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Today It Is Not Alive. What, Then, Is This Experience Of Humanism? With The Above Survey I Have Tried To Show You That The Experience Of Humanism Is That — As Terence Expressed It — “nothing Human Is Alien To Me”; That Nothing Which Exists In Any Human Being Does Not Exist In Myself. I Am The Criminal And I Am The Saint. I Am The Child And I Am The Adult. I Am The Man Who Lived A Hundred Thousand Years Ago And I Am The Man Who, Provided We Don't Destroy The Human Race, Will Live Hundred Thousand Years From Now.

-Erich Fromm

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Today It Is Not

Erich Fromm

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Today It Is Not Alive. What, Then, Is This Experience Of Humanism? With The Above Survey I Have Tried To Show You That The Experience Of Humanism Is That — As Terence Expressed It — “nothing Human Is Alien To Me”; That Nothing Which Exists In Any Human Being Does Not Exist In Myself. I Am The Criminal And I Am The Saint. I Am The Child And I Am The Adult. I Am The Man Who Lived A Hundred Thousand Years Ago And I Am The Man Who, Provided We Don't Destroy The Human Race, Will Live Hundred Thousand Years From Now.

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Modern Man Is Alienated From Himself, From His Fellow Men, And From Nature. He Has Been Transformed Into A Commodity, Experiences His Life Forces As An Investment Which Must Bring Him The Maximum Profit Obtainable Under Existing Market Conditions.

To Be Loved Because Of One's Merit, Because One Deserves It, Always Leaves Doubt; Maybe I Did Not Please The Person Whom I Want To Love Me, Maybe This, Or That - There Is Always A Fear That Love Could Disappear.

Mother Is The Home We Come From. She Is Nature, Soil, Ocean.

The Spirit Of A Production-centered, Commodity-greedy Society Is Such That Only The Non-conformist Can Defend Himself Sufficiently 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 Structure Are Necessary, If Love Is To Become A Social And Not A Highly Individualistic, Marginal Phenomenon.

The Third Error Leading To The Assumption That There Is Nothing To Be Learned About Love Lies In The Confusion Between The Initial Experience Of ‘falling’ In Love, And The Permanent State Of Being In Love, Or As We Might Better Say, Of ‘standing’ In Love.

Falling In Love

Jewish Legend Says That The World Rests On 36 Just Men: Only Thirty Six, But Their Moral Strength Is Immense.

Women Are Equal Because They Are Not Different Any More.

I Think If You Ask People What Their Concept Of Heaven Is, They Would Say, If They Are Honest, That It Is A Big Department Store, With New Things Every Week - All The Money To Buy Them, And Maybe A Little More Than The Neighbours.

I Love In You Everybody, I Love Through You The World, I Love In You Also Myself.

If The Meaning Of Life Has Become Doubtful, If One's Relations To Others And To Oneself Do Not Offer Security, Then Fame Is One Means To Silence One's Doubts. It Has A Function To Be Compared With That Of The Egyptian Pyramids Or The Christian Faith In Immortality: It Elevates One's Individual Life From Its Limitations And Instability To The Plane Of Indestructability; If One's Name Is Known To One's Contemporaries And If One Can Hope That It Will Last For Centuries, Then One's Life Has Meaning And Significance By This Very Reflection Of It In The Judgments Of Others.

Our Society Is Run By A Managerial Bureaucracy, By Professional Politicians; People Are Motivated By Mass Suggestion, Their Aim Is Producing More And Consuming More, As Purposes In Themselves.

A Person Who Has Not Been Completely Alienated, Who Has Remained Sensitive And Able To Feel, Who Has Not Lost The Sense Of Dignity, Who Is Not Yet 'for Sale', Who Can Still Suffer Over The Suffering Of Others, Who Has Not Acquired Fully The Having Mode Of Existence - Briefly, A Person Who Has Remained A Person And Not Become A Thing - Cannot Help Feeling Lonely, Powerless, Isolated In Present-day Society.

Suffering Of Others

Productive Work, Love And Thought Are Possible Only If A Person Can Be, When Necessary, Quiet And Alone. To Be Able To Listen To Oneself Is The Necessary Condition For Relating Oneself To Others.

Productive Work

To Be Concentrated Means To Live Fully In The Present.

