Personal growth literature and the timeless quality of human nature July 1, 2018
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal growth.Tags: Eric Hoffer, human nature, inspiration, life, personal development ideas, personal growth, philosophy, psychology, Reflections on the Human Condition, self-actualization, the individual, writing
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Sometimes when, through a period of time, we have delved into a lot of personal development and self-actualization materials, including very old commentary, it may seem that there is really nothing new in much of it.
And the reason is likely that individuals, the people such material is written about and directed to, do not change, even over countless centuries.
As Erich Hoffer writes:
“It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations, past and present, are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual’s hungers, anxieties, dreams and preoccupations have remained unchanged through millennia…
“…If in some manner the voice of an individual reaches us from the remotest distance of time, it is a timeless voice speaking about ourselves.”
It is the individual, rather than any particular society as a whole that is “nearest to our understanding; so near that even the interval of millennia cannot weaken our feeling of kinship,” Hoffer observes. (1)
Historical examples are numerous: ancient philosophical texts, such as the writings of Roman and Greek philosophers, playwrights, and poets; centuries old religious tracts; wall paintings in the tombs of ancient Egypt.
(1) Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1973
Dennis Mellersh
Personal development: Self-directed personal growth December 26, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Development Potential.Tags: books, Eric Hoffer, inspiration, psychology, self-actualization, self-improvement, Truth Imagined, writing
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Is it possible that in order to think more originally about our own personal development goals and our efforts towards self-actualization, that we should rely less on outside authorities and their recommendations and instead venture out on an individual path of self-discovery?
At one point in his intellectual growth, philosopher and social thinker Eric Hoffer said that he came to the “unpleasant discovery” that he would never be an original thinker, particularly in his writing, as long as he relied too heavily on the pronouncements of others.
“I realized that I would probably avoid hard thinking if I always had someone by my side (1) who knew the answers. I was not, in that case, a natural thinker. It was an unpleasant discovery,” (2)
Hoffer remedied this by using the material written by others more as a source or foundation upon which he would draw, through reflection, his own conclusions, theories, and generalizations.
Perhaps, to realize our potential in our own personal growth efforts, we might try doing the same – continue absorbing what the experts have written, but spend more time reflecting on our own interpretations of the points they make and subsequently making our self-improvement efforts more self-directed.
(1) “…someone by my side…” in this case means the books that Hoffer read throughout his life-long self-education process
(2) From Hoffer’s autobiographical book, Truth Imagined
— Dennis Mellersh
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