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.