Self-Seeking

 

 

 

On Page 134 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer provides three entries which I quote and comment on.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          256

 

That which serves as a substitute for self-seeking may eventually serve as its camouflage.”

 

My response: When those idealists that claim to or do practice altruist morality, they cite their selfless generosity in service of humankind to improve conditions for all. Their brag that they are compassionate and love of humanity is their soul motive. Rather, social justice activism is their route to acquiring and amassing power for themselves and their holy cause.

 

Never underestimate how selfish the selfless are. Do not accept their self-assigned motive but look deeper with a tinge of skepticism.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          257

 

The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind.”

 

My response: One would hope that a person’s passion to get ahead is straightforward, a trustworthy self-announcement by an ambitious, industrious, eager-beaver young person willing to work hard and long to self-sacrifice for the sake of building an impressive career.

 

Hoffer has a clever knack for stating assumed or self-proclaimed motives that people offer the world, but he then looks deeper to seek what makes them tick, and to compare their actual motive against their self-assigned motive.

 

Most people are conformists and followers, so if the group is ambitious and stresses to its members that they should get ahead, then the contented and sleepy among the pack could be sufficiently aroused to work to get ahead, lest they be left behind, and cast out of their favorite group. That loss of status within that group is their genuine motive for whatever they choose to do, or what the group leaders order them to partake in.

 

Also, when people flee the self, sometimes rushing off into a new adventure is cover for a frantic, last-ditch attempt by the individual to escape from a spoiled life and an unwanted self.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          258

 

There is in imitation a passion for equality: to do as others do is to have blanket insurance that we shall not be left behind.”

 

My response: The passion for equality is almost always a force to compel people not to stand out from the herd; if we spend our lives imitating each other in line with specified group standards, role accepted and approved-of behaviors, we not only are not left behind, but we have a indestructible fortress around us, within which we hide, to avoid God’s summoning to be unequal and become remarkable and singular.

 

5322024

 

Hoffer C

 

In Common

 

On Page 135 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          259

 

It is chiefly by their commonness that people are held in common.”

 

What a delightful entry. Objectively speaking, people biologically have likely more in common as a species than how they differ as individuals. Essential human nature is shared by all.

 

But Hoffer is not referring to shared human commonness in that sense of the word. I think he uses the word commonness to capture and explain how people live in groups, group-living, group-identifying, nonindividuating and practicing their altruist-collectivist morality.

 

Their commonness has a slightly pejorative edge to it—referring to the masses as common, or plain, vanilla mediocrities, not real good or real bad, rarely exceptional, artistic or thinking giant, new thoughts.

 

It is this chosen lifestyle of group-living in common which holds the masses in common.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          260

 

Propaganda does not deceive the people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.”

 

My response: On one hand, I have long preached that each adult citizen should exist as a living angel: an anarchist individuating supercitizen. Such a life lived is predicated intimately and grounded on an accurate, immediate, ever-present, and ever-sought connection and understand of what is true, especially as communicated by the good deities which people worship.

 

Neither politicians nor public officials, nor totalitarian authorities, nor the demagogues and gurus spearheading their personal mass movement and its story, their holy cause, can deceive the people with their lies and propaganda, if and once the masses refuse to accept lies or propaganda internally told them, or externally fed to them.

 

Groupists and nonindividuators lead collective lies based on lies and falsehoods: they deceive themselves, then expect and even welcome the lies fed them by their leaders.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          261

 

Much of man’s thinking is propaganda of his appetites.”

 

My response: We love to deceive ourselves in order that we can justify sinning, and feeding our most basic desires and impulses, that provide us with instant if temporary gratification.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Knowledgeable

 

On Page 133 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes three entries which I quote and will comment on.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          253

 

Now that we know everything, we have also mastered the art of destroying the human spirit.”

 

My response: I believe Hoffer is being ironic or sarcastic when he states that we now know everything. He implies we do not know everything, because even if our scientific and technical knowledge were complete, or very advanced—and they are—we would not know much or have not learned much if we did not realize, as do the wise, that knowledge is a tool for good or evil, depending upon the good will or evil will of its applier or handler.

 

Even back in the 50s humans had learned enough about psychology—knowing ‘everything’—that they had mastered the art of destroying the human spirit. The great totalitarian collectivities and mass movements had mastered the art of soul-raping each victim, and millions of victims as a whole, as an ongoing project and mission that they proudly, self-righteously owned up to.

 

One cannot be sane, sensitive, or realistic if one can read of the atrocities committed during World War II by the Communists, the Fascists and the Japanese in China, and fail to conclude that humans have a real appetite and demented pleasure gained by controlling, degrading and hurting others as has been done historically. Only demons in the human heart can account for such extensive, perpetual malevolence.

 

 

 

Hoffer:  “         254

 

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.”

 

My response: It just occurred to me that one reason Hoffer is a kind man as well as an ethicist is that he was likely one of the most advanced proponents of human rights that ever lived.

 

Nature (having made us groupist, self-hating, altruistic, and resentful) set humans up to suffer, fail and live unhappy lives, as they are naturally constituted. Without a benevolent, individuating, good deity pushing egoist ethics, there are not societal forces strong enough or pervasive enough to offer free-willing, perhaps cooperating humans a humane alternative plan, insisting, that each citizen be treated with dignity and respect, and, correspondingly, that each individual treat other humans with dignity and respect.

