Humble

 

On Page 119 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes two entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          212

 

Humility is not renunciation of pride but the substitution of one pride for another.”

 

My response: There is wholesome, genuine humility which may not indicate the person is actually humble in self-regard; ethically it is more important in public that one acts humble rather than arrogant: it is beneficial for social relations that one act humble, even though one is not very humble.

 

 Each person must role-play being humble, modest, discreet, diplomatic and self-effacing in public to make others feel good about themselves, to increase social harmony, and to not create a rancorous social state. If he acts humble, and does not brag or strut, his displayed humility can become an attitude of cordial modesty that becomes second nature to him, and I suggest this feigned but well-meant humility is compatible with egoism morality and individuating, while lessening social friction.

 

The pride that goes with this first account of humility is the pride of pridefulness (my term) n that is the healthy, self-realistic pride felt by an individuators that has achieved solid accomplishments, and, also, is proud in that his performance and behavior have to match or closely approximate his high self-standard or he cannot live with himself. He can be proud, act proud, and feel proud, but he must not brag or be supercilious in public, ever.

 

There is also the fake humility of the joiner that is seeking and receiving social kudos for his humble attitude. He is actually quite manipulative and seeks to grow his power in group settings.

 

The pride of pridelessness (my term) is the pride that accompanies this second, groupist, selfless sense of humility, and there is little that is good about it, but even the weak, the fake, the non-producers and the masochistic, need to feel proud of something, so their distorted humility is something for them to hang their hat onto. They are proud of their social rank and popularity.

 

I hope I am correct in assuming Hoffer is referring to something like these two kinds of pride and two kinds of humility as I independently have laid them out.

 

 

Hoffer: “          213

 

The passionate are not as a rule culturally creative, but only they make history.”

 

My response: The passionate are the intellectuals and elites that lead and rule the masses, nonindividuators and groupists, and all these assembled joiners are passionate, for they are not rational, creative or emotionally temperate. Still, being most citizens, they carry weight, and where they amble or stampede towards, that is the story of that society in that generation, and this is how they make history.

 

Individuators and great souls are culturally creative, but they are few in number, so they do not make history; still, a society of individuating supercitizens could be both culturally creative and make history as the dispassionate majority.

Eremitic

 

On Page 118 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes one entry which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          211

 

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.”

 

My response: When a person is an individualist or individuators, solitariness, privacy and time alone is critically essential to developing the self, to self-realize, to fulfill one’s duty to God to maverize, and work to preserve, administrate and expand God’s kingdom on earth, and conceivably on other worlds—eventually.

 

The solitariness enjoyed by the maverick is a healthy solitariness, but she realizes and acts so that she still has time with others, some social life, some interacting that is beneficial to all parties involved.

 

I think the kind of person that is solitary but escaping not from others, but from oneself, is actually a joiner or groupist that somehow ran afoul from his clique, and he hides away antisocially to escape seeing himself as he is in their eyes be their report accurate or biased or intentionally false.

Incomplete So Panicky

 

On Page 117 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has three entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “         208

 

Some people are born to spend their lives catching up; and they are as rule the passionate ones.”

 

My response: People that do not discipline themselves, working hard and smart at self-improvement, by never giving up and by succeeding through sheer stick-to-itiveness, are people that are fit, fit into society as competent, flourishing, adapting, well-adjusted adult individuals—they have caught up and keep up. They are integrated, composed individuals, so they do not require passionate pursuit of some radicalized ism in which to devote themselves as a means of self-forgetting, and to deceive watchful onlookers, if possible, that they, these unfit and ill-fitting zealots are doing something meaningful, demonstrating that they fit somewhere

 

 

Hoffer:            209

 

Stupidity is not a mere want of intelligence. It can be a sort of corruption. It is doubtful whether the good of heart can be really stupid.”

 

My response: Dennis Prager is not impressed by high IQs, or PhD credentials: bright, well-educated people are often stupid, clueless, incompetent, arrogant, mean and completely mistaken. Their ideological and group-thinked values make them unable to detect between truth and falsehood, good or evil. They lack both a truth-compass and a moral compass.

 

What they lack is wisdom. Only a sensible, secular realist, or a religious lover of truth, a good deity and virtue for its own sake is open to becoming wiser. These individuals are smart, and the brilliant, credentialed ideologues and evildoers are stupid.

