In praise of good manners, leisure and tolerance

Eric Hoffer

My recent review of Eric Hoffer's Working and Thinking on the Waterfront ("Working and thinking," Sept. 10) failed to mention many of the most interesting things he says in the journal entries compiled for this book in 1969. So allow me to go back and highlight a few of them now.

Good manners are inconceivable without a degree of objectivity, and the give and take of compromise. He who clings with all his might to an absolute truth fears compromise more than the devil.

Remind you of anything, like the current political environment, for instance? Good manners are lacking in Washington and elsewhere because there is no objectivity and no willingness to compromise ... on anything. Transfer that attitude to the dinner table, which may be the first thing we think of when we hear the phrase "good manners." Imagine if someone at the table decides the mashed potatoes, which happen to be near his plate, belong to him and he sees no reason to pass them down to the next person. Or because he wants some salt for those potatoes simply reaches down the table, his arm over another's plate, to claim it. No, Hoffer is right. Good manners take compromise, and compromise takes objectivity, the willingness to see another person's point of view.

In an optimal milieu there is considerable leisure. Where people are engrossed in some feverish pursuit so that they are neither bored, nor dream dreams, nor nurse grievances, creativeness will be anemic.

I get some of my best ideas in bed in the early morning when I am still half asleep or later during a leisurely shower. I sometimes think the most creative period of my life was my teen years when more hours were spent daydreaming than working. Later in his book Hoffer comments that "most utilitarian devices had their ancestry in playful practices." Amateurs, such as the Wright brothers, are responsible for many of the greatest inventions. Youngsters picking at their guitars in basements and garages write some of the best songs.

This view doesn't negate Hoffer's claim that working as a longshoreman helped him write. Unloading ships must be boring work, and boredom offers opportunity for both daydreaming and creative thinking.

Actually it is not a question of love but of tolerance -- of putting up with people, and managing to be pleasant and benevolent.

I am all for loving one another, as Jesus commanded, but I think Hoffer is right. In practice love  comes down to tolerance, or as he said earlier, good manners. He goes on say we should all think of ourselves as tourists, as travelers on a journey. "Tourists are usually brotherly with each other," he writes. I noticed that on our recent river cruise down the Rhine. We travelers were mostly strangers. We all got along famously. There was no strife, no grumbling, no ill tempers. All was smiles, concern for the comfort of others and, yes, good manners.