Eric Hoffer is one of those blue-collar thinkers, he worked as a longshoreman, whose harsh experience affects his perception of what passes for normal or common in our society. Like Charles Bukowski he harbors no illusions about life in America having lived on the streets and in the flop-house hotels and amongst the working class. He has a razor-sharp social perception honed by his tough lifestyle. This book, "First Things, Last Things", contains nine essays on various subjects.

The first essay, fancifully I think, talks about Paleolithic era cave paintings and the lives of the people who then lived. Mr. Hoffer believes that, as opposed to a grim struggle for existence, "play" was at the center of the lives of the stone age hunters. He believes that man is "the only perpetually young thing in the world" and that is what allows him to express his capacities and talents. Mr. Hoffer opines that we must return to our "playground" in order to attain our ultimate destiny.

The second essay is a rather boring discussion of how, he believes, cities pre-existed rural "drab" villages as sites of human habitation and that the latter was the sad outcome of the demise of the former. Every once in a while he interjects some really interesting commentary. "For freedom is basically freedom from nature, from the iron necessities and the implacable determinism which dominate nature. Only in the city could man become truly Promethean, in perpetual revolt against the iron laws which imprison all other forms of life". Continuing with his cities as the apogee of human existence premise he laments the current (he was writing in 1968) demise of the city when, "after our victory over nature is almost complete", the cities are packed with "people who lack the enterprise to take advantage of opportunities or the character to resist temptation".

Another of his concerns is that modern society's affluence causes kids in their late 20s to be perpetual adolescents - a state of delayed manhood. He suggests, wisely, that upon graduation from high school kids be put to work with decent pay. The passage from boyhood to manhood must be routinized, he argues, and that would provide a solution to many of the problems our chronically immature society currently faces. As it was (again, he is writing in 1968) Hoffer feared that, if the militant white and black youths dominated, the rest of us would be living in "a vast Haiti, totally chaotic and stagnant, and lorded by a Doc Duvalier...". (And so it has come to pass, but with university professors leading the charge/change by their entitled, under-educated, perpetually aggrieved, diverse student bodies.) As Mr. Hoffer notes: "Nowhere is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America". Upbraiding America's "intellectuals" he beautifully explains what you find when you go below the surface: " Scratch an intellectual and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound, and the smell of common folk". (Although definitely not a true intellectual, Barack Obama comes immediately to mind.)

It just makes you feel vindicated when Hoffer, fifty years ago, described the essence of the rich who, feeling sorry about their private schools and tax loopholes, attack, not themselves, but, rather, public sins, the "sins of the rest of us, and it our breasts they are beating into a pulp". That is even more true today as Bezos and Zuckerberg and Gates lecture us about our sins while they walk amongst the gods free of stress and worry. It is their children who make up the most violent cliques of the Left. (The Weathermen, Antifa, etc.)

Hoffer's interesting observation is that the education explosion is causing people of limited ability to want to live meaningful, relevant, and important lives, although they are incapable of doing so on their own merit, He concludes that we must concoct a "faith, a philosophy, and a style of life to suit the needs of the non-creative horde hungering for meaningful, weighty lives".

The author questions whether the "Negro revolution" will do much for blacks. Presciently, Hoffer contends that "the Negro's future will be determined by his ability to compete and excel. If the Negro cannot learn to strive and build on his own he will remain lowest man on the totem pole no matter how explosive his slogans and how extravagant his self-dramatization". He marvels at the negrification of the young and its profound effect "on language, sexual mores, work habits, and the attitude toward drugs". Negrification: 1) emboldens Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Indians to use similar tactics; 2) reverses the melting pot amalgamation; 3) compels the wealthy WASPs to conciliate them at the expense of the middle class; 4) has transplanted the Sourth to big cities [And we now know how that worked out - Detroit, for instance]:

The revolution of the young is not against regimentation but against
effort, against growth and, above all, against apprenticeship. They want
to teach before they learn, want to retire before they work, want to rot
before they ripen. They equate freedom with effortlessness, and power
with instant satisfaction. Never have the young taken themselves so
seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by
so many adults.

The crucial, central fact about contemporary Americans is their timidity
- their cowardice. .... When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents
are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonable-
ness and whatnot. ... The unavoidable conclusion is that the unpreced-
ented meekness of the majority is responsible for the increase in violence.
Social stability is the product of an equilibrium between a vigorous majority
and violent minorities. ( )