A New Definition

 

Here is a new or latests definition of moderation which I offer the reader, though it need not contradict or negate any previous definition.

There is an old saw the perfect is the enemy of good, and that is a definition of moderation or is quite tautological as to its meaning.

We never want to strive for perfection because that it is godly gift or status, and it might even be blasphemous to strive to be perfect, to rival or compete with, let alone match or surpass the benevolent deities.

Nonetheless, the good deities and the Good Spirits want all of us to self-realize or constantly self-perfect every day until we die. We are self-perfecting when we do our divinely designated job and self-perfect, both God and each us knowing full well that aiming for or attaining perfection is never the goal for a human being of limited talent, mortal and finite. Seeking self-improvement will be a level of excellent performance that will suffice for us mere mortals. That we can do and do well if we will to so live and stay at it.

Still, we should avoid being nothing, or destroying and spreading chaos, poverty, hatred and unnecessary suffering in the world, never seeking or spreading imperfection in the world.

We should seek to make ourselves, others and the world better, and a life of heroic self-improvement is just the ticket: it is a high standard, but not an unreasonably high standard, and it is a moderate goal, a moderated level of achievement for any individuator.

Hoffer's Working And Thinking On The Waterfront, Pages 19-24

 

I am typing out and commenting on Eric Hoffer’s journal, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, June, 1958-Nay, 1959, Pages 19-24’ Here it is:

Hoffer (H after this): “July 3

Worked the same ship the same place. A cold gale is just now blowing outside and the world is lost in a fog.

More talk with the Slavonians. As I said, they are extremely competent people. I found that most of them built their own houses, have small vegetable gardens, and each has a well-appointed workshop in the basement. I cannot see how people of their kind back in the Old Country need a totalitarian government to tell them what to do.”

My response: Amen.

H: “Even the most perfect central planning could not achieve anything approaching what these people manage to do on their own.

Returning to talk of the Old Country, I remarked that there is nothing to prevent them from getting together and re-creating somewhere in California a replica of the village they came from. They are all of them well off, and it should not be impossible to obtain the required financing from a bank or even a government agency. One of them said: ‘It can’t be done. The air here is not clear. Even in the mountains there is gas and smoke. In the Old Country the air is sweet.

July 6

Nine hours of the Chilean ship Almagro in Encinal. Quite a number of people on the Chile ship look like intellectuals. I don’t think they are passengers. In several Latin-American countries the intellectuals go not only into teaching and civil service but also into the army. This is probably one reason why army officers are meddling in government. It could be that a lack of employment prompted some intellectuals to become sailors on merchant ships.

I am reading An American in India by Saunders Redding. The author is a Negro American sent by the State Department to India. It is a perplexing and depressing book. A sick man writing about sick people. When facing the most preposterous questions and defamatory insinuations, he remains speechless. He tells us that he identifies himself with America, yet here is a man of words without words. The whole performance leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I suspect that for an American audience this is probably the most anti-Indian book they could read.

July 7

Same ship, same place. Six hours. In the morning I took the key-system bus to Encinal. As I walked down the several blocks from the bus stop to the docks I was impressed by the gardens in front of the houses. The houses, of average size, are fairly old, yet in excellent shape. The people living here are mostly workingmen. The sight of the gardens and houses turned my mind to the question of maintenance. It is the capacity for maintenance which is the best test for the vigor and stamina of a society.”

My response: Hoffer the genius and truth-finder is especially prescient in predicting that a people that take care of their houses and gardens might well represent a society of vigorous citizens with stamina and staying power. Maintenance is a Western habit or skill, and somehow it is intertwined with individualism, moral moderation, self-discipline and industriousness, perhaps even fostering creativity, as well as complementing the creative urge.

H: “Any society can be galvanized for awhile to build something, but the will and skill to keep things in good repair day in, day out is fairly rare. At present, neither in the Communist countries nor in the newly created nations is there a pronounced capacity for maintenance. I wonder how true it is that after the Second World War the countries with the best maintenance were the first to recover. I am thinking of Holland, Belgium, and Western Germany. I don’t know how it is in Japan. The Incas had an intense awareness of maintenance. They assigned whole villages and tribes to keep roads, bridges and buildings in good repair. I read somewhere that in ancient Rome a man was disqualified as a candidate for office because his garden showed neglect.”

My response: What is precious and refreshing about Hoffer is he highlights was is vitally important, a concept like maintenance as a prime moral value.

