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مشقة التغيير
إريك هوفرك، فيلسوف ومفكر أمريكي في علم النفس والاجتماع، ومؤلف كتاب (المؤمن الصادق) الذي ترجمه إلى العربية، الوزير السعودي: غازي القصيبي -رحمه الله-، وإريك معروف بعلمه واطلاعه الواسع على التاريخ، وفي كتابه هذا يستعرض تاريخ تطور الإنسان وتغيره في المجتمعات. ترشح هذا الكتاب إلى جوائز عديدة لشهرة كاتبه في مجال الفلسفة الاجتماعية والأخلاقية، وهو من أفضل ما كتبه إريك هوفر حسب تصريحاته بنفسه في بعض الحوارات، وثاني كتبه المترجمة إلى العربية بعد ترجمة الدكتور: غازي القصيبي -رحمه الله-.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
39 people are currently reading
1402 people want to read
About the author
Eric Hoffer
42 books586 followersEric Hoffer was an American social writer and philosopher. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work. In 2001, the Eric Hoffer Award was established in his honor with permission granted by the Eric Hoffer Estate in 2005.
Early life
Hoffer was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1902 (or possibly 1898), the son of Knut and Elsa Hoffer, immigrants from Alsace. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English. When he was age five, his mother fell down a flight of stairs with Eric in her arms. Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons two years later, but later in life he said he thought it might have been due to trauma. ("I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall.I lost my sight and for a time my memory"). After his mother's death he was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German woman named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, and Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.
Hoffer was a young man when his father, a cabinetmaker, died. The cabinetmaker's union paid for the funeral and gave Hoffer a little over three hundred dollars. Sensing that warm Los Angeles was the best place for a poor man, Hoffer took a bus there in 1920. He spent the next 10 years on Los Angeles' skid row, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd jobs. On one such job, selling oranges door-to-door, he discovered he was a natural salesman and could easily make good money. Uncomfortable with this discovery, he quit after one day.
In 1931, he attempted suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but the attempt failed as he could not bring himself to swallow the poison. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and became a migrant worker. Following the harvests along the length of California, he collected library cards for each town near the fields where he worked and, living by preference, "between the books and the brothels." A seminal event for Hoffer occurred in the mountains where he had gone in search of gold. Snowed in for the winter, he read the Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne's book impressed Hoffer deeply, and he often made reference to its importance for him. He also developed a great respect for America's underclass, which, he declared, was "lumpy with talent."
Longshoreman
Hoffer was in San Francisco by 1941. He attempted to enlist in the Armed forces there in 1942 but was rejected because of a hernia. Wanting to contribute to the war effort, he found ample opportunity as a longshoreman on the docks of The Embarcadero. It was there he felt at home and finally settled down. He continued reading voraciously and soon began to write while earning a living loading and unloading ships. He continued this work until he retired at age 65.
Hoffer considered his best work to be The True Believer, a landmark explanation of fanaticism and mass movements. The Ordeal of Change is also a literary favorite. In 1970 he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.
Hoffer was a charismatic individual and persuasive public speaker, but said that he didn’t really care about people. Despite authoring 10 books and a newspaper column, in retirement Hoffer continued his robust life of the mind, thinking and writing alone, in an apartment.
Early life
Hoffer was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1902 (or possibly 1898), the son of Knut and Elsa Hoffer, immigrants from Alsace. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English. When he was age five, his mother fell down a flight of stairs with Eric in her arms. Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons two years later, but later in life he said he thought it might have been due to trauma. ("I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall.I lost my sight and for a time my memory"). After his mother's death he was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German woman named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, and Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.
Hoffer was a young man when his father, a cabinetmaker, died. The cabinetmaker's union paid for the funeral and gave Hoffer a little over three hundred dollars. Sensing that warm Los Angeles was the best place for a poor man, Hoffer took a bus there in 1920. He spent the next 10 years on Los Angeles' skid row, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd jobs. On one such job, selling oranges door-to-door, he discovered he was a natural salesman and could easily make good money. Uncomfortable with this discovery, he quit after one day.
In 1931, he attempted suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but the attempt failed as he could not bring himself to swallow the poison. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and became a migrant worker. Following the harvests along the length of California, he collected library cards for each town near the fields where he worked and, living by preference, "between the books and the brothels." A seminal event for Hoffer occurred in the mountains where he had gone in search of gold. Snowed in for the winter, he read the Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne's book impressed Hoffer deeply, and he often made reference to its importance for him. He also developed a great respect for America's underclass, which, he declared, was "lumpy with talent."
Longshoreman
Hoffer was in San Francisco by 1941. He attempted to enlist in the Armed forces there in 1942 but was rejected because of a hernia. Wanting to contribute to the war effort, he found ample opportunity as a longshoreman on the docks of The Embarcadero. It was there he felt at home and finally settled down. He continued reading voraciously and soon began to write while earning a living loading and unloading ships. He continued this work until he retired at age 65.
Hoffer considered his best work to be The True Believer, a landmark explanation of fanaticism and mass movements. The Ordeal of Change is also a literary favorite. In 1970 he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.
Hoffer was a charismatic individual and persuasive public speaker, but said that he didn’t really care about people. Despite authoring 10 books and a newspaper column, in retirement Hoffer continued his robust life of the mind, thinking and writing alone, in an apartment.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
June 1, 2013
The Ordeal of Change is a collection of essays by Eric Hoffer which examine the patterns and influences involved in social and cultural change. Hoffer is especially interested in what causes a nation of people to rise up against their government and what causes them to remain passive. He also spends a good deal of time looking at Communism in China and in the Soviet Union. The book is fairly short, only around 120 pages, but it covers a good deal of ground. Much of what Hoffer discusses has more to do with human nature in general than history. He does, from time to time, pull from historical examples, but he seems to feel the rules which govern nations are the same rules which govern individual behavior and he makes a good case for this argument.
I had very mixed feelings about The Ordeal of Change. On the one hand Hoffer’s observations on people, our emotions and reactions to changes in our respective environments, are often (in my opinion) spot on. For instance, he points out that people who are skilled and self-confident rarely feel the need to be prideful and he suggests this can also apply on a national level where patriotism will take the place of achievement. He makes the observation that people tend to become more outwardly creative when going through rough patches and suggests that a culture going though a major shift will produce an explosion of art. I think he makes good points along these lines.
