ANCIENT& not so ancient WISDOM
offering a weekly positive perspective

May 6, 2004

Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. He is both an unfinished animal and an unfinished man. It is this incurable unfinishedness, which sets man apart from other living things. For, in the attempt to finish himself, man becomes a creator. Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.

- Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

Eric Hoffer was born in 1902 and grew up in the Bronx under the care of a household servant after his mother died when he was seven. Eric also went blind at age seven. His eyesight returned when he was fifteen. Fearing he would go blind again, he read as much as he could. His eyesight remained, but Hoffer never abandoned the opportunity to feed his habit of voracious reading.

When his father died in 1920, Hoffer moved to the west coast, determined to avoid factory work and "stay poor." He read constantly in the libraries of California while he supported himself with odd jobs and migrant farm labor. He lived his life on the road until 1941. When the war broke out, he was rejected for health reasons when he attempted to join the military. So he joined the Longshoreman's Union and became a stevedore in order to help the war effort in whatever way he could. For the next twenty-five years, he worked the waterfront and actively pursued knowledge through reading, writing, struggling, and playing with the ideas that would become his first book.  

His first book, The True Believer, was published in 1951. His work was original and non-Freudian at a time when almost all American psychology was Freudian. Hoffer was among the first to recognize the central importance of self-esteem to psychological well-being and the consequences of a lack of self-esteem, which include self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity. He felt that poor self-esteem was at the root of fanaticism and self-righteousness and that an obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people was a compensation for a lack of meaning in one's own life and a flight from the self.  Hoffer said of the 1930's, "It colors my thinking and shapes my attitude toward events. I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac."  

He retired as a longshoreman in 1967 and continued to be famous as the "the longshoreman philosopher”.

'There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life. Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book, painting a picture, and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.'

Eric Hoffer died in 1983, after writing nine books and winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1982.

Wishing you great and continued success!

Sincerely,