Harmonious

 

On Page 14 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has three entries which I shall quote and then respond to.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “             15

 

For all we know, the wholly harmonious individual might be without the impulse to push on, and without the compulsion to strive for perfection in any department of life. There is always a chance that the perfect society will be a stagnant society.”

 

My response: Jordan Peterson has a nice comment somewhere where he recommends that the alert, developing person have one foot in the regular and known, and the other foot in the world of chaos and renewal, to stay fresh and future-oriented, while grounded in tradition and continuity, and that seems right to me.

 

We do not want to be too harmonious with the existing dispensation; nor do we want to adopt a revolutionary, nihilistic attitude towards the status quo unless it is corrupt and degrading beyond repair. Hoffer is implying that the misfits, malcontents, and true believers often shake things up, and that is necessary for human advancement.

 

I would not consider a stagnant society to be a perfect society but H is correct that with no desire to change, there is not advancement possible.

 

H: “        16

 

The best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we have to run from.”

 

My response: What we are running from is our real selves, which we were not strong enough or smart enough to cope with (unable to cope by choice and cowardice, not by a natural lack of talent or will); we then run away from a ruined private life, to live forever in a collectivity where the self is extinguished as the price of admission and occupancy, which we are only to eager to comply with.

 

H: “        17

 

There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into a creative impulse. The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.”

 

My response: Hoffer, the lover of common people, knew intuitively that they were endlessly talented and gifted, all of them. I share that optimism about people’s potential.

 

Here, Hoffer seems to contradict that optimism about many of the common people lacking that natural endowment to transmute inner dissatisfaction into creative work and output, that makes them reconciled with their selves, and thus they live pleasant, happy, meaningful lives of self-regard.

 

Those that fail to transmute their inner dissatisfaction into personal creative output and work do fail, not because they are less talented than those that succeed, but that they babied themselves, and gave up too early, too easily, when they were suffering doubts and initial setbacks. They are bound by God to try, try again for a lifetime. Some still not be creative, but most will be, and even the unsuccessful will gain sufficient, positive self-esteem because heroic struggle without shortcuts or relenting is  a magnificent personal gesture to do what one can, and one will then be self-esteeming and reconciled to the self, thereby transmuting self-dissatisfaction into self-regard, so there never was a need to settle for fielding a passionate state of mind as a revolutionary fanatic.