The parts of the book I had trouble accepting I think stem from a difference in time and culture. The Ordeal of Change was published in the 1960s and I believe some of its essays were written during the 1950s. Hoffer is a working class American speaking to the world from fifty years away. Myself, not being an American and being born a good deal later find myself with a very different point of view where world history and economics are concerned. There are a few examples which come to mind. For instance, Hoffer hints that European colonialism was beneficial to south-east Asia, rather than a violent invasion. He seems to suggest intellectuals and writers all hold a great deal of disdain for the population at large and should be kept out of power. He hints that long lines of unemployed people lining up for jobs in the West are signs of Western man’s working spirit rather than a sign that jobs are scarce and there isn't an effective social net. Hoffer also claims man and man’s behavior are unnatural and that men do not have a natural habitat, that we are half animal and half creator, in the sense of classic gods. He questions why “backward” nations would reject American aid when all America wants, he suggests, is to help poor, under developed countries.
What I’m saying is at times Hoffer makes statements which, in this time and place, with our knowledge of history, biology and economics, seem strange. He is writing from a different point of view, one in which Communism is considered a great threat and America has recently come home after helping to win massive conflicts in both Europe and the Pacific. With that in mind I think it is a good idea to read The Ordeal of Change with an open mind and absorb its commentary on people and the rise and fall of nations. At the same time I suggest it is also important to recognize that some ideas will seem outdated. There is a lot of wisdom in this book, but one has to examine each stone to discover which are the gems.
I had very mixed feelings about The Ordeal of Change. On the one hand Hoffer’s observations on people, our emotions and reactions to changes in our respective environments, are often (in my opinion) spot on. For instance, he points out that people who are skilled and self-confident rarely feel the need to be prideful and he suggests this can also apply on a national level where patriotism will take the place of achievement. He makes the observation that people tend to become more outwardly creative when going through rough patches and suggests that a culture going though a major shift will produce an explosion of art. I think he makes good points along these lines.
The parts of the book I had trouble accepting I think stem from a difference in time and culture. The Ordeal of Change was published in the 1960s and I believe some of its essays were written during the 1950s. Hoffer is a working class American speaking to the world from fifty years away. Myself, not being an American and being born a good deal later find myself with a very different point of view where world history and economics are concerned. There are a few examples which come to mind. For instance, Hoffer hints that European colonialism was beneficial to south-east Asia, rather than a violent invasion. He seems to suggest intellectuals and writers all hold a great deal of disdain for the population at large and should be kept out of power. He hints that long lines of unemployed people lining up for jobs in the West are signs of Western man’s working spirit rather than a sign that jobs are scarce and there isn't an effective social net. Hoffer also claims man and man’s behavior are unnatural and that men do not have a natural habitat, that we are half animal and half creator, in the sense of classic gods. He questions why “backward” nations would reject American aid when all America wants, he suggests, is to help poor, under developed countries.
What I’m saying is at times Hoffer makes statements which, in this time and place, with our knowledge of history, biology and economics, seem strange. He is writing from a different point of view, one in which Communism is considered a great threat and America has recently come home after helping to win massive conflicts in both Europe and the Pacific. With that in mind I think it is a good idea to read The Ordeal of Change with an open mind and absorb its commentary on people and the rise and fall of nations. At the same time I suggest it is also important to recognize that some ideas will seem outdated. There is a lot of wisdom in this book, but one has to examine each stone to discover which are the gems.
October 31, 2010
Hoffer is an interesting guy, apparently very well-read and able to think on his own. He comes up with unique ideas, and sweeping ones at that. Here is my problem with Hoffer: one person, no matter how well read, over-reaches when he tries to define thoughts and actions of men, 'classes', cultures and social movements with simple statements. Here is an example, when trying to describe the emergence of the 'intellectual' as a societal class: "To the genuine writer, the word is an end in itself and the center of his existence. He may dream of spectacular action and be lured to play an active role, but in the long run he does not feel at home in the whirl of a busy life." Now, wait a minute. Maybe Hoffer doesn't feel at home in the whirl of a busy life but to make this as a general rule is a stretch. Similarly, in this book as in The True Believer, there are numerous examples of this kind of self-projection or 'logical' conclusion. This is not to say his conclusions are wrong, just that they are conclusions based on his experience, his temperament, his biases, etc.
I did especially enjoy the chapters about human nature and playfulness. Giving the idea of 'only the good die young' a new twist is great and welcome.
I did especially enjoy the chapters about human nature and playfulness. Giving the idea of 'only the good die young' a new twist is great and welcome.
September 16, 2017
This is a collection of essays written in the 1950's formed from the author's decades of transient labor in the fields and orchards of California during the depression of the 1930's. Many of his observations and conclusions about society and the nature of mankind directly reflect the burgeoning -isms of the times: socialism, fascism, communism. These are the foils for his paeon to the unique history and character of America as he sees it.
Hoffer spent a great deal of his non-labor time in the libraries of the towns he passed through, reading and educating himself, mainly in philosophy and history, and forming from his reading and his life experiences a theory of human nature and the social and political systems it creates. If the prospect of conversing with someone who asserts that "this country [America] was built by hordes of undesirables" (p.120) (or "deplorables") only makes you furious then you might find this book merely exasperating. On the other hand, maybe that's a good reason for you to take on that conversation. Although not all of his arguments were entirely convincing, I greatly respected his many well-thought-out conclusions, all of which stem from a truly impressive lifetime of wide reading and deep thinking.
Hoffer spent a great deal of his non-labor time in the libraries of the towns he passed through, reading and educating himself, mainly in philosophy and history, and forming from his reading and his life experiences a theory of human nature and the social and political systems it creates. If the prospect of conversing with someone who asserts that "this country [America] was built by hordes of undesirables" (p.120) (or "deplorables") only makes you furious then you might find this book merely exasperating. On the other hand, maybe that's a good reason for you to take on that conversation. Although not all of his arguments were entirely convincing, I greatly respected his many well-thought-out conclusions, all of which stem from a truly impressive lifetime of wide reading and deep thinking.
May 2, 2019
güzel makalelerin olduğu eleştirel bir kitaptı
August 8, 2016
Written in 1961, pertinent in 2016
At age 70, I've finally started reading this great American philosopher. A lightbulb goes off above my head on every page. Don't always agree, which is as it should be, but the man makes me think.
At age 70, I've finally started reading this great American philosopher. A lightbulb goes off above my head on every page. Don't always agree, which is as it should be, but the man makes me think.
April 17, 2023
في الأيام الأولى للعلم الحديث، وجدنا علماء بارزين يعبرون عن دهشتهم وسرورهم في أنَّ التنوع الهائل للطبيعة يجب أن يكون عملاً لقوانين بسيطة ولكن قليلة, وعدَّها جاليليو بأنها: «تقليد وعادة الطبيعة لتحقيق غاياتها من خلالِ وسائل شائعة، وبسيطة وسهلة». كان كبلر مقتنعاً بأنَّ «الطبيعة تحبُّ البساطة»، وكتب نيوتن بعاطفة عميقة وصادقة: أنَّ «الطبيعة مسرورة بالبساطة، وهي لا تتأثر بأبهة الأسباب غير الضرورية».
