Present Tyranny

 

On Page 22 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has one entry which I quote below and then will comment on.

 

Hoffer: “            28

 

There is a large measure of totalitarianism even in the freest of free societies. But in a free society totalitarianism is not imposed from without but is implanted within the individual. There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets our norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.”

 

My response: It would seem that a society of free individuals are ruthlessly, each person by himself, ruled by his own functioning conscience, which will not let him off the hook, to which he must answer satisfactorily each day. If one is a person of good will and good character, one does not seek to escape dealing with one’s functioning conscience but plans his daily and long term activities in a way consistent with and pleasing to the dictates and demands of his working, non-deceived conscience.

 

The same conscience is trying to work on people existing under external totalitarian governance, but there, the layers of groupism, altruist morality, and hierarchical noise and hustle, keep that conscience, repressed and silenced, if not ever quite extinguished.