I am going to type out the entire
Chapter 12 from Eric Hoffer’s book, The Ordeal of Change, and this chapter runs
from Page 96 to 100, and its title is Concerning Individual Freedom. I will
then respond to what he wrote.
Hoffer (H after this): “It seems to
be generally assumed that the maintenance of freedom within a society requires
the presence of sturdy individuals ready and able to stand up for their rights.
We are told that ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,’ and that ‘He
alone merits liberty who conquers it afresh from day to day.’”
My response: I have long studied
Eric Hoffer, and well realize that he uses paradox as a literary device to
educate the reader, a teachable moment. In the two sentences above, he is at it
again: He will contrast the idealistic memes, depicting humans as noble
freedom-seekers--that the citizens are sturdy individualists ready and able to
stand up for their rights, eternally vigilant so they can remain free from
tyrants, that they know and work each day to keep creeping despotism at
bay—with the contrasting, sordid reality, that the majority of any population
are low-self-esteeming, tyranny-loving, humans: fatalistic altruists,
preferring group-living and oppression under the boot of an elite to
self-determining independence and liberty.
H: “How relevant are these
assertions to everyday experience in a more or less free society? Does
individual freedom owe its existence to individual militancy? Can a man really
feel free who has to be eternally vigilant and must win his freedom anew each
day?”
My response: As undeveloped,
uneducated masses without self-esteem and Mavellonialist training to live as
individuating supercitizens, the average citizen will not waste a second of his
time worrying about remaining eternally vigilant to his necessity and duty as a
citizen to remain ever alert afresh each day to reinforce the dike protect his
free society from the ocean of tyranny ever seeping into cracks in that dike.
It is so that each citizen should
work each day to renew anew his commitment and active advocacy of expanding
liberty for himself and others, while pushing hard against incoming tentacles
of slavery seeking to grasp him and others, and to pin then down, but natural
humans will not be so inclined.
Only highly trained, motivated, sturdy,
individuated individualist recognize liberty as his mode of existence for
existing as a moral person and free citizen, and thus he demands liberty or
death almost on every occasion. The asleep, enslaved nonindivduating citizen
will not be a militant advocate for and fierce defender of freedom.
H: “Pascal maintained that we are
made virtuous not by our love of virtue but ‘by the counterpoise of two
opposite vices.’ It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the byproduct
of a stalemate between two such opposite vices.”
My response: My exegesis of this
sentence is that both Pascal and Hoffer read the world and the human soul
carefully and without a prism, and they intuited that the ethical and
ontological axiom that guides life is that moderation, or the middle way.
Both men knew that to be rational
more than passionate, and prudent and modest, rather than ardent, irrational,
exuberant and perhaps violent was how to act and how to choose, most of the
time. If evil is extreme, either too much or too little between contraries,
then good generally is the mean between the two extremes, likely more moderate
as more rather than less.
Observe that two vices, or two
political dispensations (an authoritarian Communist government fought to a
standstill by a powerful, authoritarian Polish Roman Catholic church), if the
groups and hierarchies vying for ultimate power, over an extended period of
time, cancel each other out in a state of exasperated exhaustion, then, by
historical accident, a moderate condition like freedom or virtue arises,
unpredicted, completely unexpected, unintended, unpredictable and hugely,
monumentally beneficial for suffering humankind.
Pascal and Hoffer both knew humans
are not virtuous naturally, so humans naturally seek not—most of them anyway,
most of the time—virtue: they were born in vice, suffering and slavery, which
degrades them all, and their natures and nurturing keeps them down and back,
and that is what humanity wills for itself.
God, by allowing virtue to spring
up, where conflicting vices have fought to a draw, occasionally, allows humans
to grow morally (A social, ethical growth learned, and once it becomes a
tradition in a given society, then humans, however haphazardly, intermittently
with lots of historical examples of backsliding, make actual moral progress,
and slowly painfully things can get better as people learn to act better, and
grow to like living well, acting well, doing well.).
Virtue popped up again with God’s
guiding hand when God allowed the medieval Church to wear itself out fighting
the Reformation, and when, as in Poland, when the Communists and the Catholic
church canceled each other out, the miracles of freedom and virtue
accidentally—or by the invisible divine hand—occurred.
High fantasy master writer, J.R.R.
Tolkien, like Pascal and Hoffer believed that humans were conceived in sin, and
fallen from divine grace. Thus, for even the good and noble Frodo could not
give up the ring of power, and, it was accidentally destroyed, when Gollum and
Frodo ferociously fought over possessing it on the precipice of Mount Doom, and
only Gollum falling into the pit of fire with the One Ring allowed Enlarged
Evil to be accidentally abolished in Middle Earth. Frodo could not will to do
the right thing.
