Making History

 

 

Last night (9/1/2024) I was tired of reading philosophy articles about antirealism, so I “took a break” and surfed the Internet for articles on Eric Hoffer. There are several, but one intrigued me so much that I decided to write today’s blog entry around a point made in this article, written by Lawrence W/ Reed, president emeritus of the FEE (Foundation for Economic Education.

 

The excerpt which I will quote below was written by Hoffer and is quoted by Reed in his article. Here is the excerpt: “The significant point is that people unfit for freedom—who cannot do much with it—are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a ‘have’ type of self. It says leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a ‘have-not’ type of self. If Hitler had had the talents and the temperament of a genuine artist, if Stalin had had the capacity to become a first-rate theoretician, if Napoleon had had the makings of a great poet or philosopher they would hardly have developed the all-consuming lust for absolute power.”

 

My response: I do not know which book or article by Hoffer that this quote of his originates in, but I will interpret it now. People are born wicked, and thus we hate ourselves and want to bring undeserved and deserved death, destruction, and malevolent suffering down upon our heads. Thus, naturally, all people are unfit for freedom, and thus are hungry for power, the power of powerlessness.  Human folks are altruists and collectivists. Most of them are eager to be dominated, enslaved, told what to do and think, how to live. The elite or dictator that rule them are hungry for power over the enslaved, exploited, oppressed and abused masses—BUT the downtrodden masses enable those that rule them for the masses are eager and hungry to be ruled under the auspices of the group power of powerlessness; the masses are more hungry for group power than are the elite and its strongman ruling them are. Bluntly, it is always the masses’ fault when and if they are oppressed.

 

But there is hope for humanity too. Part of our complex natures, a minority, recessive part is naturally good. If we can raise up a generation of children to love themselves, to engage in self-care, to self-realize their God-given talents, then they will, as morally and intellectually healthy adults, be able to wield a virtuous character that is habituated into individualism, personal talent maximization, and an orientation to live freely as a maverizer, a wielder of the individual, positive power of powerfulness.

 

Once most of a population are individuating supercitizens, they are fit for freedom, and seek only personal power, and let none dominate them, allow themselves to dominate none, and most of the entire population will or should operate peacefully, lawfully and socially with a rough balance of power being maintained in a stable society.

 

 

 

A society of  Hofferian ‘have’ types seek freedom and enjoy freedom. The unhealthy groupist type of Hofferian power-seekers are the ‘have-not’ type unfit for freedom, and seek a poor substituting collectivized lifestyle as wielders of power or as victims of such elite abusers of centralized power.

 

Hoffer is suggesting that those fit for freedom—that moral and politically advantageous state of being in which citizens enjoy personal power and maximum personal power utilization that is communally feasible—just want to be left alone to grow, learn, and realize their capacities as they see fit. There is still governmental structure and law and order, but government is kept limited, and personal power and freedom is maximized to the degree that is reasonable.

 

I have long maintained that each human is bursting with talent, and all can do remarkable things with their lives should they will to do and work at it for a lifetime. It is not that people like Hitler or Napoleon are unfit for freedom because they lack talent. No one lacks talent and none need ever believe that she is unfit for freedom, thus setting her up to lust after power over others as a poor consolation prize that feels her life with ersatz meaning, and some sordid, corrupt sense of worth.

 

Hitler and Napoleon never lacked enough talent to be wildly successful. They just gave in too soon. The creators of humanity, the Divine Couple, command us, invite us even, to work with what talent we have to get as far as we can. If we do so, believe in ourselves, love ourselves, and never cease realizing those personal talents, these Divinities guarantee that each of us can produce and create objects and lives of miraculous creativity. None are without sufficient talent that they are unfit for freedom, and must settle for hating themselves, and taking revenge upon humanity by seeking to rule others, be ruled by others, to inflict maximum pain and hurt upon humanity. To be unfit for freedom, to not develop one’s talents in service of the good deities, to be a ‘have-not’ type that is addicted to centralized power, that copout choice is a free choice, not an inevitable destiny that any human needs to be doomed to live.