 

At one time or another, all of us are ignorant and in error, to varying degrees. We are not stupid, but are unenlightened. To be are remain willfully blind, that is to be stupid and corrupt.

 

 

Hoffer: “         210

 

The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity of deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity. One needs the talents of an animal trained to deal with the stupid.”

 

My response: It seems likely that one cannot be stupid or remain stupid if one loves the truth for its own sake, and pursues it fervently, seriously, relentlessly. He who wants to discover what is what, will sooner or later, discover the error of his ways, and then take steps to wise up, and recover.

 

 

The Link

 

On Page 116 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes three entries which I quote and comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          205

 

It is the inordinately selfish who need self-forgetting the most, hence their proneness to passionate pursuits.”

 

My response: It amazes me how much this genius can pack into just a few words. The inordinately selfish are narcissistic, rotten people who are quite wicked: they are wicked because they hate themselves and just decided their situation and isolation from God was hopeless and insurmountable: they are already damned so they might as well enjoy their wretchedness, letting themselves go, taking their resentment out on others to whom they will do whatever they could get away with without being hurt or detected.

 

They are wicked because they hate themselves, and they hate themselves because they are wicked. They are completely selfish, so they hate themselves completely; because they find themselves utterly revolting, they seek escape from this dreary self-realization, which requires self-forgetting  to run away successfully  from conscious, constant reminder of their total worthlessness.

 

The selfless are the most selfish while and whereas the self-interested and individualistic are much less selfish and much more benevolent that the altruist is. The individualist is not as unselfish as the saintly rare giver, but he generally is rather considerate of others and himself; note that people of radical disposition are more evil, and those of moderate character are better people. This entire characterization of humans is but another sign that Hoffer—as I do—identifies evil as extreme, collective, but regards goodness as temperate, and supportive of a good self, an individualist.

 

Note that the evil, selfish man has to forget himself; he is passionate and excessively emotional so he seeks to escape from his ruined life inside a mass movement or holy cause. The individualist, by contrast, is comfortable with himself and loves himself because he is lovable, a good person. On some level, the self can never get away with lying to the self and making it stick.

 

 

Hoffer:  “         206

 

Death would have no terror were it to come a month from now, a week or even a day—but not tomorrow. For death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.”

 

My response: The instinct to live is one of the deepest human instincts, and, whether our life is worth living because we are good people, or it is not worth living because we are rotten monsters, we still cling to life, to this world. It could be that death is somehow a God-substitute, or a horrifying reminder that if we die today, we will meet God, and that is a most unnerving prospect, especially if we are ill prepared for that ultimate encounter.

 

 

Hoffer: “          207

 

We usually yield to extremism not because we have no time to grow, but because we doubt we are capable of growth.”

 

My response: We yield to extremism or a life of sin and excessive speech, action and beliefs, bad behaviors carried out in a group setting with radical views entailed. We yield not because we did not have time to grow, but because we chose to refuse the call of the Good Spirits, to individuate to love, to grow, to create and build.

 

We enjoyed being lazy, mediocre, a life of ease and unfulfilling pleasure, or we actively enjoyed destroying and hurting others, a perverse pleasure, an addiction hat grows for we must hurt more and more to feel the original adrenaline rush of hurting others.

 

We settle for extremism and sin because we do not believe in ourselves or that we can grow. It could be that the lack of faith in ourselves, and our ability to be good, to despair is the gravest sin against God that we can commit, for it leads us right down the road to hell.

 

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.

 

Superficial

 

 

On Page 114 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has two entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

Hoffer: “          201

 

The reason that man is so fantastic a creature is that he is so superficial.”

 

My response: First, I deeply trust Hoffer view of things, for he is a truth-magnet. If he suggests that humans are superficial, they likely are.

 

Second, Hoffer is deeply skeptical, even cynical at time, over the way that people present themselves to the world; people, individually and collectively even more so, live lives of self-deception and pretense. Hoffer knowing this, takes people self-assessments with a grain of salt, and then he writes what they really think, who they really are, and what they are actually up to. When he makes people aware of who and what they really are, that can be startling, disturbing, even annoying to the vain and pretentious espousing popular tropes.

