Confirmation Bias

 

On Pages 128 and 129 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has six entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          238

 

We usually see only the things we are looking for—so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.”

 

My response: If one is to individuate, then one must get to know oneself well and in depth. This is only possible when one seeks out, embraces the truth, and then struggles mightily and consistently to correct oneself to become a smart, better more honest person and individuator.

 

Each person is born in sin, in ignorance, in arrogance and stubbornness, rebellion against God; each person favors lies and fantasies about how perfect she is, versus the cold, sober truth about who and what she is, and how pathetic, mediocre, and unremarkable she is at the point. She could easily see only evidence that supports her view. She may even dream up evidence that never existed in reality.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          239

 

The fervor which prompts us to renounce and destroy is not one of denial but assertion. The iconoclast is often more idolatrous than the idol worshiper.”

 

My response: Occasionally Hoffer lays out one of these entries that I do not know how to translate, and this was a doozy.

 

Hoffer seems to be reminding us that the iconoclast is rejecting the standing cultural and social order with militant assertion and melodramatic, even loud finality. It could be that the iconoclast worships his own ego or his insight as being of more exalted importance and consequence than it actually deserves or merits.

 

Some rebels are just malcontents, haters of humanity, sickened by rage, power-lust, and the urge to get revenge, to hurt, to tear down, to smash. These radicals are to be thwarted or at least ignored and kept from gaining power or too many followers.

 

 

 

Hoffer:  “         240

 

Sometimes the means we use to hide a thing only serve to advertise it.”

 

My response: We often think we are resourceful and clever, and we sometimes are able to conceal our crimes, but often we slip up, and it becomes quite evident that the world is onto us.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          241

 

Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

 

My response: I discovered some time back, that rudeness is social misbehavior of special significance to Hoffer’s moral arrangement.  He is a moderate and moderation is good, and individualism is good. People should be healthily, temperately sentimental or feel, but not passionate or obsessive.

 

Where people run in packs, loathe themselves and seek true-believership in a mass movement to promote and expand the reach of their cherished holy cause, their selflessness and self-sacrifice is pure, total, irreversible and permanent.

 

People of such fanatical, enthusiastic orientation necessarily are wicked, unpleasant, and cruel. They are rude to themselves, to each other and outsiders because they just do not feel good, and do not feel good about their lives and what they have become, though they will stay united and champion their holy cause as the modern miracle to be enjoyed by all.

 

 

Hoffer: “          242

 

We feel free when we escape—even if it is but from the frying pan into the fire.”

 

My response: We cannot for long or at all escape our destiny: to serve and obey God by maverizing as a living angel: to choose to evade this command is what leads people to suffer more than necessary, and perhaps to end up in hell after death.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          243

 

We are unified both by hating in common and being hated in common.”

 

My response: Hatred is a powerful cementing force: when we hate a scapegoat in common with our group-associates or are hated and discriminated against by some rival group, we are united and grow very close to one another.

 

This is negative unity, based on hatred, which is selfless and self-loathing, an altruistic and group phenomenon or condition.

 

Positive unity that grows out of love of self and others—that unity is possible to congeal between people, but it is unnatural, flimsy and easily shattered. People of good will must really want to unite and stay united, to make this unity a continuous, even permanent reality.