خلال الفترة نفسها، لم يتحدّث الرجال الذين كان انشغالهم بالطبيعة البشرية عن البساطة, بل عن التعقيد المذهل. لم يتعب مونتين قَط من الإسراف في التناقض، وعدم الاتِّساق وقلة التماسك وفقدان القدرة على التنبؤ بالمظاهر البشرية.. لقد بدا لهُ أنَّ كلَّ جزء فينا, يلعبُ في كل لحظة لعبته الخاصة، وأنَّ هناك فرقًا كبيرًا بيننا وبين أنفسنا, مثل: الفرق بيننا وبين الآخرين». وقد قارنَ باسكال (تلميذ في الطبيعة والطبيعة البشرية) بساطة الأشياء مع طبيعة الإنسان المزدوجة والمعقدة.. لقد رأى الإنسان بوصفه كتلةً من التناقضات: ملاكٌ ووحشيّ، مسخٌ وأعجوبة، ذروةٌ وحثالةُ المخلوقات، مجدُ وفضيحة الكون. أيّاً كان الانسجام الموجود فينا فهو رائع ومتغيّر ومتنوّع، وخَلُصَ إلى أنَّ «الرجال مجانين حتماً، لدرجة أنَّ عدم الجنون كان شكلاً آخر من أشكال الجنون».
وكان يعتقد أنَّهُ من الطبيعي أن يكتب أفلاطون وأرسطو عن السياسة, كما لو كانا يضعان قواعد لمستشفى المجانين, بوصفه كتلة من دراسة الطبيعة، يجب ألا يكونَ التفسير متَّسقاً مع الحقائق فحسب، بل يجب أيضاً أن يكون بسيطاً ومباشراً قدر الإمكان. حين يُقدَّم عديد من التفسيرات، تُتَّبع القاعدة القائلة: إِنَّ التفسير الأكثر بساطة هو أيضاً أكثرُ صحةً تقريباً. يقول كاتب حديث عن طبيعة العلم: إِنَّ اختيار التفسير الأكثر تعقيداً سيكون أمراً منطقياً: «مثل السفر شرقاً حول العالم للوصول إلى منزل جارك المجاور غرباً».
إنَّ عقلانية النهج المباشر البسيط في الشؤون الإنسانية ليست بديهية بأي حال. هنا غالباً ما يكون صحيحاً أنَّ أبسط النهايات لا يُوصَل إليها إلّا بالوسائل الدائرية والأكثر إسرافاً، حتى الأشياء المتوقعة تأتي هنا لتمريرها بطرائق غير متوقعة. إنَّ نسيان أنَّ الإنسان هو مخلوق رائع هو تجاهل لأهم سماته، وعند التفكير في الطبيعة البشرية، فإنَّ أكثر التخمينات والتكهنات جموحاً مشروعة.
خلال الفترة نفسها، لم يتحدّث الرجال الذين كان انشغالهم بالطبيعة البشرية عن البساطة, بل عن التعقيد المذهل. لم يتعب مونتين قَط من الإسراف في التناقض، وعدم الاتِّساق وقلة التماسك وفقدان القدرة على التنبؤ بالمظاهر البشرية.. لقد بدا لهُ أنَّ كلَّ جزء فينا, يلعبُ في كل لحظة لعبته الخاصة، وأنَّ هناك فرقًا كبيرًا بيننا وبين أنفسنا, مثل: الفرق بيننا وبين الآخرين». وقد قارنَ باسكال (تلميذ في الطبيعة والطبيعة البشرية) بساطة الأشياء مع طبيعة الإنسان المزدوجة والمعقدة.. لقد رأى الإنسان بوصفه كتلةً من التناقضات: ملاكٌ ووحشيّ، مسخٌ وأعجوبة، ذروةٌ وحثالةُ المخلوقات، مجدُ وفضيحة الكون. أيّاً كان الانسجام الموجود فينا فهو رائع ومتغيّر ومتنوّع، وخَلُصَ إلى أنَّ «الرجال مجانين حتماً، لدرجة أنَّ عدم الجنون كان شكلاً آخر من أشكال الجنون».
وكان يعتقد أنَّهُ من الطبيعي أن يكتب أفلاطون وأرسطو عن السياسة, كما لو كانا يضعان قواعد لمستشفى المجانين, بوصفه كتلة من دراسة الطبيعة، يجب ألا يكونَ التفسير متَّسقاً مع الحقائق فحسب، بل يجب أيضاً أن يكون بسيطاً ومباشراً قدر الإمكان. حين يُقدَّم عديد من التفسيرات، تُتَّبع القاعدة القائلة: إِنَّ التفسير الأكثر بساطة هو أيضاً أكثرُ صحةً تقريباً. يقول كاتب حديث عن طبيعة العلم: إِنَّ اختيار التفسير الأكثر تعقيداً سيكون أمراً منطقياً: «مثل السفر شرقاً حول العالم للوصول إلى منزل جارك المجاور غرباً».
إنَّ عقلانية النهج المباشر البسيط في الشؤون الإنسانية ليست بديهية بأي حال. هنا غالباً ما يكون صحيحاً أنَّ أبسط النهايات لا يُوصَل إليها إلّا بالوسائل الدائرية والأكثر إسرافاً، حتى الأشياء المتوقعة تأتي هنا لتمريرها بطرائق غير متوقعة. إنَّ نسيان أنَّ الإنسان هو مخلوق رائع هو تجاهل لأهم سماته، وعند التفكير في الطبيعة البشرية، فإنَّ أكثر التخمينات والتكهنات جموحاً مشروعة.
March 30, 2013
Hoffer's section on 'Scribe, Writer, and Rebel' is fascinating, e.g.: "Still, despite their common ancestry, there is a fundamental difference between the writer's and the rebel's attitude toward the word. To the genuine writer, the word is an end in itself and the center of his existence. He may dream of spectacular action and be lured to play an active role, but in the long run he does not feel at home in the whirl of a busy life. However imposing and successful his action, he feels in his innermost being that he is selling his birthright for a mess of pottage. It is only when the creative flow within him materializes in serried ranks of words that he feels at home in the world.
Not so the rebel: to him words remain a means to an end; and the end is action."
Not so the rebel: to him words remain a means to an end; and the end is action."
August 27, 2015
Eric Hoffer, while he is unquestionably a thinker of great originality & depth, suffers from some bias. His other great work was quite prejudiced against mass movements and in favor of individualism. This work (The Ordeal Of Change) suffers from anti-intellectualism. In his opnion, intellectuals are phony, worthless and dangerous (Plato and Pol Pot would agree).
