In Chapter 6 of his book, The Ordeal Of Change, Eric Hoffer
writes an essay, 14 pages long, stretching from Page 43 through Page 57,
entitled The Intellectuals and the Masses. I have often written that his
understanding of intellectuals is the deepest that I have encountered, and, he
knows them full well; he knew the future of humanity hinges upon the masses
learning how to imitate the intellectuality and love of high culture favored by
the educated and intellectuals, without being mesmerized by this totalitarian
elite’s ever hostile to and eager to crush and direct the masses.
This triggered in me one of my most significant original,
political recommendations: heralding the critical importance, of using egoist
ethics, a love of good deities, the religion of maverization, and the
establishing an American upper class of mass (perhaps 120 million people deep) members
of individuating supercitizens, to help the young of the masses in being able to learn from
intellectuals while still be workers and burghers, without ever allowing
anywhere an elite of any kind to rule the masses ever again.
Without individuating supercitizens, elites comprised of
intellectuals and other thugs, must reemerge, and there will be no lasting
justice nor minimized levels of malevolence and suffering on earth.
I will quote Hoffer and comment on his content.
Hoffer: “The intellectuals as a champion of the masses is a
relatively recent phenomenon. Education does not naturally waken in us a
concern for the uneducated. The distinction conferred by education is more
easily maintained by a sharp separation from those below by continued
excellence of achievement. When Ghandi was asked by an American clergyman what
it was that worried him the most, he replied: ‘The hardness of heart of the
educated.’”
My response: The modern generations of intellectuals have
disguised (or even deluded themselves
into seeing themselves as heroes sacrificing themselves for the masses’ gain)
themselves as champions of the masses, when, in fact they almost always turn on
the masses once installed in the new dispensation: intellectuals self-recognize
that their pure function is to rule the masses whom they regard as naughty
children requiring reproof and redirecting, living on a tight leash, jerked
occasionally by their intellectual masters and mistresses.
Education, historically rare, and not widely or deeply
dispersed among the masses, was the province of an educated minority, part of
the ruling class. Rulers are without much conscience or mercy to self-regulate
to no longer exploit, oppress, abuse, kill and enslave the masses.
Hardheartedness from educated intellectuals against the less educated masses is
a predictable outcome, for the power of powerlessness corrupts the educated,
and kindness to subordinates is largely alien to them.
Hoffer: “In almost every civilization we know of the
intellectuals have been either allied with those in power or members of a
governing elite, and consequently indifferent to the fate of the masses. In
ancient Egypt and Imperial China the literati were magistrates, overseers,
stewards, taxgatherers, secretaries, and officials of every kind. They were in
command and did not lift a finger to lighten the burden of the lower orders. In
India the intellectuals were members of the uppermost caste of the Brahmins.
Gautama, who preached love of service for others and the mixing of the castes,
was by birth not an intellectual but a warrior; and the attempt to translate
Buddha’s teaching into reality was made by another warrior—Emperor Asoka. The
Brahmin intellectuals, far from rallying to the cause, led the opposition to
Buddhism, and finally drove it out of India. In classical Greece the
intellectuals were at the top of the social ladder: philosophers and poets were
also legislators, generals, and statesmen. This intellectual elite had an
ingrained contempt for the common people who did the world’s work, regarding
them as no better than slaves and unfit for citizenship.”
My response: There is a PragerU video narrated by Ben
Shapiro that is nicely done: it explains that the sources of richness of the
Western civilization flow from Greece (reason) and Israel (revelation). Stephen
Hicks online disagrees that the Judeo-Christian culture had much to do with the
rise of Western culture (He suggests mistakenly that only rational, secular Greeks
are the origin of Western Civilization.), and he faults Jordan Peterson from
espousing a view similar to Shapiro’s account of the dual origins of Western
Civilization. I agree with Shapiro and Peterson here, and I think that Hicks is
missing the boat.
Though the Greeks flirted with democracy (for and by
elites), and Pharisees in Israel were religious intellectuals with power over
the masses, my contention and speculation is that the Hebrews, or at least the
Christians emanating from this Old Testament people, made us what we are,
alongside the Greeks and Romans. We cannot escape realizing that democracy or
republicanism, or rule for and by the masses, got a huge boost when Christ died
on the cross to open the way to heaven for all humans, elite or commoner. That,
commoners are as important in the eyes of Jesus and God as elites, has to be a
democratizing influence of immense reach and significance. It is also hugely
rich in implications for the rise of the individual out of the collective
because each equal soul has free will, and can get to heaven or burn, based on
personal choice. That metaphysics is not a group lifestyle.
Hoffer: “In the Roman Empire, the intellectuals, whether
Greek or Roman, made common cause with the powers that be, and kept their
distance from the masses. In medieval Europe, too, the intellectual was a
member of a privileged order—the church—and did not manifest undue solicitude
for the underprivileged.
In only one society prior to the emergence of the modern
Occident do we find a group of ‘men of words’ raising their voices in the
defense of the weak and oppressed.”
My response: Some of those laws, about justice and mercy for
the poor, the widows, and orphans, laid out in Exodus, indicate much earlier
support by intellectuals in sympathy with the downtrodden.
Hoffer: “For many centuries the small nation of the ancient
Hebrews on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean did not differ markedly in
its institutions and spiritual life from its neighbors. But in the eighth
century B.C., owing to an obscure combination of circumstances, it began to
develop a most strange deviation. Side by side with the traditional men of
words—priests, counselors, soothsayers, scribes—there emerged a series of
extraordinary men who pitted themselves against the ruling elite and the prevailing
social order. These men, the prophets, were in many ways the prototype of the
modern militant intellectual. Renan speaks of them as ‘open-air journalists’
who recited their articles in the street and marketplace, and at the city gate.