 

This kind of benevolent egoism requires that each agent is to never soul-rape himself, nor soul-rape another person, or continue to tolerate being enslaved and abused even one second longer by others or collective units running society, whose leaders claim that they have every right morally, theologically, legally and politically to soul-rape themselves as individuals, or to serve the state, hierarchies, cliques or institutions that make it customary to soul-rape all people within their purview.

 

Hoffer implies this doctrine of individual human rights, and this is the source of his original, moral greatness.

 

As an afterthought, it came to me in a flash that human consciousness is part biological, material brain and part divine soul in each person—how this works (who knows?)—so if the mind is a soul, to rape that soul—by oneself or by the collectivities to which one belongs—is the violate that divine spark given us by our benevolent creators, and that is an insult to the Divine Couple, of enormous proportions and consequence.

 

 

Hoffer: “          255

 

Fear and freedom are mutually exclusive.”

 

My response: The individuating supercitizen of the future will be a woman of supreme yet practical, sensible self-confidence. She will still fear, but she wills to almost never allow her fear to dictate how she will conduct herself.

 

Such an exemplary woman is bred for being freedom and maverizing in a state of freedom; she can handle being free, and she thrives when free to do her thing.

Assumption

 

On Page 132 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer provides three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          250

 

It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.”

 

 

My response: People are always more subtle than they seem and no one, absolutely no one, is not overflowing with intelligence of some kind or several kinds, which feeds into their amazing creative potential, should they elect to work hard and maverize their innate blessings into artistic and original production.

 

People are born in ignorance, and only turn stupid when they refuse to learn, grow, and develop their natural gifts.

 

Hoffer likely is pointing out that people are less sensitive than they seem to indicate, that they often care less about, and are tuned into the needs and desires of others, than they are assumed to care; they are preoccupied mostly with their own issues and problems.

 

Another way to read Hoffer’s remark hear about people being less sensitive than they seem would be suggest that people usually are fairly inured to insults, rejection and setbacks in their daily wives, so disappointment and bad news probably do not much influence the one receiving bad news.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          251

 

There is probably as much effort involved in being exquisitely wicked as in being exquisitely good.”

 

My response: I have noticed that Hoffer and I usually track along similar lines of thinking regarding human nature and the human condition.

 

As an egoist, I note that most people are born corrupt, selfless, group-oriented, self-effacing and angry, but these average people as discontented, group-living nonindividuators, leading their daily lives of quiet desperation. Their groupist sinning and evil ways are collective phenomena of deep complexity. Joiners generally are evil more than they are good.

 

Individualists, mostly nonindividuators, are generally good more than they are evil, and a great-souled maverizer would be exquisitely good.

 

But great souled monsters like Hitler or Mao would be a kind of negative individualists or individuators—exquisitely wicked—would be strong individualists while still being utterly owned by and consumed by the group, society, or mass movement that they lead.

 

 

 

Hoffer:  “         252

 

The more zeal the less heart. It seems that when we put all our heart into something we are left as it were heartless.”

 

My response: I have long noted that the fanatic is zealous, passionate, ruthless, cruel, totalitarian, and capable of great, brutal cruelty. He is a pure joiner, and his altruist morality is absolutist.

 

The moderate is more rational, self-restraining, individualistic, egoistic, and tolerant of others thinking independently, making up their own mind, and exercising their free will without being punished for exercising it.

 

Here is a Ramseyian and Hofferian paradox that just reflects human nature: Humans that are moderate, more rational than emotional, are good, so they are more kind, merciful, have more heart.

 

Humans that are passionate fanatics, who stay in in their pack, and devoting their lives to promoting and extending the reach of their holy cause, are not good people, and they lack heart or mercy.

 

 

Not Tragic

 

 

On page 131 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          247

 

It is perhaps true that the hopeful cannot be tragic figures.”

 

My response: Hoffer seems to define those that are incurably optimistic as good people with perhaps a religious faith that has connected them to the Good Spirits and good deities. This loving and hopeful connection and orientation keeps them hopeful through encounters with problems, malevolence, bad luck, even tragic events experienced in their lives. Their faith or hope sustains them so they are not willing to let tragedy define them, as would a tragic figure that allows tragedy to shape his will and view of the world.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          248

 

We find it easy to exalt a person if by so doing we lower somewhat the already exalted.”

 

My response: Hoffer has a low opinion of people. They exalt someone of ability not out of admiration for his merit and talent objectively regarded. Rather they seek to exalt those that conform to the views of their clique: those that conform are to be exalted, and outsiders or insiders rebelling against prescribe group norms are to be humbled.

 

There is always an element of jealousy motivating groupist nonindividuators against those getting ahead, individuating in defiance of modest group expectations, and leaving the crowd of non-achievers behind.

 

Another groupist assumption that retards human development is that groups assume they have a right to interfere in and control the lives of each of its members, and this militates against personal striving to self-improve.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          249

 

Little discomforts are borne less willingly than great sacrifices. For the former only worsen the present while the latter refute it.”

 

My response: We are extreme creatures: we radically sacrifice ourselves and thus we feel we have conquered our unbearable present, burdensome existence.

Second In Importance

 

Yesterday, 5/26/2024, I wrote down a short video snippet of Dennis Prager talking about the flawed nature of people.

 

Here is my paraphrase of the video, posted on Facebook:

 

“The human being is flawed. This is a big issue of mine, that the second most important question is: Is human nature good?

 

The first most important question is: Does God exist?

