Saturday, June 2, 2012

An Eric Fromm Video Primmer




"The right of each man to unfold as an individual and as a human being, assuming for example that everybody has a right to voice his opinion. But what value is this right if he has no opinion? Or rather, if he is under the delusion of having opinions but actually he is only repeating what the newspapers write for him?"



"If I don't know who I am than I have to join the herd in order to be sure that I am somebody. That I am at least like the rest. That I have a place somewhere. That I am not completely disoriented. If I have a strong developed sense of I, I do not need to have an obsessional need to be part of the herd because my role in the world is given by my own experience of I."


Getting in touch with the realities inside of myself and outside of myself, that is to say to see to be in communication with what I sense without being aware of it requires first of all a social atmosphere that is free from fear. Free from fear of any kind. Free from any threat. But more than that, in which dissent is not discouraged. Is encouraged. Is furthered... to what extent a man dares to say or even dares to think what is inconvenient.



"In our enthusiasm to dominate nature and to produce more material goods we have transformed means into ends. We wanted to produce more in the 19th and 20th century in order to give man the possibility for a more dignified human life. But actually what has happened is production and consumption has ceased to be means and has become ends and we are production crazy and consumption crazy."

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