There Is Nothing Of Which We Are More Ashamed Than Of Not Being Ourselves. And There Is Nothing Which Brings Us Greater Joy And Happiness Than To Think, Feel, And Say What Is Ours.

I Have A Tremendous Faith In The Possibilities Of Man, Which Have Shown In His Past, And I Believe If We Avoid War, We Shall Be Able To Revive Our Real Vision Of Life, But That We Must See It, And Therefore, That We Must Be Critical To Where We Are.

Hate Is A Product Of The Unfulfilled Life.

Only In Being Productively Active Can Man Make Sense Of His Life.

Integrity Simply Means A Willingness Not To Violate One's Identity, In The Many Ways In Which Such Violation Is Possible.

There Is Nothing Inhuman, Evil, Or Irrational Which Does Not Give Some Comfort, Provided It Is Shared By A Group.

It Doesn't Matter Whether One Uses God Or Doesn't. What Matters Is Which Experience A Person Has.

As Long As Anyone Believes That His Ideal And Purpose Is Outside Him, That It Is Above The Clouds, In The Past Or In The Future, He Will Go Outside Himself And Seek Fulfillment Where It Cannot Be Found. He Will Look For Solutions And Answers At Every Point Except Where They Can Be Found- In Himself.

Exclusive Love Is A Contradiction In Itself.

I Think Our Danger Is That We Talk One Thing, And We Feel And Act Another Thing.

I Am Convinced That Boredom Is One Of The Greatest Tortures. If I Were To Imagine Hell, It Would Be The Place Where You Were Continually Bored.

Optimism Is An Alienated Form Of Faith, Pessimism An Alienated Form Of Despair.

Can Freedom Become A Burden, Too Heavy For Man To Bear, Something He Tries To Escape From?..is There Not Also, Perhaps, Besides An Innate Desire For Freedom, An Instinctive Wish For Submission?

Death Is Never Sweet, Not Even If It Is Suffered For The Highest Ideal.

What We Have In Common Is A Mass Men, A Mass Bureaucracy, And A Manipulation Of Everyone To Act Smoothly, But With The Illusion That He Follows His Own Decisions And Opinions.

Politics And Religious Leaders [are Hindered] By Their Egotism.

All Genuine Ideals Have One Thing In Common: They Express The Desire For Something Which Is Not Yet Accomplished But Which Is Desirable For The Purpose Of The Growth And Happiness Of The Individual.

We Substitute, Or We Rather Hide, This Fear Of Real Intimacy By A Superficial Kind Of Friendliness, Which Is Quite Nice, But Nevertheless, Very Shallow.

The Kind Of Relatedness To The World May Be Noble Or Trivial, But Even Being Related To The Basest Kind Of Pattern Is Immensely Preferable To Being Alone.

Love Is Not Easy. All Great Religions Postulate Love As One Of The Greatest Accomplishments. If It Were That Easy, Or As Easy As Most People Think, Certainly, The Great Religious Leaders Would Have Been Rather Naive.

The Hoarders, Who Are Anxiously Worried About Losing Something, Are, Psychologically Speaking, The Poor Impoverished People, Regardless Of How Much They Have. Whoever Is Capable Of Giving Of Themselves Is Rich.

In Fifty Years Activity As An Analyst I Have Witnessed Again And Again That A Dreamer After Having Met A Personage Regarded By All As Influential And Good,saw Him Again In A Dream With A Different Face.

Different Faces

The Pleasure In Complete Domination Over Another Person (or Other Animate Creature) Is The Very Essence Of The Sadistic Drive. Another Way Of Formulating The Same Thought Is To Say That The Aim Of Sadism Is To Transform Man Into A Thing, Something Animate Into Something Inanimate, Since By Complete And Absolute Control The Living Loses One Essential Quality Of Life - Freedom.

Freedom Is The Fundamental Condition For Any Growth.

Close Your Eyes, Let Your Spirit Start To Soar, And You'll Live As You've Never Lived Before.

The History Of Man Is A Graveyard Of Great Cultures That Came To Catastrophic Ends Because Of Their Incapacity For Planned, Rational, Voluntary Reaction To Challenge.

The Confusion Between Temperament And Character Has Had Serious Consequences For Ethical Theory. Preferences With Regard To Differences In Temperament Are Mere Matters Of Subjective Taste. But Differences In Character Are Ethically Of The Most Fundamental Importance.

