Unfit

 

On Page 101 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has one entry which I quote and comment upon.

 

Hoffer: “          179

 

When a situation is so unprecedented that no amount of knowledge or experience is adequate to master it, then the ignorant and inexperienced are more fit to deal with it than the learned and experienced. The unknown and untried give as it were a special fitness to the unfit.”

 

My response: It is probably good, over all that things change, and change, within traditional culture, especially is life-giving and invigorating.

 

Hoffer is correct that the unfit, the ignorant and inexperienced, in contrast to the fit, knowledgeable and experienced, are more fit in dealing with the wholly new, the wholly unprecedented, and it could well be that that special fitness of the unfit, to lead the way to teach the “fit” masses that belong and thrive in the status quo, equipped only to survive and flourish with the knowledge, skills and experience which they have accrued in the old dispensation, has survival value as the unfit, now in their element of chaos, social breakdown and lawlessness, stumble around until they accidentally stumble upon some means of coping with the coming dispensation, a successful pattern of reacting that the whole society will then imitate. In the new dispensation some will fit, and some will not, as in the past.

 

I would recommend here, as I have elsewhere, that we rear up our children as individuating supercitizens. These winners will be of high intelligence and possess immense practical wisdom, innovative adaptability, and a calm, stoic demean so they can endure and come through any disaster, war, plague, depression, invasion or dispensation implosion without panicking or stampeding, with no reason to hate the self—allowing self-disaffection to upend society, no reason to flee into self-abnegating service in the closes mass movement or holy cause.

 

Where a whole generation is each one fit within herself, and confidence, tranquil, competent and versatile to handle in a leisurely, quiet, effective and undramatic manner whatever comes her way, she and her neighbors conscious can and will calm, direct and curb their urge to panic,  order the self instead to pledge and work ceaselessly to keep the peace, law and order, until the features of the new situation become known, so they can, by slow experimentation, learn the best ways to cope with and survive the new dispensation.

 

When fit individuating supercitizens become inept because their world blew up, they are best fit and positioned to survive the painful transition and readjust at room temperature to set up a replacement dispensation with minimum fuss, limited suffering of limited and duration. A functioning, democratic new dispensation can be constructed by the people for the people: this new order can be brought up rather quickly without mass movements, civil war, totalitarian governance or world war.