Writer, born in New York City, New York, USA. Unschooled and temporarily blind as a child, he read voraciously after recovering his sight at age 15. At age 18 he went to California and took up work first as a migrant farmer, then a dockworker (from 1943), and began writing in his spare time. His writings, starting with The True Believer (1951), a study of fanaticism and mass movements, won recognition for their pungent, aphoristic style and perceptivity. He retired from the docks in 1967 but continued to be widely celebrated as the longshoreman philosopher.
Eric Hoffer (July 25, 1902 – May 21, 1983) was an American social writer.
Hoffer was born in New York City, the son of German immigrants. At age seven, following an accident, Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons. His eyesight remained, but Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.
Both his parents died while he was still a young man. Seeking opportunity, and an occupation that would allow him to read constantly, Hoffer made his way across the country to California. However, it was Michel de Montaigne's Essays, which he found in a secondhand bookshop, that first inspired Hoffer to put his ideas to paper.
Hoffer's Working Class Roots and "Intellectuals"
Hoffer drew confidence and inspiration from his modest roots and working-class surroundings, seeing in it vast human potential.
Hoffer also took solace in being an outcast, believing that the outcasts have always been the pioneers of society. but they were denied it in the democratic countries of the West (though not in totalitarian countries, which Hoffer saw as an intellectual's dream). Instead, Hoffer believed academics chose to bite the hand that fed them in their quest for power and influence.
Though Hoffer did not identify with "liberal intellectuals" and often criticized the radical ideology of many activists of the New Left, it would be wrong to characterize Hoffer's thinking "conservative". Rather, his structural approach to analyzing and understanding mass movements and their ideologies, often led Hoffer to consistently nonideological positions.
On the Nature and Origins of Mass Movements
Hoffer was among the first to recognize the central importance of self-esteem to psychological well-being. While most recent writers focus on the benefits of a positive self-esteem, Hoffer focused on the consequences of a lack of self-esteem.
The mass movements discussed in The True Believer include religious mass movements as well as political, including extensive discussions of Islam and Christianity. They also include seemingly benign mass movements which are neither political nor religious. A core principle in the book is Hoffer's insight that mass movements are interchangeable; he notes fanatical Nazis later becoming fanatical Communists, fanatical Communists later becoming fanatical anti-Communists, and Saul, persecutor of Christians, becoming Paul, a fanatical Christian himself. Hoffer furthermore suggests that it is possible to head off the rise of an undesirable mass movement by substituting a benign mass movement, which will give those prone to joining movements an outlet for their insecurities.
Hoffer's work was original, staking out new ground largely ignored by dominant academic trends of his time. In particular, Hoffer's work was completely non-Freudian, at a time when almost all American psychology was confined to the Freudian paradigm. Many argue Hoffer's lack of a formal University education contributed to his independent thought, with his book remaining an insightful classic today. Hoffer appeared on Public Television in 1964 and then in two one-hour conversations on CBS with Eric Sevareid in the late 1960s.
Other writings
Hoffer's insights into the consequences of a lack of self-esteem also informed his later writings. His 1971 book First Things, Last Things was a collection of essays published at a time in which young middle-class American youth were undergoing an increasing attraction to mass movements, whether political, religious, or subcultural, as well as a rapid increase in youth crime. In these and other books, Hoffer continued to build upon his earlier insights. In Hoffer's view, rapid change is not a positive thing for a society, and too rapid change can cause a regression in maturity for those who were brought up in a very different society than what that society has become. He sees these puberty rites as essential for self-esteem, and notes that mass movements and juvenile mindsets tend to go together to the point that anyone, no matter what age, who joins a mass movement immediately begins to exhibit juvenile behavior. He further notes that the reason working class Americans did not by and large join in the 1960s protest movements and subcultures was they had entry into meaningful labor as an effective rite of passage out of adolescence, while both the very poor on welfare and the affluent are, in his words "prevented from having a share in the world's work and of proving their manhood by doing a man's work and getting a man's pay" and thus remained in a state of extended adolescence, lacking in necessary self-esteem, and prone to joining mass movements as a form of compensation. Hoffer suggested that this need for meaningful work as a rite of passage into adulthood could be fulfilled with a 2-year civilian national service program (not unlike the earlier programs during the Depression such as the Civilian Conservation Corps), in which all young adults would do two years of work in fields such as construction or natural resources work.
Bibliography
1951 The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements ISBN 0-06-050591-5 1955 The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms ISBN 1933435097 1963 The Ordeal Of Change ISBN 1933435100 1967 The Temper Of Our Time 1969 Working And Thinking on The Waterfront; a journal, June 1958-May 1959 1971 First Things, Last Things 1973 Reflections on the Human Condition ISBN 1933435143 1976 In Our Time 1979 Before the Sabbath 1982 Between the devil and the dragon : the best essays and aphorisms of Eric Hoffer ISBN 0-06-014984-1 1983 Truth Imagined ISBN 1933435011Books on Hoffer
Eric Hoffer; Co., 1968 ISBN 0-8057-7359-2 Part of Twayne's United States authors series Hoffer's America, Koerner, James D., La Salle, Ill., Library Press, 1973 ISBN 0-912050-45-4 Eric Hoffer, Baker, James Thomas. Boston : Twayne, 1982 ISBN 0-8057-7359-2 Twayne's United States authors seriesBroadcasts
Documentary on Eric Hoffer with Eric Severeid, CBS, November 14, 1967
Quotes
"I have a premonition that will not leave me," wrote Eric Hoffer, America's great longshoreman philosopher, after the '67 war.
"The Renaissance was a time of mercenary soldiers, ours is a time of mercenary labor."
"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
"For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious."
"In times of change learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them."
"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."
"The best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from."
"We almost always have something to prove when we act heroically.
"Every intense desire is perhaps basically a desire to be different from what we are.
"It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something;
User Comments Add a comment…