Eric Hoffer: re-seeing the ordinary

No. 90

Familiarity blurs and flattens.  Both the artist and the thinker are preoccupied with the birth of the ordinary and the discovery of the known.  They both conserve life by recapturing the childhood of things. 

-- Eric Hoffer --
Reflections on the Human Condition 


In the introduction to one of his stories, Conrad is quoted as saying that the work of the artist is to make the reader see, above all, to make the reader see.  I find it interesting that this could refer to something new or something old, just as Hoffer suggests in his comment.  I think I remember that Wallace Stevens said something similar--the job of the poet was to rub off the patina that obscures words over time.

Something I have noticed, also, is that after being away from home for a week or more, everything at home seems slightly different when I return--newer, if that makes any sense.  Of course, that feeling doesn't last long.   

Laotse and Eric Hoffer: the odd couple

I first encountered this theme in Laotse's Tao Te Ching and, to be honest,  I didn't understand the significance or the reality at that time.  A day ago, while browsing through Eric Hoffer's Reflections on the Human Condition, I ran across the same theme which was expressed in the identical words that Laotse used. 

Frankly, I still don't accept this as possible.  Perhaps it's because I live in a different time than either Laotse or Eric Hoffer.  Here are the two statements in question.

17.  Rulers

Of the best rulers
     The people (only) know that they exist;
The next best they praise;
The next they fear;
And the next they revile.

      When they do not command the people's faith,
      Some will lose faith in them,
      And then they resort to oaths!
But (of the best) when their task is accomplished,
       their work done,
The people all remark, "We have done it ourselves."
-- Laotse --
The Wisdom of Laotse
Edited by Lin Yutang



No. 87

The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him   This is true not only of the writer, artist, and scientist but of creators in other fields.  The creative teacher is he who, in the words of Comenius, "teaches less and his students learn more."  A creative organizer creates an organization that can function well without him.  When a genuine leader has done his work, his followers will say, "We have done it ourselves,"  and feel that they can do great things without great leaders.  With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.  

--  Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition. 


In both statements this theme is expressed  in identical wording: "We have done it ourselves."  Is this possible?  If their accomplishments are not attributed to them, then how do we know they are great leaders or very creative workers? 

Would this work in a democracy where one must win the approval of the voters?  Would a "do nothing" legislator or governor or president ever get reelected if the people didn't recognize the value of that person's actions while in office?  

Eric Hoffer and dragons and devils

Eric Hoffer has a unique perspective on the interrelationships among devils, dragons, and humans.  At least, it is unique as far as I'm concerned.  I hadn't really read or heard anything like the inter-workings of the three as described by Hoffer.

18

"Man made God in his own image.  In whose image did he make the devil?  The devil with hoofs, tail, and horns is obviously a beast masquerading as a man.  Does he, then, personify nature?  Is there a confrontation--God and man on one side, the devil and nature on the other?

It is significant that where men live in awe of nature and see it as inexorable and inscrutable fate, nature is personified not in a devil but in a dragon.  The dragon is a composite of the fearsome strengths and uncanny faculties of the animal world.  Any piecing-together  of parts of various animals result in something like a dragon.  Vasari tells how the young Leonardo da Vinci, wanting to point something that would frighten everybody, brought to his room every sort of living creature he could lay his hands on and set out to paint a composite animal.  "He produced an animal so horrible and fearful that it seemed to  poison the air with its fiery breath.  This he represented coming out of some dark broken rocks, with venom issuing from its jaws, fire from its eyes, and smoke from its nostrils.  A monstrous and horrible thing indeed."  In the course of time the dragon came to embody the menace and mystery of the whole nonhuman cosmos.  "The dragon," says Kakuzo Akakuro, "unfolds himself in the storm clouds, he washes his mane in the blackness of the seething whirlpool.  His claws are in the forks of lightning, and his scales begin to glisten in the bark of rainswept pine trees.  His voice is heard in the hurricane."   Since societies awed by nature tend to equate power with nature, they will invest omnipotent individuals--emperors, despots, warriors, sorcerers, etc. -- with the attributes of the dragon.  Thus, unlike the devil, the dragon is a man masquerading as a beast.

The dragon is infinitely more ancient than the devil.  The earliest representation of the dragon is the painting of the sorcerer in the cave of Trois Freres.  This  Late Paleolithic painting presents a sorcerer decked out as a composite animal with horns of a reindeer, the ears, of a wolf, the eyes of an owl, the paws of a bear, and the tail of a horse.