 

Third, Hoffer is not denying that there are great depths of subterranean layer after layer of meaning and drives embedded in the human consciousness. What he is denying is that humans live and make ethical, life-altering and life-defeating levels on the surface of things.

 

We are best able to be smart, ethical, productive, wholesome, and loving by dealing with our problems and responsibilities by making liable, sensible decisions on maverizing and self-improvement on the surface level of living and being. We are capable of fantastic adjustments and assuming positive new roles to play, on the surface of life, that then like-muscle memory, these adopted surface roles over time, as habituated, become our personality, who we actually are and can be proud of becoming.

 

Most of us do not require years of Freudian psychoanalysis to discover who we are, and how we are to live. Hoffer advises us to quit worrying about being so superficial, but to accept who and what we are and work on self-improvement, based upon what nature gave us to work with.

 

Hoffer is also brilliantly warning ethicists and people of good will to avoid heeding pseudointellectuals, idealists, and never-do-wells, that seek complex, authoritarian, prescriptive, involuntary, collective, global revolutions to seek deep lasting reform via upending the whole system. They usually make things worse and destroy what is working well. They have no idea how to make things better, but they know how to tear things down. They are most effective when they do nothing, and no one gives them any say in running things.

 

It is more effective for reform to be personal, practical, small-scale, implemented by the nonexpert individual, practice on himself imperfectly, clumsily, with slow gains achieved effectively over time: self-change put upon the self by the self, on the surface of existence, that self-reform, will over time, go deep into his whole being.

 

Change

 

We do self-talk on the surface of our personalities, and the conscious and unconscious self will get behind this new role and the self can be healed this way.

 

Hoffer: “His nobleness, and vileness, loves and dedications are all on the surface.”

 

My response: It occurs to me too that we mostly are group creatures, and any group has a group personality and conforming joiners eagerly, quickly, frantically and repeatedly, do their damnedest to mimic and parrot the personality, view and reasoning of that official, adopted, group personality, that, to the degree that the group has deprived each member of his own individual personality, that group personality is the personality of each conforming joiner, popular and in good standing.

 

This denial of personal and private personality and identity, inflicted by the group upon each conforming joiner, claiming to be happy and fulfilled as a nonindividuating groupist, exacerbates the natural human tendency to not be self-aware, to be shallow, to deceive the self, to sin (which is living in a bubble of lies). The adoption of the group personality guarantees that most people, conforming joiners, live on the surface and may make jolting reversals in their plans, based upon what the group orders each member to think, do and what role to assume.

 

Hoffer: “The sudden drastic transformations of which he is capable are due to the fact that his complex differentiation and the tensions which shape his attitudes are wholly surface phenomena.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          202

 

We probably a greater love for those we support than for those that support us. Our vanity carries more weight than our self-interest.”

 

 

My response: There are times when I struggle to understand what he is really saying, and that is true with this entry. It could be that we feel that we lose faith and can’t helping feeling inferior to and resentful towards the ones that support us and shows us charity. We hate them for being seemingly or actually superior to us.

 

We gain face and feel superior when we support others; and we are the benefactor and they are the recipient. We love them because we are in the superior position for a change and that makes us feel better about ourselves.

 

It would be in our self-interest to receive support and aid when we need it, but our vanity is hurt because we feel inferior to the giver of charity.

Intolerance

 

On Page 113 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has one entry which I quote and then comment on.

 

Hoffer: “          200

 

It is doubtful whether there is such a thing as impulsive or natural tolerance.”

 

My response: Once again I am very impressed, astonished, even flabbergasted at how insightful this original, moral genius is, and how rich with implications are even a seemingly simple, single sentence like the one just above.

 

Hoffer is saying that humans are not naturally or impulsively tolerant. What does this indicate? It signifies to me that he thinks humans are born depraved, that they can only be good, kind, rational, accepting, tolerant and willing to peacefully coexist with those of differing opinions when so conducting oneself is a learned moral behavior that the majority of a nation practice, actually practice.

 

It also indicates that he is a moralist that believed the moderate, tolerant, civilized, libertarian and classically liberal acceptance of intellectual independence of others opposing us is the ideal, the behavioral standard to live by in settling disputes and disagreements. These behaviors must be taught, learned, and then widely practiced, if there is to be peace and tolerant across the land.