Apart from these flaws, Eric Hoffer SHOULD be read by anyone. His perspective can give understanding to human condition, and i believe his lack of formal training provides a certain uniqueness. So, despite Mr Hoffer's prejudices, i would still give this book 5 stars.
Apart from these flaws, Eric Hoffer SHOULD be read by anyone. His perspective can give understanding to human condition, and i believe his lack of formal training provides a certain uniqueness. So, despite Mr Hoffer's prejudices, i would still give this book 5 stars.
December 28, 2018
Thoughtful, creative, and often insightful.
Docking a star, though, for certain weaknesses; namely, a too-total faith in America as a force for capital-G Good, a blanket depiction of intellectuals as would-be despots, and a preference for the sweeping generalization over problematic complexities. I'd have liked him to better address obvious counters to his arguments.
Docking a star, though, for certain weaknesses; namely, a too-total faith in America as a force for capital-G Good, a blanket depiction of intellectuals as would-be despots, and a preference for the sweeping generalization over problematic complexities. I'd have liked him to better address obvious counters to his arguments.
January 10, 2018
The Ordeal of Change by Eric Hoffer is a collection of 16 essays written between 1952 and 1963. Most were previously published in contemporary magazines. All deal with political, social and philosophical ideas. The topics range from the origin and stimulus of political change, the working class and management, fanaticism, human nature and the ironies of individual freedom. In several of the essays there are references to writers, intellectuals and philosophers and their roles in revolution and change as well as their isolation from the general populace.
Some of the essays are especially interesting due to the passage of time. Hoffer’s analyses of communism, the cold war, the awakening of Asia and the polarity of the orient and the occident have for the most part withstood the test of time. The fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of Chinese capitalism, the metamorphosis of the Middle East and America’s struggle for political and social identity are all directions he could have never foreseen. What developments will the next sixty years bring? Fasten your seat belts
Some of the essays are especially interesting due to the passage of time. Hoffer’s analyses of communism, the cold war, the awakening of Asia and the polarity of the orient and the occident have for the most part withstood the test of time. The fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of Chinese capitalism, the metamorphosis of the Middle East and America’s struggle for political and social identity are all directions he could have never foreseen. What developments will the next sixty years bring? Fasten your seat belts
February 17, 2023
أعتقد بأن لا أحد يحب التجديد حقًا. نحن نخافه. ليس فقط كما قال دوستويفسكي لأن "اتخاذ خطوة جديدة ، النطق بكلمة جديدة هو أكثر ما يخشاه الناس". ولكن حتى في الأشياء الطفيفة ، نادرًا ما تحدث تجربة الجديد بدون بعض الإحساس بالخطر.
في عام 1936 قضيت جزءًا كبيرًا من العام في قطف البازلاء. بدأت في أوائل يناير في إمبريال فالي واتجهت شمالًا ، لقطف البازلاء أثناء نضجها ، حتى وصلت إلى البازلاء الأخيرة من الموسم ، في يونيو ، حول تريسي. ثم انتقلت إلى ليك كاونتي ، حيث كنت سأقطف الفاصوليا الخيطية لأول مرة. وما زلت أتذكر كم كنت مترددًا في ذلك الصباح الأول حيث كنت على وشك أن أتكلم مع نفسي في الكروم. هل سأكون قادرًا على اختيار حبوب الفاصوليا؟ حتى التغيير من البازلاء إلى الفاصوليا كان يحتوي على عناصر من الخوف.
في حالة التغيير الجذري ، يكون القلق بالطبع أعمق وأكثر ديمومة. لا يمكننا أبدًا أن نكون مستعدين حقًا لما هو جديد تمامًا. علينا أن نتكيف مع أنفسنا ، وكل تعديل جذري هو أزمة تؤثر على احترام الذات: نحن نخضع لاختبار. علينا أن نثبت أنفسنا. نحتاج إلى ثقة مفرطة بالنفس لمواجهة التغيير الجذري دون ارتعاش داخلي.
.
Eric Hoffer
The Ordeal Of Change
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
في عام 1936 قضيت جزءًا كبيرًا من العام في قطف البازلاء. بدأت في أوائل يناير في إمبريال فالي واتجهت شمالًا ، لقطف البازلاء أثناء نضجها ، حتى وصلت إلى البازلاء الأخيرة من الموسم ، في يونيو ، حول تريسي. ثم انتقلت إلى ليك كاونتي ، حيث كنت سأقطف الفاصوليا الخيطية لأول مرة. وما زلت أتذكر كم كنت مترددًا في ذلك الصباح الأول حيث كنت على وشك أن أتكلم مع نفسي في الكروم. هل سأكون قادرًا على اختيار حبوب الفاصوليا؟ حتى التغيير من البازلاء إلى الفاصوليا كان يحتوي على عناصر من الخوف.
في حالة التغيير الجذري ، يكون القلق بالطبع أعمق وأكثر ديمومة. لا يمكننا أبدًا أن نكون مستعدين حقًا لما هو جديد تمامًا. علينا أن نتكيف مع أنفسنا ، وكل تعديل جذري هو أزمة تؤثر على احترام الذات: نحن نخضع لاختبار. علينا أن نثبت أنفسنا. نحتاج إلى ثقة مفرطة بالنفس لمواجهة التغيير الجذري دون ارتعاش داخلي.
.
Eric Hoffer
The Ordeal Of Change
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
August 5, 2016
Interesting but oldfashioned.
May 6, 2021
16 essays relating to change and ultimately to the American experience. Some better than others, some a bit dated, the good ones are fantastic and make the book absolutely worth reading if your can get your hands on a copy.
