Grandeur

 

On Page 96 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          169

 

There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a joke sweeps like wildfire from one end of the continent to the other,  and a hundred million people roar with laughter, sway their bodies in unison, hum one song or break forth in anger and denunciation, there is the overpowering feeling that in this country we have come nearer to the brotherhood of man than ever before.”

 

My response: Yes, there is grandeur and a sense of brotherhood in mass uniformity, but that is also where evildoing is concentrated and most damaging.

 

 

Hoffer: “          172

 

The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things out; it needs leisure to mature. People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.”

 

My response: Perhaps the answer to the dilemma that a hustling people are a shallow people is twofold. First, the people must maverize so they can know leisure, growth, and advancement.

 

Second, they must move and do so they stay alive and get something done, putting their life plan into action, making it come real.

 

No Faith

 

On Page 94 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries which I quote and will comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          165

 

When we have no faith in the future we incline to arrange our lives so that we can predict the future. We either make our existence a rigid routine or pile up all manner of defenses to make it secure. The craving for security stems from a need for predictability, and its intensity is in inverse proportion to our faith in the future.

 

 

My response: When we maverize and feel confident that we can directly and forthrightly deal with whatever comes down the pike.

 

When we nonindividuated and run in packs, we are such low self-esteem, that we crave security and control.

 

 

Hoffer: “          166

 

Of all the ways of filling one’s life and of creating the illusion of purpose and worth, none seems so effective as the voluntary subjugation to a set of duties. The satisfaction derived from the daily performance of duties is so unalloyed that the inclination is strong to pile up duty after duty and revel in their performance.”

 

My response: If we would but peace at peace, exert powerful wills, and maverize, then we would have an automatic, solid sense of purpose and worth, and there would be no need to pile up duties in a desperate, vain attempt to justify our lives.

 

Impateint

 

On Page 93 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer:  “         163

 

Some generations have patience and some are without it. This is one of the crucial differences between eras. There is a time when the word ‘eventually’ has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.”

 

My response: People are naturally conservative and do not like embracing change or progressing, but, once a people become frustrated, and a mass movement is beckoning, the times, they are a-changin.

 

 

Hoffer:  “         164

 

We are not truly worried about our footing we are about to jump. It is when we have nowhere to jump that we begin to worry about the soundness of our position. Those who go places give no thought to security.”

 

My response: Hoffer seems to be saying that nonindividuators going nowhere with no dreams and no pursuit of these nonexistent dreams, they are going to worry excessively about their present day security to protect what does not exist, or is so paltry as being unworthy to protect.

 

Maverizers, going somewhere from somewhere, worry not too much about security—they just get going forward, and make adjustments on the fly as things unfold.

 

 

Evolving Theologies

 

On Page 92 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes one entry which I will quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          162

 

It is perhaps true that each era demands a particular kind of God.”

 

My response: I agree and have argued this elsewhere. Secular humanists, being atheists or agnostics or theologically indifferent, suggest that humans, as they evolve in culture, knowledge, and sophistication of consciousness, fabricate a God or gods that reflect their spiritual (the spiritual may not exist, they claim), semantic, evaluative or metaphysical needs for meaning, that posing a sympathetic God that runs parallel to the metanarrative of a historically situated generation.

 

I do not disagree that humans invent a version of God that matches the needs and limited consciousness of each generation, wherever it is at, but this is not the whole story.

 

Rather, God exists and plays an active role in religious formation: God reveals Deself to successive generations as successive deities, names, and personalities that the people of that generation are able to understand, feel attracted to and do business with.

 

These names, various deities and personalities are not fake—at least the good deities are not fake or evil—or transitory and may even be fruitfully worshiped hundreds or thousands of years after humans and moved on, abandoning these manifestations of these benevolent deities.

 

God wants progressing, developing humankind to worship De, and, as they grow in consciousness, love and understanding, God reveals Deself to them in ways they, in consecutive generations, can relate to God. God will not push us beyond what we can handle. It is not kind or merciful to push poor humans of limited intelligence, and a near-fatal weakness of being radically conservative and painfully superstitious about change or being drastically introduced to new ways of doing things.

 

As humans slowly, excruciatingly move forward and upward towards thinking, self-realizing, and loving God virtuously and piously, then God can introduce to them, via a prophet, a new deity, or deities. It is not out with the old, and in with the new: rather it is adding or introducing new members to the pantheon of benevolent deities; people can worship anywhere along this line, but worship they should and must, if they would elicit divine approval.

 

Hoffer: “There are eras when people can believe in God far off in heaven, never to be seen, and eras when they need a tangible God. Our age, it seems, needs a tangible God, be it a Hitler, a Stalin, or a Father Divine.”

 

My response: God exists spiritually and physically; humans exist spiritually and physically. We are innately weakened, sickened, prone to madness and cruel outrage, if our spiritual craving is not met through proper, wholesome religious channels, worshiping a benevolent deity.

 

The Age of Enlightenment made Westerners feel alienated from God, each other, nature, and oneself, when Modernists introduced the idea of God to be Deistically encountered and worshiped. The loss of faith was unbearable.

 

Then people lived through the 20^th century with scientism, humanism, world wars, totalitarianism, postmodernism, mass movements and holy causes. Whatever vestiges of faith in a good deity, a tangible loving deity like Jesus, still existed by 1985, are now in danger of going extinct today.

