3 ms·

I think many, if not all of his ideas show up in all of his writings here and there, he is consistent that way :) But what still positively surprised my about "

I think many, if not all of his ideas show up in all of his writings here and there, he is consistent that way :) But what still positively surprised my about "The Sane Society" was the last third, where he goes into (then) recent history, and quotes a lot of people I never heard of about the up and coming age of industrialization. Very good stuff, and all news to me. At the risk of overdoing it (even more), one last quote I consider a true pearl because it sums up so much, from http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ : The whole concept of alienation found its first expression in Western thought in the Old Testament concept of idolatry. The essence of what the prophets call "idolatry" is not that man worships many gods instead of only one. It is that the idols are the work of man's own hands -- they are things, and man bows down and worships things; worships that which he has created himself. In doing so he transforms himself into a thing. He transfers to the things of his creation the attributes of his own life, and instead of experiencing himself as the creating person, he is in touch with himself only by the worship of the idol. He has become estranged from his own life forces, from the wealth of his own potentialties, and is in touch with himself only in the indirect way of submission to life frozen in the idols. The deadness and emptiness of the idol is expressed in the Old Testament: "Eyes they have and they do not see, ears they have and they do not hear," etc. The more man transfers his own powers to the idols, the poorer he himself becomes, and the more dependent on the idols, so that they permit him to redeem a small part of what was originally his. The idols can be a godlike figure, the state, the church, a person, possessions. Idolatry changes its objects; it is by no means to be found only in those forms in which the idol has a socalled religious meaning. Idolatry is always the worship of something into which man has put his own creative powers, and to which he now submits, instead of experiencing himself in his creative act. Among the many forms of alienation, the most frequent one is alienation in language. If I express a feeling with a word, let us say, if I say "I love you," the word is meant to be an indication of the reality which exists within myself, the power of my loving. The word "love" is meant to be a symbol of the fact love, but as soon as it is spoken it tends to assume a life of its own, it becomes a reality. I am under the illusion that the saying of the word is the equivalent of the experience, and soon I say the word and feel nothing, except the thought of love which the word expresses. The alienation of language shows the whole complexity of alienation. Language is one of the most precious human achievements; to avoid alienation by not speaking would be foolish -- yet one must be always aware of the danger of the spoken word, that it threatens to substitute itself for the living experience. The same holds true for all other achievements of man; ideas, art, any kind of man-made objects. They are man's creations; they are valuable aids for life, yet each one of them is also a trap, a temptation to confuse life with things, experience with artifacts, feeling with surrender and submission. To me Erich Fromm's writings are like a holograms, they all seem to contain a rough version of the whole ^^

graycat 13y ago
Terrific. You/he did it again. I wouldn't have thought of more than 10% of that, even on a good day. There are some connections with some of the content in 'The Art of Loving', especially his -- rough quote: "The fundamental problem in life is getting security in face of the anxiety from the realization that we are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and society. Human intelligence enables this realization. For responding to this anxiety, only four approaches have been tried, (1) love of god, (2) love of spouse, (3) membership in groups (get praise, acceptance, approval, feeling of belonging, coalition, support), and (4) 'orgiastic' behavior (sex and drugs) to suppress the feelings of anxiety." So, the "idolatry" can be seen as another response to the anxiety, that is, a false approach to (1)-(3). Fromm had another one, that can regard as a 'secret scorecard'! He explained that in a good case of love, the couple gives to each other knowledge, caring, respect, and responsiveness. So, in "knowledge" they keep each other informed on their thoughts, feelings, concerns, desires, etc. In "caring", they actually, actively care about each other. In "respect" they respect the other person, e.g., don't regard them with contempt or to be manipulated or exploited. For "responsiveness", they 'respond' to each other, e.g., don't do what was long in the Sunday newspaper cartoons of the wife talking to the husband over the breakfast table and the husband behind a newspaper repeating "Yes, Dear. Of course, Dear. That's right, Dear. That's nice, Dear. Yes, Dear.". Then take these four 'attributes' and evaluate them for couples you know. If the couple gets a bad grade on all four, try to short the stock of their marriage, if it is possible to do that! Or be very cautious about marrying one of their children! That little scorecard can give some surprising results: Can discover that some couples are going along for decades with what externally to the community looks like a good marriage but according to the scorecard really would like to knife each other in the back! Or, people can put on some really big acts. There's more, from Fromm, and still more if combine Fromm with some other good sources (of which I know only a few). Here's an exercise: Watch 'Roman Holiday'. There the reporter Bradley (Gregory Peck) and Princess Anna (Audrey Hepburn) were from the beginning basically lying to each other about whom they were but slowly mutually but silently worked past the lies. Then evaluate the scorecard: They did great. On each of the four, they started off okay and then grew to a grade of A or A+. Then they were in love. Otherwise they showed it by only quite subtle means, but it was convincing and enough. The writer (Trumbo), director (Wyler), and the actors did fantastic jobs. Fromm's scorecard wins again! People really in love will likely be doing well on Fromm's scorecard whether they have heard of the four items or not. If they are not in love, are pretending to the public to be in love, and have not heard of the four items, then there is a really good chance that their act is not working and they are showing that they are not in love by getting bad grades on the scorecard. I doubt that Trumbo or Wyler had read Fromm, but they knew enough about love to give a really good presentation of it including on Fromm's scorecard. Note: I call Fromm's four attributes a 'scorecard'; I doubt that Fromm ever did! That Fromm's little four item scorecard can look like X-ray vision through the public 'presentation' of couples trying to pretend in public to have a good marriage is to me amazing and astoundingly valuable. Some of the best information about anything I ever got. One more exercise: The first item on Fromm's scorecard is giving knowledge. Well, that is a form of 'intimacy'. If you are in a romantic relationship without intimacy, then you are in deep trouble! On the other hand, if meet a girl and soon she is telling you lots of things from between her ears, then that's intimacy and inviting a romantic relationship. I've been in 'romantic' relationships where the girl was much more open about what was between her legs than between her ears. Or in 'Roman Holiday', they started between their ears and slowly worked down to, say, a nice hug and a kiss. In real life, it can be much more common to start below the waist and maybe move up, maybe never get above the shoulders, and only rarely get between the ears. Or, in middle school it can appear that a lot of the mothers told their daughters to stay away from boys, not to talk to them: "Don't tell them anything. If they ask 'why', just say 'because'. Say it over and over until they feel insulted and give up." So, such mothers know that this way they can throttle a path toward intimacy for their middle school daughters. Fromm's amazing.