The devil is coetaneous with Jehovah, the God who is not nature but its creator.  It was the feat of the ancient Hebrews that though without an advanced technology they lost their awe of nature, and saw it as man's task to "subdue the earth."  And once man, backed by Jehovah or a potent technology, assumes a cocky attitude toward nature, the devil comes upon the scene and takes the place of the dragon.  The devil personifies not the nature that is around us but the nature  that is within us--the infinitely ferocious and cunning prehuman creature that is still with us, sealed in the subconscious cellars of the psyche.

Outside the Occident, where nature has the upper hand, the dragon is still supreme, but the Occident proper is the domain of the devil.

It is of interest that at his first appearance in the Garden of Eden, before clothes were invented, the devil came undisguised, and contrived the fall of man from a paradisaical existence.  Nowadays the devil is decked out in the latest fashion, and quotes the latest scriptures.

We of the present are vividly aware that the slaying of the dragon is the opening act in a protracted, desperate contest with the devil.  The triumphs of the scientist and the technologist are setting the stage for the psychiatrist and policemen.  We also know that we can cope with the devil only by using the tension between that which is most human and nonhuman in us to stretch souls in a creative effort."
-- Eric Hoffer --
Reflections on the Human Condition



Any thoughts?

Eric Hoffer: The downside of some revolutions

No. 63

The link between ideas and action is rarely direct.  There is almost always an intermediary step in which the idea is overcome.  De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously transformed into political action.  The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives.  Hence it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulated them.

One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action--the ability to pass directly from thought to action. 
-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition


Within the past decade or so, how many popular revolutions or coups have we seen that successfully replaced dictatorships or tyrannies with regimes that are as bad or worse, in spite of the rhetoric that accompanied them?

Is Hoffer suggesting that the great majority of people can't be moved to act through reason or by intelligent thought but that they have to be stirred up by strong emotions or passion to accomplish something?

Are shouting, bullying, insulting comments, or emotionally laden slogans more likely to move people to act than calm reason and facts?

Eric Hoffer: two types of freedom

No. 57

To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do.  It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.

-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition


Are these the only types of freedom?

It strikes me that one is positive--able to do what one wants-- and one is negative--not having to do what one does not want to do.  I can see how someone with a positive view can feel free to grow, but how would someone who can grow feel free under the negative view.

Something's missing here.  .  .

Eric Hoffer: on total commitment

No. 54

Anyone aware of the imperfections inherent in human affairs is hardly capable of total commitment.  Part of him will inevitably remain uncommitted.  It is the perch of uncommitment which makes an act of self-sacrifice sublimely human, and distinguishes the man of faith from the fanatic.

-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition

The question that immediately comes to my mind is what Hoffer means by self-sacrifice.   Would this include suicide bombers, those who strap a bomb to themselves and then go on a school bus or in a crowded restaurant or a market and blow up themselves and numerous others--men, women, and children?   Is this sublimely human or the act of a fanatic?   How can one distinguish between them?

   

Eric Hoffer: some thoughts on freedom

Some random quotations from Eric Hoffer on the nature of freedom:

No. 55

We take for granted the need to escape the self.  Yet the self can also be a refuge.  In totalitarian countries the great hunger is for private life.  Absorption in the minutiae of an individual existence is the only refuge from the apocalyptic madhouse staged by maniacal saviors of humanity.


Fortunately we don't have any of these maniacal saviors of humanity, around here, do we?  We don't have people here who are convinced that they and they alone have the Truth and God's blessing on them and their ideas and are willing to create chaos and massive disruption unless they get their way, do we?  We are so lucky, aren't we?



No. 56

One of the chief objectives of freedom is to make it possible for a person to feel himself a human being first.  Any social order in which people see themselves primarily as workingmen, businessmen, intellectuals, members of a church, nation, race, or party is deficient in genuine freedom.

Since I retired, I've met a number of retired people who are unhappy, confused, and lost.  They do not know how to define themselves anymore.   They no longer are teachers, business executives, engineers, police officers, clerks. . .  They defined themselves in the past by their occupations, and now, since they no longer work, many are lost and no longer see themselves as anything.  They are lost and bitterly speak about retirement for they no longer have an identity.

Others take refuge in politics and redefine themselves as Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, or Greens.  Politics, which had been of lesser importance in the past now becomes their all-consuming interest. They now become staunch supporters of their party, complete with closed minds and unwilling or unable to listen to opposing views for fear that they may develop doubts and again lose their identity.  And others turn to religion, again rejecting and demonizing those who think differently.

On the other hand, it's harder to see oneself as a human being only because then one has to make one's own decisions about the pressing issues of the day.  Being a staunch member of a political party or a religious group gives one a ready-made collection of maxims or rules to follow, a set of criteria for making the "right" decision, and leaders who explain the right way to think, the approved opinions and ideas.

