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20 January 2007
From The
Art of Loving by Erich
Fromm:
“One might think that
nothing is easier to learn for modern man than discipline. Does
he not spend eight hours a day in a most disciplined way at a job that is
strictly routinized? The fact, however, is that modern man has
exceedingly little self discipline outside of the sphere of work. This...is
largely a reaction against the routinization of life...he has become
distrustful of all discipline: of that enforced by irrational authority, as
well as of rational discipline imposed by himself...
“How does one practice
discipline? It is essential that discipline should not be practiced
like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside, but that it become an
expression of one's own will; that it is felt as pleasant and that one
slowly accustoms oneself to a kind of behavior which one would eventually
miss, if one stopped practicing it...
“Concentration is by far
more difficult to practice in our culture, in which everything seems to act
against the ability to concentrate. One must learn to be alone with
oneself – and this ability is precisely a condition for the ability to
love...[Here he describes a simple meditation technique]
“Besides such exercises,
one must learn to be concentrated in everything one does: in listening to
music, in reading a book, in talking to a person, in seeing a view.
The activity at this moment must be all that maters, to which one is fully
given over...To be concentrated in relation to others means primarily to be
able to listen.”
Fromm goes on to describe the
particular difficulties of loving in a secular, capitalist society:
“While a great deal of lip
service is paid to the religious ideal of love of one’s neighbor, our
relations are actually determined, at their best, by the principle of fairness.”
Implicitly, each is seeking his own private advantage, while allowing for a
level playing field, and renouncing violence and coercion. This is a
far cry from love. Some philosophers proclaim “the basic
incompatibility between love and normal secular life within our
society. They arrive at the result that to speak of love today means
only to participate in the general fraud; they claim that only a martyr or a
mad person can love in the world of today, hence that all discussion of love
is nothing but preaching.”
Fromm rejects such
cynicism. “‘Capitalism’ is in itself a complex and constantly
changing structure which still permits of a good deal of non-conformity and
personal latitude...People capable of love, under the present system, are
necessarily the exceptions....The spirit of a production-centered,
commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend
himself successfully against it.
“Those who are seriously
concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human
existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical
changes in our social structures are necessary, if love is to become a
social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon...To have faith
in the possibility of love as a social and not aonly exceptional-individual
phenomenon is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of
man.”
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