 

If you believe people are basically good then you don’t fight your nature, and then the battle for a good world is lost.

 

One of the normative characteristics of human nature is cowardice. The vast majority of people are born cowards. You have to learn to be brave. Most people do not learn to be brave.

 

There are many nice people, many kind people, many honest people. There are very few courageous people.”

 

My response: I concur completely. Courage must be learned but it will not be learned unless adults teach children to be brave, that it is more important than being nice, kind and honest, all ethically very vital traits to develop and habituate in each child.

 

Prager is an ethical altruist, or a altruist/egoist. I am an ethical egoist, or moderately am an egoist/altruist.

 

People are born in sin, which means they are altruistic-collectivist naturally, more than egoist-individualist. This indicates that they hate themselves much more than they love themselves.

 

When people hate themselves, they are filled with dread, fear and anxiety, all traits consistent with a cowardly approach to life.

 

Only as individualistic individuating supercitizens will each child have the will of strength and goodness which ignites a courageous spirit in her so she can overcome her innate tendency to do what the crowd dictates, overruling her existent but weak conscience, nudging her to think for herself, to make her own decisions.

 

When people run in packs, practice the morality of selflessness, and group-identify, they will be cowards, for the most part.

 

The only time that groupists show fearless courage is when they are true believers serving in a mass movement to perpetuate and extend a holy cause across the land. But this fanatical, excessive courage is in service to the devil, spread evil, terror, and bloodshed to every citizen alive.

To Make People Good

 

Yesterday, 5/26/2024, I wrote down a short video snippet of Dennis Prager talking about the making people good.

 

Here is my paraphrase of the video, from one of his Fireside Chats: “This is the most important question. How do you make good people? Most people are not preoccupied with this question because they think people are basically good. All you have to do is give kids love.

 

But I have said all of my broadcast life of forty years, if all you give your child is love, all you will have is a well-loved barbarian.

 

Love is hardly enough: discipline, and guard rails and guidelines are actually more important even than love.

 

I am certainly a big fan of love; every normal person is.”

 

My response: I could not agree more; I would contribute my two cents that providing moral training—discipline, guard rails and guidelines are really  a form of parental love to civilize the savage heart of each child, so their natural goodness, present in each of them at birth, as a weak, recessive tendency, is strengthened until the child’s will is so used to being good, that the child wields a good will.

 

Conscience

 

Today, 5/27/2024, I wrote down a short video snippet of Dennis Prager talking about the conscience.

 

Here is my paraphrase: “The conscience we are born with needs to be developed similar to our minds. It takes considerations of these four things to make the conscience strong and effective at guided the self in making moral choices.

 

These four factors are: Truth, Courage, God, and Reason.”

 

My response: We are born basically depraved, uncivilized, lawless, violent beasts with some weak, modest aptitude for morally sensing right from wrong, but this weak aptitude must be developed by parents and society, in each growing child, so she is a responsible, ethical adult contributing to society’s well-being.

 

Irrationalist

 

It is perplexing and irritating Christians, that Jordan Peterson quotes Christ and the Bible all the time, exhorting and cajoling young men to “take up the cross” and assume as heavy a moral burden as they can sustain, and yet he will not answer a simple question, requiring a simple answer, are you a Christian or not.

 

I am below going to speculate freely about how I think Jordan views God, and why he is cagey in committing himself to declaring that he is a Christian or not.

 

Peterson likely knows the answer to that question, but he refuses to answer it, and I think he should and is obligated to do so, because he, as a public speaker, has gained lots of attention, approval, and money from millions of admiring Christians. He owes them an explanation, even if it is something like I believe in God, but the specific face, personality, name, and doctrines of a specific deity like Jesus are signifying a deity that I cannot worship at this time, or perhaps never.

 

Peterson also will not answer this question because he does not like being pigeonholed or owned by any group. If you accept a group’s label, accurate or not, then you must start conforming to standard, prescribed views, actions, and expectations consistent with their view of how to worship their deity. They mean well, but their group anticipations about proper individual member conformity in behavior and speech, restricts personal freedom, something cherished by an iconoclast like Jordan.

 

Peterson, the rational scientist and psychologist that believes in God, but is likely very uncomfortable with evangelical Christianity requiring him to surrender his whole being and will to Jesus. This communal, emotive, public expression of church feeling and group expressiveness is just something he is repelled by, and that is fine, for there are several paths to take to worship a good deity like Jesus.

 

Peterson is so aware of how important words are, so he uses them carefully. Still, he is overly cautious about declaring that he is a Christian or not.

 

I also see him as an existentialist, and there is an irrationalist and noncognitivist element in Jordan’s thinking that makes him believe and live as if the only honest and actual connection to God cannot be expressed in meaningful, logical, linguistic, declarative speech, but can only be declared as an authentic moral agent of good will acts out his faith ethically be behaving as nobly and dutifully as he can, fighting evil directly, personally, constantly.

 

This is what God and/or Jesus does and is, and by emulating such heroic, unselfish ethically ideal behavior by the worshiped divinity, in a small but solid fashion one does pure good, and that and that alone is one’s statement that one believes in God and follows God.

Dispassionate

 

On Page 130 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          244

 

Those incapable of reverence are incapable of hatred. And those of little faith are those of little hatred.”

