I have been reading Eric Hoffer for 49 years, and, yet this morning, 2/1/2022, I was reading Calvin Tomkin's diary on Hoffer, when a realization hit me like a ton of bricks. What leapt out at me from the page was something Hoffer the genius commented on. Misfits can join and make impactful mass movement, or they can individualize, and grow stable communities, group-oriented and group-lived, or a stable communities of the future, not yet existent, a flourishing, happy community of individual-oriented and individual-living maverizers.
That misfits can lead to rise and spread of mass movements and totalitarianism, want and war, or maverization for anarchist supercitizens (anticipated, not stated by Hoffer), a very high civilization. This noted dichotomy, by him, may be one of his core and most profound suggestions that I missed all along. Let me explain.
Hoffer regarded himself and his fellow migrant crop-gatherers as misfits, never belonging anywhere, never fitting in anywhere, perhaps unable to fit in anywhere, to some degree, psychologically or physically crippled. For Hoffer, misfits arise when people do not fit into any social niche. Humans are social creatures, requiring routine, community and structure to feel fulfilled and secure. Another way of putting it is that the former misfit finds group connections and group-living in which he is welcome and fits, and he feels emotionally comforted and rewarded, welcomed forever into a new or reestablished social arrangement that separates him from anguishing doubts as ontological loneliness, anxiety over not doing more with his life, fear of death, keeping God's call to maverize hidden and forgotten, etc.
Change, Hoffer noted, makes misfits of all ensconced adults, and the adjustment is painful, inevitable and stressful for all. Most adjust to the new regime, and go on, more or less, successfully with their lives.
Those that cannot adapt or be assimilated remain misfitted, and that state of dislocation and permanent not belonging anywhere, eats away at the individual's self-esteem. As the individual's mental health deteriorates, he will psychically, physically, emotionally and morally rot until he loathes himself and his painful, miserable existence. The epiphany for me came today as I learned that Hoffer way back early on offered two different paths that the permanent misfit can travel along, but more on that below. I never captured that offering until today, and it likely is key to all that he wrote.
Let me quote from Tomkins on Page 17 and 18: "He had never before thought of himself and the other men in the camp as a common species--the undesirables. 'The majority of us were incapable of hold on to a steady job,' Hoffer wrote. We lacked self-discipline and the ability to endure monotonous, leaden hours. We were probably misfits from the very beginning. Some of us were maimed, some got frightened and ran away, and some took to drink. We inevitably drifted in the direction of least resistance--the open road.' And yet, Hoffer mused, these men did not seem below average in intelligence; there was much tolerance and goodwill among them, and little viciousness. Given the opportunity, in fact might they not be able to make something of themselves?"
My response: it seems obvious that these migrant agricultural workers were misfits and undesirables, but they were not inferior to those that were middle class and fitted in. How could their lives be turned around?
Tomkins again: "The answer came to him a few weeks later, when he had left the camp and was crossing a stretch of barren desert on foot. It occurred to him that the pioneering job of making such a desert bloom would be just the sort of thing that would fire the imagination of every man in the Federal camp.'Tramps as pioneers? It seemed absurd,' he wrote. And yet, as he mulled over the idea, it became clearer and clearer to him that the pioneers, those that left society and went into the wilderness were probably people with the same people with the same characteristics as the men in the camp--men who could not hold steady jobs, drunkards, gamblers, fugitives, and outcasts, with a sprinkling of pure adventurers, young and old. 'If in the end they shouldered enormous tasks, endured unspeakable hardships, and accomplished the impossible, it was because they had to. They became men of action on the run . . . . And once they tasted the joy of achievement, they craved for more.'"
My response: Misfits can choose a path that benefits soceity as a whole and each of them personally. Pioneers like the fruit tramps were misfits. As pioneers, they could and did rise to the occasion and build a new country, prosper and create wealth. Many of them got used to being successful and prosperous, so their battered self-esteems were restored, and they were able to fit into the new social arrangement being organized and instantiated, misfits and outcasts no more. Hoffer is making the point that in America the misfits, the little people, tossed on our shores, were able to work hard, build a republic, become citizens and organized communities. Here Old World misfit became stable, established New World middle class citizens.
Tomkins continues: "It was clear to Hoffer, though, that if society's outcasts and misfits could be pioneers, they would equally well choose another path and seek a more sinister sort of regeneration. In Germany and Italy, for example, thousands of people were getting rid of their 'undesirable' status just then by joining mass movements. The newly converted Nazi, Fascist or Communist were more than willing to sacrifice individuality and freedom of choice if it meant he could also get rid of his blemished, undesirable self. "
My response: Here is the other path for misfits to follow: the sinister surrender of the self to the accepted mass movement with its corporate establsihment and its idolized ideology that all members were willing to fight and die for. The misfit escaped his unbearable personal life by fleeing into the collective.
Tomkins continues: "Hoffer was later to point out in The True Believer, 'When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movementl, we find a new freedom--freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame or remorse.' The misfit, then, formed a volatile element in society, capable either of heroic individualism or mass tyranny. It seemed to Hoffer in the thirties that history was being shaped largely by misfits who had dedicated their lives to the most dangerous tyrants of all time--Hitler, Mussoline and Stalin."
