Vehement Resistance

 

On Page 42 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes two entries which I shall quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “            60

 

The fact seems to be that we are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about. The rabid radical remains in the dark concerning the nature of radicalism, and the religious concerning the nature of religion.

 

Vehemence is the expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that can never stand on its own—something rootless, incoherent and incomplete. Whether it is our own meaningless self we are upholding or some doctrine devoid of evidence, we can do it only in a frenzy of faith.”

 

My response: The key to reading Hoffer is to establish what are the presuppostions that guide his psychological insights into the human condition.

 

First, he assumes in the moral law of moderation, or living by the middle way, is how humans are to proceed. What this entails is that the individual should be moderate, reasonable, individualistic, self-repairing, truth-prone, at peace and calm so that he can accept the harsh criticisms to himself about his own flaws, so that he can face them head on, working and gaining ground over time at being a smart, better, kinder, more artistic, more skilled person, who can esteem himself because he is working on bettering himself all the time, having initially accepted that he was a natural mess, and that he needed to clean himself up.

 

Second, he assumes people are naturally liars (mostly to themselves about themselves, far more so in quality and quantity of lies told, more than lying to others around them) who deceive themselves, that they are natural messes because they cannot stand the truth, and, then, if they do not receive the truth about themselves, there is no need to even try to improve the self.

 

Third, once people set up a pattern of lying to the self and not ever maverizing, then erecting a complex edifice of fabrications, pseudo-explanations and pathetic excuses, intentionally is deployed by the deceived self to wall off any deserved sense of self-contempt that would be unbearable to receive and endure.

 

Fourth, now that the individual is a liar as a permanent way of living, he cannot find a sense of worth that is not grounded in his lying, his self-avoidance; his group-living and nonindividuating among and in the midst of dozens of other lying nonindividuators. His deceptive way of life and thinking allows him defend his worthless self and his shoddy pseudo-religion or some other fake holy cause, only in a mood of absolute faith, and radically passionate adherence to his ism providing him cover.

 

Hoffer: “The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.”

 

My response: The weak person here is a soul is living in sin, falsehood, darkness, evil, selflessness, selfishness, engaging sadistic and masochistic cruel behaviors, not self-developing, and not individual-living, so he can avoid the communication with and communion with the good deities, which he does not want to be most effectively transferred back and forth.

 

To sustain this life of the lie and militant, passionate sinning, the weak groupist must deny almost the truth about everything.