The overall state of the global economy has crossed into a well established “hope and faith” phase. Greed and inflation have affected the buying power of most people who in turn borrow to be able to maintain a lifestyle of the past. The few who hold some assets which most often are real estate, see it as their lottery ticket out of their misery. Consumption and work is passed down, each unsatisfied worker buys from foreign producers who have workers who are worse off, and those workers equally unsatisfied carry on the pattern further down the line.
In The True Believer, Eric Hoffer described the mind behind a mass movement and how it often materializes. He provides the following quote:
Strength of faith manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move.
The general public has closed its eyes, wittingly and not, to the overall state of economic failure and starvation. The average citizen will still complain about prices and taxes and the government officials but not more nor less than he always did. What the eyes can’t see the mind can’t perceive, as well as what the eyes can’t not see the mind can ignore.
It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.
In certain parts of eastern Europe such as Athens or Cluj-Napoca the prices have reached unfathomable heights. A 1-to-1 exchange of real estate is possible between a place in a miserable state and an old, yet well preserved, apartment in Rome filled with frescoes and centuries old furniture. Owning a family home in Copenhagen could provide for generations to come in the majority of countries on the planet. The perfect “convert” has embodied the “make-believe” while much effort is required to ignore the inconsistencies of the global market and opportunities.
An active mass movement rejects the present and centers its interest on the future. It is from this attitude that it derives its strength, for it can proceed recklessly with the present.
Whoever understands how retirement plans work will have made the link before even beginning with this sentence. We seem to be approaching a state of mass anti-hysteria, where contrary to the expected norm of action, all have sunk into inaction. We are witnessing the metamorphosis of the current economic state into what could be categorized as a mass movement. The true believer in the ways of today has forged a collective based on denial and doctrine, a mass movement has emerged akin to mass stasis, a situation that must induce hysteria has inflicted a permanent comatose state.
Hoffer’s book is a refreshing read for those who do not shy away from opinion. Context is provided, yet the conclusions are there to be analyzed and dissected, engendering subjective connections spotting parallels within the modern world whether he speaks of doctrine, hatred or self sacrifice. Seeds are given and one can choose which to water. Nonetheless, the times have changed, although humanity as a whole has remained as flawed as it ever was. Many of the author’s conjectures will strike a cord even when his illustratory examples might be of the distant past.