Decision Free

 

 

 

On Page 53 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries which I will quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          85

 

There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses. Both the strong and the weak grasp at this alibi. The latter hide their malevolence under the virtue of obedience: they acted dishonorably because they had to obey orders. The strong, too, claim absolution by proclaiming themselves the chosen instrument of a higher power—God, history, fate, nation or humanity.”

 

My response: Here is another quote which, I conclude, puts Hoffer strongly in the camp of egoist ethics. Most or all of us feel that natural, powerful craving to deny personal responsibility for the cruel, vindictive, or hurtful things we say and do to others, blaming our misdeeds on the collective unit that we belong to.

 

The weak claim just to be obeying orders. The strong do evil in the name of God, history, fate, the nation, or humanity. It is their altruist morality, the ethics of immorality disguised as morality, that allows them to do evil openly without taking personal responsibility for their wickedness and wrongdoing.

 

Only when the young are reared with egoist-individualist morality, will we have a huge decline in wickedness in society, where quantitatively and qualitatively, most evil doing is a group effort, or is individually perpetrated by a criminal that is a joiner to his core.

 

Each person, as an individual is responsible for his wrongdoing, and each individual must wield self-care more than group-care to become and remain an ethical agent.

 

Hoffer: “          86

 

The awareness that the misfortunes which befall us are some sort of retribution for past transgressions often evokes in us a sense of relief. We are relieved of immediate responsibility for whatever it is that is happening to us. For if our difficulties can be ascribed to something that has happened in the past, they cannot serve as evidence of our present inadequacy and cannot blemish our self-confidence and self-esteem.”

 

My response: It is not clear when or to what degree, that the misfortunes we experience in this life are divine payback or punishment of us in this life for sins recently committed, but it is not alright to use suffering as an alibi for wrongs we committed prior to today and the evil we plan to commit tomorrow.

 

If we want self-esteem, we have to be loving, just, persons, kind to ourselves first, and then to others, afterwards. There are no workable alibis, no credible denial of responsibility for each behavior we elect to perform. We need to drop the excuses, man up, and shoulder our worldly duties directly going forward.