I have been reading Eric Hoffer for 46 years, and the selection that I read this morning came to me as a new, deeper meaning for his often used noun, misfit. This 2010 collection of Eric Hoffer's news articles is one of my favorite reads. Let me quote Hoffer from Page 89: "One can hardly exaggerate the role of the misplace persons--immigrants, exiles, outcasts, misfits--in human development.
It is well to remember that, compared with other animals, man is a misfit on this planet. He lacks the inborn skills and specialized organs which make other animals accomplished specialists, admirably adapted to their environment. It was the effort to finish himself, to fit into and master an inhospitable world, that released man's creative energies and made him uniquely human."
Humans are misfits that belong nowhere. We are not perfected, accomplished specialists like coyotes or cerulean warblers that fit comfortably and seamlessly into the ecosystems to which they are born to and adapted for. Nor are we pure, good angels or Good Spirits, followers of the Divine Couple effortlessly fitting with the heavenly hosts, their home and divine realm to which they belong and are welcome at.
We are alienated from earth and nature, and we are alienated from heaven and supernature. Born half beast and half angel, we belong nowhere, and do not fit in anywhere.
What are we do make of this difficulty? It is a curse and it is a blessing. It is a hopleless mess and a marvellous opportunity for the daring and imaginative. If we regard our fate as a curse, then we handle our misfitting status by turning to suicide, drugs, nihilism as murder and totalitarianism released from mass movement true believers desperately striving to escape reality and the truth about themselves.
Above Hoffer suggests that this misfitting clash for humans, neither beast or angel, and alienated from both groups, can release man's creative energies and make him uniquely human as he self-realizes (my phrase). This paradoxical, lonely, tortured existence as a smart creature separated from the animals and from the angels (Moderation is the unique human response to the internal clash, for each person, the clash between competing drives at work in the human creatures, and it can trigger artistic and intellectual growth, talent development and original thinking.).
Hoffer, the proto-moderate, anticipates that human misfitism is a great opportunity for those strong enough to undertake dealing with it.
The maverizers can grow and grow until she is a great soul, a living angel. Angels, whether innately perfect (mostly perfect) or so perfected by hard work over many years, will great and allow great souls to live with and fit with them. Humans will finally have found a home.
Jordan Peterson has borrowed from Asian metaphysics the old idea that the boundary between Yin (chaos) and Yang (order) is where we are to live, feel most fulfilled, discover meaning as we have taken up our responsibility to answer God's calling to us. Jordan's scenario here is not far removed from the dilemma faced by Hoffer's alienated misfit as he struggles to build a life for himself and he works on the building something out of his suffering and difficulties.
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