Free-Floating

 

On Page 44 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries which I shall quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “            64

 

What is the farthest removed from our flesh-and-blood selves?

 

Words.

 

To attach people to words is to detach them most effectively from life and possessions, and thus ready them for reckless acts of self-sacrifice. Men will fight and die more readily for a word than for anything else. The metaphysical double-talk which has fascinated Germans since the days of Hegel was undoubtedly a factor in the rise of that German recklessness which has shaken our world to its foundations. At present, Communist double-talk is moving millions in Europe and Asia to acts of daring and self-sacrifice.

 

They are dangerous times when words are everything.”

 

My response: Hoffer and Ayn Rand do share some areas of agreement, arguing that the individual’s life in the present here and now is precious and worth savoring and improving if it can be done. Such an individual is competent and effective in the here and now and has some fair amount of self-esteem as he is reconciled with who he is and what he is doing.

 

By contrast, what is Hoffer alluding to when he describes discontented and then frustrated altruists, group-livers and nonindividuators, is a true believer that attaches himself to a fetishized abstraction or holy cause. His sole objective is escape from a haunting and untenable personal consciousness.

 

These true believers are most ready to fight and die for something that is not real, a word. This word does name and represent their fervently cherished abstraction, their holy cause. They have renounced their right to a personal life, a blemished life of self-reproach. In its place, they are willing to sacrifice and die, giving their all, even their own lives for the sake of this word, this holy cause. They will dare their all, their lives, and their future, to defend and perpetuate what is not real, a word. Double-talk is beautiful talk to these fanatics, making utter, beautiful sense to them. They will die for this word which not real and die gladly and gloriously. This linguistic symbol for them is a reminder that they no longer are connected to the present, no longer advocating for a spoiled self that has been ignominiously repudiated and discarded, all for the worship of a mighty, empty visual-audible symbol, the word.

 

Hoffer: “            65

 

It is by their translation into mere words and almost meaningless symbols that ideas move people and stir them to action. This deintellectualization of ideas is the work of pseudo-intellectuals. The self-styled intellectual who is impotent with pen and ink hungers to write history with sword and blood.”

 

My response: The men of words and the men of action that run the mass movement with sword and blood push the holy cause across the globe, burning all down, and conquering all, for the sake of a mere abstraction, represented by a holy but simple word.