two basic drives: one toward identity, the other toward diversity.Read more at location 130
We can all experience a mood during which we feel the desire to be in the company of people of our own age, our own class, our own sex, conviction, religion or taste.Read more at location 132
hostile sense toward another group.Read more at location 135
This sort of conformist herd instinct was the driving motor of the nationalistic gymnastic organizations of the Germans and the Slavs,Read more at location 136
Identity and identitarian drives tend towards an effacement of self, towards a nostrism (“usness”) in which the ego becomes submerged. Of course, nostrism (a term created by the Austrian Nazi Walter Pembaur) can be and usually is a clever multiplication of egoisms.Read more at location 140
all identitarian drives not only take a stand for sameness and oppose otherness, but also are self-seeking.Read more at location 143
Luckily man in his maturity and in the fullness of his qualifications has not only identitarian but also diversitarian drives, not only a herd instinct but also a romantic sentiment.Read more at location 147
yearning to meet people of the other sex, another age group, another mentality, another class, even of another faith and another political conviction. All varieties of the novarum rerum cupiditas (curiosity for the new)—ourRead more at location 148
A dog neither wants to travel, nor does he particularly mind getting the same food day in and day out, if it is healthy fare.Read more at location 151
All higher theist religions rest squarely on this longing, this love for otherness. Though I would not subscribe to Karl Barth’s formula of Gott als der ganz andere (God as the totally different One), no theist will deny God’s otherness.Read more at location 155
In another book we have dealt with the dishonesty in the use of the fashionable term “pluralism.” As a matter of fact all modern trends point to the specter of a terrifying, bigger and more pitiless conformity.Read more at location 163
In this connection we must never forget that identity is a cousin of equality.Read more at location 165
There exists a dull, animalistic leaning toward identitarian gregariousness, but we encounter also a programmatic, passionate, fanatical drive in that direction. Nietzsche3 knew of it, so did Jacob Burckhardt.4 It has fear as its driving motor in the form of an inferiority complex engendering hatred and envy as its blood brother.Read more at location 170
Haters all through history have committed horrible acts of cruelty (which is the inferior’s revenge),Read more at location 176
In order to avoid that fear, that feeling of inferiority, the demand for equality and identity arises. Nobody is better, nobody superior, all can relax, all can be at ease, nobody feels challenged, everybody is “safe.”Read more at location 178
These sentiments, these emotions, this rejection of quality (which can never be the same with everybody!) explain much of the spirit of the mass movements of the last 200 years.Read more at location 182
This inner, often unspoken argument rests on the assumption that all goods and good things in this world are finite.Read more at location 185
The second aspect of envy lies in the superiority of another person in an important respect. The mere suspicion that the other person feels superior on account of looks, of brain-power, of brawn, of cash, etc., can create a burning feeling of envy. The only way to find a compensation lies in a successful search for inferior qualities in the person who figures as the object of envy. “He is rich, but he is evil,” “He is successful, but he has a miserable family life,” “He is well born and well connected, but, oh, so stupid.”Read more at location 190
In the last 200 years the exploitation of envy, its mobilization among the masses, coupled with the denigration of individuals, but more frequently of classes, races, nations or religious communities has been the very key to political success.Read more at location 196
Everything special, everything esoteric and not easily understood by the many becomes suspect and evil (as for instance the increasingly “undemocratic” modern art and poetry). Of course there is one type of unpopular minority that cannot conform and therefore is always in danger of being exiled, suppressed or slaughtered: the racial minority.Read more at location 203
The nonconforming person or group sinning against the sacred principle of sameness will always be treated as a traitor, and if he is not a traitor the envious majority will push him in that direction. (As late as 1934 there were German Jews who tried to form a Nazi group of their own: naively enough they considered anti-Semitism a “passing phase.” Yet can one imagine a German Jew in 1943 not praying in his heart for an Allied victory?Read more at location 206