‘The first article of irreconcilable journalism was written by Amos about 800
B.C.’ Many of the characteristic attitudes of the modern intellectual—his
tendency to see any group he identifies himself with as a chosen people, and
any truth he embraces as the one and only truth; the envisioning of a
millennial society on earth—are clearly discerned in the prophets. The ideals,
also, and the holy causes that intellectuals are preaching and propagating
today, were fully formulated during the three centuries in which the prophets
were active.”
My response: Here Hoffer offers new insights: intellectuals
found their prototype in the ancient Hebrew prophets. There is a genetic
tendency in intellectuals too radicalize themselves: as radical true believers,
they push their adopted holy cause. Like all zealots immersed in a mass
movement, intellectuals self-regard as the superior, chosen people, peddling
the one and only truth. Hoffer also reveals that educated true believers regard
themselves as idealistic and compassionate, not as potential, or actual violent
ideologues that will use tyranny and violence to usher in the world of the New
Jerusalem by means of revolution, terror, war, totalitarian order and forced
conversions or else.
Hoffer: “We know too little about these remote centuries to
explain the rise of the prophets. The temptation is great to look for
circumstances not unlike those which attended the rise of the militant men of
words in the modern Occident. One wonders whether a diffusion of literacy in
the 9th century B.C. was not one of the factors. It was at about
that time that the Phoenicians perfected the simple alphabet from the complex
and cumbersome picture writing of the Egyptians. And considering the close
relations which prevailed between the Phoenicians and the Hebrews, it would not
be unreasonable to assume that the latter were quick to adopt the new easy
writing. Particularly during the reign of Solomon (960-925 B.C.) the intimate
link with Phoenicia and the need for an army of scribes to run Solomon’s
centralized and bureaucratized administrations must have resulted in a sharp
rise in the number of literate Hebrews. Such an increase was fraught with
consequences for Hebrew society. In Phoenicia the alphabet was primarily an
instrument of commerce, and the sudden increase in the number of literate
persons presented no problem, for they were rapidly absorbed in the far-flung
trade organizations. But the chiefly agricultural Hebrew society was swamped by
a horde of unemployed scribes when the bureaucratic apparatus crumbled at
Solomon’s death. The new unattached scribes found themselves suspended between the
privileged clique, whose monopoly on reading and writing they had broken, and
the illiterate masses, to whom they were allied by birth. Since they had
neither position or adequate employment, it was natural that they should align
themselves against established privilege, and became self-appointed spokesmen
of their inarticulate brethren. Such at least might have been the circumstances
at the rise of the earlies prophets—of Amos the shepherd of Tekoa, and his
disciples. They set the pattern and the road trodden by them was later followed
by men of all walks of life, even Isaiah the aristocrat.”
My response: Hoffer’s account of the early Hebrew prophet
seems speculative but plausible. Where intellectuals are unemployed or not
belonging to the elite class running society, it seems they will champion the
people as their rationale, but power-seeking, deep down, is their only
interest.
However, the militant intellectuals came about in ancient
Israel, it seemed they did arise, and set a precedent for all future, angry men
of words.
Hoffer: “The rise of the militant intellectual in the
Occident was brought about not by a simplification of the art of writing but by
the introduction of paper and printing. Undoubtedly the Church’s monopoly of
education was considerably weakened, as I have said, in the late Middle Ages.
But it was introduction of paper and printing that finished the job. The new
men of words, like those of the 8th century B.C., were on the whole
unattached.—allied with neither Church or government. They had no clear status,
and no self-evident role of social usefulness. In the social orders evolved by
the modern Occident, power and influence were, and to a large extent still are,
in the hands of industrialists, businessman, bankers, landowners and soldiers.
The intellectual feels himself on the outside. Even when he is widely acclaimed
and highly rewarded he does not feel himself part of the ruling elite. He finds
himself almost superfluous in a civilization which is largely his handiwork.
Small wonder that he resents those in power as intruders and usurpers.”
My response: The rise of the militant intellectual in the
West historically has demonstrated that the rulers and intellectuals in charge
need to invite all intellectuals from the fringe to become part of the system,
with some say. Like Hollywood actors, they will not settle for being acclaimed
and well-paid, they want say and power. On the other hand, if the citizens are
individuating supercitizens, the fringe intellectuals brought into the status
quo, could make some changes, positive and necessary, without much upsetting
the status quo, and the masses will continue to run things, period.
Hoffer: “Thus the antagonism between the men of words and
men of action which first emerged as a historical motif among the Hebrews in
the eighth century B.C., and made them a peculiar people, reappeared in the
sixteenth century in the life of the modern Occident and set it apart from all
other civilizations. The unattached intellectual’s unceasing search for a
recognized status and a useful role has brought him to the forefront of every
movement of change since the Reformation, not only in the West but where ever
Western influence has penetrated. He has consistently sought a link with the
underprivileged, be they bourgeois, peasants, proletarians, persecuted
minorities, or the natives of colonial countries. So far, his most potent
alliance has been with the masses.”
My response: A society is not protecting itself when it
fails to account for its intellectuals, especially those that are unemployed, ignored,
unappreciated, adrift, unattached, and powerless. They will always align and
ally themselves with any group not part of or enriched by the existing
dispensation. They professes that their motives are justice, compassion and
fair treatment for the masses, but, deep down, the intelligentsia merely use
the masses as a tool, a cover or weapon to overthrow the system, and install a
new order with themselves among the ruling class.