 

Now, as I was wandering the Internet last night last night, I came upon some videotaped interviews (I recall not which ones they were.) in which Hoffer spoke of two subjects in remarkable words. I will paraphrase what Hoffer said.

 

First, he said that capitalism was the economic system that promotes freedom, so he is thus a supporter of capitalism, that economic systems like socialism or communism promote tyranny and the loss of citizen freedom, a most undesirable outcome.

 

In a free-market society and a society of political freedom, be that political arrangement a democracy, or preferably, a constitutional republic like America is, that dispensation is maximally favorable to nurturing and rewarding the ‘have’ type of citizen fit for freedom and able to realize his near infinite potential and capacities, if he maverizes as an individuating supercitizen.

 

As an aside, recall that Ayn Rand the egoist moralist promotes that humans flourish in a dispensation both democratic and capitalist.

 

Second, Hoffer made the most arresting, near explicit pronouncement of his egoistic-individualist morality, that I have yet come across, in his words (I wish I knew which book, article or interview this quote was from.). Hoffer noted that we all do unto others as we do first to ourselves. If we hate, mistreat and are cruel to ourselves, that is how we treat others. If we love, respect and care for ourselves, demanding that we build solid, humane, earned lives and livelihoods for ourselves, then that is what we expect of other people.

 

This is not far from my version of egoist-individualist morality.

 

From another article (I apologize—I cannot recall which one.), Hoffer was quoted as worrying-again, I am paraphrasing Hoffer’s words--that humans are addicted to power and do great social damage when they are obsessed with history-making. Today, Leftist college professors are indoctrinating college students, not to become experts, educated, skilled, critical thinkers, but instead to be converted into social justice warriors, activists, and ideologues pushing the narrative of their mass movement, cultural/postmodernist Marxism upon the American masses, and, conceivably, across the globe.

 

The revolution that these young people and their clerisy masters and mistresses seek to install is a secular totalitarian state whose economy is purely centralized, run by the governmental ruling party, Communist and brutal, from Washington, D.C.

 

In such a hellish dystopia, all will be unfit for freedom, all will be true-believing ‘have-not’ types, and all be corrupted by centralized power, as its ruling class or as the oppressed masses and victims of such oppression.

 

There is a positive way for citizens, as ‘have’ types, fit for freedom, as profit-driven maverizers realizing their immense, open-ended capacities, to make history. As individuating supercitzens, they will have the power, time, resources, and training to run their own lives as they see fit, while all agree together how to run the strong, but limited government.

 

Finally, in this hodge-podge blog entry, I am recalling what Jordan Peterson used to say. He used to be more pro-individualistic, I think, than he is today, with his repeated 2024 warning for people to be humble and not be sinfully proud.

 

Jordan used to warn that the idea of the individual was the sovereign idea of the West, that reform and change was best achieved and conducted by everyone in his own unique way, in his self-improvement campaign, in his private life, where he decided how to proceed, as he saw fit, and he, not the government was in control.

 

Peterson contrasted private self-help and power-wielding as the most effective way to make the world better. He criticized each activist that insisted that she was perfect internally and she was, and it was society that must change and improve.

 

He warned idealists and ideologues that seeking political solutions would make the world much worse: in pushing public, legislated, federally mandated solutions for each social problem. each It is a most destructive solution to propose that social improvement is a collective enterprise, legislated, mandated, and supervised by federal employees running the lives of each private citizen, while this unelected elite demands strict citizen obedience to the dictates of these ideological bureaucrats, whose dictates and laws would be involuntary and harshly punished should any citizen refuse publicly mandated instruction on how to live.

 

I agreed with him back then, and I think his warning that reform is an individual effort, not a collective, federalized, political undertaking that Progressives insist that it is. Peterson too thought individuals were fit for freedom as ‘have’ types as they realized their capacities in a free, capitalist society.