Assumption

 

On Page 132 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer provides three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          250

 

It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.”

 

 

My response: People are always more subtle than they seem and no one, absolutely no one, is not overflowing with intelligence of some kind or several kinds, which feeds into their amazing creative potential, should they elect to work hard and maverize their innate blessings into artistic and original production.

 

People are born in ignorance, and only turn stupid when they refuse to learn, grow, and develop their natural gifts.

 

Hoffer likely is pointing out that people are less sensitive than they seem to indicate, that they often care less about, and are tuned into the needs and desires of others, than they are assumed to care; they are preoccupied mostly with their own issues and problems.

 

Another way to read Hoffer’s remark hear about people being less sensitive than they seem would be suggest that people usually are fairly inured to insults, rejection and setbacks in their daily wives, so disappointment and bad news probably do not much influence the one receiving bad news.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          251

 

There is probably as much effort involved in being exquisitely wicked as in being exquisitely good.”

 

My response: I have noticed that Hoffer and I usually track along similar lines of thinking regarding human nature and the human condition.

 

As an egoist, I note that most people are born corrupt, selfless, group-oriented, self-effacing and angry, but these average people as discontented, group-living nonindividuators, leading their daily lives of quiet desperation. Their groupist sinning and evil ways are collective phenomena of deep complexity. Joiners generally are evil more than they are good.

 

Individualists, mostly nonindividuators, are generally good more than they are evil, and a great-souled maverizer would be exquisitely good.

 

But great souled monsters like Hitler or Mao would be a kind of negative individualists or individuators—exquisitely wicked—would be strong individualists while still being utterly owned by and consumed by the group, society, or mass movement that they lead.

 

 

 

Hoffer:  “         252

 

The more zeal the less heart. It seems that when we put all our heart into something we are left as it were heartless.”

 

My response: I have long noted that the fanatic is zealous, passionate, ruthless, cruel, totalitarian, and capable of great, brutal cruelty. He is a pure joiner, and his altruist morality is absolutist.

 

The moderate is more rational, self-restraining, individualistic, egoistic, and tolerant of others thinking independently, making up their own mind, and exercising their free will without being punished for exercising it.

 

Here is a Ramseyian and Hofferian paradox that just reflects human nature: Humans that are moderate, more rational than emotional, are good, so they are more kind, merciful, have more heart.

 

Humans that are passionate fanatics, who stay in in their pack, and devoting their lives to promoting and extending the reach of their holy cause, are not good people, and they lack heart or mercy.