The masses, soon to be newly minted as individuating
supercitizens, are half elitist ruler and half common person, each one of these
millions of people. The masses, each roughly wielding the same political and
economic clout, need to include but neutralize the power-addicted intellectual,
muffling his outsized ambitions. Also, the masses should make government small,
strong but quite limited, to prevent the intellectual from using big government
to rule the masses, end liberty and freedom, growing illegitimate big government
and the administrative state until capitalism is killed, replaced by socialism.
Hoffer: “The coming together of the intellectual and the
masses has proved to be a formidable combination, and there is no doubt that it
is largely instrumental in bringing about the
unprecedented advancement of the masses in modern times. Yet, despite
its achievements, the combination is not based on a real affinity.”
My response: The modern alliance between the intellectuals
and the masses brought about some improvements for the masses, but, in the long
run, the two are enemies, and the intellectuals plot to become the new masters
and mistresses over the masses with the whip then in their hand to flick upon
the back of the masses.
Hoffer: “The intellectual goes to the masses in search of
weightiness and a role of leadership. Unlike a man of action, the man of words
needs the sanction of ideals and the incantation of words in order to act
forcefully. He wants to lead, command, and conquer, but he must feel that in
satisfying these hungers he does not cater to a petty self. He needs
justification, and he seeks it in the realization of a grandiose design, and in
the solemn ritual of making the word become flesh. Thus he does battle for the
downtrodden and disinherited, and for liberty, equality, justice, and truth,
though, as Thoreau pointed out, the grievance which animates him is not mainly
‘his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son
of God, is his private ail.’ Once his ‘private ail’ is righted, the
intellectual’s ardor for the underprivileged cools considerably. His cast of
mind is essentially aristocratic. Like Heraclitus he is convinced that ‘ten
thousand (of the masses) do not turn the scale against a single man of worth’
and that ‘the many are mean; only the few are noble.’ He sees himself as a
leader and master.* (* In 1935 a group of students at Rangoon University banded
themselves together into a revolutionary group and immediately added the prefix
‘Thakin’ (master) to their names.). Not only does he doubt the masses could do
anything worthwhile on their own, he would resent it if they made the attempt.
The masses must obey. They need the shaping force of discipline in both war and
peace. It is indeed doubtful that the typical intellectual would feel wholly at
home in a society where the masses got
their share of the fleshpots. Not only would there be little chance for
leadership where people were almost without a grievance, but we might suspect
that the cockiness and the airs of an affluent population would offend his
aristocratic sensibilities.”
My response: Hoffer has made so many original contributions,
but his clear, accurate estimation of the motives, nature and ambitions of
intellectuals provides the masses with a clear understanding and warning as to
their lethality, should they regain control of any country, as they have after
2020 in America.
Perhaps another brilliant insight that Hoffer offers readers
does unfold as he warns that intellectuals are not in business, and are not in
the trades, so they feel an inner emptiness, a blow to their self-esteem that
cannot be filled.
They try on substitute sources of reward and a sense of
worth lost by just living in the world of words–every intellectual needs to
work at McDonalds, drive for Uber, work one day a week in the local factory, or
run a hobby farm; if they did these physical, worldly endeavors, they would
feel balanced, fulfilled, and useful. Couple that with a personal plan of
individuating, and each intellectual could find satisfaction, individual pride
and actual contentment minding their own affairs, without plotting to take over
society.
The insecure intellectuals without a sense of usefulness,
self-love, or meaning, seeks deadly substitutes, feeling weighty by pushing the
masses around. They adore receiving awards. They adopt grandiose plans and
ideals and are spellbound by their own wordy double-talk. They cannot find
satisfaction in quietly minding their own business, tending their own affairs,
finding self-respect in substantial personal accomplishment.
They need not settle for being petty selves any longer, and they should
justify their existence to themselves and God, but not via grandiose designs to
remake society and subjugate the masses to be trapped in their living
nightmare, the wordy dream from hell made flesh.
Were a population to come about, its masses comprised of
individuating supercitizens, they would be without grievance, and without any
desire to follow a guru and demagogue all the way to hell.
Hoffer: “There is considerable evidence that when the
militant intellectual succeeds in establishing a social order in which his
craving for a superior status and social usefulness is fully satisfied, his
view of the masses darkens, and from being their champion he becomes their
detractor. The struggle initiated by the prophets in the eighth century B.C.
ended, some three hundred years later, in the complete victory of the men of
words. After the return from Babylonian captivity the scribes and scholars were
supreme and the Hebrew nation became ‘a people of the book.’ Once dominant,
these scribes, like the Pharisees who succeeded them, flaunted their loathing
for the masses. They made of the word for common folk, ‘am-ha-aretz,’ a term of
derision and scorn—even the gentle Hillel taught that ‘no am-ha-aretz can be
pious.’ Yet these scribes had an unassailable hold on the masses they
despised.”
My response: Hoffer is telling the reader that elites,
anywhere, over time, being born depraved, groupist and without self-love and
individual pride, can only find the sense of pride they require to survive in
one of two ways. First, they can self-realize and individual-live, and their
brilliant, original, artistic output will suffuse them with deserved high
self-regard.
Or second, more commonly, they remain nonindividuators,
group-living, self-denying, self-loathing and self-deceiving, so they convince
themselves and their fellow elitists, that they are naturally superior to the
masses, and running the lives of the inferior, stupid, corrupt masses is the
destiny, even the obligation of the existent elite in any given generation.