 

People, frustrated and desperate to find a faith and deity to worship and serve as their cause in which they are able to hide successfully from their spoiled lives, their unwanted selves, will find a tangible deity to worship, either a neo-attraction to a great deity like Jesus, or they will find false, wicked gods like Hitler, Stalin or Satan to serve. They will invent meaning, fraudulent, self-contradictory, and wicked faiths, if necessary, but they will have meaning in their lives, a deity, mass movement, abstraction, or holy cause to worship, or they will invent it.

 

It would be better for all to provide people with benevolent deities to worship. The human requirement for religious comfort, the bottomless need for satiating spiritual hunger, cannot be extinguished or rationally explained away by haughty intellectuals; spiritual hunger, suppressed, denied, and wronged, will come back with a vengeance--as a holy cause and accompanying demonic demigod.

 

If the young can be instructed to self-realize as supercitizens, and to serve the benevolent deity of their choice, their spiritual hunger could be fed and satisfied, without social and political convulsions resulting from humankind torn up over spiritual hunger being thwarted and not met.

 

Hoffer: “Is this primitive need for a tangible God somehow connected to a lack of faith in the future?”

 

My response: Hoffer is an atheist with a profoundly religious worldview, perhaps as a lapsed illegal Jewish immigrant from Bavaria, who retains his cultural values, though he was ever after a secular thinker.

 

As an idiosyncratic theist, I here might quibble with Hoffer a bit. I do not know that the need for God, tangible or intangible (an abstract, remote, never-heard-from Prime Mover that created the world and then remains incommunicado, though existent and present in heaven), is a primitive need. This need is real and wholesome, and it may be negatively primitive in the sense of being childish and a sign of human weakness, a lack of self-esteem, an inability to survive on our own without an immediate, emotional, complex, daily relationship with a deity that we converse with in person 12 times per day, but I deny this.

 

Rather, I think this need is strong, healthy, loving, and consistent with an independent-minded, self-reliant believer—with high self-esteem--in God, who recognizes that God exists, and that this individual is willing to accept God’s existence and right to command human worship, obedience, and willingness to do our share to grow the kingdom on earth of the good deity/good deities.

 

This deep, powerful, unavoidable hunger to meet and know God, this primitive need for God, as tangible or intangible, is positively primitive in that it is an innate, primordial drive that suffuses the being and consciousness of every human being. This need is so strong, that either ultimate meaning (a relationship with a good deity) is recognized, activated, and practiced by every human daily, or the ism worshiped will be a holy cause, a fetishized ism, sickening and dark, whose evil deity will be worshiped by those who denied meeting their need for ultimate meaning by swearing fealty to a good deity. This need may be primitive, but, more so, it is brilliant, fulfilling and rationally—not just sentimentally—a need to be met in even the most subtle, worldly existent.

 

Does the need for a tangible God indicate a lack of human faith in the future? It may well be a fact, and it is a sign that we are weak, vulnerable, and need a tangible God to lean to stay sane and keep going forward. I would not regard this trait as a negative so much as just reality, or even a positive starting point, but I would recommend that an individuating believer, of immense competence, creativity, love, and confidence, would be well-served to acknowledge this need while approaching respectfully and with adoration a divinity that affirms the beauty and obligation for humans to maverize while being faithful, holy and virtuous.

 

It could be too that humans running in packs, not individuating, and living in accordance with evil, primitive, backwards altruist-collectivist morality, were so individually lacking self-esteem, that it is to be expected that they had no faith in the future, deepening excessively their dependency (They could not face the future based on their own efforts, talents and internal resources.)n God, viewed as tangibly or intangibly accessible.

 

If my theory is right, and the Divine Couple, the good deities and the Good Spirits are individuators and individualists, they will not require and do not approve of excessive human dependency and cloying, theatrical, self-debasing communing with said good spirits and good deities.

 

Hoffer: “The ancient Jews, who were the first to have faith in an invisible God, were possessed of a vivid faith in the future. Alone among the nations of antiquity they expected the future to surpass the present and the past. Apparently when we hope ‘for what we see not,’ we can also believe in what see not. It is perhaps a symptom of the hopelessness of our times that we need idols to worship.”

 

My response: It might be that Hoffer the genius, ever tapping into objective truth—and in spite of his atheistic revulsion against the ineradicable, “primitive” human search for ultimate meaning (God)—has captured something terribly, religiously significant and important here.

 

If the ancient Jews were God’s chosen people, and they were, and Yahweh was a bit an Individualist and Individuator, Yahweh would coax and educate these sheepherders and farmers to worship Yahweh as incipient individualists (still groupists and altruists, but more individualistic and egoistic than their pagan neighbors); this would be the birth of worshiping an intangible, invisible Father Sky God.

 

If the Hebrews became more individualistic, then they would discover the need for morality. If they thought that being moral could make one’s life better here in this world, and perhaps in the next (the other world in a future, after-life existence), then being moral and individualistic meant that activism pays off. With their lives guided by a weakened but entrenched egoism-altruism, they soon decided that the future could be better than the present or past, so they begin to have faith in the future. Hoffer is original in identifying that, if people have hope, they can face the future with some bravery and confidence.

 

Where people lack hope, they want a tangible, visible God and they have no hope in the future. To make this worse, it seems patent to me that when people are not egoistic, they lack self-esteem: when one has no faith in oneself, one loses hope, and then one has no sturdy faith in God or the future.  When people are egoistic and confident, then they have faith in themselves, in God and in the future.

 

When we hope in what we see not, we can believe in what we see not. Still, we need to worship God in De’s transcendent, intangible aspect as well as in God as in De’s tangible, visible and immediate mode of existing. God reveals Deself to us both ways at same time without  conflict or contradiction; it can all be balanced and reconciled honorably in the complex believers relationship with her chosen divinity.

