Working and thinking

Today is the first day's work after a week of oppressive leisure.

Eric Hoffer, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront

The title of Eric Hoffer's book Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, published in 1969, contains the key to the success of this longshoreman/philosopher: working AND thinking. For him, the two went together. When he took a week's vacation, assuming he would have lots of time to write, he found he could write nothing at all. He needed physical labor, unloading ships on docks in the San Francisco Bay, to put his mind in the proper zone for the thoughts that he turned into books like The True Believer and The Temper of Our Time.

Fortunately for Hoffer, being a longshoreman meant he didn't necessarily have to work eight hours a day or five days a week. Just a few hours of work would jumpstart his mind, then he could devote the rest of the day to reading and writing. This book consists of his journal entries in 1958 and 1959 when he was trying to organize thoughts that he would turn into the book The Ordeal of Change. Most of these entries begin with comments about the job he had that day, such as, "Danish ship at Pier 31. More meat from New Zealand." Then he would launch into his thoughts about culture, society and human nature.

Hoffer became something of a media sensation in the 1960s when Eric Sevareid interviewed him on CBS television. One can find excerpts on YouTube. In one of these I listened to this morning, Hoffer says "a philosopher generalizes ideas." That describes exactly what Hoffer did. From what he read and what he observed, he looked for patterns, themes and generalizations, which he would refine over a period of time and finally condense into his books, which remain in print and remain worth reading.

One downside to this way of thinking, revealed in his journals, is that it can become easy to overgeneralize using insufficient information. On the waterfront he would work with different men each day, often from different countries or of different races, and based on his work experiences on a particular day he would say things like "the Finns are the salt of the earth" or. speaking of the Slavs he worked with one day, "I cannot see how people of their kind back in the Old Country need a totalitarian government to tell them what to do." Sometimes his generalizations, as when he writes about women,  are much less positive.

Hoffer's most frequent target in his journals, as in his books, are intellectuals. He defines what he means by the term in a preface: "They are people who feel themselves members of the educated minority, with a God-given right to direct and shape events. An intellectual need not be well educated or particularly intelligent. What counts is the feeling of being a member of an educated elite." He plants barbs for such people throughout his journals.

Unlike his other books, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront allows glimpses into his personal life. He frequently mentions spending time with a married woman named Lili and a little boy, also named Eric. Little Eric is Hoffer's son from an affair with Lili. Her husband, oddly enough, welcomes Hoffer on occasional visits to their home. Hoffer, in his mid-50s at this time, seems like a typical proud father, happy to generalize about his son's emerging strengths.