The Ordeal of the Ordeal of Change

In The Ordeal of Change, Eric Hoffer continues his deconstruction of mass movements fueled by the true believer - that person willing to subjugate an empty, autonomous and free life to an ideology calling for revolution. The sense of belonging for each individual negates the real feeling of loss from an autonomous life - a life of post-modern isolation under the rubric "I am a free man."

"We are [discreet] sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove" [Author unknown]. Hoffer claims that we lose our sense of an individual self or free self when the communal sharing of villages and farms gives way to modern urban 'separateness'. Hoffer never veers into postmodernism but relies on the idea of well constructed tropes of Nationalism, Christian-ism, Islamism, Communism, and the other isms. These are not authentic solutions - these are the dreams of the intelligentsia which is inimical to the status quo and eager for sweeping change. The pundit class is not authentic because, according to Hoffer, after the initial impetus for disruptive change, the pundits will run to the front of the mob and claim the leadership as 'protectors of the one true faith". The true believer who joins the mass movement is guaranteed to be gob-smacked by the author of his manifesto.

The other point that Hoffer makes points to the roots of the mass movements embrace of change. In a completely static population - the society in the common configuration for all humans from 200,000 years ago to emergent civilizations 12,000 years ago - no one expects change or looks to change because, quite simply, there is no empirical evidence that change happens. It is just one damn thing after another with all the days, months, seasons and years blending together into a seamless Ground Hog day of experience. Not a lifetime of experience - a single day repeated from birth unto death. No slave anticipates change. No slave holder agitates for change.

Hoffer's example is the Democratic Greek city states in which 30,000 Free citizens of Athens depended on the slave labor of 200,000 non-citizens. The rulers had no interest in change. Plato's Republic was a bulwark against change, any conceivable change, because humans had taken control from the gods and we could never recover from that change. All change was deterioration according to Popper's The Open Society and its Enemy's. Hoffer emphasizes this point often. Change never comes from the top because the top does not want to go anywhere. Their condition may continuously improve because, see fig. 1, they get first crack at any new thing. But there is no motivation to share any good thing with the masses.

This is Hoffer's greatest contribution to my thinking - leaders that promise change are base liars. The established institutions of a civilization must preserve the civilization in its current state or budgets will be cut, the shrubbery will not be watered, and the guy in the corner office may lose his job. But here is the surprise (for me) in Hoffer's construal of events; the far away change of the slave society, the far distant change of the bureaucrat, or the 'around the corner' change of gradual prosperity give rise to mass movements only for immediate change. But more importantly the ideation of mass action comes from gradual improvements for a population.

This is key to Hoffer. Change smarts over and over again in the modern world. New technologies supplant old and individual productivity rises. The gradual change whets the appetite for continuous change but change feedback to the masses as seeds for revolution.

My current hypothesis regarding the rise of the Tea Party has changed much since reading The True Believer and The Ordeal of Change. I looked for small improvements PRIOR to the formation of the Tea Party and I believe I have found these sources of incremental, positive change per the Hofferian paradigm:

1. George W Bush tax cuts
2. George W Bush wars of choice
3. Barack Obama's health care plan

The Bush Tax Cuts were built to buy the vote of the tax payer. Remember how the tax break was delivered - each of us got a check in the mail. We were never shown that the percentage decrease in tax rates was lost in the noise. If this payment had been a tax credit instead of a rebate no voter would have noticed. If and when the tax rate increases we will not get a seperate bill for the new tax and it would not matter if we did. A mass movement once started does not notice that things get slightly worse. Mass movements start with small improvements in living conditions.

The Iraq War swept everyone up in Nationalistic fervor. We loved our tanks and Cruise Missiles and were taking charge of a world gone mad. We enjoyed the war because we felt gradual change toward a rebuilt client nation with proven reserves of petroleum. Afghanistan not so much. Let's face it, we ignored Afghanistan to death. The overall impression for a mass movement of patriots started when it got extremely popular to become a patriot. Everyone had a yellow ribbon magnet. The original hippies had all been punched in the face by the Tea Party hippies who were now on medicare. We got a shift toward a surveillance state that seemed like a good idea at the time. A mass movement win.

The notion of 'change around the corner' for healthcare is weak but I am leaving it here as a cud to chew on. I got nothing. Back to reading his Holiness, Sir Eric Hoffer.