 

We are altruists and groupists in our day, but we have no hope for the future so we worship idols (mass movements, gurus and holy causes) as poor substitutes for even a traditional relationship with a good deity.

Self-Righteous

 

On Pages 90 and 91of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has written six entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          156

 

The chief taint of self-righteousness is not its injustice but its insensitivity. The indulgence of self-forgiving is far less vicious than the blindness of self-righteousness which is naught aware of aught in the self which needs forgiving.”

 

My response: The most menacing personality disorder belongs to Progressive and true believers of any ilk in that they are so self-righteous. Not only are true believer the most cruel of thugs when the kill or maim for their holy cause, but they are sententious, actually regarding themselves as noble, superior, kind and idealistic.

 

They conclude, because they are so perfect, they could not possibly ever act in a way that renders at fault and in need of resolution. So it is that passionate fanatics, the most evil human type, are also the most self-righteous, as their most damaging lie is that they are a moral elite helping humanity. It is impossible to reach such people as to the error of their ways; they must just be defeated.  

 

 

Hoffer: "      157

 

Lack of self-awareness renders us transparent. A soul that knows itself is opaque; like Adam after he ate from the tree of knowledge it uses words as figs leaves to cover its nakedness and shame."

 

My response: Ultra-groupists are pure liars, so they possess know self-awareness, so they are thin and transparent. The soul that knows itself is indvidualistic, realistic and self-awareness, but she must fight the natural tendency to equivocate and dodge explaining who she is, warts and all, if she would will to remain virtuous, honest and ethical.        

 

Hoffer: "      158

 

We can see through others only when we can see through ourselves."

 

My response: If one is a sincere, honest, truth-embracing individualist, then one sees through oneself, and by extension, can see through others.

 If one, instead, is mendacious, dishonest, and lying to the self, then one cannot see through oneself, and then will not be able to see through others, thus lying joiners are credulous beyond belief accepting as gospel whatever narrative their groups espouses. 

Hoffer: "      159

No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart."

My response: One is not an authentic or functioning individualist or individuator unless one embraces and seeks know what is true about the self."

 

 

Hoffer: “          160

 

The most sensitive among us cannot be as observant of themselves as the least sensitive are observant of others.”

 

My response: Hoffer, the implicit promoter of egoist morality, here is very accurate the most sensitive among us (self-actualizers and developing individualists and loners) are not as observant of themselves as are the least sensitive are among us (the least sensitive are wholly group creatures, so the self for each of them does not exist, so they know nothing about themselves), who are very observant of other group members. I would describe these true-believing ultra-groupists as socially sensitive but not individually sensitive in the way that Hoffer is talking about.

 

 

Hoffer: “          161

 

It will perhaps never possible to speak our inner life in precise scientific terms. Can one laugh at oneself or pity oneself in scientific terminology. The choice is between poetry and aphorism. The latter is probably the less vague.”

 

My response: Our consciousness or inner life cannot be captured or neat, linguistically encapsulated with scientific terms and propositions. There are metaphysical and ethical inputs here that cannot just be descriptively defined. 

 

 

 

 

Oblivious

 

On Page 89 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          154

 

Those who remain in the dark about their own motives are as it were strangers to themselves. Hence perhaps their exceptional power of self-delusion—their ability to talk themselves into anything. Their own impassioned words affect their souls as the words of an outside propagandist.”

 

My response:  Groupist and especially radical, pure joiners, have no self-knowledge at all, Now, Hoffer assumes that the individual, rational and emotionally honest, will know himself and how the world works, so truth is readily at hand for him. Not so for the ultra-joiners.

 

For her, she will believe anything and can be persuaded to believe anything, to justify anything, whether it is her clique that deceives her, or she passionately prevaricates to herself internally.

 

 

Hoffer: “          155

 

There are people who seem continually engaged in an effort of self-proselytizing. To whomever they may talk or write it is to themselves they are talking or writing. They are continually engaged in talking or writing themselves into a conviction, an enthusiasm or an illusion.”

 

My response: It is the self that has free will, not the group or group will. Therefore, if the self would be free and maverize, the self must live authentically and communicate to the self in a mode of truth and openness.

 

On the other hand, where the self is estranged from the self, and lies to the self all the time to sustain the myth that the self is altruistic, exceptional, honest, fulfilled, and compassionate while group-living and nonindividuating. This whole web of interconnected social lies and evasions fed by the self to the self is meant to plaster over any awareness of what is actually going on.

Insensitive

 

Eric Hoffer, on Page 88 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, has two entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          152

 

Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.”

 

My response: When one thinks of being sensitive in a negative sense, it is the concept of being touchy, overly sensitized to input of an irritating, unpleasant kind.

 

What Hoffer has in mind, I believe, is suggesting that to be sensitive is to be caring and thoughtful and considerate about the feelings, needs, and touchy sore spots carried by others so as to not ruffle their feathers needlessly, causing them unwelcome pain.

 

He, the implicit promoter of egoist morality, is suggesting that a person that lacks sensitivity about the needs of others, is likely a joiner and nonindividuator, not a loner or maverizer.

 

To self-realize is to love the self, to come to know the self, to be sensitive to what one needs, what one must avoid, what brings one pleasure, and what brings one pain, what are one’s obligations to be met if one strives to be able to continue thinking well of the self.