My response: Hoffer never overtly espouses egoism, individuation and Mavellonialism, but his idea that retaining one's individual independence, but building a personal life for one's family and oneself as a constructive response to being dislocated is as close as he comes to espousing a philosophy of individuaism that I can detect. The developed individual life is the wholesome solution of being misfitted.
Elsewhere, misfits banded together and found a cause to serve and surrender themselves too as fanatics. Such mass movements are capable of great evil.
There are several extrapolations that I would like to offer from Hoffer;s ponderings.
First, America was and is humanity's last, best hope. Our founding and history, growing out of British philsophy, cuture and political theory, allowed dispossessed and dislocated millions of European common folk, misfitted in all ways, to choose the path of individuation to build a country based on constituional law, capitalism, liberty and individual opportunity.
Second, in Eruope, Russia, Asia and Japan, misfitted people were often canalized into mass movements. With American politics and values, they may not have formed mass movement.
Third, what can we learn from history? In America, the Leftists and Marxists are on the march with their launched Marxist revolution: they are working tirelessly day and night to uproot middle class, middle-aged andyoun, poor and minsority Americans fromt heir tradition arrangements, converting them into ruptured misfitss craving the overthrow of the current regime. If the common people can be deracinated from status quo comfort, belonging and sense of personal well-being, now shattered and fumbling and stumbling misfits seekin a new home to flee into to escape their loathed, worthless selfhoods, Marxism ofers them a waiting mass movement, an ism to cling to and die for, and a revoltuinary change ending all that America is and was.
My acceptance of Hoffer's description that change is inevitable and incessant, and that it turns all settled adults into anxious misfits with no self-esteem, how do we ensure that dislocated and discombobulated American adults and youngsters join the path of individuation and individuating, and not mass movement, war, tyranny and misery?
Mavellonialism is part of the answer. If our adults are taught to maverize, and refuse to lose faith in the self when facing change, then such self-aware average people of un-average individuated status and accomplishent, can ride out any societal storm and transitionw without falling aprat and destablisizingour wonderful politial system and way of life. The masses of individuators, self-confident, competent and self-diredted, shoulc be able to absorb wave after wave of change withoutthrowing out the baby with the bathwater, refuting Marxists, tyranny and massmovment in favor of middle class, capitalist individuated anarchist supercitizen existence in America, the world's finest constitutional republic.
I have been reading Eric Hoffer for 49 years, and, yet this morning, 2/1/2022, I was reading Calvin Tomkin's diary on Hoffer, when a realization hit me like a ton of bricks. What leapt out at me from the page was something Hoffer the genius commented on. Misfits can join and make impactful mass movements, or they can individualize, and grow stable communities, group-oriented and group-lived, or construct stable communities of the future, not yet existent, a flourishing, happy community of individual-oriented and individual-living maverizers.
That misfits can lead to rise and spread of mass movements and totalitarianism, want and war, or maverization for anarchist supercitizens (anticipated, not stated by Hoffer), a very high civilization. This noted dichotomy, by him, may be one of his core and most profound suggestions that I missed all along. Let me explain.
Hoffer regarded himself and his fellow migrant crop-gatherers as misfits, never belonging anywhere, never fitting in anywhere, perhaps unable to fit in anywhere, to some degree, psychologically or physically crippled. For Hoffer, misfits arise when people do not fit into any social niche. Humans are social creatures, requiring routine, community, and structure to feel fulfilled and secure. Another way of putting it is should a self-restored, former misfit finds group connections and group-living in which he is welcome and fits, and he feels emotionally comforted and rewarded, welcomed forever into a new or reestablished social arrangement that separates him from anguishing doubts as ontological loneliness, anxiety over not doing more with his life, fear of death, keeping God's call to maverize hidden and forgotten, etc.
Change, Hoffer noted, makes misfits of all ensconced adults, and the adjustment is painful, inevitable and stressful for all. Most adjust to the new regime, and go on, more or less, successfully with their lives.
Those that cannot adapt or be assimilated remain misfitted, and that state of dislocation and permanent not belonging anywhere, eats away at the individual's self-esteem. As the individual's mental health deteriorates, he will psychically, physically, emotionally, and morally rot until he loathes himself and his painful, miserable existence. The epiphany for me came today as I learned that Hoffer way back early on offered two different paths that the entrenched, usually permanent misfit can travel along, but more on that below. I never captured that offering until today, and it likely is key to all that he wrote.
Let me quote from Tomkins on Page 17 and 18: "He had never before thought of himself and the other men in the camp as a common species--the undesirables. 'The majority of us were incapable of hold on to a steady job,' Hoffer wrote. We lacked self-discipline and the ability to endure monotonous, leaden hours. We were probably misfits from the very beginning. Some of us were maimed, some got frightened and ran away, and some took to drink. We inevitably drifted in the direction of least resistance--the open road.' And yet, Hoffer mused, these men did not seem below average in intelligence; there was much tolerance and goodwill among them, and little viciousness. Given the opportunity, in fact might they not be able to make something of themselves?"