Hoffer Argues that humans are driven to action out of necessity, a “flailing of the arms.” People naturally dislike change, requiring us to adjust ourselves, which calls our being and self-esteem into question. Substitutes for self-confidence (of experience and of skill) are faith and enthusiasm. “Where there is necessary skill to move mountains there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.” Substitute for self-esteem is pride, substitute for “individual balance” is fusion in the group. The individual can only acquire self confidence and self-esteem in environments where achievement, acquisition, action, or development of his capacities are within reach; if these are unavailable, the individual seeks absolute truth and identifies with the collective. Says that many of the innovations of man have actually come from the weaker elements of society, who sought adaptations and tools to better help them survive. It is the man who does not succeed in the existing system who seeks to change it. Man is driven to particularly creative action when he has just enough ability to have time to contemplate. Weakness can also lead to hatred, malice, intolerance, and suspicion; resentment stemming from a sense of inadequacy and impotence. Charity to the weak is felt as but further oppression; the “healing gift to the weak is the capacity for self-help,” imparting skills to them. The scientists and mathematicians who discovered those areas did not know the practical nature of what they sought when they discovered it. Practicality is thus born out of the impractical; we do not know what we will find. When people seek to change society, it can have disastrous results (or, it can not). When people commit to the ideal above all other, they look away from facts that dispute the ideal. Argues that America is different because it is entirely born of the people who had to work tirelessly to make it, the people who left their home; America is unlike other societies that are ruled by elites, the “scribes”, who wish to order others since they have nothing to themselves order, and values the practical above all. The backward says De Tocqueville “will go forth in arms to gain knowledge but will not receive it when it comes to them”, a defiance for the illusion of strength and superiority, when in fact what is needed is some form of imitation. The West seeking to spread democracy seeks to rob people of their right to direct themselves, creating suspicion and antagonism to the West. Many ideas take hold as heresies, such as Communism, a heresy against capitalism, Christianity against Judaism, coming into being as protest. In actuality, communism could be envisioned as a super-capitalism, a monolithic company, absolute dominion, turning the population into cogs, the whole planet a holding company – an overfilling of capitalism, with no trivial motivations of humans, be they owners or workers or consumers, making production a deity – capitalism without capitalists. Protestants separated Catholics from the Catholic hierarchy. Rapid modernization requires imitation; collectivist biases lend themselves to this if it is composed of no true individuals. Intellectuals want to tell others what to do out of a fear for their own self-preservation, a lack in confidence that they provide worth in the social order. The creative classes – writers, artists, scientists – are dissatisfied, but turn it into the creative impulse, where the revolutionary diverts those energies to revolution. A fading faith in religion has caused more “fervent groping and searching for a heaven on earth.” The movement of people between places is something which causes economic productivity. “Scribes” were interested in elitism because it protected their position in society. The scribe could give voice to grievances. Education caused a diffusion of knowledge, along with the alphabet and printing; the scribe has routinely sought to separate the wealth creators from their wealth. As put forth in his other book, argues that around the corner hope prompts people to action, when they can almost taste something better, as opposed to distant hope, which is an opiate. “If we hope for what we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” -Romans 8:25. Soviet Russia and Communist China require mind control to prevent groupings of people to active resistance; the only thing which people can bind themselves to in thought is the past, their ancestors. Man strives to make and remake himself continually as an evolutionary process – a “striving to overcome and overtake nature and leave it behind.” Power cannot resist the nature to make man a thing again. “Hence absolute power corrupts even when exercised for human purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.”
--> “Whether the individual takes the path of self-realization or the easier one of self-justification by action he remains unbalanced and restless.”
--> “It is mainly by work that the majority of individuals prove their worth and regain their balance, they must keep at it continuously. Hence the ceaseless hustling of an individualist society.”
--> “There is little doubt that the frustration engendered by unemployment is due more to a corrosive sense of worthlessness than to economic hardship. Unemployment pay, however adequate, cannot mitigate it. In the Occident it is inaction rather than actual hardship which breeds discontent and disaffection... it is now recognized that men must be conditioned for retirement... Hoover... said that a man who retires from work ’shrivels up into a nuisance to all mankind.’”
--> “In societies where the Negro race is officially designated as inferior, and every white person can feel himself a member of a superior race, the pressure of individual self-assertion by work is considerably reduced. The presence of indolent ‘white trash’ is usually a characteristic of such societies”
--> “The Western workingman actually has the illusion that he can kill work and be done with it. He “attacks” every job he undertakes and feels the ending of a task as a victory. Those who, like the Negro, know that work is eternal tend to take it easy.”
--> “You do not go to a free society to find carefree people. When we leave people on their own, we are delivering them into the hands of a ruthless taskmaster from whose bondage there is no escape. The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.”
--> “When painting becomes so low that laymen talk about it, it doesn’t interest me. Do we dare to talk about mathematics? No! Painting shouldn’t become a fashionable thing. And money, money, money comes in and it becomes a Wall Street affair.” -Marcel Duchamp, The New Yorker, 1957 characterizes the disdain of artists.
--> “The deprecators of America usually point to its defects as being those of a business civilization. Actually they are the defects of the mass: worship of success, the cult of the practical, the identification of quality with quantity, the addiction to sheer action, the fascination with the trivial. We also know the virtues: a superb dynamism, an unprecedented diffusion of skills, a genius for organization and teamwork, a flexibility which makes possible an easy adjustment to the most drastic change, an ability to get things done with a minimum of tutelage and supervision, and unbounded capacity for fraternization.”
--> “Nothing has saddened me so much in life as the hardness of heart of educated people”-Gandhi.
--> “One cannot escape the impression that the intellectual’s most fundamental incompatibility is with the masses. He has managed to thrive in social orders dominated by kings, nobles, priests, and merchants, but not in societies suffused with the tastes and values of the masses.”
--> “The intellectual’s concern for the masses is as a rule a symptom of his uncertain status and his lack of an unquestionable sense of social usefulness.”
--> “The scribe was not interested in the elaboration of a practical script but in keeping writing a prerogative of the privileged few. He had a vested interest in complexity and difficulty.”
--> “When the scribe comes into power he derives a rare satisfaction from tearing tangible things out of the hands of practical people and harnessing these people to the task of achieving the impossible, and often killing them in the process.”
--> “In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from... [when] the wolf and the lamb shall dwell together, [there] will be a stagnant society.”
--> “Some of the worst tyrannies of our day genuinely are ‘vowed’ to the service of mankind, yet can function only by pitting neighbor against neighbor.” Thus, interaction with your neighbor is a good antidote to authoritarianism. “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 if of his own. Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt. When we are conscious of our worthlessness, we naturally expect others to be finer and better than we are.”
--> ”Nor is it at present easy for the individual to maintain his self-respect in the non-Communist part of the world. In the underdeveloped countries the poignant awareness from backwardness keeps even the exceptional individual from attaining the ‘unbought grace of life’ that is the true expression of an unconscious and unquestioned sense of worth. Similarly, individual self-respect cannot thrive in an atmosphere charged with racial or religious discrimination. Both the oppressors and the oppressed are blemished. The oppressed are corrupted by an inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them, while the oppressors are infected with the fear they induce in others. Finally, even in advanced and wholly egalitarian societies millions of people are ribbed of their sense of worth by unemployment, and by the obsolesce of skills as the result of revolutionary advances in technology.
--> “In man’s life the lack of an essential component usually leads to the adoption of a substitute. We have to convince ourselves that what we took as second choice is the best there ever was. Thus blind faith is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves; insatiable desire a substitute for hope; accumulation a substitute for growth; fervent hustling a substitute for purposeful action; and pride a substitute for unattainable self respect. The pride that at present pervades the world is the claim that one is a member of a chosen group – be it a nation, race, church, or party. No other attitude has so impaired the oneness of the human species and contributed so much to the savage strife of our time.” -“It is not the overworked and underpaid who make up the ranks of the D.A.R., the Dixiecrats... [it is] an indolent population living off the fat of the land, the vital need for an unquestioned sense of worth and usefulness is bound to find expression in an intensified pursuit of explosive substitutes.”
