Hoffer"s Working And Thinking On the Waterfront: Preface

 

Hoffer’s Working And Thinking On The Waterfront: Preface

Below I will write out the two-page Preface of Eric Hoffer’s book, Eric Hoffer:Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, A Journal: June, 1958—May 1959, and will comment on it.

Here is the Preface: Page ix:(H for Hoffer writing after this): “While rummaging recently through a pile of old notebooks, I came upon a diary I had kept during 1958-1959. I had completely forgotten about it. Nineteen fifty-eight and 1959 were difficult years. I was trying to write a book on the intellectuals, the ‘men of words.” Since it was not going to be a scholarly history, it soon became clear that my theories and insights would not come to more than forty pages of manuscript—enough for a chapter but not for a book. Obviously, the intellectual would have to be part of a larger project. I began to suspect that all my thinking life I had probably only one train of thought, that everything I had written stemmed from a central preoccupation, and that I might go through life and never discover what it was.

I had to sort things out; talk to somebody. So on June 1, 1958, I began a diary.”

My response: Eric Hoffer, great soul, profound loner and brilliant philosopher, needed to get outside of his own solipsistic, stoic, solitary bubble, and talk to someone wiser and learned to help him uncover and discover his main theme, his one train of thought.

But being a radically individualistic loner, there may have been no one to talk to on his level of development, so he wrote his journal so, in a way, it would talk back to him and get him moving on discovering his grand theme, his primary train of thought, and this literary mechanism, writing his journal, was an intellectual exercise which seemed to serve as an objective “friend”, a sounding board so that he could discover what he was writing about in which may have been his greatest book to come, that he was writing just then, The Ordeal of Change.

H: “Toward the end of March, 1959, I realized my central subject was change. I knew I would have to write two small books: one on change in the backward countries and one on change in general.”

My response: I will not comment much here as I have explained my interpretation of his emphasis that change is his primary theme or cultural metanarrative. Change for Hoffer is also a historical-ontological force or phenomenon because it puts constant pressure on all to adjust and adapt to fit in any longer, and the pressure on their self-esteem is massive and often unbearable. Natural, supernatural, cultural and societal change grinds down those of little self-esteem and the results are menacing for people ill-prepared to cope with it.

H: “The diary filled seven notebooks. The entry on the last pages of the seventh notebook was for May 21, 1959. I cannot remember what decided me not to go on with the diary. I did not start another notebook.

It is perhaps not out of place to state here plainly what I mean by intellectuals. They are people who feel themselves members of the educated minority, with a God-given right to direct and shape events. An intellectual need not be well educated or particularly intelligent. What counts is a feeling of being a member of an educated elite.”

My response: The intellectuals feel they are elite and superior to the masses. They feel they should direct people, acquiring and centralizing the power of powerlessness unto themselves. People are insecure so they are addicted to gaining social power and status, and that drive corrupts all touched by their power lust.

H: “An intellectual wants to be listened to. He wants to instruct and be taken seriously. It is more important for him to be important than be free. He would rather be persecuted than be ignored. Typical intellectuals feel oppressed in a democratic society where they are left alone to do as they please. They call it jester’s license, and they envy intellectuals in Communist countries that take intellectuals seriously.”

My response: The only cure for the power sickness that rots out the heart and soul of most intellectuals is to empower the masses to run things, as they will force to government to leave them be free and alone to do as they will within reason, within spiritual, moral and legals boundaries.

With the masses as liberated and liberating individuators, these supercitizens will transform society to operate by the power of powerfulness mode of power handling.

Hoffer's Working And Thinking On The Waterfront

Below I will write out the two-page Preface of Eric Hoffer’s book, Eric Hoffer:Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, A Journal: June, 1958—May 1959, and will comment on it.

Here is the Preface: Page ix:(H for Hoffer writing after this): “While rummaging recently through a pile of old notebooks, I came upon a diary I had kept during 1958-1959. I had completely forgotten about it. Nineteen fifty-eight and 1959 were difficult years. I was trying to write a book on the intellectuals, the ‘men of words.” Since it was not going to be a scholarly history, it soon became clear that my theories and insights would not come to more than forty pages of manuscript—enough for a chapter but not for a book. Obviously, the intellectual would have to be part of a larger project. I began to suspect that all my thinking life I had probably only one train of thought, that everything I had written stemmed from a central preoccupation, and that I might go through life and never discover what it was.

