I am at a loss for a story this morning.  I think this is a second sunny, paradisiacal day in a row absent rain,  but I am discomfited with laryngitis which has almost taken my voice.

After a review of notes taken many years ago, I will offer some excerpts from Before The Sabbath written by the longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer.  Hoffer was a self educated working man.  I am certain that I would have enjoyed eating lunch with him.  He spent many of his evening hours reading the classics of great literature.  And he wrote.  His best known book, something of a cult favorite in his day was The True Believer.

The quotes speak for themselves.  If I have something to say, I’ll interpolate my comments between the excerpts.

The decay of traditional authority
prepares the ground for dictatorship.
Those who try to weaken established authority
in order to enlarge individual freedom
unknowingly
clear the way
for the coming of tyranny.

I am certain that the Tea-Party crowd, and those Libertarian minded citizens who thought that electing “a businessman” president would somehow fix the ills of an empire based society–never figured that what we’d get would be a tyrant.  More than one who shakes things up, he is a breaker of norms and institutions.

You cannot build utopia
without terror,
and that before long
terror
is all that is left.

I am reminded of the patronage tradition of Chicago.  City workers, teachers, anyone attracted by the honey-pot of an early retirement in fine style — now understand they must relocate and live somewhere else, because they cannot afford to live here.  Pity the rest of us, without the fat pension.  Utopia for the few, terror for the many.

Social discipline…..
depends upon a new kind of scarcity.
In an era of general abundance
we have to know how to induce
a ceaseless striving for
the realization of individuals capacities and talents
in order to preserve
their stability and health.
By passing from an economy of matter
to an economy of spirit
a society enters a world
of incurable scarcity.

We live in an  economy of matter.  Just notice the substance and style and appeal of TV commercials.  If the medication is promoted on TV it’s a cinch that you cannot afford to pay cash for it.  Hope that you have gold plated insurance coverage.  And as for the automobiles, after you’ve leased those miracles of technology for three years, you give the vehicle back.  (You can’t afford to own it.) Then you pick out another.  The descent—-unabated, inconsolable, craving.

The distribution of goods
was a problem in industrial societies.
The problem of post-industrial society
will be the distribution of work.

Under-employment anyone?  Work like a dog for a bare subsistence of pay.

Civilized life
is based upon the acceptance
of imperfection—
on not trying 
to enforce every right
one possesses.

Are you uncomfortable with gay marriage?  Then do not marry someone who is gay.  Same with the abortion issue.  If you are “ag’n it”….don’t have an abortion.  Please do not terrorize others with your beliefs.

In a world of scarcity,
the innate anarchy of the human condition
is kept locked in the dark cellars
of the individual’s psyche
and is not allowed to inject
it’s unpredictability
into everyday life.

Indeed in our world of 21st century, first-world opulence, more than in our fathers generation — crazy-talking, extreme minded folk are a significant minority.

No one foresaw
the chronic unemployment
and the loss of a sense of usefulness
caused by increased efficiency.
No one feared
that rapid change would
upset traditions,
customs, routines and other arrangements
which make everyday life predictable.
No one foresaw
the education explosion
made possible by advanced technology
would swamp societies with
hordes of educated nobodies
who want to be somebodies
and end up being
mischief making
busybodies.