Projecting

 

On Page 66 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries, which I quote and then will comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          110

 

When we are conscious of our worthlessness we naturally expect others to be finer and better than we are. If we then discover any similarity between them and us, we see it as irrefutable evidence of their worthlessness and inferiority. It is thus that with some people familiarity breeds contempt.”

 

My response: We are born groupist and with low-self-esteem; we naturally hate ourselves so we are well aware of our feelings of worthlessness, even if we are successful, popular and boastful in front of our peers. These powerful, natural, perennial feelings of inner worthlessness are how we are wired, and we strive desperately for some sense of worth to compensate for these feelings, to stay sane and dare to live for another day.

 

We believe others are superior to us until we interact with them and see their failings and shortcomings. Then we dismiss them as part of the brotherhood and sister hood of human sinners, as worthless and inferior just as we are, so we can then regard them with contempt as that is how we regard ourselves.

 

This is why I recommend moderate, rational egoism with an emphasis on maverizing as a person’s telos: this plan, if individually enacted freely by the self for the self, will give each person enough self-love and self-confidence to withstand persistent, welling-up-from-inside, permanent feelings of worthlessness.

 

Then we can cut ourselves and our neighbors a break.

 

Hoffer: “          111

 

What greater assurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?”

 

My response: If the weak, the frustrated, can escape into a mass movement, in its active phase, and these passionate fanatics and true believers are able to sweep the whole population along with them, then all have become wholly joiners, pure collectivists, adherents of the adopted holy cause. All such radicalized individuals are now weak and alienated from themselves and each other, though their sense of unity has never been greater, and cannot be increased.

 

How much better it would be for the weak and all citizens if they, the majority of them, were individuating supercitizens: then the formerly weak would be strong, healthy maverizers, and would be and feel that they were pretty much like everyone else, and the status of each citizen would be rather fine and admirable.