I am typing out and commenting on Eric Hoffer’s journal, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, June, 1958-Nay, 1959, Pages 19-24’ Here it is:
Hoffer (H after this): “July 3
Worked the same ship the same place. A cold gale is just now blowing outside and the world is lost in a fog.
More talk with the Slavonians. As I said, they are extremely competent people. I found that most of them built their own houses, have small vegetable gardens, and each has a well-appointed workshop in the basement. I cannot see how people of their kind back in the Old Country need a totalitarian government to tell them what to do.”
My response: Amen.
H: “Even the most perfect central planning could not achieve anything approaching what these people manage to do on their own.
Returning to talk of the Old Country, I remarked that there is nothing to prevent them from getting together and re-creating somewhere in California a replica of the village they came from. They are all of them well off, and it should not be impossible to obtain the required financing from a bank or even a government agency. One of them said: ‘It can’t be done. The air here is not clear. Even in the mountains there is gas and smoke. In the Old Country the air is sweet.
July 6
Nine hours of the Chilean ship Almagro in Encinal. Quite a number of people on the Chile ship look like intellectuals. I don’t think they are passengers. In several Latin-American countries the intellectuals go not only into teaching and civil service but also into the army. This is probably one reason why army officers are meddling in government. It could be that a lack of employment prompted some intellectuals to become sailors on merchant ships.
I am reading An American in India by Saunders Redding. The author is a Negro American sent by the State Department to India. It is a perplexing and depressing book. A sick man writing about sick people. When facing the most preposterous questions and defamatory insinuations, he remains speechless. He tells us that he identifies himself with America, yet here is a man of words without words. The whole performance leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I suspect that for an American audience this is probably the most anti-Indian book they could read.
July 7
Same ship, same place. Six hours. In the morning I took the key-system bus to Encinal. As I walked down the several blocks from the bus stop to the docks I was impressed by the gardens in front of the houses. The houses, of average size, are fairly old, yet in excellent shape. The people living here are mostly workingmen. The sight of the gardens and houses turned my mind to the question of maintenance. It is the capacity for maintenance which is the best test for the vigor and stamina of a society.”
My response: Hoffer the genius and truth-finder is especially prescient in predicting that a people that take care of their houses and gardens might well represent a society of vigorous citizens with stamina and staying power. Maintenance is a Western habit or skill, and somehow it is intertwined with individualism, moral moderation, self-discipline and industriousness, perhaps even fostering creativity, as well as complementing the creative urge.
H: “Any society can be galvanized for awhile to build something, but the will and skill to keep things in good repair day in, day out is fairly rare. At present, neither in the Communist countries nor in the newly created nations is there a pronounced capacity for maintenance. I wonder how true it is that after the Second World War the countries with the best maintenance were the first to recover. I am thinking of Holland, Belgium, and Western Germany. I don’t know how it is in Japan. The Incas had an intense awareness of maintenance. They assigned whole villages and tribes to keep roads, bridges and buildings in good repair. I read somewhere that in ancient Rome a man was disqualified as a candidate for office because his garden showed neglect.”
My response: What is precious and refreshing about Hoffer is he highlights was is vitally important, a concept like maintenance as a prime moral value.
H: “Saunder Redding’s book os worth reading for its detailed recording of the talk of the Indian intellectuals both young and old. He reproduces minutely their arguments, rudeness, sarcasm, and self-righteousness. Since he seldom essayed a rebuttal his recording comes out sharp and forceful.”
My response: Hoffer is mad at Redding for failing to defend America, the America Hoffer loved and was proud of.
H: “July 8
Finished the job on the Chilean ship Almagro at Pier 19. Ten hours. The work was easy but I felt quite weary at the end of the day. My weariness generates in me bad temper, but this shows itself only when I return to my room. After a glass of hot tea and some fruit, and particularly after writing a few lines, the irritation fades more or less.
Saunder Redding’s book is a fascinating puzzle. His tongue-tiedness in the face of the crudest slanders and insults might be merely a continuation of the technique he perfected in the face of slights and insults in his own America. I doubt whether the ability to identify oneself with America is proportionate to one’s acceptance by fellow Americans. There is an intense patriotism among the rejected—inmates of prisons, and migratory workers living on the edge of subsistence.”
My response: It occurred to me that if it is true that the rejected might exhibit an intense patriotism, but their motive would be to demonstrate to the in-crowd slighting and debasing them, that they, the rejected are still loyal, intensely patriotic, longing to fit in and belong.
H: “The question is whether a Negro intellectual can feel himself truly and wholly an American. I don’t know. The Negroes I know can be fiercely American. I once heard a Negro longshoreman, while observing a Hindu crew on a British ship, pour forth his scorn on the way poor people are treated in the cold world outside America.
As I said that fact that Redding rarely hit back or even argued enabled him to record faithfully all that the Indian intellectuals threw at him, and by doing so he has produced the most anti-Indian book I know of.”
My response: Notice how Hoffer emphasizes the hypocrisy and double-standards evinced by the Hindu intellectuals so sneeringly anti-American, feeling so superior—all the while the Hindu crew of sailors were mistreated aboard their ship by their British masters.
