The Excuse

 

On Page 103 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has one entry which I quote and then comment on:

 

 

Hoffer: “          181

 

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently.”

 

My response: One is not an authentic, well-intentioned, ethical individual or individuator of good will unless one constantly strives to discover who one is, what is one’s duty, where one is to blame (including crafting tactics and strategy to defect-correct as best one can), and where one has done right and well, and may praise oneself and feel proud about one’s accomplishments, openly declaring that to oneself, to God and to others.

 

One is duty-bound to discover truth and then live in accordance with it, as best one can, as clearly as one can see what is so.

 

In this genuine mode of individual existing, there is little room for alibiing anything.

 

The wise Hoffer points out that achieving is harder and is never settles anything permanently. It is just easier to lie to the self, baby the self, do nothing and refer to it and oneself as normal, healthy, moral, and successful, just skating through life, seeking hedonic gratification, just following the crowd, without ever lifting a finger to do anything or even try to better the self. Then one finds a clever set of one million reasons to justify being a failure, a loser, a groupist conformist and nonindividuator.

 

Hoffer’s wise epigrams are filled with rich implications. If one is to individuate in the image of the Good Spirits who are creators and individuators, then one’s achievements are never done, nothing is ever personally settled, but one is to journey upwards and outwards, forever (or as long as one lives) self-realizing.

 

Thus, by extension, our mentors, the Divine Couple, the good deities, and the Good Spirits, on their own levels of consciousness, created and create the cosmos; if their achievements are never final, because human individuators do what their divine mistress and masters are doing, then it seems that becoming and self-improving by the divine entities would entail that they are improving, self-perfecting and cosmos perfecting and creating the new, and recreating the established, year after year.

 

Hoffer: “We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove we are as good today as we were yesterday.”

 

My response: Both moral, mortal individuators and the divine, good entities are individuators: we all have to prove our worth anew each day: now, my good fellow religious believers  will strenuously object to my claim that good deities do and need to self-realize: they regard God as a monotheistic, single god: perfect as is, all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful, the One, the Absolute. God is necessarily perfect right now and forever, unchanging forever. God has no reason or requirement to self-perfect forever.

 

Now I cannot prove them wrong and they cannot prove me wrong, but I think God is infinitely, richly complex, perhaps contradictory, but still it is all likely, mysteriously consistent and reconcilable.

 

Suppose, that the Divine Couple are nearly perfect directly, but they keep self-realizing and becoming; it could be that being Creators of the universe, and all worlds, they created infinity to be a world that never quits growing, expanding, self-perfecting and being perfected by good divinities ever creating and recreating cosmos. The universe’s state of being created and perfected by good, self-realizing deities is an eternal, ongoing process that goes on forever and the existence and nonexistence of the universe itself is the unchanging, eternal reality of the world, and divine, good entities can continue to self-realize and create within the parameters of the world that expands and goes forth forever, infinitely.

 

Or, it could be that Fate, the One, Being/Non-Being is that permanent, eternal, universal, infinite reality or universe that exists but within that forever existence are the good deities and their followers individuating and creating to build cosmos and goodness, and by turn the evil deities and their minions nonindividuating and destroying cosmos by malevolence, mortality conditions and sheer entropy.

 

Fate could be the reality or universe within which the good deities individuate and create.

 

Hoffer: “But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life. Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book, painting a picture and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book, or painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in gaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.”

 

My response: We cannot be good, smart, or great unless we set alibis aside forever. Anyone with an IQ level of 85 or greater, if walking with the Good Spirits, and self-realizing on an industrial scale, will tap into innate inner genius to share with the world what the self necessarily, with effort, persistence and imagination explored, can create and produce, and this most personal, marked achievement will inspire and awe all that appreciate such output, viewing what near anyone can achieve once they believe in themselves, apply themselves, and learn how to maverize. It will be the greatest book or the greatest picture in some way, being the best for a few years at least, per creator.