Cowardice

 

On Page 115 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes two entries which I quote and comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          203

 

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong it easily becomes a fashion.”

 

My response: Dennis Prager notes that most people lack courage and that this lack is devastating for moral well-being of individuals and for society as a whole.

 

We naturally hate ourselves, so that kind of weak, tepid personality is not going to engender a character resolute, able to stand out against social pressure.

 

We group-identify, and courage is a personal conviction, so this makes our natural proclivity to being cowardly, socially reinforced by being rewarded when we go along with group wishes over personal preference or stated values. Our docility and non-resistance is rewarded and we know it.

 

Then, as natural altruists and selfless creatures, we are cunning and selfish. We take the easy way out, and do what everyone else does and thus stay out of trouble. So capitulating does not serve our noble, long-term self-interest, and our capitulating serves neither us or society, but we took the quick, attractive resort for temporary gain, for temporary avoidance of unpleasantness.

 

If a community was populated by majority being individuating supercitizens, then being courageous would be the norm, as well as a social standard, and being courageous would be a desirable socially accepted advancement.

 

 

Hoffer: “          204

 

Those who proclaim the brotherhood of men fight every war as if it were a civil war.”

 

My response: It is the collectivists that hate those of rival tribes and groups, and it is the collectivists on both sides of a quarrel or war that shed so much blood in the name of cause and tribe. None are so cruel and bloodthirsty as the selfless, especially ideologues.