-”At bottom, a country’s efficiency must be measured by the degree to which it realizes its human potentialities... [serving] as a means for the realization of the intellectual, artistic, and manipulative capacities inherent in a population.” “Man’s only legitimate end in life is to finish God’s work – to bring to full growth the capacities and talents implanted in us. A population dedicated to this end will not necessarily overflow with the milk of human kindness, but it will not try to prove its worth by proclaiming the superiority and exclusiveness of its nation, race, or doctrine.”
--> “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.” -- what about Korea? What about Japan? (“rare cases”)
--> [The Intellectual] “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... any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.”
--> Almost all long-lived social bodies solved the problem by absorbing the educated into bureaucratic hierarchies. Since he is not an actual producer, the scribe needs a clearly marked status to certify his worth”
-> It is often the descendants of families that have come down in the world who act as a creative ferment
--> “When he comes into power he creates a social pattern ideally suited to the aspirations and talents of the scribe-a regimented social order planned, managed, and supervised by a horde of clerks”
--> “To the genuine writer the word is an end in itself and the center of his existence... however imposing and successful his action, he feels... that he is selling his birthright for a message of pottage.” … “Not so the rebel: to him words remain a means to an end; and the end is action”
--> “Periods of high tension and social passions leave little room for contemplation and reflection” -Trotsky. Thus, the writer and the revolutionary are at odds, the time of revolution is not a good time for creativeness. Those who cannot do or accomplish via action, will write as revolutionaries.
--> “The explosive component in the contemporary scene is not the clamor of the masses but the self-righteous claims of a multitude of graduates from schools and universities. This army of scribes is clamoring for a society in which planning, regulation, and supervision are paramount and the prerogative of the educated.”
continued: https://underconsumed.substack.com/p/...
Hoffer Argues that humans are driven to action out of necessity, a “flailing of the arms.” People naturally dislike change, requiring us to adjust ourselves, which calls our being and self-esteem into question. Substitutes for self-confidence (of experience and of skill) are faith and enthusiasm. “Where there is necessary skill to move mountains there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.” Substitute for self-esteem is pride, substitute for “individual balance” is fusion in the group. The individual can only acquire self confidence and self-esteem in environments where achievement, acquisition, action, or development of his capacities are within reach; if these are unavailable, the individual seeks absolute truth and identifies with the collective. Says that many of the innovations of man have actually come from the weaker elements of society, who sought adaptations and tools to better help them survive. It is the man who does not succeed in the existing system who seeks to change it. Man is driven to particularly creative action when he has just enough ability to have time to contemplate. Weakness can also lead to hatred, malice, intolerance, and suspicion; resentment stemming from a sense of inadequacy and impotence. Charity to the weak is felt as but further oppression; the “healing gift to the weak is the capacity for self-help,” imparting skills to them. The scientists and mathematicians who discovered those areas did not know the practical nature of what they sought when they discovered it. Practicality is thus born out of the impractical; we do not know what we will find. When people seek to change society, it can have disastrous results (or, it can not). When people commit to the ideal above all other, they look away from facts that dispute the ideal. Argues that America is different because it is entirely born of the people who had to work tirelessly to make it, the people who left their home; America is unlike other societies that are ruled by elites, the “scribes”, who wish to order others since they have nothing to themselves order, and values the practical above all. The backward says De Tocqueville “will go forth in arms to gain knowledge but will not receive it when it comes to them”, a defiance for the illusion of strength and superiority, when in fact what is needed is some form of imitation. The West seeking to spread democracy seeks to rob people of their right to direct themselves, creating suspicion and antagonism to the West. Many ideas take hold as heresies, such as Communism, a heresy against capitalism, Christianity against Judaism, coming into being as protest. In actuality, communism could be envisioned as a super-capitalism, a monolithic company, absolute dominion, turning the population into cogs, the whole planet a holding company – an overfilling of capitalism, with no trivial motivations of humans, be they owners or workers or consumers, making production a deity – capitalism without capitalists. Protestants separated Catholics from the Catholic hierarchy. Rapid modernization requires imitation; collectivist biases lend themselves to this if it is composed of no true individuals. Intellectuals want to tell others what to do out of a fear for their own self-preservation, a lack in confidence that they provide worth in the social order. The creative classes – writers, artists, scientists – are dissatisfied, but turn it into the creative impulse, where the revolutionary diverts those energies to revolution. A fading faith in religion has caused more “fervent groping and searching for a heaven on earth.” The movement of people between places is something which causes economic productivity. “Scribes” were interested in elitism because it protected their position in society. The scribe could give voice to grievances. Education caused a diffusion of knowledge, along with the alphabet and printing; the scribe has routinely sought to separate the wealth creators from their wealth. As put forth in his other book, argues that around the corner hope prompts people to action, when they can almost taste something better, as opposed to distant hope, which is an opiate. “If we hope for what we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” -Romans 8:25. Soviet Russia and Communist China require mind control to prevent groupings of people to active resistance; the only thing which people can bind themselves to in thought is the past, their ancestors. Man strives to make and remake himself continually as an evolutionary process – a “striving to overcome and overtake nature and leave it behind.” Power cannot resist the nature to make man a thing again. “Hence absolute power corrupts even when exercised for human purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.”
--> “Whether the individual takes the path of self-realization or the easier one of self-justification by action he remains unbalanced and restless.”
--> “It is mainly by work that the majority of individuals prove their worth and regain their balance, they must keep at it continuously. Hence the ceaseless hustling of an individualist society.”
--> “There is little doubt that the frustration engendered by unemployment is due more to a corrosive sense of worthlessness than to economic hardship. Unemployment pay, however adequate, cannot mitigate it. In the Occident it is inaction rather than actual hardship which breeds discontent and disaffection... it is now recognized that men must be conditioned for retirement... Hoover... said that a man who retires from work ’shrivels up into a nuisance to all mankind.’”
--> “In societies where the Negro race is officially designated as inferior, and every white person can feel himself a member of a superior race, the pressure of individual self-assertion by work is considerably reduced. The presence of indolent ‘white trash’ is usually a characteristic of such societies”
--> “The Western workingman actually has the illusion that he can kill work and be done with it. He “attacks” every job he undertakes and feels the ending of a task as a victory. Those who, like the Negro, know that work is eternal tend to take it easy.”