 

For humans to be good, they must become good, following an adopted, artificial moral code. As individualists, individuators and classical liberals, loving freedom, and mutual tolerance, and that practice peaceful tolerance and rational, civil dialoguing, humans must allow a range of views differing from their own, agreeing to peacefully and legally coexist.

 

Hoffer believes that people are born emotional, passionate, fanatical, and addicted to false dichotomies. They are born intolerant, tyrannical and willing to use force and the threat of violence to compel pure conformity in thought, word, and deed from others to one’s own views.

 

Because human history is a history of warring amongst rival groups, tribes, and nations, in which people group-live, live nonindividuated lives, group-identify and live in accordance with altruist-collectivist morality, people were allowed to express their wicked tendencies, given cover and moral sanction by society and its leaders. People, being naturally vicious, cruel, savage, barbaric and willing to terrorize and use authoritarian government to impel people to see things, “the proper way”, were allowed to act as bad as they were without secular or divine sanction, so they just misbehaved consistently and ignominiously.

 

Hoffer: “Tolerance requires an effort of thought and self-control. And acts of kindness, too, are rarely without deliberateness and ‘thoughtfulness’.”

 

My response: Hoffer does not much believe in random acts of kindness: who is most capable of consistently acting kind as a learned behavior? it is the individual being self-interested but being kind to himself, to the Good Spirits and to others as a planned pattern of behavior and it works.

 

Random acts of cruelty and intolerance are easy and effortless: all we have to do is deny we have a human nature, an animalistic, bestial nature, that is intolerant, aggressive and unkind, or that we have to fight this nature, as Dennis Prager exhorts us to do.

 

When we run in packs, it easy for acts of intolerance and cruelty to be joyously, eagerly engaged in and indulged, whether it is random or planned as a long-term pattern of abusing the dissident, the weak, the stranger, those from a rival group with a different story that they live by.

 

Hoffer: “Thus it seems that some artificiality, some posing and pretense, are inseparable from any acts or attitude which involves a limitation of our appetites and selfishness.”

 

My response: Because humans are so depraved and savage, and yet salvageable and redeemable, they must be taught the artificial, unnatural morality of egoism-individualism so they then can act rational, loving, nonviolent, tolerant, and civilized. This morality is alien to humans, so it must be a pose or pretense until, like muscle memory exercises, the natural human recessive appetite to be individual, kind, and tolerant, becomes natural or second nature to a morally well-trained adult of good will. This lie or faked goodness is a role played by humans until it becomes their surface personality, a genuine good person, a virtuous and holy persona worn over the beast or savage pullulating and raging within. As the ethical adult learns to behave, she can limit her appetites for hate and to curb her burning urge to hurt and attack those different from her, especially if they are militant about disagreeing with her. She can limit her selfish desire to control, break and own and direct them only by becoming a civilized individual and human individualist.

 

Hoffer: “We ought to beware of people who do not think it is necessary to pretend they are good and decent.”

 

My response: How I would translate this sentence in plain, Mavellonialist English talk would be to note that we are to beware of people that are unwilling to be hypocritical as a standard—always sought after even if not always lived up to (the standard of being a well-behaved person of good will, kind to the self, kind to others, and tolerant of oneself and tolerant of others frailties and follies too): the hypocrite gives praise to being virtuous, while often or mostly failing to or refusing to behave, but this hypocrite is just the average person, a bit more good-behaving than not, but who is underneath not good or decent at all. When in a group with not socially conditioned restraints on misbehaving, the group become a mob and its members, of all or any race, gender and creed, are quite equal in being capable of doing anything, literally anything to others.

 

When evil rules the social dispensation openly, when the hypocritical requirement to pretend to be good and decent is no longer required, socially rewarded or not without real danger of being punished for striving to remain good and decent, then people’s fanatical, natural tendency to be selfish, violent, intolerant, authoritarian and lawless, is openly expressed, lived and championed by the majority of the people, then it is their natural, honest, genuine nature being openly, truthfully expressed and worn on their sleeves. This is not sustainable for society, for the gates of hell are open and the demonic monsters walk the streets in their millions, these human beings openly showing their nature and their lived base desires being easily expressed and socially praised and reinforced.

 

Hoffer: “Lack of hypocrisy in such things hints at a capacity for a most depraved ruthlessness.”