Blissful Ignorance

 

On Page 41 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries which I will quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “            58

 

Far more crucial than we know or do not know is what we don’t want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person’s nature by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions.”

 

My response: Hoffer is a genius for many reasons, but two salient traits that he repeatedly demonstrates is his keen psychological insight into the inner workings of human consciousness, and his psychological, sociological and ethical characterizations of people are objectively true and valid. He demonstrates this explicitly in what he writes, and implicitly in what the implications of what he writes are, and where the lead to reader to.

 

I presuppose that God exists and that the Divine Couple created humans to live individuating, individuated holy and virtuous lives, as do the Father and Mother each day. One cannot be spiritually and morally good unless what knows what is true and what is false, so once one knows how one is to act and proceed, one will then know the telos to work towards.

 

When any of us or each of us is unwilling to allow the Good Spirits to teach us what we do not want to know, to the degree that we personally reject their teaching, to that degree we are exiled from the presence of the good divinities, from prospects to maverize, to grow in spiritual and moral goodness. The life of the lie shuts off the ability to advance.

 

Hoffer: “            59

 

It is as though our inner self is always in a state of war. No totalitarian censor can approach the implacability of the censor who controls the line of communication between the outer world and our consciousness. Nothing is allowed to reach us which might weaken our confidence and lower our morale. To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats—we know it not.”

 

My response: The individual’s ability to allow in nothing that he does not want to hear, acknowledge, or deal with is amazing. The self-deceiver, unwilling and successful at keeping out any unwanted truth or bad news about the self, is a liar not only ontologically, but emotionally and conceptually too. He will not fare well. In quiet times he will despise himself in a mode of inner discontent; when his group cover is smashed, he will then ramp up his self-hatred to a white heat of frustration and agony, so he must find a new collectivity to escape into, right now.