Pascal, Tolkien, and Hoffer all
realized that desirable human moral advancement historically was made possible,
generally when two vicious powers wore themselves out, fighting for power, and
virtue, or godliness, swept in to move humanity forward and inch or too, before
evil, tyranny and needless suffering engulfed foolish humanity once more.
Under Mavellonialism and with egoist
morality, we have a chance to raise our children as good deity worshipers, who,
as adults living as moderate, individuating supercitizens, so that they make
these historical and divine gifts of moral and spiritual advancement, a living,
expanded tradition on earth for the children of light to live, work and die
under, and the American Way is the best, most fertile ground in which to grow
this moral and spiritual crop.
H: “The same probably holds true of
individual freedom: we are not free by our own power but by the counterpoise of
two opposite powers.”
My response: It is a great irony
that Pascal, Hoffer and Tolkien, who consciously were likely sacred or secular
altruists of the Judeo-Christian variety, subconsciously and implicitly
anticipated the future coming and superiority of egoist morality: the realization
that humans are born in sin, or self-hating, selfless, groupist, and
altruistic, and that their weak, natural, recessive good nature (natural
goodness, self-loving, self-interested, individualistic and egoist) could
become a social custom learned by a people, passed down from generation to
generation (Each new generation must learn to be egoistic, or things go
backwards within a few years.), so that a national culture progresses.). Only
where opposite vices or clashing political forces cancel each other out, are
the masses able to take a few baby steps and seek a third, middle way to grow
in freedom and individualism, before collective darkness and madness reasserts
its dominance over near all societies.
H: “Individual freedom is the
automatic by-product of a drawn-out contest between two more or less equal
parties, factions, bodies, and so on. The quality of the contestants seems
immaterial. A contest between two reactionary bodies can be as productive of
individual freedom as a contest between a reactionary and a liberal party. If
Poland is at present the country with the most individual freedom in the
Communist world it is due mainly to the fact that a powerful Communist party
and a powerful Catholic church—neither of which has any concern for individual
freedom—are there pitted against each other in a more or less equal contest.
The present situation in Poland echoes to some extent the situation which
prevailed in the Occident toward the end of the Middle Ages when Church and
State, each reaching out for total domination, were engaged in a prolonged tug
of war, thus unintentionally preparing the ground for the birth of civil
liberty.
The growth of freedom in the
Occident has been marked by a diversification and distribution of power.”
My response: If our near-Utopia on
earth is to come about, where the American Way with its free markets,
constitutional republic, faith in God, and a citizenry of indivduating
supercitizens, must become the economic, political, and cultural dispensation
of many nations, power must be made diversified and distributed largely but not
wholly. We still need institutions, laws, and government, but the citizenry should
be able to be quite free and able to live self-ruling, lawfully anarchist
lives.
If these supercitizens become so
free, prosperous, happy, and civilized, and work each day vigilantly to keep
things free, then it may last.
Let us not forget the historical
warning from Pascal, Hoffer and Tolkien, that the though supercitizens
virtuously strive to be virtuous and remain virtuous, it does not hurt to allow
vices to be permanently in a standoff in the soul of each moderate
individuators, in his group, his community, his state and his nation. If there
are 300 million supercitizens functioning and flourishing at the same time in
America, power is kept dispersed, harmless (even beneficial as the power of
powerfulness, egoistically wielded, and self-restrained) and unable to coalesce
into groupism, collectivism and totalitarianism (This power model is the evil
power of powerlessness, justified by altruist morality.).
The other way to keep vices in check
is a daily battle waged by each agent in her own soul to live prudently,
temperately, and this prevents vice, or excess/deficiency, or evil from growing
in the human soul, inverting a virtuous, acquired nature into a vicious, adult
nature.
H: “Starting out with a division
between sacerdotal and secular power, there evolved in Western societies
additional categories of power (political, economic, intellectual),
subdivisions within each category (a multiplicity of churches, parties, and
corporations, independent legislatures and courts, an antagonism between labor
and management, and between intellectuals and men of action); and safeguards
against the perpetuation of power (periodic elections, and periodic
confiscations through income and inheritance taxes). The rise of
totalitarianism in the twentieth century constitutes a sharp reversal of this
characteristic Occidental tendency.”
My response: With the arrival and
enormous spread of Communism and other forms of totalitarianism in the 20th
century (and even now in Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea in 2025), here is
an example that vice, evil, and tyranny arise and strike back against mostly
beautiful and noble Modernity and Westernism, bring collectivist, irrational
darkness back to humankind.
