I have been haphazardly, willy-nilly noting converging thinking patterns shared by Eric Hoffer and Jordan Peterson. Both Peterson and Stephen Hicks are pro-Modernist, classical liberals championing individuals as the sovereign idea of the West. The latter thinkers lament that postmodern Neo-Marxists celebrate and seek rivalry and conflict for power and supremacy between rival groups and rival tribes, including the rich and the poor.
In the book, The Syndicated News Articles, Eric Hoffer writes along these same lines, Page 218: 'The pride that at the present 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."
Hoffer as usual writes a few clear, concise phrases so rich with presuppositions. With Peterson and Hicks, he denounces tribal disputes between groups on the Right and Left that contribute to human war, misery, poverty, tyranny, and endless suffering. All three want classical liberalism with the emphasis on limited government, free market economics, confidence in the healing powers of reasoning, individualism, and science to a better, more peaceful future.
The pride that Hoffer denounces here is what I refer to as the power of powerlessness, or group-clout wielded as a mighty hammer by assembled, huddled, linked altruists, proud of their group and its worshiped abstraction, its ism, their absolutist metanarrative.
The alternative pride that all three advocate is what I refer to elsewhere as the power of powerfulness in which the individual develops himself and builds a life for himself and allows his neighbors to do the same, This enterprise should fit fairly well within Ayn Rand's Objectivist ethics.
Other Hofferian presuppositions, shared by Peterson and me but not Hicks and Rand so much: we, the former, see tribalism and altruism as evil and fanatical, demonic, and we regard individualism and egoism as moderate and from God. Hoffer the atheist would not ascribe to evil and good spiritual content, but he wrote as if he had doubts about his not believing in God.
I am spooked and cheered by how prophetic Hoffer was in anticipating what we must do going forward to avoid Marxist totalitarianism and tribal annihilation of all people from the face of the world due to destructive war machinery inflicting mass death..
Let me quote the las two paragraphs on Page 218 and respond to them: "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 in life is to finish God's work--to bring to full growth the capacities and talents implanted in us.
A population dedicated to this end will not necessarily overflow with the milk of human kindness but it will spend its time and energies proclaiming the superiority and exclusiveness of its nation, race or doctrine."
I believe that Hoffer was suggesting to Americans--and all humans--in the 21st century that affluence would put the masses in a situation that they would not have to work. People without work, are without purpose and meaning, and people need meaning and will take pride in their merited affluence and excellence that they created and earned themselves or they will find substitutes that they will find meaning and the false pride of selfless dedication to their tribe, their nation, their race their faith, their ideology.
Hoffer suggests that the new arising industrial revolution requires a cultural revolution of Mavellonialist values to keep people working and then maverizing, taking responsibility and finding fulfillment and solid pride of accomplishment as living angels serving God'
Any tribal appeal to their postmodernist group, ism or Marxism will not give them solid meaning, pride and self-respect but will spread these nihilistic forces across the globe, crashing the whole world and humanity down into a dark age, malevolence without precedence, suffering and even extinction of people. Hoffer knew we had to get it right, and Peterson agrees, although he states his case differently from Hoffer.
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