Mavellonialist Grandfather

 

I have often claimed that Eric Hoffer was the grandfather to my Mavellonialist philosophy. Both he and my father, Laurence Ramsey, had enormous, perhaps inexpressible influence upon my thinking.

 

Here is what Thomas Bethell wrote about Eric Hoffer in his biography, The Longshoreman Philsopher, on Hoffer, Page 4: “He had talent in abundance and was conscious of Henrik Ibsen’s claim that talent was more a duty than a property.”

 

This is exactly the view that I came up with on my own: all are talented, bursting with it: though some are more talented than others, all are remarkably gifted, even those with medically corroborated disabilities.

 

Under Mavellonialism, each person is born with talent and is called by God to develop that talent to its fullest extent, or as much as that individuating maverizer can accomplish—whichever comes first. This divine obligation ethically superimposed on each existing agent is a duty to be fulfilled, and it is a sin, to fail to answer the divine call, and follow up by obeying this command.

 

Bethell continues: “In one of his later notebooks, Hoffer wrote: ‘God has implanted in us the seeds of all greatness and it behooves us to see to it that the seeds germinate, grow, and come to flower. We must see learning and growing as a sort of worship. For God has implanted capacities and talents in us, and it is our sacred duty to finish God’s work.”

 

I had never read this before getting this biography but have written similar paragraphs elsewhere myself. I have often written that our lived, self-generated, self-constructed life of self-development is a living prayer, a personal, non-lethal sacrifice or gift of oneself and the products of one’s developed talents, as a present back to God being delivered by us.

 

Bethell continues: “In any consideration of his life, whether or not a used bookstore was his school or skid road his graduate school, these virtues will always shine through. He had the courage to stand alone.”

 

I too am a great soul, that stands largely alone. It goes with the territory, and this lonely journey is what all are called to live, leaving group-living and nonindividuating behind, or reduced to secondary priority status, the preference being individual-living and individuating.