Rudeness

 

On Page 51 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          80

 

Rudeness seems somehow linked with a rejection of the present. When we reject the present we also reject ourselves—we are, so to speak, rude toward ourselves; and we usually do unto others what we have already done to ourselves.”

 

My response: It is indicative of Hoffer’s profoundly original thinking that he would connect a rejection of the present as a rejection of ourselves, being rude to ourselves. A true believer has abandon the self and the present, so he is rude to the despised self, murdering self-consciousness. His only consciousness henceforth is his being a cell in the mind of his mass movement. Its consciousness is his consciousness going forward, and the advancement of this holy cause into the future is his only focus, an orientation he brags up as noble and virtuous.

 

To reject the self is to be rude to the self, and this is then how the self treats others, rudely. This is another indication of Hoffer’s indirect support for egoist ethics: that we cannot treat others well unless we first esteem, love and treat the self with courtesy; only then will we practice the Golden Rule, to love others as we love ourselves.

 

Hoffer: “          81

 

To the child, the savage and the Wall Street operator everything seems possible—hence their credulity. The same is true of the people who live in times of great uncertainty. Both fear and hope create credulity. And it is perhaps true that those who want to create a state of mind receptive to fantastic and manifestly absurd tenets should preach hope and also create a feeling of insecurity.”

 

My response: I think that revolutionaries and men of words instinctively and perhaps consciously stoke the people’s imaginations with uncertainty, worry and unrealistic expectations to contrast the dispensation and accompanying holy cause as greatly superior to and preferable to the present dispensation, which like the one in present America, is not that bad.

 

If they can shake the masses free from their traditional loyalty to the metanarrative of the standing dispensation, then they can frustrate the people, and stampede them into the proffered, waiting mass movement.