Eric Hoffer

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Eric Hoffer (July 25, 1902 – May 21, 1983) was an American social writer. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by Ronald Reagan. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic. This book, which he considered his best, established his reputation. He remained a successful writer for most of his remaining years.

Hoffer was born in New York City, the son of German immigrants. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English. At age seven, following an accident, Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons. [1] His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was fifteen. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, but Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.

Both his parents died while he was still a young man. Seeking opportunity, and an occupation that would allow him to read constantly, Hoffer made his way across the country to California. He arrived in 1920, and spent the next part of his life as a migratory worker until the outbreak of World War II. In 1931 he attempted suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but this failed, as he could not bring himself to swallow the poison. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously and continue his travels throughout southern California. His experiences as a migratory worker would later become the basis for his autobiography, Truth Imagined. A rumour exists that he enlisted in the Armed forces because he was fervently anti-Nazi, but was rejected for medical reasons. Fighting this setback he went to San Francisco to work at the Naval Shipyard and support the war effort in whatever way he could. Once settled, he educated himself on the side, while earning a living wage doing manual labour. He obtained library cards to borrow books at libraries up and down the train line near his home in San Francisco and worked odd jobs, spending time as both a migrant farm laborer and gold prospector before being hired as a longshoreman in 1943. He continued working as a longshoreman until retirement at 65. Despite his often strenuous daily work, he managed to read more books than many academics. However, it was Michel de Montaigne's Essays, which he found in a secondhand bookshop, that first inspired Hoffer to put his ideas to paper.

1 Hoffer's Working Class Roots and "Intellectuals"
2 On the Nature and Origins of Mass Movements
3 Other writings
4 Bibliography
5 Books on Hoffer
6 Broadcasts
7 Quotes
8 External links

[edit] Hoffer's Working Class Roots and "Intellectuals"

Hoffer drew confidence and inspiration from his modest roots and working-class surroundings, seeing in it vast human potential. In a letter to Margaret Anderson in 1941, he wrote:

My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight,

in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch.

Towns are too distracting.

Hoffer also took solace in being an outcast, believing that the outcasts have always been the pioneers of society. He did not consider himself an "intellectual", and scorned the term as descriptive of the mostly anti-American academics of the West. Academics, he believed, craved power; but they were denied it in the democratic countries of the West (though not in totalitarian countries, which Hoffer saw as an intellectual's dream). Instead, Hoffer believed academics chose to bite the hand that fed them in their quest for power and influence.

Though Hoffer did not identify with "liberal intellectuals" and often criticized the radical ideology of many activists of the New Left, it would be wrong to characterize Hoffer's thinking "conservative". Similarly, though his writings were often likened to the centrist political philosophies of mid 20th century liberals such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., his thinking was not entirely "liberal" either. Rather, his structural approach to analyzing and understanding mass movements and their ideologies, often led Hoffer to consistently nonideological positions. As he said, "my writing grows out of my life just as a branch from a tree." When called an intellectual, he insisted that he was a longshoreman. He has since become known as the Longshoreman Philosopher.

[edit] On the Nature and Origins of Mass Movements

Hoffer was among the first to recognize the central importance of self-esteem to psychological well-being. While most recent writers focus on the benefits of a positive self-esteem, Hoffer focused on the consequences of a lack of self-esteem. Concerned about the rise of totalitarian governments, especially those of Hitler and Stalin, he tried to find the roots of these "madhouses" in human psychology. He discovered that fanaticism and self-righteousness are rooted in self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity. As he describes in The True Believer, a passionate obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people is merely a craven attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life.

The mass movements discussed in The True Believer include religious mass movements as well as political, including extensive discussions of Islam and Christianity. They also include seemingly benign mass movements which are neither political nor religious. A core principle in the book is Hoffer's insight that mass movements are interchangeable; he notes fanatical Nazis later becoming fanatical Communists, fanatical Communists later becoming fanatical anti-Communists, and Saul, persecutor of Christians, becoming Paul, a fanatical Christian himself. For the true believer the substance of the mass movement isn't so important as that he or she is part of that movement. Hoffer furthermore suggests that it is possible to head off the rise of an undesirable mass movement by substituting a benign mass movement, which will give those prone to joining movements an outlet for their insecurities.