Even If Man's Hunger And Thirst And His Sexual Strivings Are Completely Satisfied, 'he' Is Not Satisfied. In Contrast To The Animal His Most Compelling Problems Are Not Solved Then, They Only Begin. He Strives For Power Or For Love, Or For Destruction, He Risks His Life For Religious, For Political, For Humanistic Ideals, And These Strivings Are What Constitutes And Characterizes The Peculiarity Of Human Life.

The Customer Is An Object To Be Manipulated, Not A Concrete Person Whose Aims The Businessman Is Interested To Satisfy.

We Talk About Equality, About Happiness, About Freedom - And About The Spiritual Values Of Religion, And About God - And In Our Daily Life, We Act On Principles Which Are Different, And Partly Contradictory.

Thus, The Ultimate Choice For A Man, Inasmuch As He Is Driven To Transcend Himself, Is To Create Or To Destroy, To Love Or To Hate.

Man Always Dies Before He Is Fully Born.

Mobilizing The Love Of Life Is The Only Force That Can Defeat The Love For The Dead.

We Are Not On The Way To Greater Individualism, But Are Becoming An Increasingly Manipulated Mass Civilization.

The Application Of Psychoanalysis To Sociology Must Definitely Guard Against The Mistake Of Wanting To Give Psychoanalytic Answers Where Economic, Technical, Or Political Facts Provide The Real And Sufficient Explanation Of Sociological Questions. On The Other Hand, The Psychoanalyst Must Emphasize That The Subject Of Sociology, Society, In Reality Consists Of Individuals, And That It Is These Human Beings, Rather Than Abstract Society As Such, Whose Actions, Thoughts, And Feelings Are The Object Of Sociological Research.

All Men Are In Need Of Help And Depend On One Another. Human Solidarity Is The Necessary Condition For The Unfolding Of Any One Individual.

Just As Love For One Individual Which Excludes The Love For Others Is Not Love, Love For One's Country Which Is Not Part Of One's Love For Humanity Is Not Love, But Idolatrous Worship.

Modern Man Is Assailed On Every Side And Almost Without Interruption By Noise - Of The Radio, Of Television, Of Headlines, Of Advertising And Of The Cinema - Of Which The Greatest Part, Far From Enlightening The Mind, Blunts And Stultifies It.

We Must Make A Decision Of Values.

Also In Contemporary Western Society The Union With The Group Is The Prevalent Way Of Overcoming Separateness. It Is A Union Which The Individual Self Disappears To A Large Extent, And Where The Aim Is To Belong To The Heard. If I Am Like Everybody Else, If I Have No Feeling Or Thoughts Which Make Me Different, If I Conform In Custom, Dress, Ideas, To The Pattern Of The Group, I Am Saved: Saved From The Frightening Experience Of Aloneness.

The Most Important Things We Talk About On Sundays Are Things To Which We Pay Very Little Attention.

Many Psychiatrists And Psychologists Refuse To Entertain The Idea That Society As A Whole May Be Lacking In Sanity. They Hold That The Problem Of Mental Health In A Society Is Only That Of The Number Of 'unadjusted' Individuals, And Not Of A Possible Unadjustment Of The Culture Itself.

Well-being Is Possible To The Degree To Which One Has Overcome One's Narcissism; To The Degree To Which One Is Open, Responsive, Sensitive, Awake, Empty.... Well-being Means, Finally, To Drop One's Ego, To Give Up Greed, To Cease Chasing After Preservation And The Aggrandizement Of The Ego, To Be And To Experience One's Self In The Act Of Being, Not In Having, Preserving, Coveting, Using.

The More The Drive Toward Life Is Thwarted, The Stronger Is The Drive Toward Destruction; The More Life Is Realized, The Less Is The Strength Of Destructiveness. Destructiveness Is The Outcome Of Unlived Life.

I Think The Russians Might Do Away With The Terror In Twenty Or Thirty Or Years, When They Are Richer, And When They Don't Need These Repressive Methods So Much.

