Desired

 

Below are two quotes from Eric Hoffer, from Page 8 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind. I quote him and then comment on his quotes.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “             3

 

That we pursue something passionately does not always mean we really want it or have a special aptitude for it. Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have. It is usually safe to predict that the fulfillment of an excessively cherished desire is not likely to still our nagging anxiety.

 

In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.”

 

My response: The passionate view of the world and way of acting, according to Hoffer, is the hysterically emotional state—perhaps permanent in endurance—of mind and disposition, of an actual true believer, or even a fanatic fielding an almost catatonic public image. This passionate individual is a group-creature, a pure joiner, a nonindividuator, one that feels more than he thinks, whose life is a lie more than embracing of truth. He is not calm, logical, impartial, stoic, or dispassionate in his appraisal of things.

 

He is not an individual that has sought to know himself, to embrace who and what he is, to know all about the self, his flaws, his evil tendencies, his weak but conditionable good proclivities, his calling from the Good Spirits to maverize, grow and create. These are the things he is born to do, and these are the few things that he refuses to do, though this divine calling with its accompanying duties to be met are all that he really wants to do and be, all that will provide him with a sense of meaning, happiness, reward and a home in this cold, lonely universe.

 

Rather, as a radical collectivist that runs inside of and with the pack, sacrificing all, even his life if need be, to advance a holy cause that he is fanatically in favor of, even though, truth be known to him, it is a hollow, substitute reason for living, that he cannot get enough of, and it’s a poisonous drink that he really never wanted to imbibe.

 

 

H: “      4

 

It seems we are most busy when we do not do the one thing we ought to do; most greedy when we cannot have the one thing that we really want; most hurried when we can never arrive; most self-righteous when irrevocably in the wrong.

 

There is apparently a link between excess and unattainability.”

 

My response: When we do not self-realize, and embrace the raw self to be known and made familiar with, so that that ambitious self, in a mode of eagerness, drive and yet humility, is able to journey forth over the decades fulfilling one’s inbuilt divine telos or responsibility, this failure is now the unattainable life-project that we freely abandoned so early, so readily, so permanently.

 

Once we elect the alternative—as do most people leading failed lives—to live in our group with its comforting size and mendacious web of justifications for being nothing, doing nothing, and standing for nothing, all we have left is noisy emptiness to quiet our guilty consciences, to drown out that wee small voice from heaven welling up in all of us, inviting us to repent, to get back on track, to take up our cross, to proceed forth step by step on our heavenly sojourn, at this point our fanatical support for our quiet or active mass movement, and the holy cause that it pushes forth, is all that we have left to lean on. All that sound and fury is cover for a life not lived, a self not known, a self atrophied and dying.