Hoffer's work was original, staking out new ground largely ignored by dominant academic trends of his time. In particular, Hoffer's work was completely non-Freudian, at a time when almost all American psychology was confined to the Freudian paradigm. In avoiding the academic mainstream, he managed to avoid the straitjacket of established thought. Many argue Hoffer's lack of a formal University education contributed to his independent thought, with his book remaining an insightful classic today. Hoffer appeared on Public Television in 1964 and then in two one-hour conversations on CBS with Eric Sevareid in the late 1960s. Both times he drew wide response for his patiently considered but unorthodox views.

[edit] Other writings

Hoffer's insights into the consequences of a lack of self-esteem also informed his later writings. His 1963 book The Ordeal of Change discusses change and modernization in society. His 1971 book First Things, Last Things was a collection of essays published at a time in which young middle-class American youth were undergoing an increasing attraction to mass movements, whether political, religious, or subcultural, as well as a rapid increase in youth crime. In these and other books, Hoffer continued to build upon his earlier insights. In Hoffer's view, rapid change is not a positive thing for a society, and too rapid change can cause a regression in maturity for those who were brought up in a very different society than what that society has become. He noted that in the 1960s America had many young adults still living in extended adolescence. Seeking to explain the attraction of the New Left protest movements, he characterized them as the result of widespread affluence which, in his words, "is robbing a modern society of whatever it has left of puberty rites to routinize the attainment of manhood." He sees these puberty rites as essential for self-esteem, and notes that mass movements and juvenile mindsets tend to go together to the point that anyone, no matter what age, who joins a mass movement immediately begins to exhibit juvenile behavior. He further notes that the reason working class Americans did not by and large join in the 1960s protest movements and subcultures was they had entry into meaningful labor as an effective rite of passage out of adolescence, while both the very poor on welfare and the affluent are, in his words "prevented from having a share in the world's work and of proving their manhood by doing a man's work and getting a man's pay" and thus remained in a state of extended adolescence, lacking in necessary self-esteem, and prone to joining mass movements as a form of compensation. Hoffer suggested that this need for meaningful work as a rite of passage into adulthood could be fulfilled with a 2-year civilian national service program (not unlike the earlier programs during the Depression such as the Civilian Conservation Corps), in which all young adults would do two years of work in fields such as construction or natural resources work. He writes: "The routinization of the passage from boyhood to manhood would contribute to the solution of many of our pressing problems. I cannot think of any other undertaking that would dovetail so many of our present difficulties into opportunities for growth."

[edit] Bibliography

1951 The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements ISBN 0-06-050591-5

1955 The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms ISBN 1-933435-09-7

1963 The Ordeal Of Change ISBN 1-933435-10-0

1967 The Temper Of Our Time

1969 Working And Thinking on The Waterfront; a journal, June 1958-May 1959

1971 First Things, Last Things

1973 Reflections on the Human Condition ISBN 1-933435-14-3

1976 In Our Time

1979 Before the Sabbath

1982 Between the devil and the dragon : the best essays and aphorisms of Eric Hoffer ISBN 0-06-014984-1

1983 Truth Imagined ISBN 1-933435-01-1

[edit] Books on Hoffer

Eric Hoffer; an American Odyssey Tomkins, Calvin, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1968 ISBN 0-8057-7359-2 Part of Twayne's United States authors series
Hoffer's America, Koerner, James D., La Salle, Ill., Library Press, 1973 ISBN 0-912050-45-4
Eric Hoffer, Baker, James Thomas. Boston : Twayne, 1982 ISBN 0-8057-7359-2 Twayne's United States authors series

[edit] Broadcasts

Documentary on Eric Hoffer with Eric Severeid, CBS, November 14, 1967

[edit] Quotes

"I have a premonition that will not leave me," wrote Eric Hoffer, America's great longshoreman philosopher, after the '67 war. "As it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us."

"The Renaissance was a time of mercenary soldiers, ours is a time of mercenary labor." --Before the Sabbath.

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business." --The True Believer.

"For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious." --The True Believer.

"In times of change learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."

"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them."

"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."

"The best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from."

"We almost always have something to prove when we act heroically. We prove to ourselves and others that we are not what we and others thought we were. Our real self is petty, greedy, cowardly, dishonest and stewing in malice. And now in defying death and spitting in its eye we grasp at the chance of a grand refutation."

"Every intense desire is perhaps basically a desire to be different from what we are. Hence probably the imperiousness of the desire for fame, which is a desire for a self utterly unlike the real self."

"It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned." The Passionate State of Mind, aph. 49 (1955)