I Believe That One Can And Must Hope For A Sane Society That Furthers Man's Capacity To Love His Fellow Men, To Work And Create, To Develop His Reason And His Objectivity Of A Sense Of Himself That Is Based On The Experience Of His Productive Energy. I Believe That One Can And Must Hope For The Collective Regaining Of A Mental Health That Is Characterized By The Capacity To Love And To Create.

To Take The Difficulties, Setbacks And Sorrows Of Life As A Challenge To Overcome Makes Us Stronger, Rather Than Unjust Punishment Which Should Not Happen To Us, Requires Faith And Courage.

Love Is The Productive Form Of Relatedness To Others And To Oneself. It Implies Responsibility, Care, Respect. If It Isn't Productive And Respectful, It Isn't Love, But Only Fear Masquerading As Love.

Both Dreams And Myths Are Important Communications From Ourselves To Ourselves.

Who Will Tell Whether One Happy Moment Of Love Or The Joy Of Breathing Or Walking On A Bright Morning And Smelling The Fresh Air, Is Not Worth All The Suffering And Effort Which Life Implies.

When Blended With Sexuality, The Death Instinct Is Transformed Into More Harmless Impulses Expressed In Sadism Or Masochism.

Education Is Helping The Child Realise His Potentialities.

In The First World War British Propaganda Had To Invent The Stories Of German Soldiers Bayoneting Belgian Babies, Because There Were Too Few Real Atrocities To Feed The Hatred Against The Enemy.

There Is Only One Reality: The Act Of Feeling Ourselves In The Process Of Making Choices.

Paradoxically, The Ability To Be Alone Is The Condition For The Ability To Love.

Ability To Love

Man's Main Task In Life Is To Give Birth To Himself.

Human History Begins With Man's Act Of Disobedience Which Is At The Same Time The Beginning Of His Freedom And The Development Of His Reason.

The Duty To Be Alive Is The Same As The Duty To Become Oneself, To Develop Into The Individual One Potentially Is.

If I Love The Other Person, I Feel One With Him Or Her, But With Him As He Is, Not As I Need Him To Be As An Object For My Use. Respect Thus Implies The Absence Of Exploitation: It Allows The Other To Be, To Change And To Develop 'in His Own Ways.' This Requires A Commitment To Know The Other As A Separate Being, And Not Merely As A Reflection Of My Own Ego. According To Velleman This Loving Willingness And Ability To See The Other As They Really Are Is Foregrounded In Our Willingness To Risk Self-exposure.

...in Spite Of The Deep-seated Craving For Love, Almost Everything Else Is Considered To Be More Important Than Love: Success, Prestige, Money, Power-almost All Our Energy Is Used For The Learning Of How To Achieve These Aims, And Almost None To Learn The Art Of Loving. Could It Be That Only Those Things Are Considered Worthy Of Being Learned With Which One Can Earn Money Or Prestige, And That Love, Which "only" Profits The Soul, But Is Profitless In The Modern Sense, Is A Luxury We Have No Right To Spend Energy On?

The Member Of A Primitive Clan Might Express His Identity In The Formula "i Am We"; He Cannot Yet Conceive Of Himself As An "individual," Existing Apart From His Group.

The Need For The Creation Of Collective Art And Ritual On A Nonclerical Basis Is At Least As Important As Literacy And Higher Education.

Greed Is A Bottomless Pit Which Exhausts The Person In An Endless Effort To Satisfy The Need Without Ever Reaching Satisfaction.

In Fact, There Are Very Important Writings Of Marx Which Are Not Even Translated Into English.

This Marxian Sentence, Repeated To The Point Of Boredom, Is Misinterpreted. In Reality [karl] Marx Was A "religious" Man.

The Aim Of Life Is To Be Fully Born, Though Its Tragedy Is That Most Of Us Die Before We Are Thus Born.

According To Me [sigmund ] Freud Did Not Notice That The Dream Expresses The Inner Experiences In A Symbolic Form,resembling In That, Poetry Or Other Art Forms.

The Pace Of Science Forces The Pace Of Technique. Theoretical Physics Forces Atomic Energy On Us; The Successful Production Of The Fission Bomb Forces Upon Us The Manufacture Of The Hydrogen Bomb. We Do Not Choose Our Problems, We Do Not Choose Our Products; We Are Pushed, We Are Forced -- By What? By A System Which Has No Purpose And Goal Transcending It, And Which Makes Man Its Appendix.