 

My response: This entry is important for it reveals Hoffer’s moral theory. Those incapable of reverence, passionate devotion, or even wildly fervent support for a faith or cause cannot hate because they are not collectivized true believers whose emotional extremism is what makes them so sure they are right and the best. The self-hatred lived and felt by the true believer is pure and pulsating; he is passionate hatred personified, so that he hates better than anything else should come as no surprise to anyone.

 

I assume that the person of little faith need not be an agnostic, skeptic or atheist—though he could be any of the three—but he, if he is a believer in a religion or a cause, he is a tranquil, stoic, logical, mildly skeptical free thinker: this individual and individualist loves himself, so his modest faith in whatever he believes in will make him incapable of hating anyone or anything  very much.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          245

 

Hatred often speaks the language of hope.”

 

My response: Here is another famous Hofferian paradox. To be filled with hatred and to promote hatred intuitively seem to be destructive emotions that spread war, injustice, violence, destruction and suffering—and these actions make human prospects very bleak, without hope or promise.

 

Hoffer would agree with this assessment of hatred, but he is not referring to the idea that to hate is a hopeful action. He likely is substituting the suggestion that the hateful  campaign, being sold to a people by politicians or generals, or to true believers by the gurus and demagogues that rule them, as something noble, desirable and restorative, whereas it is totalitarian and dystopian.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          246

 

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.”

 

My response: I am an egoist, and I think Hoffer secretly or implicitly is a supporter of egoist morality. If self-esteem is a synonym for love (love of the self, love of others, love of God, love of the world), then self-contempt or egolessness or group-living is a synonym for hate (hatred of the self, hatred of others, hatred of God and love of Satan, hatred of the world).

 

Love has a natural odor—a sweet, appealing odor--that other humans and creatures can smell, feel, and intuit, perhaps reading body language. Dogs with their brilliant noses, 500 hundred times more powerful than human olfactory sense, may well smell goodness.

 

Hatred or evil as a natural odor—foul, rotted, spoiled, decaying, fecal.

 

It could be that a person of deep mystic faith, or telepathic prowess, could detect goodness or evil by its spiritual odor, which may or may not be the same as these two odors, naturally encountered and detected.

 

 

 

Confirmation Bias

 

On Pages 128 and 129 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has six entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          238

 

We usually see only the things we are looking for—so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.”

 

My response: If one is to individuate, then one must get to know oneself well and in depth. This is only possible when one seeks out, embraces the truth, and then struggles mightily and consistently to correct oneself to become a smart, better more honest person and individuator.

 

Each person is born in sin, in ignorance, in arrogance and stubbornness, rebellion against God; each person favors lies and fantasies about how perfect she is, versus the cold, sober truth about who and what she is, and how pathetic, mediocre, and unremarkable she is at the point. She could easily see only evidence that supports her view. She may even dream up evidence that never existed in reality.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          239

 

The fervor which prompts us to renounce and destroy is not one of denial but assertion. The iconoclast is often more idolatrous than the idol worshiper.”

 

My response: Occasionally Hoffer lays out one of these entries that I do not know how to translate, and this was a doozy.

 

Hoffer seems to be reminding us that the iconoclast is rejecting the standing cultural and social order with militant assertion and melodramatic, even loud finality. It could be that the iconoclast worships his own ego or his insight as being of more exalted importance and consequence than it actually deserves or merits.

 

Some rebels are just malcontents, haters of humanity, sickened by rage, power-lust, and the urge to get revenge, to hurt, to tear down, to smash. These radicals are to be thwarted or at least ignored and kept from gaining power or too many followers.

 

 

 

Hoffer:  “         240

 

Sometimes the means we use to hide a thing only serve to advertise it.”

 

My response: We often think we are resourceful and clever, and we sometimes are able to conceal our crimes, but often we slip up, and it becomes quite evident that the world is onto us.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          241

 

Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

 

My response: I discovered some time back, that rudeness is social misbehavior of special significance to Hoffer’s moral arrangement.  He is a moderate and moderation is good, and individualism is good. People should be healthily, temperately sentimental or feel, but not passionate or obsessive.

 

Where people run in packs, loathe themselves and seek true-believership in a mass movement to promote and expand the reach of their cherished holy cause, their selflessness and self-sacrifice is pure, total, irreversible and permanent.

 

People of such fanatical, enthusiastic orientation necessarily are wicked, unpleasant, and cruel. They are rude to themselves, to each other and outsiders because they just do not feel good, and do not feel good about their lives and what they have become, though they will stay united and champion their holy cause as the modern miracle to be enjoyed by all.

 

 

Hoffer: “          242

 

We feel free when we escape—even if it is but from the frying pan into the fire.”

 

My response: We cannot for long or at all escape our destiny: to serve and obey God by maverizing as a living angel: to choose to evade this command is what leads people to suffer more than necessary, and perhaps to end up in hell after death.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          243

 

We are unified both by hating in common and being hated in common.”

 

My response: Hatred is a powerful cementing force: when we hate a scapegoat in common with our group-associates or are hated and discriminated against by some rival group, we are united and grow very close to one another.

 

This is negative unity, based on hatred, which is selfless and self-loathing, an altruistic and group phenomenon or condition.

 

Positive unity that grows out of love of self and others—that unity is possible to congeal between people, but it is unnatural, flimsy and easily shattered. People of good will must really want to unite and stay united, to make this unity a continuous, even permanent reality.

Gracefully

 

On Page 127 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          235

 

The best part of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.”

