Sublime

The “true believer” of Hoffer’s title is someone who belongs not to the few but to the many, someone who strives to bring the entire group (the church, the nation, the world even) within the grip of one narrative, the force of one body of belief, the authority of one charismatic Leader. This kind of fanaticism has no interest in Inner Rings; its

Sissela Bok’s book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life

The psychologist Jonathan Haidt says that if you find what is sacred to a person, there you will find “rampant irrationality.”

Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Along with this has grown an inordinate worship of bigness. We live in an age of

14. Grandiose, disrespectful, and unempathic behavior by people with social and political power always generates powerful, rage-filled compensatory outbreaks of madness. Such behavior is fueled by a despair that feels powerless and has little or nothing to lose. In lieu of hope for a future on earth, a heroic death becomes intoxicatingly attractive.

The test of the justice, morality, and worth of any society is how it treats those who are dependent due to youth, old age, physical or mental disability, and economic deprivation.

Starting out from the fact that the frustrated1 predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective

As appealing as it sounds, people are scared to think like a philosopher. Social media has turned us all into public relations professionals who pursue likeability instead of truth.

When one feels as though one is under constant existential threat, one cannot maintain the bonds of trust in others needed to build community or the kind of curiosity that can lead to finding ways to serve one another.