Elites always turn on the masses, and subjugate, enslave,
oppress, and exploit them, and, as long as the elites stay united and convinced
that their values, culture, and dispensation are the best thing going, there is
near no chance that the masses will revolt or overthrow them.
The masses dislike themselves, and they like being, abused,
dominated, tortured, and killed. If their lives are run for them, and they
suffer malevolently at the hands of the elite, this suffering offers them a
most attractive alibi for doing nothing with their lives. Who needs to or wants
to leave the dispensation behind, and go out and discover what one’s good deity
demands of one in terms of a hard but fascinating life as a reviled
individuators?
Hoffer: “The noble carpenter from Galilee could make no
headway when he challenged the pretensions of the solemn scholars,
hair-splitting lawyers, and arrogant pedants, and raised his voice in defense
of the poor in spirit. He was ostracized and anathematized, and his teachings
found a following chiefly among the non-Jews. Yet the teachings of Jesus fared
no better than the teachings of the prophets when they came wholly into the
keeping of dominant intellectuals. They were made into a vehicle for the maintenance
and aggrandizement of a vast hierarchy of clerks, while the poor in spirit,
instead of inheriting the earth, were left to sink into serfdom and
superstitious darkness.
In the sixteenth century, we see the same pattern again.
When Luther first defied the Pope and his councils he spoke feelingly of
‘the poor, simple, folk.’ Later, when
allied with the German princelings, he lashed out against the rebellious masses
with unmatched ferocity: ‘Let there be no half-measures. Cut their throats!
Transfix them! Leave no stone unturned! To kill a rebel is to destroy a mad
dog.’ He assured his aristocratic patrons that ‘a prince can enter heaven by
the shedding of blood more certainly than others by means of prayer.’
In the twentieth century, however, which has given us the
most striking example of the discrepancy between the attitude of the
intellectual while the struggle is on, and his role once the battle is won.
Marxism started out as a movement for the salvation of both the masses and the
intellectuals form the degradation and servitude of a capitalist social order.
The Communist Manifesto condemned the bourgeoisie not only for pauperizing,
dehumanizing, and enslaving the toiling masses, but also for robbing the intellectual
of his valued status. ‘The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every
occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe.’ Though the
movement was initiated by intellectuals and powered by their talents and
hungers, it yet held up the proletariat as the chosen people—the only carrier
of the revolutionary idea, and the chief beneficiary of the revolution to come.
The intellectuals, particularly those who had ‘raised themselves to the level
of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole,’ were to act
as a guide—as a composite Moses—during the long wanderings in the desert. Like
Moses, the intellectuals would have no more to do once the promised land was in
sight. ‘The role of the intelligentsia,’ said Lenin, ‘is to make special
leaders from among the intelligentsia unnecessary.’”
My response: Once intellectuals have a taste of leadership
and power, and they wield the instruments of totalitarian government and
absolute power, they are too corrupted to ever willingly give up the reigns of
power. There are no virtuous George Washingtons among them, voluntarily
relinquishing power.
Only a society constituted by masses that are individuating
supercitizens would have the insistence, muscle, and fearlessness, to command
ruling elites to give up their power.
Hoffer: “The Marxist movement has made great strides during
the past forty years. It has created powerful political parties in many
countries, and is in possession of absolute power in the vast stretch of land
between the Elbe and the China Sea. In Russia, China and adjacent smaller
countries, the revolution envisioned by Marxism has been consummated. What,
then, is the condition of the masses in these countries?
In no other social order, past or present, has the
intellectual so completely come into his own as in the Communist regimes. Never
before has his superior status been so self-evident and his social usefulness
so unquestioned. The bureaucracy which manages and controls every field of
activity is staffed by people who consider themselves intellectuals. Writers,
poets, artisans, scientists, professors, journalists, and others engaged in
intellectual pursuits are accorded the high social status of superior civil
servants. They are the aristocrats, the rich, the prominent, the indispensable,
the pampered, the petted. It is the wildest dream of the men of words come
true.
And what of the masses in this intellectual’s paradise? They
have found the intellectual the most formidable taskmaster in history. No other
regime has treated the masses so callously as raw material, to be experimented
on and manipulated at will; and never before have so many lives been wasted so
recklessly in war and peace.”
My response: The intellectual, in power inside the Communist
Party in a totalitarian regime, is the most formidable taskmaster in history.
Only supercitizens of the future can survive the influence and menace emitted
by the passionate monsters.
Hoffer: “On top of all of this, the Communist intelligentsia
has been using force in a novel new manner. The traditional master uses force
to extract obedience and lets it go at that. Not so the intellectual. Because
of his professed faith in the power of words and the irresistibility of the truths which supposedly shape his
course, he cannot be satisfied with mere obedience. He tries to force a
response that is usually obtained by most perfect persuasion, and he uses
Terror as a fearful instrument to extract faith and fervor from crushed souls.”
My response: The true-believing Communist intellectual can
operate the cattle prod and torture rack to soul-rape his prey just as
fervently and effectively as any Catholic terrorizer running the Inquisition.
Hoffer: “One cannot escape the impression that the
intellectual’s most fundamental incompatibility is with the masses. He has
managed to thrive in social orders dominated by kings, nobles, priests, and
merchants, but not in societies suffused with the tastes and values of the
masses.”
My response Hoffer is highlighting two points here to be
attended too. One: Intellectuals and all other elites are incompatible with the
masses. Two: The values and tastes of the elitists are different from those of
societies run by the masses (America for example).
