Unleashed

 

Eric Hoffer, in his book, The Passionate State of Mind, on Page 50 has one entry which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “            50

 

The formidableness and uniqueness of the human species stem from the survival of the weak. Were it not for the habit of caring for the sick, the crippled and the weak in general humanity could not have perhaps attained to culture and civilization. The invalided warrior who had to stay behind while the manhood of the tribe went out to war was probably the first storyteller, teacher and artisan (fashioning weapons and toys). The earliest development of religion, poetry and wit owed much to the survival of the unfit. One thinks of the unhinged medicine man, the epileptic prophet, the blind bard, the witty hunchback and dwarf. Finally, the sick must have had a hand in the development of the arts of healing and cooking.”

 

My response: If one would understand Hoffer, it is best to define his technical terms, and he coined a few, but did not define some of them sufficiently clearly. The weak, is one such phrase. Depending on context, the weak, for Hoffer, can be the discontented/frustrated masses at the bottom and middle rungs of class society that live groupist lives of self-loathing, but, when rolling along as part of the active mass movement of which they belong and sacrifice for, they are an almost unstoppable train of change reworking existent society.

 

The second use of the weak as a technical term, wielded by Hoffer and also is a term—like the first definition of the weak mentioned just above--defining humans as group-livers and nonindividuators, not individual-livers and maverizers.

 

These weak people lack military training and weapons as do professional warriors; they lack economic, institutional, and political powers as do the upper-class members of society, or the elites that rule a people. The elite people are typically groupist and nonindividuators too.

 

The third definitional term defining the weak, as used by Hoffer, is also a definition of the masses as groupists and nonindividuators. This is more of a sociological term: it refers to the poor, middle class, upper class and educated classes that are misfits, no longer included and appreciated by the rulers of the existing dispensation. Their social status is much weakened and reduced because social change as allowed them to lose their rank and status: they were once fitting in and empowered, even if they were the ruling masses. As newly reassigned of undesirable role of being socially unfit and misfits renders them rejected by society, so they are ripe for joining a mass movement to overturn society.

 

The fourth definition of the term the weak coined by Hoffer is his grouping of the witty hunchback, the dwarf, the invalided warrior, the blind bard and the epileptic prophet as a group of individual-living, individuating misfits that had time on their hands so, they invented poems, art, technologies, weapons and new folk crafts to give their lives meaning, and their creations and benefits led to religious, technological and cultural advancement for the tribe they belonged to, and were allowed by the tribe to belong to, despite their eccentricity and idiosyncrasy.

 

I would introduce and add a fifth definition of a misfit member of the society. If each child was reared to become an ever-developing individuators supercitizen as an adult, maverizing as a legally and socially popular way to live in society, this arrangement would allow each individuators to fit mostly, and by, every creating and changing, to be a misfit all the time.

 

 The moderate stance, about being a misfit that each child should practice, would require in each supercitizen, to be part individualistic fit person and a part misfitted. This blended, permanent personal status as fit person/misfit would much benefit that person and society itself.