Listen Up, Jordan

 I have such respect and affection for Jordan Peterson, though I have never contacted him, and do not intend to--I sense that, as a great soul, meeting another great soul, like Peterson, might not go well. Most people do not like meeting the real Ed Ramsey.

In 1981 or in 1982, my best friend in Grand Forks, North Dakota wanted to drive me out to San Francisco to meet Eric Hoffer, who was then very old but still alive. I declined the offer because I did not know how it would go, and thought, a cold rejection would too much dishearten me.

Anyway, Hoffer was a good man and a genius, and he knew from the real world that the little people were capable of murder and mayhem in a mass movement as soulless true believers, but they were also capable of individuation on a grand scale. They had as much talent as mega-geniuses like Jordan Peterson, and that everyone had that wow potential, and all are invited by God to get after it.

Note what biographer Calvin Tomkins wrote about Eric Hoffer in his biography on Hoffer, Eric Hoffer, Pages 37 & 38, written in 1967, when Jordan Peterson was 7 years old: "Hoffer enjoyed the company of the longshoreman he worked with. There was never any question of talking down to them; he admired their competence and common sense, and often used them as sounding boards for his own ideas. 'When I was writing The True Believer,' he recalls, 'and I came to that section called 'Things Which Are Not'--the only poetic section of the book, where I say from the beginning of time men have always desired the things which are not, the cities not yet built and the gardens not yet planted--anyway, I was full of it. That day I worked with a Negro, and all day I was developing these ideas out loud. It turned out the Negro was a preacher, and the following Sunday he preached to his congregation on 'Things Which Are Not.' I felt good about that. 

You see, I have always had the impression that there wasn't a single idea that I couldn't convey to these people. These men are so ingenious, so skilled, so highly intelligent--they can do anything. Look at the way they worked out that dispatching system all by themselves. Nobody helped them. They didn't need experts. I believe the way to measure the vigor of a society is by its ability to get along without outstanding leaders; any organization that can get along without outstanding leaders is a good organization. Once, a few years ago, a professor at Berkeley told me I was wrong there; he said the vigor of a society should be judged by its ability to produce outstanding leaders. I told him, 'Fine, but it is precisely the society that can get along without them that produces them!' And we have proved that over and over in this country. After all, Eisenhower was the President for eight years, and the country got along O.K.; it functioned, didn't it?"

Hoffer worked regularly with blacks or Negroes and did not seem to mind too much. He shared his ideas with this black preacher-longshoreman and was pleased that there was some mutual sharing there. It is obvious to me that Hoffer respected blacks, but he wanted all people, colorblind or not, to pull their own weight as individuals, and he practiced what he preached.

Hoffer never directly refers to self-actualization as a capacity that the common people could strive for satisfactorily, but he sure implies it up above. Self-realization is for all, not just the elite. That is the message that I want Jordan Peterson to hear. Jordan is one of those experts that Hoffer believes that the common people do not need, but any expert should be heard because he has worked hard to master something important.

Still, gifted amateurs that are accomplished should be heard too. 

I have just taken Hoffer's insight that the little, mass people should be outstanding as should be their wont to augment their impressive, fantastic abilities. I just, under Mavellonialism, have taken individuating to its ultimate conclusion for individuals. As a nation of American anarchist, indviduating supercitizens, the average person will be so outstanding that he will be one of millions of brilliant followers as well as bosses of their politician brilliant leaders. None lack ability: what they lack is imagination, will, a goal, the hard work and self-discipline to get after it for a lifetime and the willingness to listen to their Good Spirit guardian angel to help them be all that they can be.