Let me read between the lines a bit: If America is a land
for the masses, formerly and currently run by the masses, then it is
individualistic, democratic, capitalistic, and there people are more or less
equal in rights and opportunity if not guaranteed equality of outcome, I then
conclude that the masses is where individualism and egoism will find the most
promising fitting. As individuating supercitizens, the masses will thrive, and
elites will wither away.
If intellectuals are incompatible with the American masses,
I infer that the intellectuals are rulers of the pack, but are altruists,
collectivists, groups, nonindividuators and fit for tyranny, socialism, and
hierarchy.
The masses need to rid themselves of the intelligentsia, not
by liquidating the intellectuals, but by stealing their thunder, by each
citizen becoming a learned, wise, knowing indiviudator.
Hoffer: “The trespassing of the masses into the domain of
culture and onto the stage of history is seen even by the best among the
intellectuals as a calamity. Heine viewed with horror the mass society taking
shape on the North American continent—‘that monstrous prison of freedom where
the invisible chains would oppress me more than the visible ones at home, and
where the most repulsive of tyrants the populace, hold vulgar sway.’”
My response: Hoffer has convincingly demonstrated that
intellectuals universally have reacted with pessimism and horror genuinely
felt, when the masses take over the culture of a country and march victoriously
onto the stage of history.
Intellectuals genuinely believe they are superior humans,
and the masses are inferior humans or subhumans, and, usually the cowed,
enslaved, uneducated, self-deprecating, nonindividuating, groupist masses agree
with the intellectuals, that they, the masses, are inferior sub-humans
deserving to be oppressed, direct, enslaved and exploited.
Everyone accepts the intellectuals’ cynical, dark view of
the masses, and this is why elites have not disappeared, even in democratic
societies around the world. With the introduction of Mavellonialism and my
reform of the masses as each of them an individuating supercitizen, we will
finally build a society where the masses do not believe, tolerate, or accept
that they are inferior to any elite, and no longer are willing to endure
corrupt, debasing dispensations that perpetuate this calamitous social lie. The
world that I foresee was first foreseen by Hoffer as least implicitly if not
outright.
Hoffer: “The masses, says Karl Jaspers, exert an ‘immense
gravitational pull which seems again and again to paralyze every upward sweep.
The tremendous forces of the masses, with their attributes of mediocrity,
suffocate whatever is not in line with them.’ To Emerson, the masses were
‘rude, lame, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be
flattered but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to
tame, drill, divide and break them up and draw individuals out of them . . . If
government knew how, I would like to see it check, not multiply the
population.’ Flaubert saw no hope in the masses: ‘They never come of age, and
will always be at the bottom of the social scale . . . ‘ He thought it of
little importance ‘that many peasants should be able to read and no longer heed
their priests; but it is infinitely important that men like Renan and Littre’
should be able to live and be listened to.’
Renan himself, so wise and humane, could not hold back his
loathing for the masses. He thought that popular education, so far from making
the masses wiser, ‘only destroys their natural amiability, their instincts,
their innate sound reason, and renders them positively unendurable.’ After the
debacle of 1870 Renan spent several months in seclusion writing his
Philosophical Dialogues, in which he vented his spleen not on the political and
cultural elite, which was responsible for France’s defeat, but on democracy and
the masses. The principle that society exists for the well-being of the mass of
people does not seem to him consistent with the plan of nature. ‘It is much to
be feared that the last expression of democracy may be a social state with a
degenerate populace having no other aim than to indulge in the ignoble
appetites of the vulgar.’ The purpose of an ideal social order is less to
produce enlightened masses than uncommon people.”
My response: It seems to me that the purpose of an ideal
social order is to produce enlightened masses who by maverizing are transformed
into remarkable, uncommon people.
Hoffer: “’If the ignorance of the masses is a necessary
condition for this end, so much the worse for the masses.’ He is convinced that
a high culture is hardly to be imagined without the full subordination of the
masses, and he envisages a world ruled by an elite of wise men possessed of
absolute power and capable of striking terror into the hearts of the vulgar.
This dictatorship of the wise would have hell at its command; ‘not as a
chimerical hell of whose existence there is no proof, but a veritable hell.’ It
would institute a Preventive Terror, not unlike that initiated by Stalin sixty
years later, ‘with a view to frighten people and prevent them from defending
themselves,’ and it would ‘hardly hesitate to maintain in some lost district in
Asia a nucleus of Bashkirs and Kalmuks, obedient machines, unencumbered by
moral scruples and prepared for every sort of cruelty.’”
My response: Renan, however brilliant, humane and wise—as he
likely was (even SS officers were kind and decent to their families and
neighbors), was, a member of an imagined, ruling elite, capable of endorsing
and even practicing, wide-opened campaigns of murder, torture, terror and
psychological rape upon the masses, so harshly ruled, looked down upon, and
enthusiastically deprived of their human rights by the ruling intellectual
elite.
Hoffer knew the wise, humane but basically evil Renan, and
millions of other basically evil
intellectuals similar to him around the globe, across several
generations, could act to br absolutely ruthless and demonic in their
group-role as true-believing, fanatics enforcing the will and views of their
Party, their ism, their totalitarian government upon the resisting masses.
However horrible and repugnant that you could imagine they could misbehave,
they, or any of us as ruling intellectuals, are capable of inflicting, endless,
ingenious, ever-increasing torture upon the targeted masses. Once we are
legally authorized to torture and terrorize the masses, and we begin such a
dark campaign, we will become more and more cruel as the demonic, subhuman
monsters that we have transformed into.