 

My response: We are mortal, our time on earth in incredibly brief, and then we are gone. This reality should permeate our consciousness by the time we are 22 years old, so we get going, self-realize and make something brilliant and remarkable with our efforts.

 

We should go 80 miles an hour until our last breath, living life to the fullest and having a blast.

 

Yet, we should age gracefully, if we can manage it, perhaps mellowing a bit, not taking ourselves, life, or others quite so seriously, while still maverizing.

 

 

Hoffer:   “        236

 

There is a sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has, and we are his.”

 

My response: It may well be that the generous person, not just with his time, but his respect, his regard and his money, whether he is motivated by self-interest or other-interest, is just a loving, kind person, and that warms the grateful hearts of most normal people.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          237

 

The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.”

 

 

My response: Each of us do make a difference and our efforts matter; we must stand tall, fight for what is right, and make the world just a little bit better.

 

 

 

 

Jolted Awake

 

On Page 126 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          232

 

We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.”

 

My response: The less developed the sane adult of average intelligence is, in terms of coming to know herself, to be in touch with God and reality, and to live the individuating lifestyle, the mode of high existing whereat the individual’s unity of apperception, or self-consciousness as an integrated psyche, the more will she be existing in a world of fantasy, deceit, lies and dreams. Though that crude state of personal consciousness or awakeness is painful and unfulfilling, it is also comforting and requires no effort, no need for the slacker to rouse herself and get moving.

 

When someone jolts us into awakeness, gets us going, and helps us begin to build a prosperous, responsible, adult life, part of us resents them for smashing our comforting dreams, our beloved life of fantasy and little consequence or exertion.

 

 

Hoffer: “          233

 

Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.”

 

My response: This is perhaps the clearest, most poignant definition of the ethical law of moderation that has ever been written. Hoffer the moderate nails it again.

 

 

Hoffer: “          234

 

Some watch others to learn what to do and some watch to learn what not to do.”

 

My response: I have often remarked to my boss and coworkers that a smart, effective employee knows what to do (show up, behave, do the work, and watch one’s mouth and temper) but also knows what not to do, to stay out of trouble.

 

It might be that a wise, with-it teenager would watch others to learn what to do and what not do, and, thus builds a popular, successful life, minimizing getting into trouble or looking for trouble.

The Loss

 

 

On Page 125 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          229

 

We like to give but hate to lose. What affects is most is the gain and the loss not in substance but in self-esteem.”

 

My response: Hoffer the brilliant psychologist recognizes that no human being can go on living without pride in the self, be that pride fake, a lie, based upon the holy cause one serves as a true believer, or a true, solid, positive pride based on a life well lived morally, where one is fit, competent productive, actually making a difference for the better in the world.

 

We can be generous and give time, money, and resources to others; we are not entirely selfish as the selfless joiners that we are.

 

What impacts or hurts us much more is to lose self-esteem, be it fake, collectivist pride born of bad faith and a bad will, or constructive personal pride or self-esteem, grounded in self-love and personal accomplishment, where one is a person of good will, acting in good faith, betters himself, and the world at the same time, by the same efforts.

 

Hoffer: “          230

 

It is not at all simple to understand the simple.”

 

My response: All of reality can be rationally and empirically studied, defined, and quantified in ways are cognitively meaningful, linguistically communicable, and truth-apt. At times, the nature of reality and the people operating within it can be understood and linguistically characterized with certain truth. Other times it is less obvious what is and what is going on, and, often things are very complex, and we just do not yet have the science, the concept, the words, in short the understanding to capture the essence of what we are observing and experiencing.

 

Ayn Rand, in her epistemology, mentions something like this, that brute or foundational objects, facts and concepts are so basic and original, that they cannot be explained or characterized in terms of causes going back beyond them. These axioms or axiomatic objects are just to be ostensively pointed to and named, and that is as far as humans can go, for now or perhaps ever—though God can and does go much farther than we ever could.

 

It might be that this is what Hoffer is alluding to when he writes that it is not at all simple to understand the simple, for each particular, person, idea, event and object is singular and unique on the one hand, and yet related to everything else and Objective Reality, on the other hand.

 

 

Hoffer: “          231

 

The fear of becoming a ‘has been’ keeps some people from becoming anything.”

 

My response: We lack self-esteem, self-love, courage, will, nerve, ambition, and the willingness to work, from birth, but all these positive character traits can be strengthened until they are our primary, consistent personality characteristics.

 

At that point, if we choose to listen to the Good Spirits, and serve our final cause, to live as an individuating, living angel, serving to grow God’s kingdom on earth, at that point we no longer worry about once having been great and famous, and later lapsing into has-been stature as other surpass us.

 

Success, in God’s eyes, is personally maverizing, and getting as far as one can before one dies, and that is acceptable in God’s eye; to remain nothing, and never do anything is what God frowns upon and will punish us for not doing.

Lonely

 

 

On Page 123 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          223

 

There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.”

 

My response: I have often thought that loneliness is estrangement from God, or truth, or being or love. That being established, it makes sense that God the Individuator and competent, successful Achiever would rarely or never feel lonely, because God likely rarely fails at what De works at.

 

When the individual does not individuate or does not succeed at individuating, he is, in a sense the anti-God, so his loneliness will be deep, unshakable and very painful for this failure not fitting even in his own house.

 

 

Hoffer: “          224

 

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous.”