--> “You do not go to a free society to find carefree people. When we leave people on their own, we are delivering them into the hands of a ruthless taskmaster from whose bondage there is no escape. The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.”
--> “When painting becomes so low that laymen talk about it, it doesn’t interest me. Do we dare to talk about mathematics? No! Painting shouldn’t become a fashionable thing. And money, money, money comes in and it becomes a Wall Street affair.” -Marcel Duchamp, The New Yorker, 1957 characterizes the disdain of artists.
--> “The deprecators of America usually point to its defects as being those of a business civilization. Actually they are the defects of the mass: worship of success, the cult of the practical, the identification of quality with quantity, the addiction to sheer action, the fascination with the trivial. We also know the virtues: a superb dynamism, an unprecedented diffusion of skills, a genius for organization and teamwork, a flexibility which makes possible an easy adjustment to the most drastic change, an ability to get things done with a minimum of tutelage and supervision, and unbounded capacity for fraternization.”
--> “Nothing has saddened me so much in life as the hardness of heart of educated people”-Gandhi.
--> “One cannot escape the impression that the intellectual’s most fundamental incompatibility is with the masses. He has managed to thrive in social orders dominated by kings, nobles, priests, and merchants, but not in societies suffused with the tastes and values of the masses.”
--> “The intellectual’s concern for the masses is as a rule a symptom of his uncertain status and his lack of an unquestionable sense of social usefulness.”
--> “The scribe was not interested in the elaboration of a practical script but in keeping writing a prerogative of the privileged few. He had a vested interest in complexity and difficulty.”
--> “When the scribe comes into power he derives a rare satisfaction from tearing tangible things out of the hands of practical people and harnessing these people to the task of achieving the impossible, and often killing them in the process.”
--> “In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from... [when] the wolf and the lamb shall dwell together, [there] will be a stagnant society.”
--> “Some of the worst tyrannies of our day genuinely are ‘vowed’ to the service of mankind, yet can function only by pitting neighbor against neighbor.” Thus, interaction with your neighbor is a good antidote to authoritarianism. “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 if of his own. Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt. When we are conscious of our worthlessness, we naturally expect others to be finer and better than we are.”
--> ”Nor is it at present easy for the individual to maintain his self-respect in the non-Communist part of the world. In the underdeveloped countries the poignant awareness from backwardness keeps even the exceptional individual from attaining the ‘unbought grace of life’ that is the true expression of an unconscious and unquestioned sense of worth. Similarly, individual self-respect cannot thrive in an atmosphere charged with racial or religious discrimination. Both the oppressors and the oppressed are blemished. The oppressed are corrupted by an inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them, while the oppressors are infected with the fear they induce in others. Finally, even in advanced and wholly egalitarian societies millions of people are ribbed of their sense of worth by unemployment, and by the obsolesce of skills as the result of revolutionary advances in technology.
--> “In man’s life the lack of an essential component usually leads to the adoption of a substitute. We have to convince ourselves that what we took as second choice is the best there ever was. Thus blind faith is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves; insatiable desire a substitute for hope; accumulation a substitute for growth; fervent hustling a substitute for purposeful action; and pride a substitute for unattainable self respect. The pride that at present pervades the world is the claim that one is a member of a chosen group – be it a nation, race, church, or party. No other attitude has so impaired the oneness of the human species and contributed so much to the savage strife of our time.” -“It is not the overworked and underpaid who make up the ranks of the D.A.R., the Dixiecrats... [it is] an indolent population living off the fat of the land, the vital need for an unquestioned sense of worth and usefulness is bound to find expression in an intensified pursuit of explosive substitutes.”
-”At bottom, a country’s efficiency must be measured by the degree to which it realizes its human potentialities... [serving] as a means for the realization of the intellectual, artistic, and manipulative capacities inherent in a population.” “Man’s only legitimate end in life is to finish God’s work – to bring to full growth the capacities and talents implanted in us. A population dedicated to this end will not necessarily overflow with the milk of human kindness, but it will not try to prove its worth by proclaiming the superiority and exclusiveness of its nation, race, or doctrine.”
--> “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.” -- what about Korea? What about Japan? (“rare cases”)
--> [The Intellectual] “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... any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.”
--> Almost all long-lived social bodies solved the problem by absorbing the educated into bureaucratic hierarchies. Since he is not an actual producer, the scribe needs a clearly marked status to certify his worth”
-> It is often the descendants of families that have come down in the world who act as a creative ferment
--> “When he comes into power he creates a social pattern ideally suited to the aspirations and talents of the scribe-a regimented social order planned, managed, and supervised by a horde of clerks”
--> “To the genuine writer the word is an end in itself and the center of his existence... however imposing and successful his action, he feels... that he is selling his birthright for a message of pottage.” … “Not so the rebel: to him words remain a means to an end; and the end is action”
--> “Periods of high tension and social passions leave little room for contemplation and reflection” -Trotsky. Thus, the writer and the revolutionary are at odds, the time of revolution is not a good time for creativeness. Those who cannot do or accomplish via action, will write as revolutionaries.
--> “The explosive component in the contemporary scene is not the clamor of the masses but the self-righteous claims of a multitude of graduates from schools and universities. This army of scribes is clamoring for a society in which planning, regulation, and supervision are paramount and the prerogative of the educated.”
continued: https://underconsumed.substack.com/p/...
January 16, 2022
Hoffer is a unique person and thinker. His background as a migratory worker, longshoreman, and being completely self-taught on all history and philosophy gives him a unique perspective on everything.
This book is a collection of essays that explores change in societies, who drives change, and which groups fight it. Classically, philosophy divides people into two broad classes, the masses and the nobles. Hoffer astutely adds one more: the scribes, from which we get intellectuals.
One of Hoffer’s points is that communism, tyranny, and other totalitarian governments are highly dependent on intellectuals. These states give intellectuals their place in a hierarchy. American liberal democracy, however, is an anathema to the intellectual because it strips everyone free of standard hierarchy and allows the masses to build society.
This is why, Hoffer notes, intellectuals routinely hate America and show a disdain for it. The intellectual is unneeded in the US. This is untrue in other places.
Hoffer explores this and other topics in a great and easy to read style. He is extremely well-read and very quotable. Well worth the time to read and think about.
This book is a collection of essays that explores change in societies, who drives change, and which groups fight it. Classically, philosophy divides people into two broad classes, the masses and the nobles. Hoffer astutely adds one more: the scribes, from which we get intellectuals.
One of Hoffer’s points is that communism, tyranny, and other totalitarian governments are highly dependent on intellectuals. These states give intellectuals their place in a hierarchy. American liberal democracy, however, is an anathema to the intellectual because it strips everyone free of standard hierarchy and allows the masses to build society.