It isn't just retired people who are this way.  There are many who are not retired but show the same attitudes about the groups they belong to and also about those who are different.  I'm not saying all members of any political party or religious group are like this, but they are there and generally they are the ones who cause the most problems.  They have a way of making others, who are not as adamant or unswerving in their faith, appear to be less than genuine members of the group.  They are loud in their condemnation of others who are not really True Believers, as defined by them, True Believers really being those who think the same way as they do.  They and they alone are qualifed to decide who is and who is not a real member of the group.

These true believers are really slaves, trapped within an imperfect belief system, as all human systems are, and cannot really breath the fresh air of freedom for they spend their waking hours making sure that they and all others are on the One True Path to Paradise.




Quotations are from
Eric Hoffer
Reflections on the Human Condition

Eric Hoffer: Troublemakers

The following are aphorisms taken from the chapter "Troublemakers" by

-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition


#46
"It is cheering to see that the rats are still around--the ship is not sinking."

Of course,  they won't leave.  It's their duty to save us from ourselves by showing us their road to paradise (and make a few bucks lecturing, appearing on talk shows, and selling books at the same time). 


#47
"Right now it seems that they who have a truth to reveal also have a lie to hide."

This reminds me of numerous books whose titles begin with "20 Lies Your ______ (Parents? Teachers? Religious Teachers?--fill in your favorite here) Told You."  I found a copy of one of them at a used  bookstore for twenty-five cents.  After reading it, I felt like going back and asking for a refund.  The lies? fell into two categories.  The majority of them were the type that belong in a category with  Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, George Washington and the cherry tree,  etc.  In other words, most adults, in fact most teens, no longer believe these things.  The other type, I found, couldn't be verified or came from dubious sources and also had an obvious political agenda. 



#49
"Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question.  What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder."

I never met a true dissenter who didn't believe he/she had a direct line of communication with the Deity and  as well as being gloomy and inflexible.

#50
"Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches.  You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone.  And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity."

 I remember the hippies in the '60s who insisted they had broken out of the conformist trap and were becoming their own person, unique and individual unto themselves.  What was funny was that one could always identify these unique individualists by their uniform--jeans, t-shirts, headbands, beads, long hair, and sandals.  The women were slightly more individualistic as they alternated between granny dresses and jeans, usually cutoffs or with numerous holes.

Eric Hoffer: from Reflections on the Human Condition

Something to irritate almost everybody .  .   .


"#33  It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn."

"#40  It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around.  As a matter of fact, a dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority:  what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority."

"#41  There is a spoiled-brat quality about the self-consciously alienated.  Life must have a meaning, history must have a goal, and everything must be in apple-pie order if they are to cease being alienated.  Actually there is no alienation that a little power will not cure."

"42  The untalented are more at ease in a society that gives them valid alibis for not achieving than in one where opportunities are abundant.  Fin an affluent society, the alienated who clamor for power are largely untalented people who cannot make use of the unprecedented opportunities for self-realization, and cannot escape the confrontation with an ineffectual self."


"43  We all have private ails.  The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails."

"44  Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation."


-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition

Eric Hoffer: the central task of education

#32

"The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people.  The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future.  The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition


I agree here with Hoffer, but I also think that he neglected a significant number of  people:  those who actively reject being even a member of the learned.  These refuse to learn anything that conflicts with their ancient prejudices and tranquilizing dogmas and insist on  remaining locked in past centuries, not just years or decades.

I wonder which of the three is most characteristic of  the people of the United States.

Eric Hoffer: some thoughts on play

28

"Man is a luxury-loving animal.  Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society  becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles."


I don't I've ever met a society or a group of people who are too rational, but I know I've met those who are too serious, who believe that the only worthwhile activity is making money, and who assign value on the basis of whether it is profitable.  If they can't make a profit on it, it has no value.  They may play golf but only because one can make profitable contacts out on the greens.



29
 
"To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as a fuel of achievement."



30

"It is a juvenile notion that a society needs a lofty purpose and a shining vision to achieve much.  Both in the marketplace and on the battlefield men who set their hearts on toys have often displayed unequaled initiative and drive.  And one must be ignorant of the creative process to look for a close correspondence between motive and achievement in the world of thought and imagination."

-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition


Hoffer is not alone when he speaks of the importance of fun and play.  For a similar point of view, go to two posts on  Lin Yutang, one dated October 10, 2011 and another on June 6, 2011.


 Is fiction play?

Eric Hoffer: on mass movements

Faith is a two-edged sword. It can move people to do virtuous and compassionate acts as well as monstrously evil. However, we tend to focus solely on the good it can do and ignore its tendency towards cruelty and hate. Are the processes that lead to good actions the same as those that lead to evil?

