Motive To Rebel

 

On Page 110 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes two entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          194

 

The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection—real or imagined—by them.

 

We often hate that which we cannot be. We put up defenses against something we crave and cannot have.”

 

My response: One of these hidden presuppositions that course through all of what Hoffer writes is that we deceive ourselves: what we claim vehemently to favor or fight for on the surface of things, is often a cause or stance that is a poor substitute for being cast out of belonging to a cherished, desired group rejecting us, or their cultural story.

 

This poor substitute is now heralded by us as our first choice all along, and that it is the best thing going; the truth is, it may be worthy or froth, but we were embarrassed and shamed by being rejected by our desired group, and that humiliating reality must never come to light in the public.

 

Those that we yearned to join, to be accepted and allowed to belong to, have spurned us, so our rebellion, to be different from them, is being at war with them, and a denial that the spurning ever took place, and that, because it did, they need to be crushed.

 

 

Hoffer: “          195

 

There is in us a dark craving for rot. It is as if decay were an escape from the limits, the oppressive fears and the pains of an individual existence."

My response: There are several things indicated hear. First, Hoffer does not believe that human nature is basically good: we hate ourselves and are addicted to being and doing evil, hurting ourselves, others and the world. Murder of the self, murder of others and murder of the world itself, if we have the skill and power to effect us, is our goal should our dark craving for rot, violence, destruction and chaos grow pure and powerfully emanating within us, pervading our entire consciousness.

When we are dead, and all is dead, then there is no need to have to meet the divine call to maverize, a heavy burden laid on each human from the moment of birth onward, by the demanding Good Spirits. If we are dead and do not exist as  individuals, there no longer the pressure to measure up as a living angel, a burnden most of us would just as soon avoid.