DWQA QuestionsCategory: Limiting BeliefsHoffer wrote: “There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove we are as good today as we were yesterday. 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 and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.” What is Creator’s perspective?
Nicola Staff asked 2 years ago
This is a good illustration of the quandary experienced by those who experience weakness in themselves and great fear as a result. Those who find it difficult to compete, and perhaps have tried but failed and given up through weakness, may well go looking for excuses, and that is what an alibi can provide. Those who believe they are in a kind of victim class, by virtue of race, economic stratum, poorly educated, or by birth, arising in a poor undeveloped country, and thus lack a cosmopolitan sophistication, may well be trapped by their own perception of inadequacy and live the rest of their life as an underdog, as a weakling, and a perceived failure to themselves and others perhaps as well. Seeking an alibi is a common refuge for the weak who are unable to break free of their perceived stereotype. Such a fate might well be culturally imposed and is the case in many parts of the world where people are not truly free to make their own choices and to leave if they can develop aspirations in seeing better possibilities and acting boldly. The fact this is a human dilemma of major proportions exhibited by so very many downtrodden human beings is a testament to the success of forces of evil corrupting people to settle for less, to fear the worst, and to lack confidence in themselves to make things better. The very strategy of domination and subjugation depends on getting humans to fight with one another, join warring factions so they never agree, and will be, at best, in a kind of standoff where no one wins and all are losers. Winning out over a group holding different beliefs may seem rewarding on its surface but in all likelihood will involve some kind of unfair manipulation, and that will undercut the advantage of the victor because there will be a karmic consequence demanding restitution, so the perceived advantage will not last all that long. Being a loser is not a reward either, even though the victor, through skullduggery, might have a karmic comeuppance one day. Being victimized through one’s weakness and vulnerability is also a karmic misstep because your soul potential is greater than that, and if you allow it to happen, surrender to your state of weakness, and fail to find a way to surmount it, you, in effect, are joining hands with the perpetrator who subjugates you. While the lesser of evils, it is not to your advantage to put your head on a chopping block if that doesn’t have to happen. So you will see this idea of labels characterizing various victim groups grow in popularity as not just a pastime but a political tool, and an insidious one, that works to keep people disempowered because people begin to believe in their alibi, and that label of classification, as a group treated historically in an unfair way, will work generation after generation by descendants who may still be struggling but, in effect, choose to remain a victim because it is easier than working to become successful. Granted that can be quite difficult, but we are talking here about taking the easy path so one does not have to be responsible and accept blame for failure because they have an alibi in being a member of the downtrodden, who deserves sympathy that becomes pity through the soft bigotry of low expectations, and living through an alibi to cope becomes the norm and even expected because it is a kind of prejudice that is easily self-imposed as it is recognized and applied by others who, after all, can count themselves lucky and even feel superior if they are not a member of that lower stratum grouping they look down on. This is a prescription for a troubled world of divisiveness and misery that can easily lead to social unrest, high crime, and a decaying society. This is the end consequence in attempting to force an equity of outcomes in the false belief it will make everyone equal and experience fairness. When this drives people to give up because that is the easy path, eventually there will be diminishment of society itself and all will all be living on the level of the lowest common denominator to be a self-selected failure with an alibi.