Intensity

 

 

On Page 10 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, the state of mind of a true believer, Hoffer offers two quotes which I will copy and then respond to.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “             7

 

Every intense desire is perhaps basically a desire to be different from what we are. Hence probably the imperiousness for the desire for fame, which is a desire for a self utterly unlike the real self.”

 

My response: Hoffer, the first Mavellonialist, wants each person not to desire to be different from how God or nature made her, and thus intend for her to be to become her greatest self-conceivable and possible. If she were to elect to maverize into a great-souled personhood and personal state of being, her feelings would be intense but not sizzling, so hot that she will set fire to herself and the world. Her emotional state and her desires would be strong, lasting, unwavering but stoically self-metered and enjoyed on a cool, intellectual fashion.

 

She would not be a joiner, a nonindividuator, a person of excessive and understated sentiment and reasoning, so her passionate state of mind would be reflected in how she was overly enthusiastic about her chasing dubious goals, that she really does not want or believe in, but cannot cease to praise and work towards.

 

The more passionate she is, the more radicalized she becomes, and then idealized self to be sought sought is the antithesis to the role or personality that she seeks to don, but it is ephemeral, illusory. She flees from herself into a collective world of noise and bustle, where her adopted role is what she passionately affirms, but is a surface self that she really does not want to be or live, but she is in to deep now to back out.

 

H: “        8

 

There is even in the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, the health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.

 

Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.”

 

My response: This quote #8 is the clearest indication yet that H is a Mavellonialist. I argue for rational egoism of the individuators as the ideal morality for people to fill their lives with love, happiness, meaning and purpose. The real self is only made contact with, is only instantiated as the lived state of existent consciousness, where the egoist is gently passionate, moderately enthusiastic, fearlessly self-aware and deeply self-disciplining. This thoughtful person will not be selfish but will be self-interested and yet other-interested in a productive way. It is the passionate that are fanatics, nonindividuators, true believers, phony and false to their core.

 

Self-renunciation, escape from a spoiled life and rotten self, is the goal, and where the self is wiped out, there the altruist and the clique reign supreme, sad, and lonely.