Empty Heads

“An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.”

Eric Hoffer

I just finished re-reading Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer” which I first read over thirty years ago. If you want to better understand cults it’s a great source of wisdom.

Eric Hoffer was known as the “longshoreman philosopher,” a high school graduate who unloaded ships at night and got his advanced education by reading his way through the San Francisco library by day. He was also known to not suffer fools gladly, so I wasn’t surprised to come upon the above quote—perhaps a bit prickly and mostly true.

The election season here in America is a vivid reminder of how much “rubbish” is available should we allow it to populate that space between our ears. It seems that a necessary twenty-first century awareness and skill set is the need to filter this torrent of communication for truth, for context and for utility.

It’s my hope that “An Extraordinary Minute” always meets a higher standard for you.

With love and respect,

Robert