The Sadistic Person Is As Dependent On The Submissive Person As The Latter Is On The Former; Neither Can Live Without The Other. The Difference Is Only That The Sadistic Person Commands, Exploits, Hurts, Humiliates, And That The Masochistic Person Is Commanded, Exploited, Hurt, Humiliated. This Is A Considerable Difference In A Realistic Sense; In A Deeper Emotional Sense, The Difference Is Not So Great As That Which They Both Have In Common: Fusion Without Integrity .

The Right To Express Our Thoughts Means Something Only If We Are Able To Have Thoughts Of Our Own

I Understand By Socialism A Society In Which The Aim Of Production Is Not Profit, But The Use. In Which The Individual Citizen Participates Responsibly In His Work, And In The Whole Social Organization, And In Which He Is Not A Means Who Is Employed By Capital.

If It Is True, As I Have Tried To Show, That Love Is The Only Sane And Satisfactory Answer To The Problem Of Human Existence, Then Any Society Which Excludes, Relatively, The Development Of Love, Must In The Long Run Perish Of Its Own Contradiction With The Basic Necessities Of Human Nature.

One Cannot Fall In Love, Really; One Has To Be In Love.

Falling In Love

In The Dominant Western Religious System, The Love Of God Is Essentially The Same As The Belief In God, In God’s Existence, God’s Justice, God’s Love. The Love Of God Is Essentially A Thought Experience. In The Eastern Religions And In Mysticism, The Love Of God Is An Intense Feeling Experience Of Oneness, Inseparably Linked With The Expression Of This Love In Every Act Of Living.

The Manual Worker Does Not Have To Sell His Personality. He Doesn't Have To Sell His Smile.

Society Must Be Organized In Such A Way That Mans Social, Loving Nature Is Not Separated From His Social Existence, But Becomes One With It.

Man Today Is Fascinated By The Possibility Of Buying, More, Better, And Especially, New Things. He Is Consumption Hungry... To Buy The Latest Gadget, The Latest Model Of Anything That Is On The Market, Is The Dream Of Everybody, In Comparison To Which The Real Pleasure In Use Is Quite Secondary. Modern Man, If The Dared To Be Articulate About His Concept Of Heaven, Would Describe A Vision Which Would Look Like The Biggest Department Store In The World.

I Believe That None Can "save" His Fellow Man By Making A Choice For Him. To Help Him, He Can Indicate The Possible Alternatives, With Sincerity And Love, Without Being Sentimental And Without Illusion.

Can One Have Love? If We Could, Love Would Need To Be A Thing, A Substance That One Can Have, Own, Possess. The Truth Is, There Is No Such Thing As Love. Love Is An Abstraction, Perhaps A Goddess Or An Alien Being, Although Nobody Has Ever Seen This Goddess. In Reality, There Exists Only The Act Of Loving. To Love Is A Productive Activity. It Implies Caring For, Knowing, Responding, Affirming, Enjoying: The Person, The Tree, The Painting, The Idea. It Means Bringing To Life, Increasing His/her/its Aliveness. It Is A Process, Self-renewing And Self Increasing.

For [sigmund ] Freud, The Manifest Dream, That Is That Which We Remember After Waking,is Like A Code Message, That Can Be Interpreted, Provided The Right Key Is Avail-able, For Example The Method Of Free Association.

Man Unites Himself With The World In The Process Of Creation.

In The Sleeping State, Instead, One Is Much More Oneself, Even If Society Never Ceases To Intervene.

Our Whole Culture Is Based On The Appetite For Buying, On The Idea Of A Mutually Favorable Exchange. .... For The Man An Attractive Girl - And For The Woman An Attractive Man - Are The Prizes They Are After. 'attractive' Usually Means A Nice Package Of Qualities Which Are Popular And Sought After On The Personality Market. What Specifically Makes A Person Attractive Depends On The Fashion Of The Time, Physically As Well As Mentally. ... Two Persons Thus Fall In Love When They Feel They Have Found The Best Object Available On The Market, Considering The Limitations Of Their Own Exchange Values.

I Would Say That Love Today Is A Relatively Rare Phenomenon, That We Have A Great Deal Of Sentimentality; We Have A Great Deal Of Illusion About Love, Namely As A... As Something One Falls In.

