Eric Hoffer Quote of the Day No. 7

"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause."

This resonates with me, except maybe the "holy cause" part, which I don't understand.  There are some "causes" that truly do transcend individuality and are worth devoting oneself to, and "claiming excellence for."  And I don't think "holy" necessarily means "religious" because he has already covered that.  Maybe he just added it because it sounded good at the end of the sentence.

The reason the quote resonates with me is that it contains the basic truth that there is little objective qualitative difference between varieties of the different semi-artificial constructs we call "nation," "religion," and "race."

Let's start with "nation," since that's easiest, and it's something even Albert Einstein and Leo Tolstoy agree upon:

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!"  (Einstein)

"One would expect the harmfulness and irrationality of patriotism to be evident to everybody." (Tolstoy) 

There's not much more to say about this; for me, it's only a small leap to say that those who "claim all excellence for their nation" are somewhat less than excellent themselves.  That's not to say that some systems of government aren't better than others -- in principle at least, democracy is better than communism or totalitarianism.  But as between two countries with similarly democratic systems, why should one country think that it's better than the other?  Clearly, others have been here before me, so I won't belabor the point -- a good list of reasons patriotism is dumb is found here:

http://listverse.com/2014/03/27/10-unavoidable-arguments-against-patriotism/

And yes, that's where I found the Tolstoy and Einstein quotes.

Religion is similar.  ISIS is appealing to exactly this point right now -- there are a lot of less than excellent young men and women out there who would like to be part of something that calls itself excellent.  And it is their very lack of excellence that allows them to persuade themselves that taking videos of brutal murders is somehow doing the right thing by God.

And of course, "race" is the same.  We can see it right now when we listen to the people who are still sticking up for state-sponsored display of the confederate flag.  I'm not quite saying that everyone who supports the idea of flying that flag over a state institution is a racist; my point is just that the people that I have seen quoted recently in support of the confederate flag seem to be really less than excellent individuals.  Their "less-than-excellence" fits Hoffer's prediction in any event, whether they are racist, patriotic (to the old South?), or believe in the confederacy as a "holy cause."