H: “Saunder Redding’s book os worth reading for its detailed recording of the talk of the Indian intellectuals both young and old. He reproduces minutely their arguments, rudeness, sarcasm, and self-righteousness. Since he seldom essayed a rebuttal his recording comes out sharp and forceful.”

My response: Hoffer is mad at Redding for failing to defend America, the America Hoffer loved and was proud of.

H: “July 8

Finished the job on the Chilean ship Almagro at Pier 19. Ten hours. The work was easy but I felt quite weary at the end of the day. My weariness generates in me bad temper, but this shows itself only when I return to my room. After a glass of hot tea and some fruit, and particularly after writing a few lines, the irritation fades more or less.

Saunder Redding’s book is a fascinating puzzle. His tongue-tiedness in the face of the crudest slanders and insults might be merely a continuation of the technique he perfected in the face of slights and insults in his own America. I doubt whether the ability to identify oneself with America is proportionate to one’s acceptance by fellow Americans. There is an intense patriotism among the rejected—inmates of prisons, and migratory workers living on the edge of subsistence.”

My response: It occurred to me that if it is true that the rejected might exhibit an intense patriotism, but their motive would be to demonstrate to the in-crowd slighting and debasing them, that they, the rejected are still loyal, intensely patriotic, longing to fit in and belong.

H: “The question is whether a Negro intellectual can feel himself truly and wholly an American. I don’t know. The Negroes I know can be fiercely American. I once heard a Negro longshoreman, while observing a Hindu crew on a British ship, pour forth his scorn on the way poor people are treated in the cold world outside America.

As I said that fact that Redding rarely hit back or even argued enabled him to record faithfully all that the Indian intellectuals threw at him, and by doing so he has produced the most anti-Indian book I know of.”

My response: Notice how Hoffer emphasizes the hypocrisy and double-standards evinced by the Hindu intellectuals so sneeringly anti-American, feeling so superior—all the while the Hindu crew of sailors were mistreated aboard their ship by their British masters.

H: “July 9

I had several good hours with Lili and the boy. He is growing up fast and becoming reasonable. He ate a frozen boysenberry tart which he greatly enjoyed. For the first time I saw him attack food methodically—eating first the loose berries on the plate and, after cleaning them up, tackling the tart. I savor being with him the way I savor food and drink. Lili is still herself and nothing can go wrong. Everything we do is adequate, everything we say meaningful, everything we see memorable,

July 10

There is something in the air. You come to expect America to fail whether it be in the launching of a satellite, the exhibition of the Brussels Fair, the interventions in the Near East, the revival of the slumping economy. We are not in the van, and we are not going anywhere in a hurry. To those in the van much is forgiven, their blemishes and shortcomings are temporary, since they are growing and rushing into the future. But to those that are not going anywhere, the present (made up of vulgarity, senseless haste, juvenility, dishonesty) is all there is. You are aware all of a sudden that the country is in dire need of an exceptional leader. The need is an unhealthy symptom.”

My response: Hoffer never believed in the need for an exceptional leader, nor did I, having arrived at this same conclusion on my own, I rather see as exceptional common people, most or all individuators.

H: “July 12

Pier 38. One o’clock start. The five-hour shift (1-6)passed without the least strain. Reading Ivan Bunin’s little book Memories and Portraits reinforced my conviction that life with writers, artists, and intellectuals in general is most likely charged with envy and malice. It could be that the air thus charged stimulates the creative flow. Yet what a strained and miserable life it would be.”

My response: My interpretation of the small Hofferian paragraph above is that if intellectuals run in a pack, their originality and creativity will be stymied or less than it could otherwise be. Rudeness, vicious competing, ugly struggling for rank and prestige, backed by and riddled with malice, envy and ill-will. My conclusion is that such vying, miserable, vicious, second-rate intellectuals and artists (2nd rate not because they have gone as far as they can go but because they choose to quit growing and developing as intellectuals and artists, settling for running in a pack because they are joiners and nonindiviudators with little self-esteem; they are so rude to each others because they have been so internally self-discourteous first and foremostly.

It seems to me that Hoffer is highlighting that the creative, the intellectuals, the elites, at least as classically defined are more cliquish, mean and cruel on average to even each other than they are to the masses whom they live off of, direct and rule.