 

Once the self-aware self-realizer, now awake and sensitive to what he or what any other person needs, is able to feel sympathy, compassion and fellow-feeling, and will seek to act so as to maximize their healthy pleasure or enjoyment, while avoiding adding to their degrading pain and suffering, especially malevolent, senseless, uncalled-for suffering.

 

 

Hoffer: “          153

 

The inability to see into ourselves often manifests itself in a certain coarseness and clumsiness. One can be brazen, rude and even dishonest without being aware of it.”

 

My response: Egoist morality makes people self-aware, so they readily know how they are acting, and if their actions hare bringing enjoyment or pain to others, and that they have no right to bring pain to others.

 

The rudeness, dog-eat-dog competitiveness, and law of the jungle vying is best demonstrated  by how groupist nonindividuators mistreat each other every day on any American freeway.

 

This is why I urge self-realizers to always treat others with courtesy, kindness, dignity, and respect—it is their due.

To Change

 

On Page 87 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has one entry which I will quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          151

 

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are. Whether this being different results in dissimulation or a real change of heart—it cannot be realized without self-awareness.”

 

My response: Hoffer, the Mavellonialist and implicit promoter of egoist-individualist ethics, informs the reader that we can desire to be different from what we are—negatively because we are fleeing from our loathed, unwanted selves; positively, because we have embraced an imperfect self as it is, but we realize that our talent, potential and moral improvements can be made possible by rigorous, persistent self-application—but we cannot change who we are unless we come to know ourselves (The self is largely not knowable, infinite and ineffable, but is increasingly knowable as we individuate.), discover our essence and live and act to make the essence real and improved and improving. We define and conceptualize the self and its telos, and then work to become our dream.

 

Hoffer: “Yet it is remarkable that the very people who are most self-dissatisfied and crave most for a new identity have the least self-awareness.”

 

My response: People without self-esteem, whose lives are irremediably ruined, who consciously hate themselves and their lives, they crave a new identity which is actually a personal conversion or the adoption of being invisible, a nonentity, a nonperson subsumed into the mass movement or group arrangement in which the self being fled from ceases to exist as a separate consciousness.

 

The initial self-awareness of these groupist nonindividuators was very minimal even when they are still somewhat conscious, semi-independent and rudimentarily individualistic. They lived in the truth a bit, but once they adopt their new identity of being a fully joined nonperson, self-awareness has disappeared, and what arises for the remnant individual consciousness is living, believing and thinking whatever the group’s group-awareness, group consciousness and group-personality dictates for the absorbed true believer to think and feel.

 

Only when the new identity sought and gainable is an organic evolution arising voluntarily, out of a loved and esteemed self with wholesome, sane self-regard, and some sophistication assumed already in self-awareness, is the adopted, new identity of a fairly self-satisfied but still ambitious self-seeking self-growth of the individuating young person.

 

Hoffer: “They have turned away from an unwanted self and hence never have a good look at it. The result is that the most dissatisfied can neither dissimulate nor attain a real change of heart. They are transparent, and their unwanted qualities persist through all attempts at self-dramatization and self-transformation.”

 

My response: Hofer warns that the un-self-aware cannot adopt a genuine self, and they can even simulate a fake, artificial self in a credible fashion.

 

One can only change, really change, if one is self-aware, having loved the self enough to enjoy getting to know it and appreciate, despite its flaws and limitations: that the self has not given up on working to make that battered self better or less unsavory. Once one comes to know the esteemed self to a fair degree, then self-awareness is awakened: the self-appraisal is fairly accurate and realistic, and the self is ready to take on a new identity, especially linked naturally to the emerging self if one self-realizes.

 

The maverizer is self-aware, has made his peace with the self, and so takes on a new identity growing out of his fulfilling his life quest.

 

The nonindividuator, self-avoiding and not self-aware, cannot take on a new identity because he really does not want a new identity: he wants to move from being a weak, stunted, displeasing identity as self towards becoming a reduced status for the self: life as a pure follower, a group non-entity, buried deep within the gang or the pack.

 

 

Soul-Saving

 

On Page 86 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has one entry which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: ‘           150

 

In this godless age, as much as in preceding religious age, man is still preoccupied with the saving of his soul.”

 

My response: Hoffer is cautious about reform plans. Most reformers are collectivist and idealist, with zero appreciation for what makes people tick: the world would be better off if these willful zealots did nothing. We usually cannot make things much better, but our ill-conceived, mandated, clumsy public regulations enforced on the masses usually make things much worse, often intolerably so.

 

We should not be so morally ambitious and filled with sententious, self-congratulatory idealism: our altruist-collectivist activists claim that federal mandates will uplift and save the souls of millions, when, in fact, they have the opposite effect—soul-raping and soul genocide.

 

Our idealistic goals necessarily, self-consciously must be much more modest and limited: reform must be generally a private, voluntary effort by each person independently undertaken (if she so elects), left up to each individual who, as a child, can be taught a little about self-realizing and self-control, and then he is left alone, as we idealists reluctantly must agree to leave it up to him on his own to decide how to live.

 

Hoffer: “The discrediting of established religions by enlightenment did not result in the weakening of the religious impulse. A traditional religion canalizes and routinizes the quest for salvation. When such a religion is discredited, the individual must do his own soul-saving and he is at it twenty-four hours a day. There is an eruption of fanaticism in all departments of life—in business, politics, literature, art, science and even in lovemaking and sport. The elimination of the sacerdotal outlet thus results in a general infection and inflammation of the social body.”

 

My response: People are not born good, and they are born passionate and irrational more than reasonable and temperate, though they can learn to be more sensible and practical.

