Dispassionate

 

On Page 130 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          244

 

Those incapable of reverence are incapable of hatred. And those of little faith are those of little hatred.”

 

My response: This entry is important for it reveals Hoffer’s moral theory. Those incapable of reverence, passionate devotion, or even wildly fervent support for a faith or cause cannot hate because they are not collectivized true believers whose emotional extremism is what makes them so sure they are right and the best. The self-hatred lived and felt by the true believer is pure and pulsating; he is passionate hatred personified, so that he hates better than anything else should come as no surprise to anyone.

 

I assume that the person of little faith need not be an agnostic, skeptic or atheist—though he could be any of the three—but he, if he is a believer in a religion or a cause, he is a tranquil, stoic, logical, mildly skeptical free thinker: this individual and individualist loves himself, so his modest faith in whatever he believes in will make him incapable of hating anyone or anything  very much.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          245

 

Hatred often speaks the language of hope.”

 

My response: Here is another famous Hofferian paradox. To be filled with hatred and to promote hatred intuitively seem to be destructive emotions that spread war, injustice, violence, destruction and suffering—and these actions make human prospects very bleak, without hope or promise.

 

Hoffer would agree with this assessment of hatred, but he is not referring to the idea that to hate is a hopeful action. He likely is substituting the suggestion that the hateful  campaign, being sold to a people by politicians or generals, or to true believers by the gurus and demagogues that rule them, as something noble, desirable and restorative, whereas it is totalitarian and dystopian.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          246

 

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.”

 

My response: I am an egoist, and I think Hoffer secretly or implicitly is a supporter of egoist morality. If self-esteem is a synonym for love (love of the self, love of others, love of God, love of the world), then self-contempt or egolessness or group-living is a synonym for hate (hatred of the self, hatred of others, hatred of God and love of Satan, hatred of the world).

 

Love has a natural odor—a sweet, appealing odor--that other humans and creatures can smell, feel, and intuit, perhaps reading body language. Dogs with their brilliant noses, 500 hundred times more powerful than human olfactory sense, may well smell goodness.

 

Hatred or evil as a natural odor—foul, rotted, spoiled, decaying, fecal.

 

It could be that a person of deep mystic faith, or telepathic prowess, could detect goodness or evil by its spiritual odor, which may or may not be the same as these two odors, naturally encountered and detected.