To protect the human rights, the life and soul-independence
of each individual on earth is a legal, spiritual and moral obligation that we
all must defend and promote.
Hoffer: “It is remarkable how closely the attitude of the
intellectual towards the masses resembles the attitude of a colonial
functionary toward the natives. The intellectuals growing under the dead weight
of the inert masses reminds us of sahibs groaning under the white man’s burden.
Small wonder that when we observe a regime by intellectuals in action, whether
in Russia or in Portugal, we have the feeling that here that colonialism begins
at home.”
My response: This seems intuitively and psychologically
accurate to me: Intellectuals are colonial oppressors, exploiters, enslavers,
and human rights abusers against the masses at home, and they just run a
parallel government of abuse and oppression in their colonies. These vicious,
corrupt elites are group-oriented. They are selfless servants of their
dispensation as they serve humanity by attacking it and living off of it, for
their own good, they claim and self-justify.
Hoffer: “Nor should it be surprising that liberation
movements in the colonies spearheaded by intellectuals result in a passage from
colonialism by Whites to colonialism by Blacks.”
My response: Hoffer implicitly is criticizing the masses
anywhere—of any color--being abused by any elite—of any race or ethnic
background—and he notes that elites of all colors and races have been enslavers
and oppressors. So much for the unique evil of white supremacy.
Hoffer the implicit egoist is also suggesting that, caste
systems, hierarchies, ruling elites trampling and living parasitically off the suffering masses, this natural engendered
but socially systematized system of widespread, societal injustice, are
phenomena that grow out of bad values, group-living and altruist ethics.
Hoffer: “In the essay on ‘The Readiness to Work’ it has been
suggested the masses are not likely to perform well in a society shaped and run
by intellectuals.”
My response: Ayn Rand and the Randians are correct and seem
to agree with Hoffer that the masses only flourish when they work willingly,
and that requires America style governance, under which the liberated
individual is free to enrich himself and acquire property in a free society, a
free market economy, where he decides what is his self-interest, and he is
comparatively not much stymied in pursuing his self-interest.
Hoffer: “Some measure of coercion, even of enslavement, is
apparently needed to keep the masses working in such a regime. However, with
the coming of automation it may eventually be possible for a ruling
intelligentsia to operate a country’s economy without the aid of the masses,
and it is legitimate to speculate on what the intellectual may be tempted to do
with the masses once they become superfluous.”
My response: It is July 2024, and someone somewhere has a
prototype robot dog that rapid fires a powerful machine, likely hundreds of
rounds per minute. That AI robots could run the economy without the masses, and
even without intellectual, ruling elites (all humans exterminated) is a
nightmare scenario that seems increasingly plausible and perhaps impossible to
prevent.
Hoffer: “Dostoevsky, with his apocalyptic premonition of
things to come, puts the following words in the mouth of an intellectual by the
name of Lyamshin: ‘For my part, if I didn’t know what to do with nine-tenths of
mankind I’d take them and blow them up into the air instead of putting them in
paradise.’”
My response: The malignant hatred of humanity, by cultural
Marxists and Envirostatists--identified by Mark Levin, could lead necessarily
to schemes and operations to liquidate the masses from the face of the earth in
the future decades. You do not love individual millions of people when you are
willing to wipe out humanity to accomplish some idealistic aim.
Hoffer: “’I’d leave only a handful of educated people who
would live happily ever afterwards on scientific principles.’* (*The Possessed,
Modern Library edition (New York: Random House, 1936, p. 411.) Now it is highly
unlikely that even the most ruthless intelligentsia would follow Lyamshin’s
recommendation, though one has the feeling that Mao Tsetung’s unconcern about a
nuclear holocaust is perhaps bolstered by a wish to rid his system of millions
of superfluous Chinese. There is no reason, however, why a doctrine should not
be propounded eventually that the masses are a poisonous waste product that
must be kept under a tight lid, and set apart as a caste of untouchables. That
such a doctrine would not be alien to the mentality of the Communist intellectual
is evident from pronouncements made by Communist spokesmen in East Germany
after the rising of 1953. They maintained that the rebellious workers, though
they looked and behaved like workers, were not the working class known by Marx,
but a decadent mixture of unregenerate remnants of eliminated classes and
types. The real workers, they said, were now in a position of responsibility
and power. Bertoltbrecht suggested in a ironic al vein that since the Communist
government had lost confidence in the people, the simple thing to do is to
dissolve the people and elect another.”
My response: Hoffer, the implicit egoist, is identifying
concretely with example after example, that the greatest evildoers in history
are idealistic altruists with unlimited state power at their disposal to
implement their campaigns of mass murder at will to “dissolve the people”.
Hoffer: “Actually, the intellectual’s dependence on the
masses is not confined to the economic field. It goes much deeper. He has a
vital need for veneration and worship that can come only from a vast, formless,
inarticulate multitude.”
My response: The selfless, lowly self-esteeming, altruistic
intellectual, a well-situated member of the ruling class, is a possessor of a
group pride that demands veneration and bended knees from the wowed masses, and
his vanity knows no bounds. We now recognize that his demand to receive adulation
shown him by the masses, is a bottomless craving that can never be satiated and
never ceases to be demanded of the masses. This very pathological worship of a
ruling celebrity by the masses, gives being arrogant a new and horrifying
significance. The vanity of the egoist expressing self-pride is generally
modest and moderate when contrasted with the egomaniacal self-appraisal of the
Luciferian intellectual, reveling in his group pride.