 

People do not like themselves and run in packs where they hide anonymously from themselves and their nagging moral sense, so they can avoid being free, independent, and forced by reality to confront the self and build a life of competence, hard work, and reward on self-correction.

 

They gain a desperately sought-after, substitute sense of worth and vicarious sense of soul-saving comfort from a quasi-collectivist organized religion, and they find some relief from guilty and self-nausea; They find home and hope for salvation in some group church of modest value, to which they belong. Their quiet lives of inner despair and discontent are manageable, unless secular idealists, as they did in the Enlightenment--and as the Progressive postmodernists are committing today—undercutting and gaslighting the standing social order, its metanarrative and its cultural story and faiths, pushing the masses into frustration, mandated, unwanted awareness of the self, violently jerked into awakeness, in full naked public exposure.

 

People will seek any replacement mass movement—which the gaslighters and revolutionaries know and planned upon--any holy cause to worship, something to believe in, something to tell them they have some worth, something whose guru absolutely promises their souls will be saved. People want their souls saved by vicarious means, by collectivist religions rather than doing the hard work and answering the call from God to maverize personally, the only way that a soul can be saved by the self willingly living as God lives, as an individuating individuators.

 

People must have faith, must believe in something, must strive to save their souls, and must find self-worth somehow, however ludicrously crafted. Holy causes will spring up where legitimate religions are cast down.

The Danger

 

There is always a danger that the suppression of a clearly defined evil will result in its replacement with an evil that is widely diffused—one that infects the whole fabric of life.”

 

My response: For example, the Prohibition Movement in US: no one drank less after the anti-booze crowd outlawed drinking: it just gave organized crime a chance to become a permanent fixture in our culture, and criminalized the behavior of millions of ordinary, functioning citizens.

 

When Marxist decry the injustices of capitalism, and then introduce the greater evil of totalitarian Leninism into a conquered society, limited evil is not eliminated, but has morphed into something far more pervasive, cruel, and dangerous on many levels. These are the destructive, ineffective techniques employed by these destroyers: fanaticism, extremism, arrogance, incompetence, absolutism, the collectivized, universal application of their “solutions”, their violent, brutal, cruel enforcement methods—all these strengthened means of growing evil in authoritarian society gravitate towards making a smaller evil into a greater evil inflicted involuntarily upon unwilling society.

 

Hoffer: “Thus the suppression of religious fanaticism usually gives rise to a secular fanaticism that invades every department of life. The banning of conventional warmaking may result in an endless undeclared war. The elimination of the conventional employer gives rise to a general monstrosity that bosses not only our working hours but invades our homes and dictates our thoughts and dreams.”

 

My response: Hoffer is warning society at idealists, true believers, and fanatics, are authoritarian and intolerant, and they always seek to take over the government and all the social institutions, running them with the heavy hand, the iron fist. Their nationalizing moral solutions makes their terrible solutions universal and now enforced by the secret police, through out every corner of society. None are left unscathed. Evil has not been eliminated but has been give several shots of steroids. These murderous reformers seek to wipe out all vestiges of personal liberty in society in the name of bring justice to society; they are the cruelest enemies of humankind, and their damage is deep and wide.

 

We must not give up on humanity. I know I assert all the time that people are born sinners, postlapsarian, morally defective creatures. Yet, paradoxically, I know that there is not any moral reform possible if it is not shouldered by each agent voluntarily and consciously, without external pressure, deception, empty promises, threats or flattery or bribes.

 

Reform must be a personal choice and is best achieved—by individuals on an individual basis--not by seeking to be perfect, but instead to love the self and others, to seek to be at peace, while simultaneously struggling each day upward and forward by self-actualizing. One works with all that what has as one’s disposal, both one’s defects and morally questionable properties.

 

A society of such reformed and self-reforming individuating supercitizens could then unite to come up with answers to mitigate socially and collectively and democratically, what linger social ills as need addressing still.

 

Evil is with us always, even after Jesus comes back to earth and brings heaven to earth. Evil is embedded in all of us, all the time, ineradicably so. Total, permanent, unending moral victory is not achievable or desirable because uncompromising absolutists and idealists with the purest motives, are haters and killers and poison all wells that they drink from. They collectively cannot make things better, but will make things much worse.

 

By contrast, willing individualists and individuators can make themselves and the world a little bit better, if they try real hard, and that is as good as it will get.

Doable

 

On Page 84 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has one entry which I will quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “It is doubtful whether we can reform human beings by eliminating their undesirable traits. In most cases elimination comes to nothing more than substitution: we substitute a close relative for the bad trait we have eliminated, and the dynasty continues. Envy takes the place of greed, self-righteousness that of selfishness, intellectual dishonesty that of plain dishonesty. And there is always the chance that the new bad trait will be more vigorous than the one it supplants.”

 

My response: Undesirable traits is much of human nature is, so it would be wise and more prudent to worry less about eliminating undesirable traits and emphasize sublimating such traits, redirecting them.

 

The Bible

 

Today, 4/21/2024, there was an online Jordan Peterson video excerpt, from ‘You Probably Should Have Read The Bible (In the West, the Bible is the precondition of truth.).’

 

I took notes on the short clip and then will comment on it.

 

Peterson: “The Bible is true in a very strange way. It’s true that it provides the basis for truth itself. And so it is like a metatruth. Without it, there couldn’t be the possibility of truth. And so maybe that is the most true thing.

 

The most true thing is not some truth per se, but that which provides the precondition for all judgments of truth.”

