Secretiveness

 

On Page 108 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has one entry which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          192

 

Secretiveness can be a source of pride. It is a paradox that secretiveness plays the same role as boasting: both are engaged in the creation of disguise. Boasting tries to create an imaginary self, while secretiveness gives us the exhilarating feeling of being princes disguised in meekness. Of the two, secretiveness is the most difficult and the most effective. For in the self-observant boasting breeds self-contempt. Yet it is as Spinoza said: ‘Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.’”

 

My response: The boaster is insecure and gains a false sense of pride by excessively exalting himself, and the secretive introvert is thrilled by working in secret, just knowing how excellent he is, though he comes across as the most modest person in the entire community.

 

The secretive seem modest and are liked because they are so common and humble.

 

I think too that groupists, all or almost all, on some level—to varying degrees--are satanists. Social collectivities are satanic centers of influence and monopoly. Group insiders share this smug feeling of being in the know—and they are in the know—as to the schemes, plans and games engaged in by the group and its loyal adherents to know victory in clashes with rival groups and dissenting individualists.

 

It is impossible for a maverick to fully grasp how ill-intentioned, and conniving are the surrounding groupists—that they really do not mean him well at all. He has no inkling as to their intentions, and these secret plotters, undetected and scurrying about in the dark, usually are underhanded and replete with bad motives.

 

The groupists around him will attack from any angle at any time. They know their agenda and he does not, and their self-satisfaction over enjoying his dilemma: they know the group’s plans and he, the disadvantaged outsider, is unaware of their secret ambitions. Their mutual sense of union and alliance is powerfully reinforced by their realization that they are the select few sharing secret knowledge: they prize this group-constructed status of exclusive membership in a clandestine brotherhood: their sense is huge, their sense of false pride gained by being in the know, while excluding those not-in-the-know. They know the game, and the targeted outsider does not know the game, let alone that the game is being conducted, or what are the rules that govern this game.