The true "herdist" will carefully avoid acting or thinking originally,
in order not to destroy the uniformity which is so dear to him, and he
is also ready to rise immediately against anybody who dares to act independently
and thus destroy the sacred unity of the uniform group to
which he belongs. The loyal herdist will not rise alone against the sacrilegious
offender; he will have the support of the rest of the circumscribed
society and thus a mass action of collective protest will take place, forcing
the "lonely individual" to conform or to withdraw. It must be fully
borne in mind that no one of us is completely free from the influence of
the herdist instinct and even the noblest among us yield to its dark
appeal in one form or the other.
The herdist instinct is furthermore not only personal, in the sense that
it clamors for a personal collectivism; it creates also a longing and desire
for the visual or acoustic contemplation of identitarian or uniformistic
phenomena. The true herdist, the man truly dominated by that inferior
instinct, will not only rejoice in marching amongst twenty thousand uniformly
clad soldiers, all stepping rhythmically in one direction, but he
will find an almost equal gratification in contemplating the show from
a balcony. He will not only be happy in sitting amidst two hundred other
bespectacled businessmen, drinking beer and humming one chant in
unison, but the aspect of a skyscraper with a thousand identical windows
will probably impress him more than a picture by Botticelli or Zurbarán.