 

My response: I agree that the Bible is metatrue, the base of alethic assumptions out of which discovering or making true statements arise out of.

 

Peterson: “I can’t see holes in that argument. And I can’t see any holes in it from a scientific perspective either because we do know well enough now as scientists that the problem of deriving ethical direction from the collection of facts is an intractable problem. There are too many facts. There is an infinite number of facts. They do not provide an unerring guide for action. They can’t. There are too many of  them. They have to be prioritized. And as soon as they are prioritized, well, then you are in the ethical domain.”

 

My response: I roughly agree with Peterson that scientific facts are descriptive, not ethical, so they cannot serve as guide for acting unless we prioritize them, and that is an ethical enterprise. Perhaps prioritizing facts is a way of bridging the is-ought gap.

Ruthless

 

On Page 83 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer wrote two entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer:  ‘          146

 

Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind.”

 

My response: This is so for several reasons. First, each person is granted free will by God, so this reminds all other people that that person is given the gift of choice by God to decide to build a life for herself, or not, or to what degree, and none should interfere with her personal destiny.

 

It is a grave sin to capture or cast a spell on an entire generation, so they will cooperate with their guru, government, nation, or cause, to sacrifice themselves for a mere often meretricious ideal.

 

Also, we do not love people unless we let them go to run their own affairs. We are not to bind others to ourselves—so doing holds them back and down, and us too.

 

 

Hoffer: “          147

 

The only index by which to judge a government or a way of life is by the quality of people it acts upon. No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion—it is an evil government.”

 

My response: I agree. I wonder if all elites running governments, hierarchies and institutions do not always turn on the people they are meant to serve.

Passionate

 

On Page 82 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries which I quote and comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          144

 

Men of strong passions are usually without compassion. The feeling for others is a ‘wee small voice’ that makes itself heard only in the quiet of an inner equilibrium. The passion for humanity even is not infrequently lacking in humanity.”

 

My response: By accident, Hoffer and I agree on so much. I have long believed that reasoning more than feeling leads to clear thinking, good decisions and acting in concert with one’s healthy, operative moral sense. Feeling is important, but passionate operating too often speak of a fanatic, both cruel, hateful, and living lies.

 

The moderate feeling about others, life, reality and how to proceed is revealed to one from benevolent, divine sources, of moderate intent.

 

The individual that is dispassionate and modest in expression and behavior is likely compassionate, while the theatrical, loud, screecher is passionate but without kindness.

 

 

Hoffer: “          145

 

To be fruitful, an enthusiasm should be but as a condiment. Pride in our country and race, dedication to justice, freedom, mankind, etc., must never be the main content of our lives, but an accompaniment and an accessory.”

 

My response: Hoffer is an ethical moderate, and he disavows enthusiasm, fanaticism, true believer-ship, joining a mass movement, group-living (implied), wide-open dedication to an adopted holy cause.

Selflessness

 

Eric Hoffer, on Page 81 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, has two entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          142

 

The taint hidden in selflessness is that selflessness is the only moral justification of ruthlessness.”

 

My response: This taint is the rot that smells up stench-ridden altruist-collectivist ethics: Hoffer is brilliant and original in identifying selflessness as the only moral justification of ruthlessness.

The true-believer regards himself as a noble hero, sacrificing his life, if necessary, for the spread of his mass movement and holy cause. He is convinced that he is morally pure and noble, even while committing murder and mayhem. The ability of the selfless wicked to justify their immorality without flinching or blushing makes it near impossible to appeal to their guilty consciences to nudge them to cease acting wickedly and to repent.

 

 

Hoffer: “          143

 

Original sin? It is probably the malice that is flickering within us. Seen thus, it is a grievous error for those who manage human affairs not to take original sin into account.”

 

My response: Amen. If the individuator accepts that he is a sinner and must work very hard to be good and to be loving, holy and virtuous, while self-perfecting, then he can canalize his malice and primitive urges into creative, positive avenues. If each person so manages his own affairs, it would revolutionize all of society and political and economic structures and relationships.

Just Be Loving

 

On Page 80 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes two entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          140

 

It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.”

 

My response: One benevolent theories and ideals may get in the way of being compassionate and just—just lose the cant, sententiousness and virtual signaling, and treat people well.

 

Hoffer: “          141

 

Good judgment in our dealings with others consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions but in being able to waken the decency dormant in every person.”

 

My response: Hoffer like I, does not believe much in natural human goodness, for good judgment consists in being able to waken the decency dormant in every person, a decency that requires awakening, whereas human malevolence is front and center, being freely expressed and indulged, when it should not be.

 

If one is cynical and regards oneself and others as naturally, invariably vicious, and treacherous, though that is so, then people live down to the low standard. If one expects better things from oneself, and demonstrates good will, fair play, courtesy, and reciprocity in one’s relations with others, that might well trigger or strengthen their social, decent instincts in return.

No Pity

 

One of best reasons for guarding ourselves against doing harm to anyone is to preserve our capacity for compassion. For we cannot pity those we have wronged.”

 

My response: This entry is chilling. People are born wicked, so if they as individuals or worse, as a mob, harm anyone without cause—especially the blameless—they deaden their consciences, and are capable then of doing anything, absolutely anything to anyone. And doing evil is an addiction: to continue to get a thrill by being cruel, unjust, sadistic, or violent, one has to become more and more hateful and vicious towards targets.

 

Not only can we not pity those that we have wrong, but our lies to ourselves, justifying our nasty treatment of them, become the truth in our minds, so now we can really hurt them, even kill them. We have not pity upon those that have done us no damage. The more innocent they are, the worse we treat them. The more unreasonable our treatment of them, the more likely the maltreatment will be likely to continue and worsen.