This is why, Hoffer notes, intellectuals routinely hate America and show a disdain for it. The intellectual is unneeded in the US. This is untrue in other places.
Hoffer explores this and other topics in a great and easy to read style. He is extremely well-read and very quotable. Well worth the time to read and think about.
January 20, 2024
Brilliant collection of essays written several lifetimes ago yet still speak to the current events unfolding in the 2020s. Worth your time to at the very least skim a few of the essays.
Favorites:
Drastic Change
Imitation and Fanaticism
Jehovah and the Machine Age
Scribe, Writer, and Rebel
The Playful Mood
The Unnaturalness of Human Nature
Favorites:
Drastic Change
Imitation and Fanaticism
Jehovah and the Machine Age
Scribe, Writer, and Rebel
The Playful Mood
The Unnaturalness of Human Nature
July 13, 2019
Eric Hoffer is a must read for those want to understand the human condition in times of vast change and mass movements.
February 18, 2013
Supposedly we don’t read mid-century books because they are stuck in the copyright trap- too young to be freely made into electronic books; too old to be made electronic by their owners. But the other problem with mid-century books is that because people had a global awareness many thought they could make global pronouncements.
This book falls into that issue of dated-ness. The author starts with the difficulty of picking a different kind of pea. As he then zooms to an opinion on the Chinese zeitgeist because of something he saw on a newsreel. Anyone before 1880 could have been relied upon to stick to the issue of the peas; anyone since would have the data. One wishes he would stick to applying his considerable analytic ability to that which he knows. Mid-century also has this problem of 1,000s of writers on the same topic without the present ability to easily find each other. “I think…” the author proclaims, where now we know everyone else thought as well.
Fortunately later in the book he returns to his observations of American labor, something he knows well and knows uniquely, and his erudition becomes reliable again. The writing is extremely well structured and flies by like trees beside a train track, so if someone wants to be exposed to this particular era of sociology done well, in a short and readable book, this would be a decent place to start.
If one wants a long and unreadable, but enormously valuable book, as always I point to The Technological Society.
This book falls into that issue of dated-ness. The author starts with the difficulty of picking a different kind of pea. As he then zooms to an opinion on the Chinese zeitgeist because of something he saw on a newsreel. Anyone before 1880 could have been relied upon to stick to the issue of the peas; anyone since would have the data. One wishes he would stick to applying his considerable analytic ability to that which he knows. Mid-century also has this problem of 1,000s of writers on the same topic without the present ability to easily find each other. “I think…” the author proclaims, where now we know everyone else thought as well.
Fortunately later in the book he returns to his observations of American labor, something he knows well and knows uniquely, and his erudition becomes reliable again. The writing is extremely well structured and flies by like trees beside a train track, so if someone wants to be exposed to this particular era of sociology done well, in a short and readable book, this would be a decent place to start.
If one wants a long and unreadable, but enormously valuable book, as always I point to The Technological Society.
October 9, 2008
"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 hi neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own. Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt. ...we demand more of [others] than we do of ourselves, and it is as if we wished to be disappointed in them. Rudeness luxuriates in the absence of self-respect"
"In the chemistry of the soul, a substitute is almost always explosive if for no other reason than that we can never have enough of it. We can never have enough of that which we really do not want"
"We are usually told that revolutions are set in motion to realize radical changes. Actually, it is drastic change which sets the stage for revolution"
"In the chemistry of the soul, a substitute is almost always explosive if for no other reason than that we can never have enough of it. We can never have enough of that which we really do not want"
"We are usually told that revolutions are set in motion to realize radical changes. Actually, it is drastic change which sets the stage for revolution"
June 29, 2014
Eric Hoffer always offers fresh ideas about human and society nature. This book comprises some inspirational insights about how masses shape the societies. At the time of its writing, Communism was a powerful force, and its ideology shapes the lives of many people. Even Communism is in recession now, the author's account of what makes Communism an uprising power and evil is still relevant. Using individual as a starting point to explain the institutional implication is a nice attempt to make politics more accessible. I would recommend people who are interested in how individuals shape political scene to read this book.
September 21, 2015
Eric Hoffer was an outsider intellectual. He wrote about 10 books about where man came from, where he is, and where he's going. The reason he was an outsider is because he was self educated with the help of a library card. Once he was orphaned he went to LA and lived on skid row as a teenager, then worked as a migrant farm worker with the Okies during the depression, then for the rest of his life as a longshoreman. Being outside the need to conform to academia, his thinking was original. The book was a collection of previously published magazine articles. A fascinating man.
July 18, 2018
Started reading this book about a year ago and only able to finish it months later. Eric Hoffer beautifully exert his thinking of human nature and it's unnaturalness and the dreaded feeling of incomplete and isolation. These flaws would eventually, as Eric Hoffer elated, be used as a tool to make man whole; with a fervent sense of purpose and resilience.
A fine writing for understanding the struggle of human in conquering our own incomplete and flaws. In the process being the self-made man we have always yearn.
A fine writing for understanding the struggle of human in conquering our own incomplete and flaws. In the process being the self-made man we have always yearn.
February 3, 2016
A set of philosophical essays on the subject of the effect of social, political and economic changes on human behavior, which contain some gems of wisdom, but unfortunately have not withstood the test of time because those gems are overshadowed by the author's prejudices, which are typical of the era (mid 20th century), and by subsequent historic events.
June 27, 2018
There is something special and magical in Hoffer's The Ordeal of Change. Perhaps, it is the honesty, the practicality, and the immensity of the ideas he employed.
I have deep admiration for people who despite their inadequacies (like for Hoffer's case lack of formal education) rose above in defense of humanity!
I have deep admiration for people who despite their inadequacies (like for Hoffer's case lack of formal education) rose above in defense of humanity!
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April 19, 2010This is one of the books i used for my exhibition research paper and the thing i have to say about this book is that it is very dense. it is basically a history book with a hint of science and mankind.
February 8, 2016
More great insights from Mr. Hoffer. This book focuses on the working man and the differences between Communism and Capitalism. I liked what he had to say about America and the importance of play (fun).
September 21, 2017
Well worth reading. Although I can't agree with all of his conclusions, Mr. Hoffer certainly gives me a lot to think about. His last essay in the book, "The Role of the Undesirables" resonates the most with me.
December 8, 2018
Great books with an amazingly deep insight on most Asian countries' in situ problems for modernization and realizing of their position in the world civilization map, surprisingly come from an American thinker.
May 3, 2021
Eric Hoffer considered this his best book and it certainly is intriguing and insightful.
December 14, 2016
Great read...
May 28, 2017
Eric Hoffer's writing does something to the mind. His words forces you to think and see things which you generally and habitually overlook.
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