H: “Totalitarianism spells
simplication:”
My response: My explanation of
totalitarian simplication is that Hoffer is reminding us that individualism,
goodness, moderation, love and freedom are wiped out in a totalitarian, demonic
dispensation, be it sacerdotal or sacred, it makes little difference. The
masses are hyper-collectivized collectivists and groupists, for there is only
one simple, ultraistic, black-and-white truth, the Party Line and holy cause
pushed and promulgated by the elite running the government, backed up by secret
police, gulags and terrorism against its own people.
H: “an enormous reduction in the
variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the
categories and units of power. In a totalitarian state power is of one kind,
and the defeated individual, no matter how outstanding, can find no redress.”
My response: Hoffer is correct here:
the defeated individual, no matter how outstanding, can find no redress against
the totalitarian Leviathan.
But if a minority of dissidents, by
God’s intervention, could grow into individuating supercitizens, it would be
impossible for the authorities to quell these dissenters very long, and their
numbers would soon swell and overthrow the evil regime.
Each is capable of standing alone
against the Leviathan, and 8 or 10 of these apostles of freedom and godliness,
released into civilian communities, would light a revolutionary spark that the
authorities could not squelch for long.
H: “It is clear, therefore, that the
presence of an effective, organized opposition is a prerequisite for individual
freedom. A society that in normal times cannot function adequately without
unanimity is unfit for freedom”
My response: Hoffer’s axiom of
ontological and moral moderation as goodness on earth does apparently extend to
the political arena too, but, that should not surprise us, because what is
political is downstream from the moral system practiced by a nation’s masses.
Thus, the only people fit for
freedom are those in the majority that welcome and seek to coexist with a loyal
opposition.
H: “It is equally clear that that
the activities of an effective opposition and of free individuals subject the
body social to considerable strain. A society must be in good working order and
firmly anchored in a tradition of unity if it is to stand up under the ceaseless tug of parties and the
willfulness of free individuals. Its government, economy, and the whole
apparatus of everyday life must function smoothly and with a considerable
degree of automatism. This means that a free society is a skilled society. A
wide diffusion of skills—technical, political, and social—not only makes it
possible for a society to function under strain, but it also enables it to
dispense with fervor and enthusiasm, which unavoidably blur individual
autonomy., and to avoid the curtailment of freedom involved in excessive
tutelage and supervision.”
My response: A free people that are unified while
disagreeing, insistent upon holding the nation together while quarreling, who
are skilled, moderate, and prudent, are able to avoid factional schism between
rivaling true believers, which converts free individual citizens into
heteronomous minions of warring tribes of special interests, and civil war
could ensue, resulting in the rise of authoritarian rule, and the purging of
vanquished factions.
H: “In a genuinely free society even
extraordinary tasks can be accomplished by ordinary people in an ordinary way,
and the social process can run at room temperature rather than white heat.
Finally, a society needs a large measure of affluence before it can allow its
members full play of their initiative and bents. It must be able to afford the
waste inherent in a riot of trial and error. There can be no real freedom
without the freedom to fail.”
My response: Individualism begets
creativity, change and innovation, but, if conducted by rational, temperate
adults at room temperature, then society need not be sickened by change, and
affluence and room to fail allow progress and correction to follow.
H: “There is no doubt that
individual freedom is an unequaled factor in the release of social energies,
and particularly in the activation of ordinary people. ‘It infuses,’ says de
Tocqueville, ‘throughout the body social an activity, a force and an energy
which never exist without it and which bring forth wonders.’ But this source of
energy can only be tapped under special conditions: a society must be strong
enough to support, and affluence enough to afford, individual freedom. It would
thus be wholly unreasonable to expect a backward country to modernize itself in
a hurry in an atmosphere of freedom. Its poverty, lack of skill, and its need
for fervor and unity militate against it. In exceptional cases, like Puerto
Rico and Israel, where capital and skills are available, rapid moderation is
not incompatible with a considerable measure of individual freedom.”
My response: If a people in another
Third World country, were to have a skilled population with plenty of capital,
the sense of self-esteem of the masses would not be so depleted and
individually erased, that they must seek collectivist, totalitarian substitutes
and Communistic holy causes, to be created along with rapid modernization.
Skills and affluence render a people
able to modernize and change without embracing drastic, revolutionary
metanarratives to dope them up with false self-regard, so that they can stomach
rapid modernization.
H: “To some extent, the present
dominant role of the intellectual in the modernization of backward countries
also militates against the prevalence of individual freedom. Not only does the
intellectual’s penchant for tutoring, directing and regulating promote a
regimented social pattern, but his craving for the momentous bound to foster an
austere seriousness inhospitable to the full play of freedom.”
