I will write out below his diary entries and comment on them where
necessary.
Hoffer (H after this): “June 1, 1958
5 A.M. I am getting self-righteous. This usually happens after a long
stretch of work. I remember Tolstoi saying somewhere that work makes
not only ants, but me, too, cruel.”
My response: When people are tired, or stressed from too much work or
working too long, they can turn nasty. Just scapegoating or blowing
off steam. When I was about 12 years old, and it was -20F after
school and we were feeding cows, and apparently my Dad got cranky
with my brother and me for some work offense feeding cows on our
farm. Later, when chores were done, he was warming himself by backing
up to the cherry-red wood stove in the farmhouse, and he may have
been apologizing, for he said that cold weather could make him mean,
though I do not much recall that behavior.
H: “4 P.M. Went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned. Lili and
the boy met me afterwards and we went to the beach. We had a good,
plentiful meal at the Hitchrack. It is long since I tasted such good
liver. The boy had learned several dirty words. Lili did not seem
alarmed.
10 P.M. Went to the union meeting. Again the contrast between the
shallowness of the discussion of the abstract and the originality in
tackling the practical. There were weariness and boredom in the first
half of the meeting, which dealt with the Sobell* case. (*Morton
Sobell was convicted as a spy in 1951, in connection with the
Rosenberg case. The radicals are still agitating for his release.) In
the second half the subject was the hiring hall and how to deal with
chiselers on the scrap-iron jobs. The solutions offered were original
and wonderfully simple. The simplicity gave an impression of
subtlety.”
My response: Both Hoffer and I are blue-collar workers, like him, I
have noted many times that my peers are wonderfully clever and
creative at solving practical problems. People can think for
themselves: they do not need an elite to think for them, to direct
them. I go one step beyond Hoffer (Actually, below, Hoffer catches up
with me by speculating that practical blue collar workers might be
able to do intellectual, speculative pondering, theorizing and
playing with ideas-- with a subtle, original twist, and why not?) in
asserting that the masses are as smart, more or less, as anyone else
in leadership positions. and that the masses as self-taught,
individuating intellects could be as original sand elegant as nay at
solving abstract puzzles as well.
It also occurs to me that the abstract is shallow and dull when the
union intellectuals droned on and on because their ideological
uniformity of speaking with one voice makes them dull, repetitive and
dumb.
NOTE: I spoke too soon—below Hoffer speculates whether that blue
collar longshoreman, so original and subtle in solving practical
problems, could handle playing creatively with abstract ideas, and my
resounding response is hell yes. There is no educated or
intellectually superior elite anywhere, of any race, superior to the
masses in being able to solve both practical problems and speculative
ventures. All have the talent, and if all or most would individuate,
the masses would finally have a full opportunity to demonstrate their
stuff and abilities, and this would go a long, long way to
dismantling and discrediting elites being needed to supervise the
masses anywhere.
H: “It would be fascinating to see whether the longshoremen’s
originality in solving practical problems could be canalized into
theorizing and the play with ideas. We know a canalization in the
opposite direction. In the middle of the nineteenth century the
intellectual energy of New England was drained into practical
channels of mining, engineering, railroading, and the like, during
the opening of the West. The feats of practical organization of the
Rockerfellers, Morgans, and even the Carnegies were the feats of
potential philosophers plunged into an atmosphere of action.
I am aware of how much I have to watch myself. The pitfalls are all
around me: not only self-righteousness but also deprecation of
others. The others are not the people I work and live with but the
intellectuals in general. There is a danger I might come to think of
most of them as sterile, pretentious and futile. And it is strange
that this attitude is pronounced at a time when my creative flow is
at its thinnest.”
My response: What I admire most about this original, brilliant,
moderate philosopher is his brutal honesty about all things, life and
people, including himself. He knows that he, I and everyone born
basically evil and we are most susceptible to being corrupted when we
hate an enemy deserving to be hated too much, enemies like
power-hungry intellectuals working to overthrow and rule lovely
America, which Hoffer reveres.
