Knowledgeable

 

On Page 133 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes three entries which I quote and will comment on.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          253

 

Now that we know everything, we have also mastered the art of destroying the human spirit.”

 

My response: I believe Hoffer is being ironic or sarcastic when he states that we now know everything. He implies we do not know everything, because even if our scientific and technical knowledge were complete, or very advanced—and they are—we would not know much or have not learned much if we did not realize, as do the wise, that knowledge is a tool for good or evil, depending upon the good will or evil will of its applier or handler.

 

Even back in the 50s humans had learned enough about psychology—knowing ‘everything’—that they had mastered the art of destroying the human spirit. The great totalitarian collectivities and mass movements had mastered the art of soul-raping each victim, and millions of victims as a whole, as an ongoing project and mission that they proudly, self-righteously owned up to.

 

One cannot be sane, sensitive, or realistic if one can read of the atrocities committed during World War II by the Communists, the Fascists and the Japanese in China, and fail to conclude that humans have a real appetite and demented pleasure gained by controlling, degrading and hurting others as has been done historically. Only demons in the human heart can account for such extensive, perpetual malevolence.

 

 

 

Hoffer:  “         254

 

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.”

 

My response: It just occurred to me that one reason Hoffer is a kind man as well as an ethicist is that he was likely one of the most advanced proponents of human rights that ever lived.

 

Nature (having made us groupist, self-hating, altruistic, and resentful) set humans up to suffer, fail and live unhappy lives, as they are naturally constituted. Without a benevolent, individuating, good deity pushing egoist ethics, there are not societal forces strong enough or pervasive enough to offer free-willing, perhaps cooperating humans a humane alternative plan, insisting, that each citizen be treated with dignity and respect, and, correspondingly, that each individual treat other humans with dignity and respect.

 

This kind of benevolent egoism requires that each agent is to never soul-rape himself, nor soul-rape another person, or continue to tolerate being enslaved and abused even one second longer by others or collective units running society, whose leaders claim that they have every right morally, theologically, legally and politically to soul-rape themselves as individuals, or to serve the state, hierarchies, cliques or institutions that make it customary to soul-rape all people within their purview.

 

Hoffer implies this doctrine of individual human rights, and this is the source of his original, moral greatness.

 

As an afterthought, it came to me in a flash that human consciousness is part biological, material brain and part divine soul in each person—how this works (who knows?)—so if the mind is a soul, to rape that soul—by oneself or by the collectivities to which one belongs—is the violate that divine spark given us by our benevolent creators, and that is an insult to the Divine Couple, of enormous proportions and consequence.

 

 

Hoffer: “          255

 

Fear and freedom are mutually exclusive.”

 

My response: The individuating supercitizen of the future will be a woman of supreme yet practical, sensible self-confidence. She will still fear, but she wills to almost never allow her fear to dictate how she will conduct herself.

 

Such an exemplary woman is bred for being freedom and maverizing in a state of freedom; she can handle being free, and she thrives when free to do her thing.