Hoffer also believes the masses, especially burghers and blue collars workers in the prosperous, free, decent, happy America which he knew was populated by the masses who were not so vicious, sniping, quarreling and my clique versus your cliquish intellectuals in the ruling class.

I agree but wish to emphasize that their ideology and their hyper-collectivism robs them of all self-esteem, any residual sense of decency and kindness, thus they can and will do whatever to others and themselves and each other. Their is nothing wrong with heir intellects though they are ideologically lazy and generally not very intellectual curious and ambitious by choice. Their power of powerlessness power mode makes them cruel. Their high rank corrupts them some, but I believe their hyper-collectivism as mobists, and their ideology are what truly make them malevolent, oppressive, violent and dangerous for the whole society: their lifestyle and policies are not models to be followed.

H: “July 14

Finished the job at Pier 38. Nine hours. Though the same work and company, I felt less weary this evening than last. The reason: eight hour’s sleep last night and a good hot lunch today. Yesterday (Sunday) all the restaurants were closed and I had two sandwiches and a piece of pie for lunch.

This morning, some item in the paper started me thinking on the cause of British defeatism. Quite a number of people in Britain seem to envisage the defeat of the West and even the occupation of Britain by Soviet troops. I wonder whether this defeatist prognostication is born of a secret wish to see the defeat and decline of the whole West.”

My response: Yes, Westerners, like other peoples and nations in history, become demoralized, defeatist and ready to surrender their hegemony, their superior cultural story and their cultural excellence when they are tired and have lost faith and hope, but these attitudes are largely a matter of choice. Why should the West decline, unless we give in first, thus making it inevitable? Why cannot we allow Mavellonialists and the Good Spirits to build a new West a world cultural of hope, strength, peace, freedom and prosperity, so the American Way becomes the World Way and we Westernize culturally, politically, economically people all over the globe?

H: “The decline of the British Empire seems to be having a more demoralizing effect on British intellectuals (who were supposedly anti-imperialist) than on businessmen. One wonders how much of ‘the unbought grace of life’ of the British intellectual was derived from the fact that British red covered half of the map of the world. They have seen this map from childhood and known the axiom that the British are natural rulers. They wish to see their own decline as part of a general, natural process.”

My response: I don’t deny that Hoffer is right that British intellectuals in the late 1950s were culturally gloomy and defeatist not just because the Empire was winding down, collapsing even. Rather they missed their divine right to rule the Third World..

I think if the individual is self-realizing, that is the best antidote to feeling gloomy, defeatist and despairing. If one self-realizes, loves the self and loves and serves the Good Spirits, there is no room for silly thoughts of despair, cultural suicide, cultural waning and death, Each individuator that takes action refutes that whole sorry worldview.

One Thing (Thought) Might Lead To Another idea

 

I am a follower of Ayn Rand and I like her epistemological and/or metaphysical trichotomy between the subjective, the intrinsic and the objective.

Still, I am not a true believer in subscribing to her views. For example, I am for metaphysical moderation, which allows me to assume that she is mostly right that we are born tabula rasa, but that our innate ideas and the makeup of our human natures strongly color and bend what genetics and environment hand us.

At least five intrinsic ideas which I feel but cannot prove are foundational ontologically in my thinking. First, God exists. Second, we are born more depraved than morally neutral or basically good. Third, the truth about the world is moderate more than extremist, too much or too little, and Rand is absolutist and totalist too much. Fourth, egoist morality is the most benevolent code of morality under which a human can make choices. Fifth, I do agree with Rand that as rational beings with free will, we must choose how to live.

Now, I want to highlight but two of these premises as having helped me reach some original conclusions about the nature of the Father and Mother, major deities and minor deities, all spiritually and morally good.

If moderate morality or moderate truth is the rubric that runs the universe, and God created the world, then God loves moderation more than extremism. Thus when Christians (or any other denominational backers) claim to be the one, true faith, that Jesus is the only way to heaven, and that all unbelievers and other-believers will burn in hell, they verge over into lying and extremism, which are demonic traits, proclamations and practices, alien too and resolutely repudiated by Jesus and all other good deities.

My ethics is rational egoism. If rational egoism is the preferred and promoted morality of all the good deities, then such a moral system informs the believer, or offers him a glimpse into God’s perfect or near perfect nature. If egoism is the divine moral code, then the good deities are egoists more than altruists, loners more than joiners, individuals more than collectivists

It was, over many decades, my latching onto foundational beliefs about moderation being the way to live and detect what is true and what is false, and that egoism is the finest moral standard available, then I somehow concluded that these two ontological realities inform us profoundly and substantively as to the nature and personality of the good deities.