My response: it seems obvious that these migrant agricultural workers were misfits and undesirables, but they were not inferior to those that were middle class and fitted in. How could their lives be turned around?
Tomkins again: "The answer came to him a few weeks later, when he had left the camp and was crossing a stretch of barren desert on foot. It occurred to him that the pioneering job of making such a desert bloom would be just the sort of thing that would fire the imagination of every man in the Federal camp. 'Tramps as pioneers? It seemed absurd,' he wrote. And yet, as he mulled over the idea, it became clearer and clearer to him that the pioneers, those that left society and went into the wilderness, were probably people with the same characteristics as the men in the camp--men who could not hold steady jobs, drunkards, gamblers, fugitives, and outcasts, with a sprinkling of pure adventurers, young and old. 'If in the end they shouldered enormous tasks, endured unspeakable hardships, and accomplished the impossible, it was because they had to. They became men of action on the run . . . . And once they tasted the joy of achievement, they craved for more.'"
My response: Well-oriented misfits, with renewed self-esteem, could decide to amount to something, and thus could choose a path that benefits society as a whole and each of them personally. Pioneers like the fruit tramps were misfits. As pioneers, they could and did rise to the occasion and build a new country, prosper, and create wealth. Many of them got used to being successful and prosperous, so their battered self-esteems were restored, and they were able to fit into the new social arrangement being organized and instantiated, misfits and outcasts no more. Hoffer is making the point that in America the misfits, the discarded common people that here learned to believe that they were of intrinsic worth, these little people, tossed on our shores—they were able to work hard, build a republic, become citizens and organized communities. Here Old World misfits became stable, established New World middle class citizens.
Tomkins continues: "It was clear to Hoffer, though, that if society's outcasts and misfits could be pioneers, they would equally well choose another path and seek a more sinister sort of regeneration. In Germany and Italy, for example, thousands of people were getting rid of their 'undesirable' status just then by joining mass movements. The newly converted Nazi, Fascist or Communist were more than willing to sacrifice individuality and freedom of choice if it meant he could also get rid of his blemished, undesirable self. "
My response: Here is thar other, ominous path for misfits to follow: the sinister surrender of the self to the accepted mass movement with its corporate establishment and its idolized ideology that all members were willing to fight and die for. The misfit escaped his unbearable personal life by fleeing into the collective.
Tomkins continues: "Hoffer was later to point out in The True Believer, 'When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom--freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame or remorse.' The misfit, then, formed a volatile element in society, capable either of heroic individualism or mass tyranny. It seemed to Hoffer in the thirties that history was being shaped largely by misfits who had dedicated their lives to the most dangerous tyrants of all time--Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin."
My response: Hoffer never overtly espouses egoism, individuation and Mavellonialism, but his idea that retaining one's individual independence, but building a personal life for one's family and oneself as a constructive response to being dislocated is as close as he comes to espousing a philosophy of individuaism that I can detect. The developed individual life is the wholesome solution of being misfitted.
Elsewhere, misfits banded together and found a cause to serve and surrender themselves too as fanatics. Such mass movements are capable of great evil.
There are several extrapolations that I would like to offer from Hoffer’s ponderings.
First, America was and is humanity's last, best hope. Our founding and history, growing out of British philosophy, culture and political theory, allowed dispossessed and dislocated millions of European common folk, misfitted in all ways, to choose the path of individuation to build a country based on constitutional law, capitalism, liberty and individual opportunity.
Second, in Europe, Russia, Asia and Japan, misfitted people were often canalized into mass movements. With American politics and values, they may not have formed or built mass movements.
Third, what can we learn from history? In America, the Leftists and Marxists are on the march with their launched Marxist revolution: they are working tirelessly day and night to uproot middle class, the middle-aged and young, the poor and minority Americans, yanking them up by the roots, extricating them from their tradition arrangements, converting them into ruptured misfits, craving the overthrow of the current regime.
If the common people can be deracinated from status quo comfort, belonging and sense of personal well-being, now shattered and fumbling and stumbling misfits seeking a new home to flee into to escape their loathed, worthless selfhoods, neo-Marxism/Postmodernism offers them a waiting mass movement, an ism to cling to and die for, and a revolutionary change ending all that America is and was.
Given my wholehearted acceptance of Hoffer's description that change is inevitable and incessant, and that it turns all settled adults into anxious misfits with no self-esteem, how do we ensure that dislocated and discombobulated American adults and youngsters join the path of individuation and individuating, and not mass movement, war, tyranny and misery?
Mavellonialism is part of the answer. If our adults are taught to maverize, and refuse to lose faith in the self when facing change, then such self-aware average people of un-average individuated status and accomplishment, can ride out any societal storm and transition without falling apart and thoroughly destabilizing and blowing up our wonderful political system and way of life. The masses of individuators, self-confident, competent and self-directed, should be able to absorb wave after wave of change without throwing out the baby with the bathwater, refuting Marxist, tyranny and mass movement in favor of middle class, capitalist individuated anarchist supercitizen existence in America, the world's finest constitutional republic.
No comments:
Post a Comment