Optimal

 

On Page 26 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has one entry which I quote and comment on.

 

Hoffer: “            33

 

The conditions optimal for cultural creativeness seem to be a marked degree of individual autonomy; a modicum of economic well-being; absence of mass fervor whether religious, patriotic, revolutionary, business or war; a paucity of opportunities for action; a milieu which recognizes and awards merit; and a degree of communal discipline.”

 

My response: Hoffer loves America because America is close to what a society of high-achieving individuating supercitizens would require to flourish, and it is already available here, for the most part, in traditional American cultural, political and economic nature.

 

Hoffer: “The last point needs elucidation.

 

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest. A society which gives unlimited freedom to the individual, more often than not attains a disconcerting sameness. On the other hand, where communal discipline is strict but not ruthless—‘an annoyance that irritates, but not a heavy yoke which crushes’—originality is likely to thrive. It is true that when imitation runs its course in a wholly free society it results in a uniformity which is not unlike a mild tyranny. Thus the fully standardized free society has perhaps enough compulsion to challenge originality.”

 

My response: Hoffer is often paradoxical: it intuitively seems that total freedom per person enjoyed in a free society would trigger maximum originality, but all are the same, so they imitate each other, run in packs and do not maverize.

 

Originality and creativity are created by the clash of contrary qualities, so a society that promoted liberty and individualism on one hand, but parents, the community, the church, the school and the government require and maintain discipline, self-control, law and order, there the moral but autonomous individual, especially if reared on rational egoism, is a person of conscience and self-discipline, the living embodiment of ordered-liberty so his will and talents moderately clash, so he is a prime candidate to produce artistic and original work.