I wish to hasten to reassure altruists, who conclude that egoism is selfishness and that God is pure love and pure self-sacrifice, that the divine egoists are the shepherds that guide their flocks, so the needs of the many and the lowly are provided for, and there is no contradiction inhering here, nor is the paradox of egoistic divinities caring for their flock, a problem at all. It is a pattern to emulate, an opportunity for growth, joy and love, and it is what the good divinities call us to do and live as, as living angels.

Summer Of 69

 

I was driving home alone from the lake on Sunday, 8/31/26, and I was listening to a classical rock station when the song, Summer of 69, cam on, the nostalgic song about love and lost youth, being the best days of the singer’s life. This great pop tune, by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance, and sung by Adams, got me to thinking.

Are the glory days of high school and one’s late teens and early twenties typically the best day of a young person’s life? Likely so, since the vast majority of adults of any race, any generation, are groupist and nonindividuators.

My take is that, if one would self-realize for a lifetime, then the day before one died would be the best day of one’s life. Just a thought.

Darlene Graham

 

Yesterday, 8/30/26, I was driving back to the Twin Cities from our lake cabin in Hubbard County. I was listening to a weekend roundup with Clay Travis and Buck Sexton on a Fox News radio station. I usually do not have a bone to pick with them but what they said about Darlene Graham, dismissing her scornfully as being wholly unfit, unworthy to serve as the new US Senator from South Carolina; their foolish remarks really irked me.

One of them depreciated her worth severely as unworthy to serve as South Carolina’s future US Senator.. They said she knew nothing, and implied she is not very bright, and that smart candidates make the best politicians.

It is true that she is under-informed, but I do not know that she is smart or not. Chuck Schumer likely is quite smart and politically very savvy, but few Senators have done some much to destroy America.

She is loyal to Trump, and that is valuable in a Senator. She should just admit she is an amateur but that she will hire excellent advisors, and that she will grow into the job, which she will if elected. She should reassure the voters disarmingly that her judgment is sound and wise, and that she will be a loyal backbencher for the Trump agenda. That is what she will do if elected, and that is precisely what we need.

Far more important to me than a political expert and being a Washingtonian insider is if she is a principled conservative who will vote as she promised the voters, that she will listen and often obey voter wishes, and that she will vote as she promised as a principled conservative.

There are many wicked but clever politicians who hate and hurt America once elected.

Psychic Pain

 

I recently hurt my lower back at work and now am undergoing treatment and physical therapy to restore my ability to work and live pain-free as I have usually enjoyed. When that pulled set of lumbar muscles were raging the pain was near unbearable.

Physical pain, chronic and ever less bearable when very intense, can wreck a person’s life. I have never much subscribed to the outlook that suffering and pain are ennobling beyond a certain point.

Chronic or severe pain is something I would like medical science, God or folk medicine to eradicate or lessen considerably.

This all got me considering that it is an oversight, a mistake not to contemplate that spiritual or psychic pain, chronic and mild or chronic and severe, might make people as much or even more unhappy than those suffering physical pain.

Spiritual or psychic pain, even endured long enough, for most people, especially nonindividuators, will deplete their self-esteem to such a low level, that resentful, grievance-mongering, self-loathing and loathing of others and the world is all that is left of that shattered self.

If that person does not get therapy, or get exorcised, or discipline the self in a strong, integrated, full mode, that person may become a living demon and act out accordingly.

Only a sense of gratitude, and a positive attitude, accompanied by love of God, the self, others and creation itself can reverse and reduce whatever level of psychic or spiritual pain afflicting that person.

Hoffer's Working And Thinking On The Waterfront, Pages 13-18

 

his blog entry is my writing out and commenting on Eric Hoffer’s content from Page 13 to through Page 18 of his book, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, June 1958—May 1959. Here it is:

Hoffer (H after this): “

June 22

Nine and three-quarter hours on the Hawaiian Wholesaler in Encinal. Steady grind but the loads moved slowly. A good bunch. I felt better at 6 P.M. than I did in the morning.

