The Similarities

Tom Shactman's biography contains many new revelations about Eric Hoffer. The biography, American Iconoclast, has shown me two things at least. First, there is an existentialist streak in Hoffer that is similar to the one in Jordan Peterson. Both men are agnostic, or at least unwilling to be specific about God existence, personality and purpose. Both men are fascinated with the Old Testament and Dostoevsky. Let me quote from this biography, Page 22 about Hoffer: "The Pentateuch was a revelation, though not a religious one. 'What grandeur, vividness, and freshness of perception, ‘he later wrote, using terms he also used to praise Dostoevsky. The Old Testament's pages reflected 'a primitive mentality, naive, clumsy, bold and all-embracing,' and a Jewish people that imagined a lone God who made mankind in His image--a God that gave man the tasks of acting as He had, to create, to subdue nature, to build cities, and to live fully in the present. Hoffer was impressed that the ancient Jews have been so involved with the present that they did not bother to imagine a hereafter; and that several thousand years since the Old Testament had been written, its characters still came across as very 'real.'" Both Jordan Peterson and Eric Hoffer like historical people and fictional characters that are alive, lively, gritty, facing life head on, with all their flaws and suffering and sins laid bare, and some of them actually, heroically facing their suffering and hurt, and transcending it. It is gripping, real, truthful and authentic, and both these genius intellectuals relish the Bible and Dostoevsky.