Erich Fromm speaking:
"I
believe, indeed, that our society offers the picture of a low grade
chronic schizophrenia. The fact is that most people today are
employees high or low [who] do what they are told or what the rules tell
them and feel as little as possible because feelings disturb the smooth
functioning of the machine. People must train themselves to have as [few] emotions as possible
because an emotion costs money."
Erich Fromm in a letter written on the 29th of September,
1962........"the other night I wrote a kind of appeal which is centered
around the love of life. It was born out of a mood of despair which made
me feel that there is hardly any chance that atomic war will be avoided,
and sudden insight in which I felt
the reason why people are so
passive towards the dangers of war lies in the fact that the majority
just do not love life. I thought that to appeal to their love
of life rather than to their love of peace or to their fear of war might
have more impact."
Erich Fromm observed that
fewer and fewer people were attracted to life and liveliness, and more
to the destructive and the dead, often seeking out destruction for its
own sake.
We can show that
people
who have no chance to be free and to develop their own powers,
people who are hemmed in, who live in a class or society in which
everything functions in a mechanical, lifeless way-these
people lose their capacity to "sparkle."
A person's own ego has become a product to be had; one receives
training in how to sell oneself. Being an integrated and authentic
person is no longer the goal; possessing the right personality profile
is what counts. It is of vital importance to make oneself attractive, to
sell oneself successfully, portray oneself in the right light, present
oneself with focused self-confidence.
It is no longer of interest what
feelings one has and who one really is.
And these quotes from
"To Have or to Be"
"The traditional formula "production for
use instead of for profit" is insufficient because it does not qualify what kind of use
is referred to: healthy or pathological. At this point a most difficult
practical question arises: who is to determine which needs are healthy
and which are pathogenic? Of
one thing we can be certain: to force citizens to consume with the state
decides is best- even if it is the best-is out of the question.
Bureaucratic control that would forcibly block consumption would
only make people all the more consumption hungry. Sane consumption can
take place only if an ever-increasing number of people want to change
their consumption patterns and their lifestyles. And this is possible
only if people are offered a type of consumption that is more attractive
than the one they are used to. This cannot happen overnight or by
decree, but will require a slow educational process, and in this the
government must play an important role."
"One of the gravest objections to the possibilities of overcoming
greed and envy, namely that their strength is inherent in human nature,
loses a good deal of its weight upon further examination.
Greed and envy are so strong not
because of their inherent intensity but because of the difficulty in
resisting the public pressure to be a wolf within wolves.
Change the social climate, the values that are either approved or
disapproved, and the change from selfishness to altruism will lose most
of its difficulty."
