Erich Fromm on Failure/Sickness of Industrial Society
Posted: May 29th, 2016, 6:12 am
This quote in a book by Swiss Psychologist Erich Fromm is so true and describes people like us who don't fit in America, because we are too sane and honest in an insane and fake society. Isn't it so true, insightful and eloquent?
"The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic."
- Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)
You can get Erich Fromm's books on Amazon.com. He saw a lot of the ills we see in Western society long ago.
https://www.amazon.com/Erich-Fromm/e/B0 ... t_ebooks_1
Here is an interesting book he wrote called "To Have or To Be" in which he explains how western society has lost all its focus on being, instead it focuses on having things, rather than being things, which ultimately leads to emptiness.
Description from Wiki:
"To Have or to Be? is a 1976 book by social psychologist Erich Fromm that differentiates between having and being.
Fromm mentions how the modern society has become materialistic and prefers "having" than "being". He mentions the great promise of unlimited happiness, freedom, material abundance, and domination of nature. These hopes got to their highs when the industrial age begun. One could feel that there would be unlimited production and hence unlimited consumption. The human beings including men and women have started dreaming about becoming the Gods of earth, but it wasn’t really the case. The great promise failed due to the unachievable aims of life, i.e. maximum pleasure and fulfillment of every desire (radical hedonism), and the egotism, selfishness and greed of the people. In the industrial age, the development of this economic system was no longer determined by the question that what is good for man, rather what is good for the growth of the system.
...In every mode of life, the people should ponder more on "being" nature and not towards the "having" nature. This is the truth which people deny and thus the people of modern world have completely lost their inner selves. The point of being is more important as everyone is mortal, and thus having of possessions will become useless after their death, because the possessions which are transferred to the life after death, will be what the person actually was inside.(wiki)"
Here's another book he wrote called "The Sane Society". He talks about a lot of the stuff we talk about in regard to how Western societies can be insane, rather than individuals. Description from Amazon.com:
"Social psychologist Erich Fromm’s seminal exploration of the profound ills of modern society, and how best to overcome them
One of Fromm’s main interests was to analyze social systems and their impact on the mental health of the individual. In this study, he reaches further and asks: “Can a society be sick?” He finds that it can, arguing that Western culture is immersed in a “pathology of normalcy” that affects the mental health of individuals.
In The Sane Society, Fromm examines the alienating effects of modern capitalism, and discusses historical and contemporary alternatives, particularly communitarian systems. Finally, he presents new ideas for a re-organization of economics, politics, and culture that would support the individual’s mental health and our profound human needs for love and freedom.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate."
Here's another great book by Fromm about how most people do not want freedom, instead they want "escape from freedom". Hence the title of the book. Review from Amazon.com of "Escape From Freedom":
"An amazing book that pieces modern society starting from the medieval to the renaissance and reformation, that is, from a well defined structured and fixed group identity, fixed meaning to life, determined purpose to life and the here after, to that of the existential, capitalistic and monopolist society that has produced radical individualism with the type of freedom producing severe loneliness, separation and the need to alleviate such emptiness, which has been fulfilled by illusionary means.
Fromm relates a major piece of Western civilization's struggle in the ability to see the correlation between the medieval, secure, self-employed society to that of the Renaissance, an elite aristocracy employing the masses as dependent employees, commodities under a new capitalistic society. It was here only the limited rich could prosper in creativity, while the masses existed in a new existential despair. And so Luther, and later Calvin, devised new forms of Christianity, existential types, to aid these new psychological needs of the masses in accepting this change from security to exploitation.
Fromm goes both into the psyche of man, the nature of societal structure, the development of western civilization and need for security and certainty to that of either authoritarian rule, internal conscious rule or the invisible rule of democratic conformity to public opinion, or automation.
Basic Masochistic/Sadistic desires of man from the extreme, to what is considered "normal" has been seen in the forfeit of the individual self into totalitarian control, capitalistic profit and religious and social concepts that attempt to fill the void of separateness without keeping the self.
Fromm ends his book in what the positive traits of what Faust would be: that of spontaneous living, not compulsive living, but in positive affirmation and movement, in the process of life, not the results, the experience of the activity of the present moment. I couldn't agree more."
Wow I didn't know that during the Middle Ages, or Medieval Europe, most people were self-employed and didn't have to work for someone else. In that way, people back then had more freedom, whereas the Renaissance created a system where people had to work for others and become exploited as "wage slaves" and human capital. That's something most people don't know, that there were a lot of freedoms in the past that are lost today. For example, government had no ability to monitor people under surveillance in the past, so people did not have to worry about "Big Brother" watching them.
Some great quotes from Fromm's "Escape From Freedom":
"The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self."
"This loss of identity then makes it still more imperative to conform, it means that one can be sure of oneself only if one lives up to the expectations of others. If we do not live up to this picture, we not only risk disapproval and increased isolation, but we risk losing the identity of our personality, which means jeopardizing sanity."