The Affirmation Of One's Own Life, Happiness, Growth And Freedom, Is Rooted In One's Capacity To Love.

Capacity To Love

[carl Gustav] Jung Was Not Right When He Said That The Unconscious Message Is Always Written Clearly And So There Is No Need To Seek To Discover The Distortions, Because One Must Recognize That Many Dreams Are More Or Less Distortions.

By Equality, One Once Understood Equality In The Very Same Sense In Which The Bible Speaks Of Equality: That We Are All Equal, Inasmuch As We Are Created In The Image Of God.

I Think We Got Off The Track, As Many Societies Do, Who Follow Successfully One Aim, And Yet Are Not Capable Of Seeing At What Point The Pursuit Of This Aim Prevents Them From Following A More Total Aim. That Is To Say, They Get Into A Blind Alley.

It Is True That One Has To Think First And Then To Act - But It's Also True That If One Has No Possibility Of Acting, One's Thinking Kind Of Becomes Empty And Stupid.

The Fact That Millions Of People Share The Same Vices Does Not Make These Vices Virtues, The Fact That They Share So Many Errors Does Not Make The Errors To Be Truths, And The Fact That Millions Of People Share The Same Form Of Mental Pathology Does Not Make These People Sane.

If We Love Our Fellow Humans, We Cannot Limit Our Insight And Our Love Only To Others As Individuals...we Have To Be Political People, I Would Even Say Passionately Involved Political People, Each Of Us In The Way That Best Suits Our Own Temperaments, Our Working Lives, And Our Own Capabilities.

Man Does Not Only Sell Commodities, He Sells Himself And Feels Himself To Be A Commodity.

I Feel Worried, Deeply Worried, Only About One Thing - The Possibility That We Fall... That We Cannot Avoid An Atomic War.

The Most Important Influence On A Child Is The Character Of Its Parents, Rather Than This Or That Single Event.

Alienation As We Find It In Modern Society Is Almost Total… Man Has Created A World Of Man-made Things As It Never Existed Before. He Has Constructed A Complicated Social Machine To Administer The Technical Machine He Built. The More Powerful And Gigantic The Forces Are Which He Unleashes, The More Powerless He Feels Himself As A Human Being. He Is Owned By His Creations, And Has Lost Ownership Of Himself.

Independent Of Others And In Concert With Others, Your Main Task In Life Is To Do What You Can Best Do And Become What You Can Potentially Be.

The Experience Of Separateness Arouses Anxiety; It Is, Indeed, The Source Of All Anxiety.

Nonviolent Communication

If Other People Do Not Understand Our Behavior-so What? Their Request That We Must Only Do What They Understand Is An Attempt To Dictate To Us. If This Is Being 'asocial' Or 'irrational' In Their Eyes, So Be It. Mostly They Resent Our Freedom And Our Courage To Be Ourselves. We Owe Nobody An Explanation Or An Accounting, As Long As Our Acts Do Not Hurt Or Infringe On Them.

The Real Opposition Is That Between The Ego-bound Man, Whose Existence Is Structured By The Principle Of Having, And The Free Man, Who Has Overcome His Egocentricity.

Modern Man Has Transformed Himself Into A Commodity; He Experiences His Life Energy As An Investment With Which He Should Make The Highest Profit, Considering His Position And The Situation On The Personality Market. He Is Alienated From Himself, From His Fellow Men And From Nature. His Main Aim Is Profitable Exchange Of His Skills, Knowledge, And Of Himself, His "personality Package" With Others Who Are Equally Intent On A Fair And Profitable Exchange. Life Has No Goal Except The One To Move, No Principle Except The One Of Fair Exchange, No Satisfaction Except The One To Consume.p97.

I Shall Become A Master In This Art Only After A Great Deal Of Practice.

On The Whole, Our Modern Ritual Is Impoverished And Does Not Fulfill Man's Need For Collective Art And Ritual.

People Seek A New Orientation, A New Philosophy, One Which Is Centered On The Priorities Of Life-physically And Spiritually-and Not On The Priorities Of Death.

Love Means To Commit Oneself Without Guarantee, To Give Oneself Completely In The Hope That Our Love Will Produce Love In The Loved Person. Love Is An Act Of Faith, And Whoever Is Of Little Faith Is Also Of Little Love.