Even a moral great soul like Hoffer, if his wrath and hatred of
elites waxes excessively, then he is in constant danger of being
transformed into one of them, a self-righteous, oppositional hater,
whose hatred will hollow out his self-esteem, his great self-love,
and then resentment, bitterness and a complete loss of humility and
objectivity has allowed him to become what he hates most. Hoffer was
keenly aware of that danger and temptation, but kept himself humble
and in check, so that he could fight them calmly and cooly, so that
the reader can understand his loathing of and wariness towards all
elites as the perennial enemies of humankind and human well-being, as
they surely are.
Implicit in Hoffer’s voluminous writings warring the mass to be
wary of intellectuals is his endorsement of the masses as talented
commoners who could and should run their own affairs and
self-realize. The masses as organized individualist should run
society all the time, in all institutions fro the bottom up.
H: “June 2
The present depression, even if it turns out to be temporary, and our
lag in science and technology have shaken my confidence.”
My response: Even the bold, confident, ultra self-reliant Hoffer felt
unsure, down and self-doubting at times, and that is completely
understandable and acceptable for humans naturally suffer from
depression and low self-esteem.
But the key takeaway here is to rally again and again and such a
feisty approach will help one rebound.
H: “The disillusionment with America is not likely to follow the
course of the disillusionment of the British which we experienced
between two world wars. The chief weakness in this country is the
inability to keep the industrial plant in full operation all the
time. The weakness in England was that it had to sustain the edifice
of Empire on a shaky economic foundation. I doubt whether being or
not being a great power would deeply affect our lives in this
country. What matters is the crisis of confidence in our know-how and
ingenuity.”
My response: This insightful genius knows everyday Americans are so
progressive, innovative and proficient as entry-level individuators,
individualists with some self esteem and some egoist morality, would
only remain self-confident if they sense their America can-do,
know-how and ingenuity could be renewed and demonstrated routinely
all across the population as they validate their lives by creating,
thinking, doing, not by being a member of the nation, or British
empire, though those things matter too.
H: “I am cheered when I realize that things vital for my welfare or
prospects have completely escaped my mind. Preoccupation with the
self has always seemed to me unhealthy.”
My response: Though Hoffer is an implicit egoist and an implicit or
unconscious proponent of individuating, egoist morality and
individual-living, notice that he regards preoccupation with the self
to be unhealthy, and he is right to criticize self-obsession as sick
and he will not live that way, so he avoids that subjective,
corrosive kind of narcissistic individualism, which is really
altruistic/collectivized narcissism at work.
When people are interested in the objective be it infinity within or
without, or objectivity inside materially or the external physical
world, the self is happiest when it is busy, creative, productive,
competent engaged loving and developing: there little depression and
sick stultifying self-absorption occurs, Hoffer the great soul
carries on an intellectual and metaphysical dialogue with his
self-realizing self and that is self-interest and self development
not self-preoccupation. It is the collectivist, the joiners, who
wallow in self-obsession and it is unhealthy.
H: The analysts and the prognosticators have not shown up well on the
French crisis. In this case the man in the street was a better judge
than the experts.”
My response: Hoffer loves paradox, and truth is often paradoxical:
ironically the less educated less intellectual masses often are more
rational, realistic and truthful than the elites experts whose
ideology and fanaticism and groupthink often makes them dumb.
H: To an intellectual words—parliament, democracy, dictatorship,
fascism—loom large. To the general run of people, the chief
question is whether, and how smoothly, a thing works. The government
of France, call it by any name, has not worked during the last
decades. To make it work you have to get it out of the hands of the
people who have played with it until now.”
My response The intellectuals, the ideologues, are fixated upon and
words words to guide them in how to choose rule and make decisions
about things in the real world, whereas the grounded, sensible,
realistic masses, are more pragmatic and goes with what is effective
and functions or not.
H: “June 4
None hours on the German ship Dortheim on Pier 26.
On the way to the job it occurred to me that the homogenizing effect
of Communism is partly due to its inducement of passionate rudeness.
People of all nationalities become somewhat alike when swept away by
a fit of rudeness.”
