{"id":24775,"date":"2016-05-22T00:01:49","date_gmt":"2016-05-22T07:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=24775"},"modified":"2016-05-22T00:01:49","modified_gmt":"2016-05-22T07:01:49","slug":"eric-hoffer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/eric-hoffer\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Eric Hoffer Book Award — More Kudos for ‘Wrestling with God’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
Thanks to InspirationBoost.com for this timely quote from Eric Hoffer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Great news. “Wrestling with God” has won yet another honor. This time the recognition comes from\u00a0the Eric Hoffer Book Award, which has named WWG a finalist<\/a> in its international competition recognizing books from\u00a0small, academic, and independent presses.<\/p>\n

The awards honor the\u00a0American working class philosopher<\/a> Eric Hoffer, whose seminal book, “The True Believer,” dropped into the American intellectual scene with a\u00a0splash in 1951. It was must reading for people of my generation, and maybe it ought to be must-reading in this 2016 election year.<\/p>\n

Eric Hoffer\u00a0and the True Believer<\/h5>\n

Hoffer — a longshoreman and proudly working class\u00a0— asserted that fanatical movements, religious, political or otherwise, emerge\u00a0when large segments of the population feel themselves to be marginalized. People whose way of life and self-esteem are\u00a0threatened are drawn — often passionately and irrationally — to a larger group that promises radical change. For Hoffer, communism and fascism were interchangeable; the rhetoric differed, but the underlying human psychological need for the reassurance of belonging to a powerful, idealistic movement was the same.<\/p>\n

When\u00a0I lived in Germany and traveled to the Soviet Union after college, I interpreted\u00a0the early 20th-century history of Germany and the Soviet Union through Hoffer’s True Believer lens. Today, his ideas shed helpful light\u00a0on the\u00a0ISIS phenomenon.<\/p>\n

I’m honored\u00a0to be named a finalist in a competition with Eric Hoffer’s name on it.<\/p>\n

Read the story of a Chinese\u00a0true believer at “A Tiananmen Survivor Tells All.”<\/a>\u00a0 For a little political levity, go to\u00a0“The Politics of Housework Revisited.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Seal<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

“Wrestling with God” is\u00a0a finalist in an international competition named for the American longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,52],"tags":[1686,34,1737,1738,281,282,1739,53],"class_list":["post-24775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-writing-reading","category-the-writing-room","tag-book-awards","tag-dont-miss","tag-eric-hoffer","tag-eric-hoffer-book-award","tag-philosophy","tag-politics","tag-the-true-believer","tag-wrestling-with-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}