.for.thought.•