Hoffer: “After all, God himself could have gotten along
without men, yet he created them, to be adored, worshiped, and beseeched by
them. What elation could the intellectual derive from dominating an aggregation
of quarrelsome, backbiting fellow intellectuals?”
My response: This is why university departments are a jungle
of conflict and uniformity to one ideological stance, where vying intellectuals
tear each other up as quarrelsome, backbiting intellectuals that purge
dissenters from their midst. If they do this to peers, and it is the accepted
thing to do, it is no wonder that undergraduates and graduate students, all
nonindividuators and non-supercitizens, just submit and sell their souls to
their guru, clique superiors.
Hoffer: “It is, moreover, the faith of the masses which
nourishes and invigorates his own faith. Hermann Rauschning quotes a Nazi
intellectual: ‘If I am disheartened and despairing, if I am dead beat through
the eternal party quarrels, and I go to a meeting and speak to these simple,
goodhearted, honest people, then I am refreshed again; then all my doubts leave
me.”
My response: An anarchist-individuator supercitizen need not
worry about the opinion of others, pro or con, fair or unfair, true or false,
whether from peers or from the masses (whether adjulating, indifferent or
mob-like invective and contempt). Her reasonable social approach is to give
others a fair hearing and welcome their feedback, but the final say is hers and
hers alone, though she will want to consult with her worshiped good deity and the
Good Spirits to receive their advice and correction.
Hoffer: “To sum up: The intellectual’s concern for the
masses is as a rule a symptom of his uncertain status and his lack of an
unquestionable sense of social usefulness.”
My response: One has status and a sense of social usefulness
if one works and maverizes in the real world: one tends to mind one’s own
business when one’s private business is worth minding.
Hoffer: “It is the activities of the chronically thwarted
intellectual which makes it possible for the masses to get their share of the
good things in life. When the intellectual comes into his own, he becomes a
pillar of stability and finds all kinds of lofty reasons for siding with the
strong against the weak.”
My response: No intellectual should side with the strong
against the weak. Rather, he should maverize and support the masses, that each
of them grows into proud, free, happy, loving, creative individuating
supercitizens.
A great soul, an intellectual that is also a short-order
cook or a ship sailor, is living proof that of the Ramsey paradox: It is only
the masses that can become intellectually, artistically, politically, and
morally elite; it is only elites and rulers that hold humanity back and down,
limiting the intellectual and creative output and range of every human being,
including those among the privileged class.
Hoffer: “It is, then, in the interest of the masses that the
struggle between the intellectual and the prevailing dispensation should remain
undecided. But can we justify a continuing state of affairs in which the most
gifted part of the population is ever denied its heart’s desire, while the
masses go on from strength to strength?”
My response: As it stands it is better for the masses in a
republic or a democracy if the intellectual is still struggling with the
prevailing dispensation, not having emerged victorious, overthrowing the
prevailing dispensation, replacing it with a revolutionary, socialist
authoritarian order under which the clerisy and the ruling classes abuse the
masses for decades.
What would be better permanently for the masses would be for
them to be trained as individuating supercitizens, and then, whether or not
intellectuals are supporting the prevailing dispensation—a free society with
capitalist economics and plenty for the masses running that society—the masses
could not be overthrown and enslaved by intellectuals inside the prevailing
dispensation, or as outliers.
It would be my original contribution to the Hofferian view
of the world to suggest that intellectuals are inherently, innately groupist
and altruistic, and that the masses, when following the suggestion of their
better angels, are individualist and egoist.
Both Hoffer and Jordan Peterson seem to accept the
traditional view of people that there are a few genetically superior, smarter
people that end up rising to the top and run things, so Hoffer argues that
perhaps the masses cannot keep these people shut out forever from running and
influencing the culture and government. Hoffer has a point, but I think the
masses are still so smart and talented that with hard work and original
thinking, they can be so exceptional and creative, that they could be
half-elite and half-commoners, by the millions, without destabilizing the
prevailing dispensation, without disallowing change and reform peacefully introduced,
peacefully lawfully accepted, and blended with cultural, normative, and
political features of the existing system. Rare geniuses at the top could make
their contributions, but the masses would be so talented and smart, though less
so than those rare geniuses, that they need not and would not step aside to
allow these geniuses to run society and dictate to the individuated masses.
Hoffer: “Actually, an antagonism between the intellectuals
and the powers that be serves a more vital purpose than the advancement of the
masses: it keeps the social order from stagnating. For the evidence seems clear
that a society in which the educated are closely allied with the governing
class is capable of a brilliant beginning but not of continued growth and
development.”
My response: Once the masses are populated by individuating
supercitizens, the people will run the status quo and will decide what new
concepts and trends to support and which ones to discard so that society is a
mixture of the best of tradition and yet enjoying constant growth, renewal, and
development.
Hoffer: “Such a society often attains heights of excellence
early in its career and then stops. Its history is in the main a record of
stagnation and decline. This was true of the ancient river-valley civilizations
in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China, and of the younger civilizations in India,
Persia, the Graeco-Roman world, Byzantium, and the world of Islam. We also see
that the first step in the awakening of a stagnant society is the estrangement
of an educated minority from the prevailing dispensation, which is usually
effected by the penetration of some foreign influence. This change in relations
between the educated and the governing classed has been a factor in almost
every renascence, including that of Europe from the stagnation of the Middle
Ages.
The creativeness of the intellectual is often a function of
a thwarted craving for purposeful action and a privileged rank. It has origin
in the soul intensity generated in front of the insurmountable obstacle on the
path to action.”
