Am I Original?

 

Am I as original thinker as I believe that I am? Yes, to some degree, but I was amazed to read Eric Hoffer quote from the biography of him, Eric Hoffer by Calvin Tomkins, Page 68: “The cold war between the intellectual and the bourgeois, which began in the nineteenth century, is coming to a climax in our time, and its being won by the intellectual. Automation confirms it. But the solution is that society will become a school, and everyone will become an intellectual, and once everyone is an intellectual, we don’t have to worry about the intellectuals any more!”

 

I thought it was my original insights that to prevent elites from ruling the masses as they have throughout history, the cure, the only solution, was to help each common person realize that they were to live as individuators-anarchist-supercitizens, upper middle class, but not much above or below anyone else in wealth or power. Once common people were instructed on how to self-realize, then these deep and genuine intellectuals would be so willful, smart, skeptical and critical that no elite or intellectual authority figure seeking to dominate them—and, conversely, realizing and accepting that it was neither right nor in their best interest to seek power over anyone else—would have a leg to stand on.

 

I am convinced that Hoffer anticipated my point of view. Wow.