What You Might Call The "symbol Pushers" - That Is To Say, All Of The People Who Deal With Figures, With Paper, With Men, Who Manipulate - To Use A Better Or Nicer Word - Manipulate Men And Signs And Words. All Those Today Have Not Only To Sell Their Service, But In The Bargain, They Have To Sell Their Personality, More Or Less. There Are Exceptions.

An Illusion Shared By Everyone Becomes A Reality.

Man, The More He Gains Freedom In The Sense Of Emerging From The Original Oneness With Man And Nature And The More He Becomes An "individual," Has No Choice But To Unite Himself With The World In The Spontaneity Of Love And Productive Work Or Else To Seek A Kind Of Security By Such Ties With The World As Destroy His Freedom And The Integrity Of His Individual Self.

Society, And The Family As Its Psycho Social Agent, Has To Solve A Difficult Problem: How To Break A Person's Will Without His Being Aware Of It? Yet By A Complicated Process Of Indoctrination, Rewards, Punishments, And Fitting Ideology, It Solves This Task By And Large So Well That Most People Believe They Are Following Their Own Will And Are Unaware That Their Will Itself Is Conditioned And Manipulated.

Once They Are Through The Process Of Education, Most People Lose The Capacity Of Wondering, Of Being Surprised. They Feel They Ought To Know Everything, And Hence That It Is A Sign Of Ignorance To Be Surprised Or Puzzled By Anything.

We Are Not Only Less Reasonable And Less Decent In Our Dreams... We Are Also More Inteligent, Wiser And Capable Of Better Judgment When We Are Asleep Than When We Are Awake.

When People Can't Handle God Any More, They Turn To Religion.

Optimism Is An Alienated Form Of Faith, Pessimism An Alienated Form Of Despair. If One Truly Responds To Man And His Future, Ie , Concernedly And "responsibly." One Can Respond Only By Faith Or By Despair. Rational Faith As Well As Rational Despair Are Based On The Most Thorough, Critical Knowledge Of All The Factors That Are Relevant For The Survival Of Man.

Today It Is Not Alive. What, Then, Is This Experience Of Humanism? With The Above Survey I Have Tried To Show You That The Experience Of Humanism Is That — As Terence Expressed It — “nothing Human Is Alien To Me”; That Nothing Which Exists In Any Human Being Does Not Exist In Myself. I Am The Criminal And I Am The Saint. I Am The Child And I Am The Adult. I Am The Man Who Lived A Hundred Thousand Years Ago And I Am The Man Who, Provided We Don't Destroy The Human Race, Will Live Hundred Thousand Years From Now.

A Relatively Primitive Village In Which There Are Still Real Feasts, Common Artistic Shared Expressions, And No Literacy At All Is More Advanced Culturally And More Healthy Mentally Than Our Educated, Newspaper-reading Radio-listening Culture.

Happiness Does Not Exclude Sadness - If A Person Responds To Life, He's Sometimes Happy And Sometimes Sad. What Matters Is He Responds.

People Think That To Love Is Simple, But That To Find The Right Object To Love - Or To Be Loved By - Is Difficult.

Modern Man Thinks He Loses Something - Time - When He Does Not Do Things Quickly. Yet He Does Not Know What To Do With The Time He Gains, Except Kill It.

Our Conscious Motivations, Ideas, And Beliefs Are A Blend Of False Information, Biases, Irrational Passions, Rationalizations, Prejudices, In Which Morsels Of Truth Swim Around And Give The Reassurance Albeit False, That The Whole Mixture Is Real And True. The Thinking Processes Attempt To Organize This Whole Cesspool Of Illusions According To The Laws Of Plausibility. This Level Of Consciousness Is Supposed To Reflect Reality; It Is The Map We Use For Organizing Our Life.

That Is Not Quite Enough To Make One Happy, If One Spends Eight Hours A Day In Something Which In Itself Has No Meaning And Interest, Except That One Gains Money From It.

Critical And Radical Thought Will Only Bear Fruit When It Is Blended With The Most Precious Quality Man Is Endowed With - The Love Of Life

The Scars Left From The Child's Defeat In The Fight Against Irrational Authority Are To Be Found At The Bottom Of Every Neurosis.

