On Page 47 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer refers to the inordinately selfish as a sample of the frustrated category of people that are misfits willing to join passing mass movements to escape from an untenable self.
Here is Hoffer entry on selfishness: “ VII
The Inordinately Selfish
38
The inordinately selfish are particularly susceptible to frustration. The more selfish a person is, the more poignant his disappointments. It is the inordinately selfish, therefore, who ae likely to be the most persuasive champions of selflessness.
The fiercest fanatics are often selfish people who were forced, by innate shortcomings or external circumstances, to lose faith in their own selves. They separate the excellent instrument of their selfishness from their ineffectual selves and attach it to the service of some holy cause. And though it be a faith of love and humility they adopt they can be neither loving or humble.”
My response: If I look up the adjective inordinate in my The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the 2004 New Edition, inordinate is defined thus: adj: exceeding reasonable limits: immoderate . . .”
Hoffer uses inordinately, the adverbial form of inordinate, to characterize the type of selfish person who is selfish to a sick, unhealthy, or immoral, immoderate and unreasonable degree.
He is likely not making a normative statement about selfishness itself as good or bad; he does not define selfishness per se, though he describes it as an excellent instrument for getting what one wants. This too is ambiguous because selflessness can be an excellent instrument for the agent because he is intellectually and practically focused on identifying what interests him, and how he can quickly and efficiently get what he wants before someone else takes it. Hoffer hints at this.
He also could be a normative egoist (Again, Hoffer is not using such technical language.) praising selfishness as an excellent instrument for the individual to apply to reality on his own behalf to secure what he wants and needs, and that endeavor is laudable, exactly what he should be pursuing.
Again, I am not sure which or both, of these senses of selfishness, as an excellent instrument is what Hoffer is clearly selecting, because he does not define the term selfishness here.
He might be describing, without using such technical language, that people are selfish naturally; that they just pursue their self-interest, and I suspect that is how he feels about people, and that he is a moderate morally. He likely would not disapprove of their being mildly selfish, if they engage in self-care, to some approximate degree, but not inordinately: being selfish to excess is not morally acceptable thinks Hoffer. It is morally repugnant when the agent is inordinately or extremely selfish; his piggy ways are nauseating and goes against the public interest, and, indirectly, his own interest, because he ends up being frustrated and so disappointed with himself that he abandons the self by fleeing into the collective order, his adopted holy cause.
Unstated but implied by Hoffer in this section is the suggestion that the cure for selfishness or inordinate selfishness for Hoffer is not pure, inordinate selflessness—joining a mass movement—by losing the spoiled self—that is the last, desperate selfish act of a inordinately selfish person, that his selfishness is connected to his selection to join a holy cause, a radical form of group-orientation.
The cure for selfishness is not excessive altruism—joining a mass movement; nor is it one’s selecting to be inordinately selfish.
The cure for selfishness (And this ties directly to my oft-stated recognition that is the selfless altruists that are much more selfish than are the self-interested individuals and individuators, as conservatives give more to charities in American than do progressives, and great souls like Gandhi, Frodo or Jesus, or some famous warriors dying in battle, do huge self-sacrifices for the sake of the community or humanity itself.) is not living by altruist ethics as one’s primary moral theory, but to adhere to altruism as one’s 2ndary theory that supplements one’s primary moral theory, egoism or enlightened self-interest, the determination to treat others and oneself and God with affection, courtesy, honesty, fairness and respect.
The other aspect of curing selfishness is that the agent as a proclaimed egoist and individualist, presupposes that his moral choices and self-image are consistent with his being reasonable/rational, emotional but not passionate or enthusiastic in feeling, being moderate or ordinate along the spectrum of most degrees of a behavior, like being selfless and generous, or selfish and self-caring, in behavior and actions selected over a period of time.
Hoffer writes that it is the inordinately selfish who are likely to be the most persuasive champions of selflessness. He could mean that their being inordinate makes them self-hating, so they need to flee awareness of their own existence by getting lost in a holy cause. He could also be indicating that their being selfish so sickens them and makes their own shoddy existence repulsive to them, that they escape from individual freedom into individual utter surrender and disappearance into the collective totalitarianism of the holy cause. Hoffer likely means their lives and selves are irremediably spoiled both due to their selfishness and their emotional inordinate reactions to living and choosing.