 

When we forsake the duty to feel compassion and pity towards others, we have taken the first step, likely irretrievable, down that slippery slope to becoming moral monsters.

 

Individualists may seem selfish, and perhaps they can be, but, more likely and more often, an individualist—and especially an individuators—because he sees himself as a person of worth, he will treat himself with dignity and respect. His ability to recognize himself as a human being of worth will also implant in his conscious state of mind a keen, appreciated awareness of the individuality and worth of every neighbor, and the concomitant requirement to treat them with compassion.

 

It is the nonindividuator who attacks and degrades himself, treating himself as an object, not a noble, autonomous subject; he will treat others as things, as mere stones to be kicked, because he has objectivized himself first.

 

 

Hoffer: “          139

 

Compassion is probably the only antitoxin of the soul. Where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses are relatively harmless. One would rather see the world run by men who set their hearts on toys but are accessible to pity, than by men animated by lofty ideals whose dedication makes them ruthless. In the chemistry of man’s soul, almost all noble attributes—courage, honor, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, etc.—can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.”

 

My response: Only compassion or love can blunt or conquer our desire to do evil to ourselves or to others, and hurting ourselves or others is hating ourselves and others.

 

Hoffer is pointing out that non-intellectual burghers, farmers, blue-collar workers, and laborers are naturally more rational, wiser, kinder, more moderate, and individualistic because they are temperate and non-fanatical, setting their hearts on toys, not lofty ideals.

 

It is the intellectuals, the men of words and men of action, animated by lofty ideals, which are the concepts and arguments comprising their adored ism. The ruthlessness and cruelty of such zealots is without limit once it gets rolling. Their zeal is pure hatred aggressively, violently on the march.

 

We need idealism and idealistic fervor, but these abstractions can be transmuted into ruthless, evil isms so easily. We need a generation of individuating supercitizens, idealistic and yet practical, making money and being artists, running the government and living their own independent lives, enjoying personal power with no desire to deprive the neighbor of his legitimate share of power and property. He is moderate, loving and non-coercive: he remains fairly compassionate.

 

Confidence

 

 

On Page 78 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer wrote two entries which I shall quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          136

 

We have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything which has its roots in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone; we are not alone when we imitate.”

 

My response: I had no doubt that Eric Hoffer was the first Mavellonialist, but this entry confirms it in my mind. Note that people can only have faith or much faith in what they imitate, not in what they originate. It is the individualist, the individuators, the great soul that originates and creates. He cannot exhibit, demonstrate or actually feel absolute certitude about his world view, about himself, about the god he follows and serves, or the project he is bringing to life, for three reasons.

 

 First, he is hugely confident just to stand alone and create, for his self-esteem and self-assuredness is very high; still, what he believes in is invisible, intangible, will-of-the-wisp. He can never totally shed self-doubt: is he a solipsist, alone in the universe or living his own private fantasy? Is he flat wrong about everything? Does his near boundless sense of rightness amount to the same thing as what is actually true and factual?

 

Second, he is very rational and loves truth: this means, he understands that there is always  a risk that he is merely self-deluded, biased, ignorant, willfully blind or mistaken.

 

Third, he is a moderate epistemically: truth is multifaceted and complex, and he may have missed including some vital insight into his theory of creativity and production.

 

By contrast with the maverick and maverizer, the joiner, the nonindividuator, the true-believer, whether impassioned and energized, or snoring and sleepwalking, imitates and allows the group to do his thinking. Where there is no basis whatsoever in feeling confident about the subjective, emotional, communal, popular narratives or metanarrative of the pack and clique—and these narratives and metanarrative by accident may be wise, truthful and beneficial, but that is not why the collectivized joiner has absolute certainty about these beliefs and attitudes—there, the joiner has absolute certitude about his rightness, based upon his fanatical, absolute sense of being right, superior and wise.

 

Finally, even the most ardent individuator is a social creature and loves companionship, and a secretly seeks and craves a adulating, deferential clique of yay-sayers approving openly and repeatedly with one’s narrative and ideas, and are willing to stand with one out in the world for all to see, so without group support, one emotionally feels uncertain, no matter how wise, accurate  and logical is one’s original insights.

 

When a true-believer lies and is irrational about his spurious, shallow narratives and attitudes, he must present himself and his views to himself, to his pack and to the world as views of absolute truth and superiority, though they are nothing of the kind.

 

 

Groupists are absolutely certain about the worth of the sentimental claptrap that they devote their lives too, because they have an army of enthusiastic suppsorters backing them in wholehearted solidarity, all of one mind, and pure unity and uniformity of outlook and opinion.

 

 

 

Hoffer:  “         137

 

A  valid index by which to evaluate the influence other people have on us is by how much they increase or decrease our benevolence toward our fellow man.”

 

My response: This entry is a little harder for me to decipher, but Hoffer seems to suggest that if we are individualists and persons of good will, we will be fairly benevolent towards our fellow man.

 

If we are groupists, joiners, animated by altruist-collectivist morality, we likely will pick up all the hatred, bias and malevolence that our group feels and acts out against all rival groups, tribes, nations, loners and dissident individuals.

Other-Governed

 

On Page 77 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries which I shall quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          134

 

When we are not governed too much by what other people think of us, we are likely to be tolerant toward the behavior and opinions of others. So too, when we do not crave to seem important we are not awed by the importance of others. Both our fear and our tolerance are the result of our dependence.”