I spoke with a tall Montenegrin whom I call Negus. He is Communist in his sympathies, bitter about this country, chock-full of grievances, but we get along. I asked him how many years ago Stephen Dushan lived. He answered correctly: about six hundred years ago. I felt I could discuss with this barely literate Montenegrin some of the things I had learned from Diehl’s Byzantium. I pointed out that the Bible was translated into Serbian, Bulgarian, and Russian before it was translated into German, French, and English. How come? Because in the West the Catholic Church was an independent power, an imperial power, and it did not want to see the formation of national churches which might be promoted by a translation of the Bible into common speech.”

My response: Notice how the Catholic Church in the West had a totalitarian grip on all nations under its auspices, in ecclesiastical as well as in political arena. Centralized power kept the people down and controlled. Very corrupt and not from Jesus at all, though it was done in His name.

H: “On the other hand, the Byzantine church, being under the thumb of the Emperor, was interested solely in the Christianization of the warlike barbarians, and this could be effected most readily by the formation of national churches.

Eventually, national churches came into being also in the West, and nations crystallized around these churches. This is a significant point. The compact churchly organization of Christianity promoted nation formation, while Islam, being without a church organization, could not supply a nucleus for national crystallization. This suggests that compact Communist parties rather than promote internationalism may in the long run foster nationalist separation.”

My response: Hoffer may have been right to declare that compact Communist organizations within a subjugated nations could serve as a local nucleus for the rise of nationalist fervor and aspiration for local people to have their own country, their own identity.

H: “He was listening attentively and shaking his head, but I had no way of telling whether he got the hang of what I said. When I finished he shook my hand and said: ‘It is always wonderful to talk with you.’ Of one thing I am sure. He will always remember, and brag about it, that the Bible was translated into Serbian long before it was translated in English—that Serbian literature is more ancient than English literature.

Lili and the boy have been on my mind all these days. I am following a policy of restraint: to see them only once a week. I must not acquire the habit of seeing them too often. I am going to die alone, and it is too late in life to start feeling lonely.:

My response: It seems that Hoffer the great soul knew he needed mostly to live alone to keep his independence and creativity alive: he loved Lili and little Eric, but he may not have been able to live with them each day.

H: “The kink in my back is gone. Yesterday’s work did it. The world looks clean and fresh after last night’s rain. I have a long list of chores to do, and I am just getting ready to clean my room. Before starting I read the last few pages of Byzantium. I cannot tell as yet what I got out of the book. It needs vigor to last a thousand years.

5 P.M. Spent a hectic day getting things done. Now I am caught up. After a meal of lettuce salad and pea soup I sit down to drink a glass of tea and read. I happened to read the latest issue of the nation. Suddenly I threw it away as a distasteful thing (whining, self-righteous, carping, petulant) and turned to a new travel book by Lord Kinross. This is a continuation of his book on the interior of Asia Minor.

7 P.M. The second Kinross book, as far as I read, is inferior to the first. Since I am in the mood to make it easy for myself I switched to another book—a delightful one. It is a book of letters written by an American woman who lived in Jerusalem 1953-54. It is a warm, sensitive, honest book. My first reaction is: What delightful people Americans are. I ought perhaps to say fine people.”

My response: Yes, Americans over all are delightful and fine.

H: “And saying this I reflect that I certainly am not an American (hinting that he is an illegal immigrant, Ed Says?). Under similar circumstances I would have been neither delightful nor fine. Here she is among total strangers and she does not carp or criticize (Unlike the carping, foreign intellectuals visiting here, Ed Says), or betray the least trace of bad temper. The American’s capacity for fraternization is a noble feature, a true foretaste of the brotherhood of man.”

My response: Here is another Hofferian paradox which somehow is a true statement about Americans: on one hand Americans masses are capable of fraternizing and brotherhood as part of an enormous working class and middle class, and on the other hand, America’s capitalistic, individualistic culture offers an authentic brotherhood, only reachable and true as individualists cooperate and compete but not viciously or to set up strict social pecking orders, not as hierarchical and rigid as elsewhere in the world. The book is Letters from Jerusalem by Mary Clawson. I shall probably sit up all night reading it.

H; I spent 5 hours (8-1) with Lili and the boy. Lili is wholly herself and a joy to be with. The boy is of absorbing interest to me. Though almost three years old he is yet to me a stranger—someone from another world come to live among us. He is tireless, fairly clumsy, and can be wonderfully affectionate.