 

My response: The bored are not bored so much because the novelty of routine has worn thin for them, but because they have experienced so many new, exciting pleasurable experiences, that they all seem the same afterwhile. This person needs routine, work, and responsibility to feel fresh and renewed each day.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          225

 

Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.”

 

My response: When one is a true believer, a pure joiner and nonindividuator, then one has no self-esteem. When one lacks self-esteem, the self must be filled with self-hatred and passionate hatred towards others, God and Being itself.

That hater knows she is worthless and nothing, but her sense of pride will not live with that at face value, so she discovers vicarious self-esteem in advocating a holy cause. If you took away her hatred, she would have nothing left at all, including the holy cause that she has sacrificed everything to serve.

A morally good religious faith is heartfelt and rational love for a good deity, and the belief that inhere there have little to do with a bad faith.

One kind of bad religious faith is open devil-worship. A more common and misleading, popular kind of bad religious faith is one whose followers are extremists. These fanatics will spread the faith by utilizing the sword and the torture rack to gain converts, and they feel righteous and good blessed for so conducting themselves, these true-believing, passionate, or emotionally excessive, melodramatic posturing, hyperbolic, spouters of absolutist rhetoric or ideological hatred of anyone.

Questioned

 

 

On Page 122 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          220

 

To spell out the obvious is often to call it into question.”

 

That which is customary, or routine is so familiar that it is unquestioned backdrop. To spell out the obvious is the highlight the routine and obvious in a new way to highlight some fascinating facet of it heretofore not detected, or to criticize the normalcy of some unjust tradition.

 

 

Hoffer: “          221

 

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of things they do not want to do.”

 

My response: It leaves an indelible mark on our souls, not to do what we want to do and were born to do. After time has passed; our self-contempt will be a regular feature in our personal psychology. Nothing makes us feel so empty and weary as goals left unmet.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          222

 

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

 

My response: Discover how he attacks you, and then turn the tables on him.

Bereft

 

5222024

 

Hoffer C

 

Bereft

 

On Page 121 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer  has three entries which I quote and then  comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          217

 

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.”

 

My response: If we try harder to hide our emptiness than we do our evil and our ugliness, that tells me that we have a darn good moral reason to hide our emptiness. It would seem to suggest that being evil or ugly imply that the grievious sinners still possesses some individuality or personality, and the individual is good, and the group is sinful, unless tightly restricted, managed and minimized.

 

Where one is invisible, empty with no personality at all, that person is a black hole of pure evil and concentrated self-despising; that wretched state must  be kept hidden.

 

 

Hoffer: “          218

 

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.”

 

My response: Our passions, urges, phobias and desperate seeking for pride of any kind—no matter how unmerited—these emotional drivers of low human behavior make group-oriented masses susceptible to being charmed and manipulated by wily gurus and demagogues.

 

 

Hoffer:  “         219

 

Man staggers through his life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.”

 

My response: It is natural and understandable that a person would seek to self-forget and escape into consciousness oblivion which being immersed inside a collectivity provides, but that is not living, individuating, or existing as a responsible adult, when one yields to self-surrender and evasion of duty.

Selfless

 

There are three entries below which I quote and then comment on, and they are from Page 120 of Eric Hoffer’s book, The Passionate State of Mind.

 

 

Hoffer: “          214

 

Selflessness is not infrequently a temporary regimen to which we submit in order to fortify and reinvigorate our selfishness.”

 

My response: I have been maintaining for some time that the selfess altruist is much more selfish—usually in some socially harmful manner—than the self-interested individual.

 

 

Hoffer: “          215

 

To know  a person’s religionwe need not listen to his profession of faith but find his brand of intolerance.”

 

My response: Our religious choice may matter less than if our adherence to this faith is rational and temperate, or passionate, extreme and intolerant.

 

A good religion is one that we believe in and practice moderately. A bad religion is one that we belief in and practice with all the evident zeal of a true believer.

 

 

Hoffer: “          216

 

Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.”

 

My response: Hoffer the moderate dislikes true believers, passionate zealots, and ideologues with their mass movements and holy causes.

 

Those that claim to know absolute truth are just lying again, and malice motivates their slanderous, exaggerating tongues-a-wagging.

 

There may be absolute truths but they are not known or quoted by zealot

Is He Christian?

 

 

It seems like my intellectual interests keep multiplying, to the point that I could lose focus and get nothing done. To prevent that, I have had to scale back my ambitions and tendency to digress. I am doing a translation/interpretation of Eric Hoffer’s written and published views on my blog site, a page at a time, and that is my primary interest this summer. Right now, I am deeply into my interpretation of what he thinks and writes in his book, The Passionate State of Mind.

 

Still, below, I will digress, because I think this needs immediate addressing. What is this pressing question? It is the podcast world which is whirling about with speculation about Jordan Peterson’s religious beliefs. He is angering Christian with his nearly coy, cagey, sophisticated evasions as to whether he believes in God, whether he believes that Jesus Christ is God, whether or not, he, Peterson is a Christian, and has and will he surrender his life to Jesus, and declare openly, forever, his belief that Christ is God and Christ is his Savior.

 

Christians, bluntly speaking, are demanding answers to these questions from Peterson: does he believe in God? Does he worship Christ as his Savior, and will he surrender his life to Jesus? I criticize Peterson for not answering Christians directly. They have asked and he should answer simply, clearly, and affirm what does he believe.