I had to sort things out; talk to somebody. So on June 1, 1958, I began a diary.”

My response: Eric Hoffer, great soul, profound loner and brilliant philosopher, needed to get outside of his own solipsistic, stoic, solitary bubble, and talk to someone wiser and learned to help him uncover and discover his main theme, his one train of thought.

But being a radically individualistic loner, there may have been no one to talk to on his level of development, so he wrote his journal so, in a way, it would talk back to him and get him moving on discovering his grand theme, his primary train of thought, and this literary mechanism, writing his journal, was an intellectual exercise which seemed to serve as an objective “friend”, a sounding board so that he could discover what he was writing about in which may have been his greatest book to come, that he was writing just then, The Ordeal of Change.

H: “Toward the end of March, 1959, I realized my central subject was change. I knew I would have to write two small books: one on change in the backward countries and one on change in general.”

My response: I will not comment much here as I have explained my interpretation of his emphasis that change is his primary theme or cultural metanarrative. Change for Hoffer is also a historical-ontological force or phenomenon because it puts constant pressure on all to adjust and adapt to fit in any longer, and the pressure on their self-esteem is massive and often unbearable. Natural, supernatural, cultural and societal change grinds down those of little self-esteem and the results are menacing for people ill-prepared to cope with it.

H: “The diary filled seven notebooks. The entry on the last pages of the seventh notebook was for May 21, 1959. I cannot remember what decided me not to go on with the diary. I did not start another notebook.

It is perhaps not out of place to state here plainly what I mean by intellectuals. They are people who feel themselves members of the educated minority, with a God-given right to direct and shape events. An intellectual need not be well educated or particularly intelligent. What counts is a feeling of being a member of an educated elite.”

My response: The intellectual feel they are elite and superior to the masses. They feel they should direct people, acquiring and centralizing the power of powerlessness unto themselves. People are insecure so they are addicted to gaining social power and status, and that drive corrupts all touched by their power lust.

H: “An intellectual wants to be listened to. He wants to instruct and be taken seriously. It is more important for him to be important than be free. He would rather be persecuted than be ignored. Typical intellectuals feel oppressed in a democratic society where they are left alone to do as they please. They call it jester’s license, and they envy intellectuals in Communist countries that take intellectuals seriously.”

My response: The only cure for the power sickness that rots out the heart and soul of most intellectuals is to empower the masses to run things, as they will force to government to leave them be free and alone to do as they will within reason, within spiritual, moral and legals boundaries.

With the masses as liberated and liberating individuators, these supercitizens will transform society to operate by the power of powerfulness mode of power handling.

The Book Of Deuteronomy 1:39

 

I was reading this line from The Book of Deuteronomy and a line jumped out at me so I wish to comment on it. First, here is the verse from The New American Bible: “Your little ones, who you said would become booty, and your children, who as yet do not know good from bad—they shall enter; to them I will give it, and they shall occupy it.”

My response: Yahweh was mad at Moses and the vast majority of the rebellious, stiff-necked, sinning Hebrews that did not follow or worship Him unreservedly, so their punishment is that almost all of them would die in the desert, outside the Promised Land, never to step foot in the Promised land, but the children, who yet were innocent, who as yet did not know good from bad, they would be allowed to enter the Promised Land and to occupy it.

Now both Yahweh and I know children are not born innocent but basically corrupt, but that until their late teens or early adulthood, their psychological, emotional, rational and volitional attributes are not yet fully developed and trained up, so they are innocent, more or less, for all practical purposes of being judgement-worthy and punishable by Yahweh for their future offenses.

This remarkable line reveals much about human nature, and the covenant between humans and Yahweh results in what Yahweh demands of His human children.

Here is this same line from the Holy Bible (KJV): “Moreover your little ones, which you said should be a prey, and your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto to them will I give it, and they shall possess it.”

The Only Way Assumption

 

I saw a billboard somewhere recently while driving: Its originator declared or wrote that the only way to God is through Jesus. As a theological moderate, as a conservative Unitarian-Universalist, and as an ontological moderate (The middle is the way, the way that the Light Couple created the world and this principle—moderation--both creatively and operationally permeates divine laws that built and regulate the natural and human worlds.), I disagree in part with that declaration, and agree with it in part.