In the afternoon the doorbell rang and a young man came up. He is working for the U.S. Information Office, and seemed intelligent and alert. We talked about the backward countries and how terribly handicapped an American is when dealing with them. It is hopeless to try to win the weak over to our side.”

My response: The weak are groupist generally, fanatical and sadomasochistic, either those richer and more powerful beat and oppress them, or are cowering and defeated, ready and deserving to be overthrow and deprived of power, position, wealth and perhaps their lives. The weak see the world as a power struggle, either one is abject and defeated, or ascendant and ready to take over.

H: “We have no ideology to impart, no faith to propagate, and no pride we can share with others. We have much to give in skills and tangible things. We can teach backward people how to work and how to be efficient. But no backward country could ever identify itself with America and be won over completely to our side. How strange it is! The whole world is imitating us, is becoming Americanized, yet the countries that become like us tend to resent us. And the reason is that we cannot win the intellectuals, the men of words, the self-appointed spokesmen who stand between us and the millions we try to help. All the rudeness and biting comes from the intellectuals, and we must have the dossier of the intellectual from way back at our finger tips—from his first appearance as a scribe with the invention of writing. An American is more truly of the masses than any intellectual anywhere, and he can benefit the masses more than any intellectual can do.”

My response: What a rich paragraph, true and representative of Offer; he is correct that we cannot reach the masses of the Third World the American Way, the land of individualism, moral egoism-altruism, the land of capitalism, fabulous opportunity and much personal liberty.

When Hoffer write than an American is more truly of the masses everywhere than any intellectual anywhere, and that he can benefit the masses everywhere more than any intellectual can do, this is the case but those masses must become, each of them or most of them, individuating anarchist supercitizens in their own constitutional republic, bless with riches, capitalism and liberty—this updated version of the American Way as the global culture, political and economic system, locally blended by the natives with their way of life as they see fit—this is the world that Hoffer anticipated coming about after his death, as he sensed it come about eventually sensed it decades ago.

H: “June 25

Nine hours on the Pope & Talbot Leader at Howard Street. Nothing much to do all day, but the last hour was hectic—sewer pipe. Since I didn’t sleep enough last night I feel tired.

I saw today a gentle-spoken longshoreman whom I have not seen for over a year. He works most o the time on the Oakland side of the bay. He is afflicted with an eruption around his nose. It has become much worse now. The flesh of his face is being eaten away, and his eyes are lusterless and lost amidst the expanse of decomposition. I told him how glad I was to see him. It is difficult to visualize the suffering of the man, particularly his thoughts as he rises in the morning.

July 1

Nine hours on the Flying Enterprise at Pier 34. A busy day but not unpleasant. The work though steady was not rushed.

But morning and evening are now cold and wet, but the middle of the day has a warm brilliance. The bay as seen through the huge open door in the back of the dock seemed a fairyland. I don’t think a landscape can come into a room through a window. It can come in only through a door.

The fact that I accomplish little when I take time off disqualifies me as a writer. I do have an original idea now and then. If I hang on with all of my might, I eventually put together a few thousand words. The most crucial words are never at my service. I have to search and recruit them anew each time.

July 2

Followed the Flying Enterprise to Oakland. An easy day in warm weather. A discussion with several Slavonians on the relative merits of America and the Old Country. What it comes to is that this is not a country for the old. After twenty years in America, these Slavonians are still homesick for their native village. They are excellent workers—skilled and conscientious. They look healthy, and young for their age. But the American tempo grates on them. They talk of the ease and the slowness back home, and how men over fifty no longer work but sit around talking and sipping coffee, letting their children take care of things, and remain hale until they are eighty or more. Actually, none of these Slavonians would be happy if they went back. A few tried and rushed back to America. I mentioned the fact. One of them said: ‘It may be so, but it will be our greed that will drag us back.:

My response: The way of life is faster in America, but wealth and opportunity can help one rise economically if one will hustle here.

H: “Early this morning on my way to work I felt a burning pain in the arms. It seemed to me for a moment that had I been without this pain I would have been wholly happy. In a moment like this I realize how lucky we are when nothing at all—good or bad—happens to us.”

My response: It may be that Hoffer’s philosophical worldview is revealed here: Hoffer the Stoic suggests we are happiest when nothing at all good or bad happens to us on a given day, and this seems evidence of the Stoic outlook brought to my attention in a 2024 article by Philosopher Pedro Gonzalez.