Note the evil or immorality implied by Hoffer: extreme selfishness is connected by the inordinately selfish to promoting a holy cause in a mode of inordinate selflessness. Extreme moral behaviors, antipodal though they seem to be, are actual evil behaviors, instantiations in behavior and actors as negative or excessive altruism as true believers belonging to their holy cause.
He clearly suggests that escape into a mass movement is not desirable for a morally or psychologically well-adjusted person. Choosing the life of person surrender and self-renunciation, settling for a sub-optimal lifestyle as a true-believing myrmidon in service and bondage to the adopted holy cause is a tempting but unwise, a not morally advisable option, for the sane healthy individual, lost, confused, and but seeking viable solutions.
If mass movement existence, or excessive group-living and pathological, altruistic need to serve an ideological collective ism or cause is blameworthy as Hoffer insists it is, then I do not think it is a stretch to characterize him as an altruist-egoist and a moderate, while my moral theory is egoism-altruism and a moderate ethical orientation.
Remember that when I combined egoism-altruism as my moral theory, I am assuming that these rival theories are combined as both-and, not either/or (the false binary ethical theory), with the first listed moral theory (egoism) as the primary moral motive for an ethical person, and altruism as my second listed moral theory represents that theory as crucial and critical to be a good person, but that this moral theory receives secondary moral emphasis when one chooses how to act generally and specifically each time one makes a choice.
Note again the paradoxical element here: Hoffer links selfishness, especially inordinate selfishness with selflessness, the loss of self in the collective, and this negative altruism, existing as a true believer adhering to and championing a mass movement, is not a morally worthy choice. It would seem logically intuitive or natural that what is morally true is that selfishness is bad and linked with individualism, and that selflessness is noble and that sacrificing oneself for others or for a good cause and is associated with other-care and serving the greater good. That is the opposite of Hoffer’s conclusion.
This is not what Hoffer says, and he does not follow it through explicitly as far as I know to conclude we should live rather as egoist-altruists; instead, he seems to me to conclude that the proper moral theory to adopt would be pro-Western and pro-individual like the standard altruistic moral theory representative of current American conservatives that are Judeo-Christian altruist-egoists.
Again, I point out that anything I am now writing about my Mavellonialist, customized theory of rational egoism was roughly anticipated by Hoffer almost 75 years ago.
Hoffer writes that the fiercest fanatics are those who have lost faith in their ineffectual selves. Those these true believers claim to be humble and loving, they are neither. Similarly, Progressive intellectuals are so arrogant and smug, while actually their ideology has made them stupid, foolish and cruel, offering inferior solutions.
Here is another paradox: It would seem that idealists and ideologues self-identify as unselfish, compassionate and modest, and ascribe to individualists and capitalist monikers like being selfish moneygrubbers, conservatives, as uncaring non-ideologues who are selfish, greedy, racist, haters and white supremacists. But, however flawed conservatives and individualists are, their evil cannot be so systematic, organized and universally applicable as the excesses and cruelties of that of mass movement-fueled idealists. These ideologues claim to be selfless, humble and loving, they are selfish, supremely confident, arrogant to the extent of overweening false pride, actually convinced that they are the smartest, noblest, most heroic, most selfless and loving do-gooders ever to walk this planet, when in fact they are actually self-centered in the most ruthless and brutal meaning of the term, hyper-cocky, filled with hate anger, bitterness and resentment against the self, against others, against God for having been born, and against Being itself, which needs destroying too.
These fanatics have no self-esteem, but as proponents of their holy cause, pushing it out onto others, their vanity, bragging and flamboyant claims to being perfect, true, and superior, they exude and speak of their complete confidence and rightness of their unerring cause.
They spread their revolution or cause under the cover of being loving, just, compassionate, and idealistic, but their war on the world is to end it, and to bury it under an avalanche of down-rushing, unjust vicious Bolshevik totalitarianism. The elite rulers of the totalitarian party will inflict cultural savagery and barbarism upon all humanity, if they can.
Raw power lust always was and only ever has been their goal and standard of behavior as they conspire to engulf and envelope the whole world within their mass movement. Positive, modest altruism or social beneficence and charity is commendable, but this negative, mass-movement generating altruism is a vehicle for spreading great evil all across the planet, and its backers plan on making this great evil the universal system of all people in all countries.
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