 

Peterson, like me, is a moderate and he believes the universe is complex, dualistic, both-and, and he thinks this principle of moderation applies metaphysically, naturally, spiritually, and ethically. This suggests that his direct answer to Christians, to their relevant questions, might not be straightforward or without qualification or context, but he should be honest about his complex relationship with Christ.

 

He is somewhat a Buddhist, seeing life as well-lived only when the individual straddles that line cutting right down the middle of Being, and this demarcation, a symbol of infinity, and of  Yin, the Feminine, the Collective and Chaos are on one side of the demarcation, and of Yang, the Masculine, the Individual, and Order are on the other side of the line, is the line that Jordan walks along in life..

 

Peterson is a strong individualist, though he seems to be espousing altruist ethics and self-sacrifice these days.

 

He is a respected, published scientist and psychologist from the world of fact and experience, and, yet, he is a metaphysician, that believes that spiritual good and evil exist, that the human can only believe and worship Christ if they fight evil directly and personally.

 

Peterson is also a Jungian theologian and Jungian interpreter of what the divinity is, and how one should interact with that deity, and how one should characterize that deity, one’s relationship with that deity or what one believes about that deity.

 

Peterson is a scientist, ethicist, metaphysician, and psychologist with very complex ideas about who God is and what, he, Peterson, thinks about God. Peterson might be a cultural Christian, or a sympathizer and admirer of Christ as a mortal teacher, while denying that Jesus was God. He needs to let Christians know if he, Peterson, believes Jesus exists, is divine, and if Peterson can relate to Jesus—assuming he thinks Jesus exists, as divine, and to be surrendered too—as his Lord.

 

Peterson must communicate to Christians what he believes and should state so as clearly and concisely as he can. It would be better to tell Christians that he is not a Christian, or that he does not believe Jesus is God, than to play cute verbal games. That angers Christians and risks offending Christ; Jesus is a good, powerful deity and capable of divine wrath, so it is ill-advised for Peterson or anyone else to be playing evasion games with Christ .

 

Peterson’s Christian supporters would forgive his being but an agnostic cultural Christian, if that is who Peterson is, but he needs to be clear and clean up this mess right away.

 

Yesterday (5/21/24), Brandon Estrada, a Christian podcaster on Instagram, put out an 11-minute video on Peterson entitled: Unexpected: Jordan Peterson Gives His Official Stance on Jesus.

 

I think Peterson is a good man and a brilliant thinker, as well an individualist, so Christians need to cut him some slack, and he needs to be forthright with them.

 

I take some quick, incomplete, paraphrased notes on what Peterson, his interviewer Sean Ryan, and what Estrada commented about Peterson’s religious take as state by him to Ryan in the Ryan-Peterson interview.

 

Estrada (E after this): Estrada comments on Peterson’s recent interview with Sean Ryan that they discuss God, the Bible and faith.

 

Ryan (R after this): “You talk a lot about the Bible. You do not like to answer the question about your beliefs about God. What do you believe? Do you believe in God?”

 

Peterson (P after this): “The thing about God is not something you believe in.”

 

My response: No, the thing about God is that you believe in God or not, and you should make your beliefs known before humans, and that is a moral duty.

 

P: “Our views on religious belief are shallow. To believe in God is not what you state but is how you live your life, not mere statement that I believe in God”

 

My response: Religious belief is not shallow, nor is the statement of that belief inherently shallow; one needs to take a stand, declare belief in God or not, or what deity one is serving or not.

 

Peterson is correct that religious belief is not just a linguistic declaration of belief, but that linguistic declaration is critical and vital to believing, and one must make it openly and clearly, which Peterson refuses to commit to.

 

Peterson is an existentialist: he beliefs that one must radically commit to living a good life, even when it is dangerous. Spiritual and moral evil exists, as does spiritual and moral goodness, and each person serves an evil deity or a good deity. Which one one serves is how one acts, and that is religious belief implicitly stated, not what one declares and announces about belief on the surface.

 

I think Peterson thinks Jesus is divine, but that Peterson the moderate, the Deist, the quirky undeclared kind of Unitarian-Universalist that he is, does not want to declare his belief in Jesus because that is surrendering his life, soul, and independence to Jesus, and he is unwilling to worship Jesus exclusively.

 

This likely being the case, the usually articulate Peterson, so clumsy and inarticulate in sharing his views about his belief in Christ with his Christian followers—and also being coy because he does not want to be yelled at by his Christian followers and fans—must bluntly state that he could worship Christ as he does right now, but not worship Christ exclusively. Peterson, for the sake of his soul being saved, and his reputation no longer be trashed for being playful and evasive  because he does not want to lose his secular, scientific, atheistic followers or his Christian fans, should just come out and say he is a modest dedicated believing Christian, or a most sympathetic cultural Christian that worships many good deities including Christ, but also other than Christ—Peterson owes everyone this explanation, or he is going to lose respect from all quarters.

 

He is a secular scientist and potential atheist or part deist theologically, and he is a sacred believer and follower of Jesus and Buddha in the other part of his complex orientation to divinities, but, he is genuinely and moderately both, and he should tell the world this explicitly. He can be a theological moderate, and Jesus and all good deities are okay with that.

 

I think Jordan is saved and in good grace with God and Jesus as he is, but he could be angering the good deities by not making clear his moderate orientation. Say what you are, be what you are, live as you are, and let the world deal with it—that is their problem, not Jordan’s and he must tell them the truth, always or near always.

