Eric Hoffer On Tribalism

 Eric Hoffer, 50 years ago, worried greatly about rich, bored, affluent Americans that used to find meaning and a healthy sense of pride, if not happiness, in their work and struggle just to put food on the table. He foresaw that the time would come when people would be so rich, bored, no longer challenged, so privileged, so smothered by comfort and lack of material need that it redounded to a huge social crisis: a people without the ability to find meaning in the struggle to provide for their families and themselves, are a people deficient in solid personal pride of contribution and purpose.

Set adrift into meaninglessness, without a chance to earn proper pride as individuals, they would likely make a desperate resort to that false, unsatisfying but dangerous pride in their cause, their tribal group, their mass movement.

Read what he wrote on Page 218 in The Syndicated News Articles: "The pride at present that pervades the world is the claim that one is a member of a chosen group--be it a nation, race, or party. No other attitude has so impaired the oneness of the human species, and contributed so much to the savage strife of our time."

My response: this collective pride is that false pride in one's tribe and it is the source of historical and current conflict, and Hoffer was warning about this 50 years before Jordan Peterson admonished us about the deadly tradition of tribe versus tribe, which is why both men advocated real pride built on personal achievement, individuation and just making a living, to provide needed meaning for people in their lives.

Hoffer continues: "If affluence is not to set in motion social dissolution we must change our conception of what is worthwhile, useful and efficient. Now that the new industrial revolution is on the way to solving the problem of means and we can catch our breath, it behooves us to remember that man's only legitimate end is life is to finish God's work--to bring full growth to the capacities and talents implanted in us."

My response: implicit in the social worrying about keeping people stable and happy or at least contented--in the worrying shared by Peterson and Hoffer alike--is the presupposition that without meaning in their lives, people will destroy the whole world because pseudo-meaning and nihilism to provide them with a bad but workable form of meaning, their ideology is a substitute for their just cause, their reason to keep on living. Here Hoffer anticipates the rise of Mavellonialism for indivdidating Americans and other to maverize and finish God's work growing their natural capacities and talents.

Hoffer continues: "A population dedicated to this end will not necessarily overflow with the milk of human kindness but it will not be likely to spend its time and energies proclaiming the superiority and exclusivity of its nation, race or doctrine."

My response: His genius is his divine knack to see how things are and where they could lead. He knew that people without a purpose to give them proper pride will find something to replace it with, an ideology that they embrace with true believer enthusiasm, with a collectivist  answer for all problems.

Good pride is finding meaning in self-realization, working hard, or serving God and that is an individualistic effort and lifestyle.

Bad pride is finding relief and a reason to continue in a false narrative like an ideology. There the fanatical advocacy of the one true cause leads to spreading it by the sword, as its adherents, collectivist and for unlimited government to back the spread of their cause as group affiliation is what they worship as they seek to seize power everywhere.