graycat 13y ago

Terrific. You/he did it again. I wouldn't have thought of more than 10% of that, even on a good day. There are some connections with some of the content in 'The Art of Loving', especially his -- rough quote: "The fundamental problem in life is getting security in face of the anxiety from the realization that we are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and society. Human intelligence enables this realization. For responding to this anxiety, only four approaches have been tried, (1) love of god, (2) love of spouse, (3) membership in groups (get praise, acceptance, approval, feeling of belonging, coalition, support), and (4) 'orgiastic' behavior (sex and drugs) to suppress the feelings of anxiety." So, the "idolatry" can be seen as another response to the anxiety, that is, a false approach to (1)-(3). Fromm had another one, that can regard as a 'secret scorecard'! He explained that in a good case of love, the couple gives to each other knowledge, caring, respect, and responsiveness. So, in "knowledge" they keep each other informed on their thoughts, feelings, concerns, desires, etc. In "caring", they actually, actively care about each other. In "respect" they respect the other person, e.g., don't regard them with contempt or to be manipulated or exploited. For "responsiveness", they 'respond' to each other, e.g., don't do what was long in the Sunday newspaper cartoons of the wife talking to the husband over the breakfast table and the husband behind a newspaper repeating "Yes, Dear. Of course, Dear. That's right, Dear. That's nice, Dear. Yes, Dear.". Then take these four 'attributes' and evaluate them for couples you know. If the couple gets a bad grade on all four, try to short the stock of their marriage, if it is possible to do that! Or be very cautious about marrying one of their children! That little scorecard can give some surprising results: Can discover that some couples are going along for decades with what externally to the community looks like a good marriage but according to the scorecard really would like to knife each other in the back! Or, people can put on some really big acts. There's more, from Fromm, and still more if combine Fromm with some other good sources (of which I know only a few). Here's an exercise: Watch 'Roman Holiday'. There the reporter Bradley (Gregory Peck) and Princess Anna (Audrey Hepburn) were from the beginning basically lying to each other about whom they were but slowly mutually but silently worked past the lies. Then evaluate the scorecard: They did great. On each of the four, they started off okay and then grew to a grade of A or A+. Then they were in love. Otherwise they showed it by only quite subtle means, but it was convincing and enough. The writer (Trumbo), director (Wyler), and the actors did fantastic jobs. Fromm's scorecard wins again! People really in love will likely be doing well on Fromm's scorecard whether they have heard of the four items or not. If they are not in love, are pretending to the public to be in love, and have not heard of the four items, then there is a really good chance that their act is not working and they are showing that they are not in love by getting bad grades on the scorecard. I doubt that Trumbo or Wyler had read Fromm, but they knew enough about love to give a really good presentation of it including on Fromm's scorecard. Note: I call Fromm's four attributes a 'scorecard'; I doubt that Fromm ever did! That Fromm's little four item scorecard can look like X-ray vision through the public 'presentation' of couples trying to pretend in public to have a good marriage is to me amazing and astoundingly valuable. Some of the best information about anything I ever got. One more exercise: The first item on Fromm's scorecard is giving knowledge. Well, that is a form of 'intimacy'. If you are in a romantic relationship without intimacy, then you are in deep trouble! On the other hand, if meet a girl and soon she is telling you lots of things from between her ears, then that's intimacy and inviting a romantic relationship. I've been in 'romantic' relationships where the girl was much more open about what was between her legs than between her ears. Or in 'Roman Holiday', they started between their ears and slowly worked down to, say, a nice hug and a kiss. In real life, it can be much more common to start below the waist and maybe move up, maybe never get above the shoulders, and only rarely get between the ears. Or, in middle school it can appear that a lot of the mothers told their daughters to stay away from boys, not to talk to them: "Don't tell them anything. If they ask 'why', just say 'because'. Say it over and over until they feel insulted and give up." So, such mothers know that this way they can throttle a path toward intimacy for their middle school daughters. Fromm's amazing.