 

Peterson and no one else out there knows that I exist and write, but, if he did, my Mavellonialism thought could help him formulate his response to Christians in a more clear, coherent manner. Jordan the scientist and the religious believer is a moderate and a conservative Unitarian-Universalist. He is also an intellectual, an original thinker, a great soul, individualist and individuators who believes and practices rational religion.

 

A rational religionist, who is an individualist and critical thinker, would have some problems with the fundamentalist, emotional, complete surrender of the self to Jesus the divinity, stating and accepting that Christ is Lord, and that one’s entire self and life is wholly given up to Christ, and that Christ runs it all: one faithfully, emotionally and fatalistically submits and thinks independently no more and does not try to solve problems on one’s own, if one is  to live as a believer in a good deity, not to fight evil on one’s own.

 

Peterson and I might believe that the ethical agent can only be ethical as an individualist and egoist, and that this is how one should do religion too. I think Jordan believes these above-presented objections as I do, but is not conscious of them, or is not entering them fully into his religious arguments.

 

 Jordan admires Christian altruist self-sacrifice and taking on ethical duty, while disliking evangelical insistence that the individual surrender his independence, his consciousness, his selfhood, and his life as a grand statement or gesture of emotional complete surrender to and dependence on Christ, allowing this divinity to run every aspect of one’s life. Peterson the Moderate wants to hold back because he believes he should hold back as an ego, an individual, to not surrender completely any good deity, and I think this is an consideration in his  unwillingness to declare that he is Christian, for he does not want to lose his individuality as a Christian believer, as was required in the old days. To believe is to lose the self is what seems suggested by and insisted upon by the current fundamentalists and evangelicals. One must admit they have much scriptural evidence to support their interpretation of what Christ requires from a follower.

 

As an ethical moderate and theological moderate, and as an ethical egoist, I think God exists, and that the Mother, the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Good Spirits and other specifically named good deities are all individualists and individuators that create and self-realize and that is what they expect of all human children, including Christians.

 

Rational religion or scientific religion is the way of the future, but the pietistic, faith only, evangelical, fundamentalist, emotional, subjective strands of believing still should be there as minority religious orientations and approaches to the divinities, while as religions individuators, believers should rationally worship the good deities.

 

There is no one true faith but there are many fine faiths, of which Christianity is one of the finest.

 

P: “So you say you believe that Christ is God. You have made that commitment. Really? That is a most difficult commitment: you must hoist up the cross as Christ did, taking on painful, unjust death accompanied by betrayal, the perfidy of the mob and the dominion of the tyrant. You are going to welcome that. And that is not all because Christ harrows hell. That is not all. That is just where it starts: it encompasses full confrontation with malevolence.”

 

My response: Jordan better than anyone understands that one is not ethically chasing after virtue, serious about finding truth and living truth, or worshiping and believing in the good deity that one openly states that one is allied with and works for—we are only virtuous and holy if we live being good and confronting spiritual evil directly; our virtuous action is our statement of faith and is our faith.

 

He has convinced me that we know God and get to heaven through faith and works together; we cannot be or do one without the other, and we should worship many good deities at the same time as rational religionists and we all coexist peacefully and tolerate really tolerate each other though we disagree and agree to disagree and Jesus and the other good deities expect us to conduct ourselves in this harmonious manner.

E: “Jordan needs to surrender himself to Christ not just lead a good life.”

 

My response: As a partial believer in Christ as a rational religionist, Jordan should surrender himself to Christ in part, and being as Jordan and Christs are individualists and individuators, that partial surrender is fine. If one chooses emotional full surrender as do fundamentalists that worship only Jesus, Jesus is fine with that too as long as the ardent remain tolerant and not for attacking practitioners of other good holy faiths.

 

Generally, Jesus the Son of God, the rational religionists and individuators, just now revealed as such under Mavellonialist thinking, would favor that people surrender themselves genuinely but quietly and temperately while maverizing and running their own lives and affairs most of the time.

 

E: “Christ has saved people though we are not perfect, cannot being perfect even after we surrender ourselves to Christ, and we will never be perfect. God’s grace is a process of sanctification. Sadly, we will still sin and fall short of God’s glory. Peterson urges that the full embrace of goodness is to confront evil directly and joyfully, to bring it on.”

 

My response: Peterson is correct in noting that few have the courage to radically embrace goodness by confronting evil directly and joyfully, inviting demons to attack. I counter that only as individuators and believers will humans have the courage to live so radically ethical and holy lives. Traditional Christian nonindividuators, groupists and joiners, victims of the morality of selflessness, group rights, group identity and self-sacrifice are likely to remain gullible, fatalistic, conformist, cowed timid sheep.

 

E: “Jordan is not ready to surrender himself to Christ, but we are saved by the grace of God, not by our works. Peterson is trying to do it on his own, but it can only be done by the Lord.”

 

My response: Peterson is right and lauded by Jesus by trying to do it on his own, but we also we are saved by God’s grace, plus our own efforts, but God has to do it for us too.

 

E: Let God fill you with His spirit so you can enjoy a full surrender to Christ.”

 

My response: I think Peterson is a good man ethically and spiritually and is saved as he is, but he still owes Christians strong, clear explanations right now.

 

In some other website interview, Peterson claims that sacrifice is the basis of the community, where is no longer all about you. Voluntary self-sacrifice is the basis of stable psychean state.

 

As an egoist-individualist I disagree with Peterson the altruist, but his idea of self-sacrifice as a secondary moral emphasis is acceptable, even laudable.