As a theological moderate I presuppose that there is no sole way to reach God, but several functional, sectarian routes. If one refuses to answer God’s call to find a preferable route to reach out to, make contact with, to pray to, to love, reverse, to serve God, then hell or centuries in Purgatory could occur.

I will say that I am some kind of Christian, and love Jesus as the powerful, divine son of the Mother and the Father, that worshiping Jesus is a most effective way to reach God, God the Father and God the Mother, two separate, but married chief deities, both spiritually and morally good.

Worshiping Jesus could well be the best way to go, but it is not the only way to God, and I think if Jesus was interviewed today, He would agree.

The Book Of Deuteronomy 1:29-31

 

Imagine that God not only will back you if your cause is righteous, but that God will not only go before you, but will also jump into the fray and fight for you. Wow, now that’s an ally to count on! Here is how Yahweh supported the Hebrews as discussed in The New American Bible: “But I said to you, ‘Have no dread or fear of them. The Lord, your God, who goes before you, will himself fight for you just as he took your part before your very eyes in Egypt, as well as in the desert, where you saw how the Lord your God, carried you, as a man carries his child, all along your journey until you arrived at this place.”

My response: God will fight for you, God affirms that He is your God, that he will carry you went you are tired and defeated as a father carries his child.

Here are those same passages from the Holy Bible (KJV): “Then I said unto you, Dread not, neither be afraid of them. The Lord your God who goeth before you, he shall fight for you, according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes.

And in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doth bare his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place.”

My response: Yahweh or God is with the Hebrews all the time, in various settings, be it settled Egypt, or in the desert or the wilderness.

The Book Of Deuteronomy 1:16-17

 

When Yahweh selects elders and judges among the Hebrew about to enter Israel, his view of being a just judge is laid out nobly by Yahweh. Here is this verse from The New American Bible: “I charged your judges at that time: Listen to complaints among your kinsmen, and administer true justice to both parties even if one of them is an alien. In rendering judgment, do not consider who a person is; give ear to the lowly and to the great alike, fearing no man, for judgment is God’s. Refer to me any case that is too hard for you and I will hear it.”

What I love about the Old Testament, Judaism, Yahweh and the Hebrew faith and culture is early, consistent commitment to a just judicial system, as both the lowly and the great, even the alien.

For judgment is God’s: Yahweh judges each human soul, as later His Son Jesus would die on the cross for our sins and then come back at the end of time to judge all.

God loves spiritual and moral goodness, and hates, judges and punishes spiritual and moral wickedness, and an unjust judge is an abomination unto God.

As an aside, I admire Hebraic culture and justice for giving justice to the alien. That is not the same as amnesty or open borders. We have a right, even a legal and moral duty to send our illegal aliens home to build a free, capitalist, individualistic, American-Way and American-Like culture at home, blended with their own cultures and mores.

Here are these same passages from the Holy Bible (KJV): “And I have charged your judges at that time. Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his brother, and thee stranger that is with him.

You shall not respect persons in judgments; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God’s: and the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will hear it.”

Mt response: That phrase admonish the elders or judges to judge righteously interests me, and a quick online search reveals the phrase is prominent in Christianity in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. To judge righteously they said was to detect truth from lie or error, good from evil, right and wrong, to adjudicate cases fairly and impartially for thus the judge emulates the righteous, moral, supernatural Judge of all humankind, Yahweh.

The Book Of Deuteronony 1:6-8.

 

In the first chapter of Deuteronomy, Yahweh tells Moses to move the Hebrews away from Horeb and to enter, conquer and take over Palestine, the Promised Land, which Yahweh order the Israelis to do. Here are these verses from my The New American Bible: “Departure from Horeb. The Lord, our God said to us at Horeb, ‘You have stayed long enough on this mountain. Leave here and go to the hill country of the Amorites and to all the surrounding regions, the land of the Canaanites . . . I have given that land over to you. Go and occupy the land I swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I would give to them and their descendants.”

Well when Almighty God, Yahweh, orders his His Chosen people to occupy the Promised Land, the land of Canaan, or what we now call Israel or Palestine, that ‘invasion” has divine sanction. I say that the land of the ancient Hebrews belongs to them now, with God’s sanction.

Here is these passages from the Holy Bible: “The Lord our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount.

Turn you and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the plain, in the hills, and in the vale, and in the south, and by the sea side, to the land of the Canaanites, and unto Lebanon, and unto the great river, the river Euphrates.

Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give unto them and their seed after them.”