Selden Osborne

 Eric Hoffer regarded his friend and competitor, Selden Osborne as the prototypical, virtual signaling intellectual that self-ascribes to himself the moral stance as compassionate, reforming, a tireless worker in the vineyard of social justice.

 

Here is what Calvin Tomkins wrote in the biography that he wrote, Eric Hoffer, Page 39: "Largely as a result of Bridges' enmity, Osborne had been thwarted in his ambitions to win election to union office and to rise in the labor movement. Hoffer did not have a very high opinion of union intellectuals. He thought they were far from understanding the true nature of the working masses, and he suspected that what they really cared for was power."

This quote is rich with implications about Hoffer's take on common people and the elites so eager to control them.  

First, he accepted that all people and workers are created roughly equal in talent and ability.

Second, because they could achieve just about anything that they set their minds to, American workers--or workers anywhere-do not require much supervision and direction. A democratic workplace in which workers have great say in running the company and allocating the work is a company that will be innovative, durable, successful, and profitable.

Third, unlike the wise Jordan Peterson, Hoffer and I vehemently disagree with Jordan, on the subject of human talent. Unlike Jordan states, we do not regard talent as rare or as the province of only the very brightest and gifted. All people, on all levels of ability, are overflowing with talent, and God calls each of us every day to self-realize and bring that marvelous potential into actuality.

Fourth, intellectuals like Selden Osborne bring to bear a deadly, vicious presupposition of their own: people are inferior to the natural elite that should rule them, and without a firm, stern, permanent  oligarchy to run the workplace and all of society, all will devolve into anarchy, chaos, disorder and wretchedness.

Fifth, all people, average or naturally more gifted, are basically evil. People are naturally lazy, fatalistic and run in packs. People naturally seek to submit to authority, to conform and to be told how to work and live. Natural humans, untrained, do require elites to rule them. Where people are existing under the umbrella of traditional values, how people naturally are innately impels people to end up in stratified structures: the few that are smarter, better, more industrious and more energetic end up ruling the hierarchy.

Under this unjust and wasteful scenario, the huddled, crowded masses at the bottom of the hierarchies are ruled by elites for thousands of years, leading their lives of quiet desperation, yet, in their altruistic self-loathing, they require and desire to be ruled by elites, not because they are inferior to any member of that elite, but because they believe they are, and have no instruction in Mavellonialist values to help them learn how to live, mostly free of rule by elites and other intellectuals, and largely within flattened hierarchies.

Sixth, Hoffer realized that the American experiment was a wondrous social experiment, run by the little people that made lives for themselves as individuals. He just required introduction to the philosophy of Mavellonialism to take this train of thought to its logical end.

Seventh, another aspect of this complex realization is that intellectuals were naturally craving power and naturally, actually believing that they were superior to the masses of lower class, institutional rank, education and material standing. Intellectuals and members of the ruling class are not superior or inferior to anyone—they are just people, period.

These intellectuals naturally rise to the top of any hierarchy, but, lacking Mavellonialist values, they did not know how to live, so they, like all other ruling elites in history, crave and acquire power over others and ruin the lives of all in their roles as oppressors, exploiters and victimizers.

If Selden had opted to self-realize and become a great soul like Hoffer did without being addicted to and yielding to his power-craving, Selden like Hoffer would have declined and been disinterested in gaining union office.

A profound, committed and arrived self-realizer craves his own power and liberty with zero desire to have power over his neighbors. Until elitists and intellectuals like Selden come to recognize and accept their limitations regarding ruling their neighbors, human suffering will not be alleviated as their dangerous men prowl the earth, seeking out niches of people to rule.