The True Believer and Why Much of Life is Simply Elaborate Theater

The True Believer

By Eric Hoffer

I started reading the True Believer by Eric Hoffer a while ago, but I haven’t been reading consistently. Now that I am stuck on a train between Montreal and New York for eleven hours, I figured it would be a good time to make progress in this book.

One section stood out to me as something I want to talk about on my STAC blog, especially in the way that it spoke about theater in the metaphorical sense. In this section, Hoffer claimed,
“To our real, naked selvest here is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture.”

I think Hoffer makes a fascinating and valid point. When we watch theater, or play video games, we do not take the issue of death very seriously, because we know that it is fake. In order to be willing to sacrifice oneself, one has to put himslef into this mindset. Essentially, one has to live in a world that seems inherently unreal; something that is not to be taken seriously.

The way that this is done is by creating theatrical-like scenarios in the real world. The primest example for this is war. In the art of war, average men are trained, dressed in fancy costumes, and told they must enter a battlefield. That situation seems inherently a little bit mystical. Almost anything involving wearing uniforms can make the world seem like a costumed play. Though I have never been in war, I get the assumption that when people are on the battlefield, the situation is as surreal to them as it is to us a far distance away. This can be recreated in rituals as well. Large rallies and ceremonials evoke awe from onlookers, and awe makes the world seem mystical.

Arguably, this phenomenon of creating awe where it does not exist is something that many people do. For example, when some people are involved in personal drama, they may reference their lives to television, and start to behave like the intense characters on their shows. This attitude actually exacerbates the situation in a negative manner. On the other hand, it makes life a little more exciting, which can be very appealing.

People also do this with their personalities. They create a persona, and then they act to fit the role so people don’t question them. Even the people who appear most solid in their personality may have some contradictory feelings that they choose not to express for fear of arousing confusion or questions from others. We act in our own bodies.

Some of our actions come from feelings of genuine emotion, but some of them also comes from purposeful acts to test the boundaries of reality. The act of self-sacrifice, like many other radical acts that a person can commit, only takes place when people have this mystical, pushing the envelope mentality.

To end this post, I would like to include another Hoffer quote. “Glory is largely a theatrical concept.”