 

My response: When we mostly make up our own minds about ourselves (what and who we are and do, and should we approve of our status and behavior or not), rather than live vicariously through the eyes of others as to who and what we are, we are self-esteeming individualists and potential individuators who neither overreact and severely punish others for their harsh input (be it fair or unfair), nor do we go overboard rewarding and promoting them for flattering us.

 

When we strive to be important as a self-made individual and do not strive to be important within a hierarchy or of quite high social standing in our group-affiliations, we are not awed by the importance of others.

 

Groupists are overawed by important others in their hierarchy or clique, so their fear and intolerance of dissidents and rival tribes is ruled by the opinions and commands of revered gurus and demagogues at the helm of the group ship.

 

 Hoffer: “         135

 

Our impulse to persuade others is strongest when we have to persuade ourselves. The never wholly successful task of persuading ourselves of ourselves manifests itself in a ceaseless effort to persuade others of it.”

 

My response: Hoffer’s entries are often rich beyond belief. In this entry, he implies that groupists, without self-esteem, are not loving of truth, so they do not accurately appraise themselves or others—it is all a tissue of lies. If they were honest individualists, honest about themselves and others, their input to themselves and others would be truthful--truthful input necessarily if imperfectly and only partially goads the individual and his group to act better and strive to improve, however slightly at times—they would act better and do better, so they would justifiably feel better about themselves, so their self-esteem would increase.

 

Once they know where they as individuals and their group as a collectivity actually stand, they no longer need to resort to slander, flattery or the Big Lie to convince others or themselves of what they don’t actually believe, and which is never true, but they must act as fanatical true-believers on the surface level of consciousness to persuade themselves personally and the whole group that bad is good, that ugliness is beauty,  that dumb is smart, and that what is false is true;  these social patterns of enmasse lying behavior is an endless web of circulating deceit and mass hypnosis.

To Praise

 

On Page 76 of  his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has three entries which I will quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          131

 

The readiness to praise others indicates a desire for excellence and perhaps an ability to realize it.”

 

My response: Hoffer, the implicit and unrecognized egoist-individualist moralist, knows that if one is a moral person of high self-esteem, proper pride, a desire to get better, and perhaps a self-realizer, then one will judge others’ character and actions truthfully. Where they fall down, are evil, lazy or mediocre, this truth-telling judger will criticize them.

 

Where they do well and are good and achieve merited excellence, this one will praise others, and this non-flattery but fair judgment of these succeeding others does indicate that he is not an insecure egotist or jealous Nosy Parker, but one admiring excellence in others, while he is determined to do something excellent on his own.

 

Hoffer: “          132

 

A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is a symptom of meagerness.”

 

My response: This rich little proverb alerts us to the fact that egoists that self-realized, creating wealth and new ideas, new technologies and artistic objects, will ordinarily be persons of generous approach to others, willing to share praise, tips, and money.

 

Non-individuating altruists and joiners, by contrast, have very little self-love: these cramped souls so impoverished and empty, are usually without much spontaneous generosity; they have little to offer because they have come to believe they have nothing to offer, so they do nothing to better themselves, so they end up having nothing to offer; this state of unhappiness and guilt cannot be stomached very long: to gain a sense of worth so they can stay sane and continue to function, they become selfish, and stingy towards themselves and others, unwilling to give credit where it is due, stinting with praise, money, gratitude or appreciation.

 

Hoffer: “          133

 

Those who are ready to praise others usually take praise from others with a grain of salt. On the other hand, those who praise others reluctantly accept praise from others at its face value. Thus the less magnanimous a soul, the more readily does it succumb to flattery.”

 

My response: How to unpack this rich paragraph: Dennis Prager is a self-actualizer, a brilliant and wise man of faith. He often reminds the audience that he enjoys praise from the public, but does not base his sense of self-worth on such input. He is often condemned and criticized harshly, but he does not internalize the slings, though it likely bothers him on some level. Rather, he knows who he is and is in a state of objective truth about his own character and worth; as an egoist-collectivist, he and he alone provide self-praise and self-criticism that he hears, heeds and adjusts to where necessary for self-improvement is called for.

 

He is also reminding the public to be honest with themselves but judicious too. Each agent is to live as an independent-thinking individualist that do not pay too much or too little attention to praise or blame offered to them by the public or their peers. Each person is to make up his own mind in judging who he is and how he is doing: input from others is welcome, but he alone decides how he is doing, and what he needs to be doing.

 

Prager and Hoffer, good Jews both of them, are suggesting that individualists have high self-esteem: they feel secure and generous, so they are free to praise—never flatter—others when such praise is warranted. They take praise from others with a grain of salt.

 

It is groupists of low self-esteem that listen and heed both the criticisms and praises from others and base their self-image on what others characterize them as. They cannot praise or criticize others honestly because they have no internal resources that make them secure enough to be so honest.

 

They criticize and praise others based upon how the group as a group characterizes that other person, no matter how unfair, slanderous, or flattery-bound such characterization may be.

 

They have no self-esteem, so they are meager inside, and cannot praise honestly. They will flatter others if the group orders them to flatter others. They live in a pattern of lying, spoken and lived, so if the group condemns them, they might kill themselves, as these unfortunate teenage girls sometimes do when their online clique informs them electronically that they are valueless losers.

 

When their group flatters them with fake, unearned praise, they soak it up, and are then prone to being deceived, abused, exploited or used as a tool of mob violence should their clique order them  to go after some helpless, innocent victim.