Eric Hoffer on the subject of faith:


11
Mass movements use irrationality to shut out the intellect, to turn people into predictable, mindless machines. Both Stalin and Hitler used blind faith as a device for mechanizing souls.


12
We hear a lot about the dehumanizing effects of the machine. Actually, the large-scale dehumanization of the Stalin-Hitler era was the work of ideological machines. In Russia the doctrinaire appliances work better than the mechanical.


13
The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despo9t who wants to turn them into puppets.

There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience; a readiness to attempt the impossible; a bias for simple solutions--to cut the knot rather than unravel it; the viewing of compromise as surrender; the tendency to manipulate people and 'experiment with blood.' Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition


This is an interesting list of qualities characteristic of those demanding absolute faith.
1. a demand for absolute obedience;

2. a readiness to attempt the impossible;

3. a bias for simple solutions--to cut the knot rather than unravel it;

4. the viewing of compromise as surrender;

5. the tendency to manipulate people and 'experiment with blood.'



Are there "leaders" today who insist on the above from their supporters or have they all disappeared with the twentieth century?

Eric Hoffer: Reflections

#5

Due to the imperfection of man's instincts there is a pause of faltering and groping between his perception and action. This pause is a seedbed of the apprehensions, the insights, the images, and the concepts which are the warp and woof of the creative process. A shrinking of the pause results in some degree of dehumanization. This is as true of highly grained specialists and dogmatic True Believers as of the mentally deficient.

Both iron discipline and blind faith strive to eliminate the pause of hesitation before action, while the discipline that humanizes and civilizes aims at widening the interval between impulse and execution.

Art humanizes because the artist must grope and feel his way, and he never ceases to learn.

-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition



Some interesting thoughts here.

One could speculate that during that widening pause between impulse or perception and action or response, people could conceivably think differently than they did the last time and therefore might change their ideas. That suggests that changing one's mind now and then when felt necessary is more human than never changing one's mind at any time. So, those who insist on attacking others for changing their minds are actually complimenting them, are calling them more human and civilized. A strange thought.



Michel de Montaigne put it much more succinctly.

Only fools are certain and immovable.

Something to think about

No. 3

The source of man's creativeness is in his deficiencies; he compensates himself for what he lacks. He became Homo faber--a maker of weapons and tools--to compensate for his lack of specialized organs. He became Homo ludens--a player, tinkerer, and artist--to compensate for his lack of inborn skills. He became a speaking animal to compensate for his lack of the telepathic faculty by which animals communicate with east other. He became a thinker to compensate for the ineffectualness of his instincts.

Eric Hoffer
Reflections on the Human Condition



I'm not sure I can go along with all of this. I have some doubts about the telepathic faculty which he says animals have.

Eric Hoffer: a quotation

No. 2

There is something unhuman about perfection. The performance of the expert strikes us as instinctual or mechanical. It is a paradox that, although the striving to master a skill is supremely human, the total mastery of a skill approaches the nonhuman. They who would make man perfect end up by dehumanizing him.

-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition


Do perfect performances strike one as nonhuman? I remember reading a review by a music critic in the BBC Music Magazine. He criticized a CD by the The Tallis Scholars (a choral ensemble specializing in liturgical music led by Peter Philips) for being too perfect and inhuman and, therefore, he could only rate them a 4 on a 5 point scale.

I found that to be strange.

A Quotation

Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. He is both an unfinished animal and an unfinished man. It is this incurable unfinishedness which sets man apart from other living things. For, in the attempt to finish himself, man becomes a creator. Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.


Eric Hoffer
from Reflection on the Human Condition

Interesting thought--but I wonder if nature does attain perfection. Does he mean that ants and bees are perfect or have stopped changing and have achieved the maximum development possible for them?

Are we incurably unfinished and therefore perpetually immature?

I wonder how this makes us creators, or some of us anyway.

What would happen if we did finally achieve the finished state, whatever that may be?

Something to think about

Eric Hoffer
Reflections on the Human Condition


The following is a brief quote from Eric Hoffer's Reflections on the Human Condition.


"The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.

There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience; a readiness to attempt the impossible; a bias for simple solutions--to cut the knot rather than unravel it; the viewing of compromise as surrender; the tendency to manipulate people and 'experiment with blood.' Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanisation. Hence absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power."

Reflections on the Human Condition was first published in 1973, over 35 years ago. This quote suggests that it could have been published last week.

What do you think? Is he overstating his case?



Eric Hoffer is the author of The True Believer, a work which should be read by anyone who wants to gain some understanding of the true believer, one who is ready to die for a belief and, unfortunately, equally ready to kill others in the name of that same belief. The true believer is one who knows the only way to paradise and is determined to lead you there, even if it kills you. This person exists on both sides of the political fence.