Beech Tree News Network

Some uncommon thoughts of a common man...sometimes with my own common thoughts thrown in:

About himself: Of his early life he says, “I had no schooling. I was practically blind up to the age of fifteen.  When I regained my eyesight, I was seized with an enormous hunger for the printed word.  I read indiscriminately everything within reach.” 

“When my father died I realized I was on my own.  I had to get out of New York.  Logic told me that California was the poor man’s country.  Through ten years as a migratory worker and gold miner.  I continued to read and write during the years of the Great Depression.  In 1943 I chose the longshoreman’s life and settled in California.  I worked loading and unloading freight off of ships.  In my spare moments I jotted down my thought and observations in a notebook.”

“I had library cards in a dozen towns along the railroad as a migratory fruit picker.  When I could afford it I took a room near a library.  This was before I became a dock worker.”

This common man’s thought and observations in his notebook eventually became over a dozen best selling books, one of which was, Reflections on the Human Condition.

Some of these reflections are as follows:

Elitist intellectuals (snobs) never tire of repeating that only the chosen few matter; the majority are pigs.  Yet it does happen that a he pig marries a she pig and a Leonardo Da Vinci is born.

People who cannot grow want to leap: they want shortcuts to fame, fortune, and happiness. Lawrence Welk played danceable music twenty five years before his first big break.

There is something inhuman about perfection.  The total mastery of a skill approaches the nonhuman.  They who would make me perfect end up dehumanizing him.  

Before he performed, guitarist, Chet Atkins would tell his audience, “I have deliberately put into this number three or four mistakes so you won’t think I’m perfect.”  

Belief passes, but to have believed never passes.  In the Greek language, belief and trust are the same words.  

To perform well, elitists need tending and nurturing.  They need attention, and would rather be persecuted than ignored.  However the masses are like weeds — they thrive best when left alone.  

In countries ruled by despots (Hitler, Stalins, the Kim Jung Ums (North Korea)).  A man considers himself fortunate, if he can be certain he will not be imprisoned, exiled, or liquidated, between going to bed and getting up.  

The opposite of such is freedom.  Freedom from fear.  

How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.  

This common man of uncommon thought was Eric Hoffer.  He eventually only worked three days a week and spent one day as “research professor” at the University of California at Berkeley.  He was the subject of twelve half-hour programs on national tv.  

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.

Kindest regards...