"... We must replace manipulation of men by active and intelligent co-operation, and expand the principle of government of the people, by the people, for the people, from the formal political to the economic sphere."
"The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic."
- Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)
You can get Erich Fromm's books on Amazon.com. He saw a lot of the ills we see in Western society long ago.
https://www.amazon.com/Erich-Fromm/e/B0 ... t_ebooks_1
Here is an interesting book he wrote called "To Have or To Be" in which he explains how western society has lost all its focus on being, instead it focuses on having things, rather than being things, which ultimately leads to emptiness.
Description from Wiki:
"To Have or to Be? is a 1976 book by social psychologist Erich Fromm that differentiates between having and being.
Fromm mentions how the modern society has become materialistic and prefers "having" than "being". He mentions the great promise of unlimited happiness, freedom, material abundance, and domination of nature. These hopes got to their highs when the industrial age begun. One could feel that there would be unlimited production and hence unlimited consumption. The human beings including men and women have started dreaming about becoming the Gods of earth, but it wasn’t really the case. The great promise failed due to the unachievable aims of life, i.e. maximum pleasure and fulfillment of every desire (radical hedonism), and the egotism, selfishness and greed of the people. In the industrial age, the development of this economic system was no longer determined by the question that what is good for man, rather what is good for the growth of the system.
...In every mode of life, the people should ponder more on "being" nature and not towards the "having" nature. This is the truth which people deny and thus the people of modern world have completely lost their inner selves. The point of being is more important as everyone is mortal, and thus having of possessions will become useless after their death, because the possessions which are transferred to the life after death, will be what the person actually was inside.(wiki)"
Here's another book he wrote called "The Sane Society". He talks about a lot of the stuff we talk about in regard to how Western societies can be insane, rather than individuals. Description from Amazon.com:
"Social psychologist Erich Fromm’s seminal exploration of the profound ills of modern society, and how best to overcome them
One of Fromm’s main interests was to analyze social systems and their impact on the mental health of the individual. In this study, he reaches further and asks: “Can a society be sick?” He finds that it can, arguing that Western culture is immersed in a “pathology of normalcy” that affects the mental health of individuals.
In The Sane Society, Fromm examines the alienating effects of modern capitalism, and discusses historical and contemporary alternatives, particularly communitarian systems. Finally, he presents new ideas for a re-organization of economics, politics, and culture that would support the individual’s mental health and our profound human needs for love and freedom.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate."
Here's another great book by Fromm about how most people do not want freedom, instead they want "escape from freedom". Hence the title of the book. Review from Amazon.com of "Escape From Freedom":
"An amazing book that pieces modern society starting from the medieval to the renaissance and reformation, that is, from a well defined structured and fixed group identity, fixed meaning to life, determined purpose to life and the here after, to that of the existential, capitalistic and monopolist society that has produced radical individualism with the type of freedom producing severe loneliness, separation and the need to alleviate such emptiness, which has been fulfilled by illusionary means.
Fromm relates a major piece of Western civilization's struggle in the ability to see the correlation between the medieval, secure, self-employed society to that of the Renaissance, an elite aristocracy employing the masses as dependent employees, commodities under a new capitalistic society. It was here only the limited rich could prosper in creativity, while the masses existed in a new existential despair. And so Luther, and later Calvin, devised new forms of Christianity, existential types, to aid these new psychological needs of the masses in accepting this change from security to exploitation.
Fromm goes both into the psyche of man, the nature of societal structure, the development of western civilization and need for security and certainty to that of either authoritarian rule, internal conscious rule or the invisible rule of democratic conformity to public opinion, or automation.
Basic Masochistic/Sadistic desires of man from the extreme, to what is considered "normal" has been seen in the forfeit of the individual self into totalitarian control, capitalistic profit and religious and social concepts that attempt to fill the void of separateness without keeping the self.
Fromm ends his book in what the positive traits of what Faust would be: that of spontaneous living, not compulsive living, but in positive affirmation and movement, in the process of life, not the results, the experience of the activity of the present moment. I couldn't agree more."
Wow I didn't know that during the Middle Ages, or Medieval Europe, most people were self-employed and didn't have to work for someone else. In that way, people back then had more freedom, whereas the Renaissance created a system where people had to work for others and become exploited as "wage slaves" and human capital. That's something most people don't know, that there were a lot of freedoms in the past that are lost today. For example, government had no ability to monitor people under surveillance in the past, so people did not have to worry about "Big Brother" watching them.
Some great quotes from Fromm's "Escape From Freedom":
"The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self."
"This loss of identity then makes it still more imperative to conform, it means that one can be sure of oneself only if one lives up to the expectations of others. If we do not live up to this picture, we not only risk disapproval and increased isolation, but we risk losing the identity of our personality, which means jeopardizing sanity."
"... We must replace manipulation of men by active and intelligent co-operation, and expand the principle of government of the people, by the people, for the people, from the formal political to the economic sphere."