H: “July 9
I had several good hours with Lili and the boy. He is growing up fast and becoming reasonable. He ate a frozen boysenberry tart which he greatly enjoyed. For the first time I saw him attack food methodically—eating first the loose berries on the plate and, after cleaning them up, tackling the tart. I savor being with him the way I savor food and drink. Lili is still herself and nothing can go wrong. Everything we do is adequate, everything we say meaningful, everything we see memorable,
July 10
There is something in the air. You come to expect America to fail whether it be in the launching of a satellite, the exhibition of the Brussels Fair, the interventions in the Near East, the revival of the slumping economy. We are not in the van, and we are not going anywhere in a hurry. To those in the van much is forgiven, their blemishes and shortcomings are temporary, since they are growing and rushing into the future. But to those that are not going anywhere, the present (made up of vulgarity, senseless haste, juvenility, dishonesty) is all there is. You are aware all of a sudden that the country is in dire need of an exceptional leader. The need is an unhealthy symptom.”
My response: Hoffer never believed in the need for an exceptional leader, nor did I, having arrived at this same conclusion on my own, I rather see as exceptional common people, most or all individuators.
H: “July 12
Pier 38. One o’clock start. The five-hour shift (1-6)passed without the least strain. Reading Ivan Bunin’s little book Memories and Portraits reinforced my conviction that life with writers, artists, and intellectuals in general is most likely charged with envy and malice. It could be that the air thus charged stimulates the creative flow. Yet what a strained and miserable life it would be.”
My response: My interpretation of the small Hofferian paragraph above is that if intellectuals run in a pack, their originality and creativity will be stymied or less than it could otherwise be. Rudeness, vicious competing, ugly struggling for rank and prestige, backed by and riddled with malice, envy and ill-will. My conclusion is that such vying, miserable, vicious, second-rate intellectuals and artists (2nd rate not because they have gone as far as they can go but because they choose to quit growing and developing as intellectuals and artists, settling for running in a pack because they are joiners and nonindiviudators with little self-esteem; they are so rude to each others because they have been so internally self-discourteous first and foremostly.
It seems to me that Hoffer is highlighting that the creative, the intellectuals, the elites, at least as classically defined are more cliquish, mean and cruel on average to even each other than they are to the masses whom they live off of, direct and rule.
Hoffer also believes the masses, especially burghers and blue collars workers in the prosperous, free, decent, happy America which he knew was populated by the masses who were not so vicious, sniping, quarreling and my clique versus your cliquish intellectuals in the ruling class.
I agree but wish to emphasize that their ideology and their hyper-collectivism robs them of all self-esteem, any residual sense of decency and kindness, thus they can and will do whatever to others and themselves and each other. Their is nothing wrong with heir intellects though they are ideologically lazy and generally not very intellectual curious and ambitious by choice. Their power of powerlessness power mode makes them cruel. Their high rank corrupts them some, but I believe their hyper-collectivism as mobists, and their ideology are what truly make them malevolent, oppressive, violent and dangerous for the whole society: their lifestyle and policies are not models to be followed.
H: “July 14
Finished the job at Pier 38. Nine hours. Though the same work and company, I felt less weary this evening than last. The reason: eight hour’s sleep last night and a good hot lunch today. Yesterday (Sunday) all the restaurants were closed and I had two sandwiches and a piece of pie for lunch.
This morning, some item in the paper started me thinking on the cause of British defeatism. Quite a number of people in Britain seem to envisage the defeat of the West and even the occupation of Britain by Soviet troops. I wonder whether this defeatist prognostication is born of a secret wish to see the defeat and decline of the whole West.”
My response: Yes, Westerners, like other peoples and nations in history, become demoralized, defeatist and ready to surrender their hegemony, their superior cultural story and their cultural excellence when they are tired and have lost faith and hope, but these attitudes are largely a matter of choice. Why should the West decline, unless we give in first, thus making it inevitable? Why cannot we allow Mavellonialists and the Good Spirits to build a new West a world cultural of hope, strength, peace, freedom and prosperity, so the American Way becomes the World Way and we Westernize culturally, politically, economically people all over the globe?
H: “The decline of the British Empire seems to be having a more demoralizing effect on British intellectuals (who were supposedly anti-imperialist) than on businessmen. One wonders how much of ‘the unbought grace of life’ of the British intellectual was derived from the fact that British red covered half of the map of the world. They have seen this map from childhood and known the axiom that the British are natural rulers. They wish to see their own decline as part of a general, natural process.”
My response: I don’t deny that Hoffer is right that British intellectuals in the late 1950s were culturally gloomy and defeatist not just because the Empire was winding down, collapsing even. Rather they missed their divine right to rule the Third World..
I think if the individual is self-realizing, that is the best antidote to feeling gloomy, defeatist and despairing. If one self-realizes, loves the self and loves and serves the Good Spirits, there is no room for silly thoughts of despair, cultural suicide, cultural waning and death, Each individuator that takes action refutes that whole sorry worldview.
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