My response: When people are grateful, at peace and self-loving,
there is no need to be rude to self or others. When people lack
self-esteem, travel in packs, whose insides are strewn by passionate
strife, who burn with resentment, being rude to the self and other is
a way of venting this unhappiness, and when it becomes
institutionalized as a practice, it unites heterogenous but
frustrated peoples.
H: “On the job I had for a partner the voluble Negro, ‘Cigar’
Barlow. He is a fairly effective speaker at union meeting, somewhat
of a rabble-rouses but his conversation is pretentious and empty. He
had gone to see and hear Billy Graham, but could not tell me why he
was so impressed. He uses high-sounding cliches.
Character seems to be more typical among Negroes than among Whites.
The unctuous hypocrite, the barefaced cheat, the windbag, the lecher,
the miser are immediately identifiable, and remind one of types one
has read about in old books and fairytales. There must be a large
element of playacting in the Negro’s life. My hunch is that any
change in the fortunes of a Negro would immediately show itself in
every detail of his life. There will be a new play, and a new role
acted with minute attention to every detail.”
My response: It could be that playacting, practicality and loud
extroversion are group behaviors, so when people are joiners, their
lack of deep individuality might be compensated by them by showing
the world a loud, showy, melodramatic but superficial individuality
as a character, but it is a compensation not an actuality. Blacks
generally are more groupist than whites, so playacting and theatrical
character roles being assumed by them as adults, might be more
prevalent and evident, than among whites who generally are a bit more
individualistic, they know it, and can be individualistic without the
color and playacting.
H: “On and off during the day I have been thinking about woman’s
role in American political life. My feeling is that, on the whole,
women will vote against the workingman. They will side with anything
that smacks of an upper or ruling class. Women elected Eisenhower,
and they were shocked by Truman’s commonness.”
My response: It is noticeable even today that women for Democrat more
than men do, and men vote Republican more than women do.
H: “June 5
Finished the German ship at Pier 26. Six hours. I have the impression
that many Scandinavian longshoreman are anti-British. They speak of
the British the way the anti-Semites speak of the Jews. According to
Axel (the Swede I talked with today) the British own every mine, mill
and factory in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. How come then that Britain
seems to be hard up? Answer: it’s only the poor in Britain who are
hard up.
It is perhaps true that ignorance tends to be extremist. Our opinions
about things we do not know are not likely to be balanced and
moderate.”
My response: It seems likely.
H: “My mind went back to the possibility of canalizing practical
intelligence into intellectual channels (And why not, Ed Says.) One
of the peculiarities of the Occident has been the ability to distill
spiritual impulses from practical pursuits. The Italian Renaissance
was born in the marketplace, in the workshops of artisans. Pure
science emerged from the pursuits of architects, navigators, and
craftsmen. The Greeks extracted geometry from surveying, and their
philosophy probably received its first impetus from the invention of
coinage about 700 B.C.It was but a step from seeing coins as the
common denominator of all values to the speculation that the manifold
appearance of things is due to different states and arrangements of a
fundamental substance.”
My response: Hoffer is speculating that commerce can feed
individualism, philosophizing and the creative mindset, another
paradox and likely true.
H: “
June 6
Four hours on the Lurline at Pier 35. In the afternoon I took Lili
and the boy to the circus. The child seemed hardly interested in the
stunts and spectacles. My impression is that he can get excited only
about something that has a direct relationship to him. In the zoo and
in the park there is a personal confrontation between the animals and
himself. This lack of enthusiasm for the circus reminded me that he
shows no interest in animated toys such as pecking birds and other
mechanical animals. He becomes passionately attached to the sculpture
of a bird or an animal, no matter how crude, and he spends hours
tinkering with wheels and gears.
June 8
A long day, loading rice on the Hawaiian Pilot in Encinal. There have
been intermittent downpours. Had it not been for the pleasantness of
my partner it would have been a miserable day. Between loads I
observed sparrows feeding on patches of scattered rice on the deck.
How timid they are! Are these blobs of life without fear? They come
down from the edge of the roof like a cloud and spread out like a
carpet. They seem to keep away from spots where the rice is think as
if fearing a snare.”
