Christopher Klim

Kim is an editor that published a book on Eric Hoffer's articles, entitled, "The Syndicated News Articles". The Social Surgeon is the title of Hoffer's December 1, 1968 news article.

Hoffer is vehemently criticizing sociologists that demand that root causes of injustice and social unrest need to be addressed if problems are to be solved. Typical idealists, they make problem-solving hopelessly complicated, and inevitably muck things up, actually making things worse.

Hoffer wants to solve social problems in effective, workable ways. Let me quote him from Page 103 of that book: "It is probably true that in human affairs there are no deep causes--there are no depths, only surface and symptoms."

I believe that Hoffer is advising that human nature is naturally corrupt and never changes. It is quite conservative. The changes that do occur, or appear to occur, may be genuine and sincerely felt and sincerely meant, but they are evanescent in duration, scope and effect. Hoffer would advise that we maintain law and order and give people work to find fulfillment in and these surface solutions will do more than anything to maintain social order, law and peace-keeping. If we would add in Mavellonialist training, then these surface personal improvements would yield powerful social benefits.

Hoffer goes on to write that words and phrases have an almost magical allure to possess the masses and the public, not unlike Stirner's fixed ideas those abstractions that  the involuntary egoists in the public serve.

He writes: "When you see the role example and imitation play in shaping events, and how minds are affected by words, gestures and symbols, you realize that history is made by trivial, superficial agencies, by gimmicks and toys. Not to know that in human affairs the trivial is not trivial is to ignore a chief ingredient of man's uniqueness."

Hoffer wants people to excel for fun, material possessions and for material gain, not just for serious, high motives. He seems to suggest that we accept that our imperatives may be hypothetical, not categorical, and that is as it should be. If we accept such sullied, trite motives for doing what is good and right, we may be able to accomplish more for the sake of the community.

Hoffer continues: "It is man's superficiality that makes hims so fantastic a creature. His nobleness and his vileness, his hatreds, loves and dedications are all skin-deep.The sudden drastic transformations of which he is capable are due to the fact that the tensions which shape his attitudes are all surface phenomena."

Hoffer does not think highly of humanity, but he does not hold it against them, because they are born sinners, weak, fickle and prone to backslide. He takes them for what they are: he likes them but keeps his expectations modest. His view of their nature comes across as cynical, but he knows that to reform a people is to try to not push them beyond what they are capable of. Appealing to their trivial motives, their sense of play and wonder will do move them to do the brave, good and right than some appeal to some Kantian universal obligation, confusing, remote and austere.

His view on skin-deep solutions for human problems my seem counter intuitive, but he is wrong rarely, and correct most of the time.

That our natures, at least on the surface are superficial and easy to alter is great news.  If we seek self-betterment, we just adopt a role as a thinker, a kind person, and a brave worker. Immediately, we begin to become that person. Our skin-deep self-reforming can lead to deeper, substantive character alteration. By living in accordance with good values, and self-talking our way into believing, expressing and acting them out, we become better individuals.

As we invite our guardian angels and the Good Spirits to stand with us and accompany us while we self-realize, we become the better persons that we so ache to be. As righteous, do-gooders, we have so long and consistently lived our good values, that these sound personal habits become a wholesome personality, in effect converting our evil nature to a good nature.

Underneath it all we are still born sinners, but that impulse is no longer much prevalent in us. By working with our natural, bestial, corrupt natures as given, by canalizing and diverting our subconscious with its vanity, emotions, passions and urges so snarling and turbulent with liveliness and will, our surface efforts to self-improve and be good citizens is planting that spiritual garden that will, over time, with mindful pruning, weeding, watering and fertilizing, grow into a bountiful and wholesome harvest.

By working from where we are at with what we have to work with (our surface-dwelling, fickle, crowd-pleasing and crowd-following self/subject/ego, we can fabricate a surface-dwelling, a surface-living, shallow, plastic, adaptable personality, a civilized, kindly, pious maverized ego, that was put together by the self for the self, changed on the topsoil of the personal volcano. By practicing this role of improved, desirable, honorable self, over time the change becomes permanent, and even the id down in the subconscious is transformed into an angelic and noble beast of merit and praiseworthiness.

To sum up, our basic natures run deep, down to our cores, our DNA, our souls. Our animal nature, our emotional state of being, is primal, and powerful, not be be discarded, ignored or disregarded--not without undermining all that we desperately seek to achieve.

Our shallow, surface natures are fickle, adaptable, and not be to taken too seriously. On the other hand, by self-improving at the surface level, change can occur over the years to the bestial nature inside.

As we can, perhaps therapy exploring the nature and concerns of that subconscious world of id is worthwhile and intellectually stimulating.