My response: My recommendation is to rear up a generation of
citizens, in all countries willing to participate in Mavellonialist morality, who
are liberated to see their current level of development as a private person as
a difficult but usually surmountable obstacle which the individual can overwhelm
creatively via making a living, supporting a family, and through creative
self-expression. Their temporary frustration and being hemmed in spur them to
grow, think, create, and develop the self, and this acting out their ambitious
will to be more and better for a lifetime is the way forward for most
maverizers.
Hoffer: “The genuine writer, artist, and even scientist are
dissatisfied persons—as dissatisfied as the revolutionary—but are endowed with
a capacity for transmuting their dissatisfaction into creative impulse. A busy,
purposeful life of action not only diverts energies from creative channels, but
above all reduces the potential irritation which releases the secretion of
creativity.”
My response: Hoffer almost has it right here: both the
genuine creator and the revolutionary are dissatisfied persons, but the genuine
creator has taught himself or naturally transmutes his dissatisfaction into
creative impulse, while the revolutionary is unable to transmute his dissatisfaction
into creative impulse, so he gives up prematurely, and hating himself, he seeks
to destroy the prevailing dispensation, and humanity, finding release in
yielding to his destructive impulse which consumes him, and he cannot escape
serving this urge.
Hoffer is incorrect in assuming that only the rare geniuses,
if genuinely creative, are able to transmute their dissatisfaction into
creative impulse, while the masses are able to redirect their dissatisfaction
and frustration into busy lives of work, parenting and living as contributing
citizens, finding satisfaction with the self and life by serving family and
society.
This is all true, useful, and rewarding, but a bit
misleading. The geniuses and genuine creators are not that much smarter or more
talented than the masses, not enough to make a significant difference. I
suggest that rare geniuses and those of more average ability and intelligence all
maverize as superecitizens, to the maximum achievable, all while leading
active, productive lives in commerce, industry, and government, so in both
ways, those that try, can transmute their dissatisfaction into creative impulse.
Those, that do not work productively as individualists and refuse to self-realize,
could only deal with their self-satisfaction by means of destroying society and
others, and that is an unfortunate election to make.
Hoffer: “There is also the remarkable fact that where the
intellectuals are in full charge they usually do not create a milieu conductive
to genuine creativeness.”
My response: This is true but makes sense once one acknowledges
and accepts my premise above that elitists are groupist. Groupists do not
foster creativity among its people.
Rather, creativity, artistic excellence, rational brilliance,
and fresh, original ideas will be coined and extolled coined by the masses as
individualists and individuator supercitizens, half-elite, half-commoner,
half-artist and half-burger, half-dentist, or plumber or housekeeper and mother.
A society run by the individuating masses will place a
premium reward sponsoring individual creativity and the high civilization. Wondrous
inventions and works of art will bubble over conceivably for hundreds of years.
Hoffer: “The reason for this is to be found in the role of
the noncreative pseudointellectual in such a system.”
My response: I agree but point out that the the noncreative pseudo
intellectual the majority of persons in the traditional ruling educated elite,
its majority of intellectuals, and the masses that accpt the lie that the masses
are inferior in intelligence and talent so they must just settle for making
money and babies and dying in the country’s wars in the armed services because
they can ever individuate as geniuses. To the degree that one is a
pseudointellectual and unintellectual or works for money and never
individuates and group lives as a mediocrity as one of the traditional
intellectual elite, or one of the sleeping masses, these are personal choices
limiting the self. Natural talent, intelligence and ability was never the
deciding factor, only the idnividuals belief in herself that she is worthy to
maverize, and will accept no life of the Randian second-hander as a consolation
prize.
Hoffer: “The genuinely creative person lacks, as a rule, the
temperament requisite for the seizure, the exercise, and above all, the retention
of power.”
My response: I agree that the genuinely creative person will
not seek group pride and control of others by gathering the power of
powerlessness unto himself to rule over and dominate others, but this sick
pride and perverted form of power accrual is attractive to the nonindividuator
and joiner, be she naturally a genius or of more average ability.
Hoffer: “Hence, when the intellectuals come into their own,
it is usually the pseudo-intellectual who rules the roost, and he is likely to
imprint his mediocrity and meagerness on every phase of cultural activity.”
My response: This is why the masses need to become
individuals and individuators wielding the power of powerfulness. By virtue of
being culturally, politically, organizationally, and commercially assertive,
they prevent any structure or hierarchy from being taken over by the
pseudo-intellectuals. When real intellectuals and maverizers run everything,
the meager, petty, and foolishly restrictive practices and rules are pushed
aside.
Hoffer: “Moreover, his creative impotence brews in him a
murderous hatred of intellectual brilliance, and he may be tempted, as Stalin
was, to enforce a crude leveling of all intellectual activity.”
My response: The creative masses must no longer suffer
jealous, resentful, power-hungry hacks to run any dispensation.
Hoffer: “Thus it can be seen that the chronic thwarting of
the intellectual’s craving for power serves a higher purpose than the
well-being of the common folk. The advancement of the masses is a mere
by-product of the uniquely human fact that discontent is at the root of the
creative process: that the most gifted members of the human species are at
their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for
what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.”
My response: The well-being of the masses can still be
served while the thwarting of the intellectual-as-elite rulers of society is
maintained: this is achievable as the masses, all wondrously smart and gifted, routinely
and deliberately thwart themselves by focusing on their natural preference for inaction
and resting on their laurels, insisting of themselves that another level of
performative excellence (and then the two levels of excellence after that) sought
will goad them into first dissatisfaction, and then motivates them to act,
grow, create invent and think originally, pushing on to the next level of
excellence and brilliance.