My response: The intellectual is a
grandiose fanatic with his craving for constructing, via federal mandate, a
momentous, perfect social order which will “benefit” all, and the intellectual
will direct the building of it, and will rule it as part of the authoritarian
elite once he holds the reins of power. He and his slaves, the captured,
passionate, true-believing masses, strive to remain true to their pure
revolutionary doctrines, and all opposition will be crushed or retrained on the
torture rack. His grim seriousness of purpose and policy allows for no
individual divergence of thought and playful experimentation, not centrally
regulated, and conducted by the individual for its own sake, as he pursues his
personal vision of worldly salvation and happiness.
H: “The intellectual ‘transforms the
prosaic achievements of society into Promethean tasks, glorious defeats, tragic
epics.’ * (*Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1957), p. xiv.”
H: “The strained atmosphere of an
eternal drama working up toward a climax and a crisis is optimal for heroes and
saints but not for the autonomous individual shaping his life to the best of
his ability.”
My response: The skilled, affluent,
American individual and individualist, can find meaning and emotional reward
running his life and affairs and political operations at room temperature, if
his nation is to remain a society, a democracy or constitutional republic, of more
or less cooperative yet autonomous individuals.
H: “The chances are that should an
advanced country come into the keeping of the intellectual it would begin to
show many of the hectic traits which seem to us characteristic of a backward
country in the throes of awakening.”
My response: The current mass
movement in America of cultural Marxism, run by intellectuals, by 2022, came
mighty close to transforming America fundamentally into social, authoritarian
Venezuela.
H: “To the intellectual the struggle
for freedom is more vital than the actuality of a free society. He would rather
‘work, fight, talk, for liberty than have it.’* (*Lincoln Steffens, The
Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1931), p. 635.)”
My response: The freedom that the
intellectual fights for is the freedom from a society’s traditional culture,
political arrangement, and economy, be it mildly corrupt and authoritarian, or
a free, prosperous, decent place of law and order and individualism and
capitalism like in America.
This intellectual promotes
revolution to overthrow the status quo, which he labels corrupt and tyrannical
(It may be so to some or a large degree.), but the totalitarian nightmare, and
its doctrines, once the new regime is installed, is far more tyrannical and
corrupt and bloody than what he worked so hard to overthrow. He lied and hid
his plot, that he planned to make things worse, for the masses, and they
accepted his lies, and wake up only when it is too late, and he is their new
Mao Tse-Tung.
H: “The fact is that up to now the
free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither accorded
him a superior status to sustain his confidence nor make it easy for him to
acquire an unquestioned sense of social usefulness.”
My response: Under Mavellonialist
thought, I would support the rise of each citizen to individuate and just be an
average (average in the sense of people one among equals, of 340 million
American citizens of remarkable individuals, as supercitizens.) person. Each
citizen would be a Renaissance man or woman, relying upon himself or herself—as
a hybrid intellectual/artist/technician/doctor/farmer, plumber/housewife,
shopkeeper--only to find confidence, meaning purpose and an unquestioned sense
of social usefulness, so he or she would never need to rule the masses as an
intellectual at the head of a mass movement, bringing hell and suffering to all
people in his or her country.
H: “For he derives his sense of
usefulness mainly from directing, instructing and planning—from minding other
people’s business—and is bound to feel superfluous and neglected where people
believe themselves competent to manage individual and communal affairs, and are
impatient of supervision and regulation. A free society is as much a threat to
the intellectual’s sense of worth as an automated economy is to the
workingman’s sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum
of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.
The intellectual craves a social
order in which uncommon people form uncommon tasks every day. He wants a
society throbbing with dedication, reverence, and worship. He sees it as
scandalous that the discoveries of science and the feats of heroes should have
as their de’nouement the comfort and affluence of common folk. A social order
run for and by the people is to him a mindless organism motivated by
sheer phsyiologism.”’
My response: We need a society of
individuating supercitizens, all of whom would be a hybrid of uncommonness
(individuated personal excellence, intellectual, ingenuity and artistic
expression) in character and mind while infusing their workday job as teachers,
professors, bankers, plumbers and farmers with the same remarkable traits,
practically applied, not just culturally applied, and yet 86% of the masses
would be such remarkable, miraculously talented thinkers and doers, that their
aristocratic, superior, rational worldview would be common and disperse amongst
the vast majority, the common folk. These people would run society
democratically and equally, in comfort, affluence, freedom and happiness, and
elites of all kinds would disappear.
