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| By Sholeh Patrick |
Longshoreman put humanity into perspective
Not many career longshoremen earn the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Nor have many immigrants. So it's probably safe to say that Eric Hoffer, German-born dock worker turned social philosopher, is the only one who could boast of both.
This week he would have been 104. The author of ten books and dozens of articles in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, New York Times Magazine, and Reader's Digest (not to mention his column in the Los Angeles Times), Hoffer became a voracious reader and prolific writer (while continuing to work the shipyards) in part because of an appreciation that followed an 8-year blindness during childhood. His first book was widely considered his best -- and still a classic, "The True Believer" (1951). It established his reputation as a highly intelligent, critical thinker without the university education of many of his contemporaries.
Called "the longshoreman philosopher," Hoffer's modest roots and working class experience inspired thoughts of vast human potential, and intense social waste, especially in the largest hierarchies of politics, industry and organized religion. He considered outcasts the true pioneers of society, seeing too much focus on power and self-interest in academia and mass religious movements. His writings were at times liberal, at other times conservative, depending upon the subject; they were often groundbreaking and challenged accepted doctrines.
From "Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: 'Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely,'" The New York Times Magazine, April 25, 1971:
"The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity."
"There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutions; to cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power."
And quotes from his books:
"Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good."
"We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails."
"Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self."
"Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life."
"The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure."
"The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own."
"A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend."
"The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto."
"Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves."
"The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together."
Sholeh Patrick is an attorney and a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Send e-mail to sholehjo@hotmail.com
