Lonely

 

 

On Page 123 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          223

 

There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.”

 

My response: I have often thought that loneliness is estrangement from God, or truth, or being or love. That being established, it makes sense that God the Individuator and competent, successful Achiever would rarely or never feel lonely, because God likely rarely fails at what De works at.

 

When the individual does not individuate or does not succeed at individuating, he is, in a sense the anti-God, so his loneliness will be deep, unshakable and very painful for this failure not fitting even in his own house.

 

 

Hoffer: “          224

 

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.”

 

My response: The bored are not bored so much because the novelty of routine has worn thin for them, but because they have experienced so many new, exciting pleasurable experiences, that they all seem the same afterwhile. This person needs routine, work, and responsibility to feel fresh and renewed each day.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          225

 

Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.”

 

My response: When one is a true believer, a pure joiner and nonindividuator, then one has no self-esteem. When one lacks self-esteem, the self must be filled with self-hatred and passionate hatred towards others, God and Being itself.

That hater knows she is worthless and nothing, but her sense of pride will not live with that at face value, so she discovers vicarious self-esteem in advocating a holy cause. If you took away her hatred, she would have nothing left at all, including the holy cause that she has sacrificed everything to serve.

A morally good religious faith is heartfelt and rational love for a good deity, and the belief that inhere there have little to do with a bad faith.

One kind of bad religious faith is open devil-worship. A more common and misleading, popular kind of bad religious faith is one whose followers are extremists. These fanatics will spread the faith by utilizing the sword and the torture rack to gain converts, and they feel righteous and good blessed for so conducting themselves, these true-believing, passionate, or emotionally excessive, melodramatic posturing, hyperbolic, spouters of absolutist rhetoric or ideological hatred of anyone.