Essay #3: Mass Movements and Boredom

"There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society's ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom."
-- Eric Hoffer

One of the cornerstones to a charged up movement is that you have a group of people with no real 'life'.  They aren't members of bowling club, a church, a weekend softball league, or bear-hunter's association. 

When Eric Hoffer wrote True Believer in the 1950s....he had done a fair amount of study over revolutionary groups and found that those who ran in and joined in the early stage.....really didn't have much of a life.  They were bored.  A mass movement or revolutionary group....was a relief to boredom.

You need a purpose and an identity.  You need something that gets you out of bed and peppy....when boredom is the reality of your life.

When you go and look at the Antifa groups, or the young social justice warriors.....they all have the same basic element....a bunch of members who don't have much of a life or enthusiasm for anything beyond their 'club'.

My brother (the engineer) often makes the analysis that guys need a good eight to ten hours of hard physical labor to get the boredom out.....to prevent them from doing stupid things (like tipping cows over at 11PM, or drinking to 2 AM in a honky tonk).  It's probably true that if people just got that boredom all pumped out.....they'd quietly avoid mass movements or social justice warrioring.