There Is No Word In Our Language Which Has Been So Much Misused And Prostituted As The Word Love. It Has Been Preached By Those Who Were Ready To Condone Every Cruelty If It Served Their Purpose; It Has Been Used As A Disguise Under Which To Force People Into Sacrificing Their Own Happiness, Into Submitting Their Whole Self To Those Who Profited From This Surrender. [...] It Has Been Made So Empty That For Many People Love May Mean No More Than That Two People Have Lived Together For Twenty Years Just Without Fighting More Often Than Once A Week.

In The 19th Century Inhumanity Meant Cruelty; In The 20th Century It Means Schizoid Self-alienation.

Why Should Society Feel Responsible Only For The Education Of Children, And Not For The Education Of All Adults Of Every Age?

What Is Common To Our Societies Is The Development Into A Managed Mass Society, With Big Bureaucracy, Managing People. The Russians Do It By Force. We Do It By Persuasion.

The Most Beautiful As Well As The Most Ugly Inclinations Of Man Are Not Part Of A Fixed Biologically Given Human Nature, But Result From The Social Process Which Creates Man.

Love Is A Power Which Produces Love.

I Think American Man Unconsciously Hates His Work Very Often, Because He Feels Trapped By It... Imprisoned By It... Because He Feels That He Is Spending Most Of His Energy For Something Which Has No Meaning In Itself.

That Millions Of People Share The Same Forms Of Mental Pathology Does Not Make These People Sane.

There Is A Creative Pleasure, Which, For Instance, The Artisan In The Middle Ages, Or In A Country Like Mexico, Still Today Has - Namely The Pleasure Of Creating Something. You Find Quite A Few Skilled Workers Who Still Have That Pleasure: Maybe In A Steel Mill; Maybe A Worker Who Works With A Complicated Machine - He Has A Sense That He Is Creating Something.

For [karl] Marx It Is Socialist Society Which Realizes "concretely" The Religious Principles Of Equality, Brotherly Love, And Freedom.

Education Is Identical With Helping The Child Realize His Potentialities. The Opposite Of Education Is Manipulation, Which Is Based On The Absence Of Faith In The Growth Of Potentialities And The Connection That A Child Will Be Right Only If The Adults Put Into Him What Is Desirable And Suppress What Seems To Be Undesirable.

The Human Passions Transform Man From A Mere Thing Into A Hero, Into A Being That In Spite Of Tremendous Handicaps Tries To Make Sense Of Life.

Not He Who Has Much Is Rich, But He Who Gives Much.

The Whole Life Of The Individual Is Nothing But The Process Of Giving Birth To Himself; Indeed, We Should Be Fully Born When We Die.

There Is No Meaning To Life Except The Meaning Man Gives His Life By The Unfolding Of His Powers.

We Forget That, Although Freedom Of Speech Constitutes An Important Victory In The Battle Against Old Restraints, Modern Man Is In A Position Where Much Of What "he" Thinks And Says Are The Things That Everybody Else Thinks And Says; That He Has Not Acquired The Ability To Think Originally - That Is, For Himself - Which Alone Gives Meaning To His Claim That Nobody Can Interfere With The Expression Of His Thoughts.

If Faith Cannot Be Reconciled With Rational Thinking, It Has To Be Eliminated As An Anachronistic Remnant Of Earlier Stages Of Culture And Replaced By Science Dealing With Facts And Theories Which Are Intelligible And Can Be Validated.

I Would Say, Compared With The 19th Century, Compared With Most Previous History, This Is As Good Or Better A Society Than Any Which Man Has Ever Made. But That Doesn't Mean It Is Such A Good One.

Greedhas No Satiation Point, Since Its Consummation Does Not Fill The Inner Emptiness, Boredom, Loneliness, And Depression It Is Meant To Overcome.

Man Is Born As A Freak Of Nature, Being Within Nature And Yet Transcending It. He Has To Find Principles Of Action And Decision-making Which Replace The Principles Of Instincts.

Creativity Requires The Courage To Let Go Of Certainties.

Infantile Love Follows The Principle: "i Love Because I Am Loved." Mature Love Follows The Principle: "i Am Loved Because I Love." Immature Love Says: "i Love You Because I Need You." Mature Love Says: "i Need You Because I Love You.

Freedom Is Not A Constant Attribute Which We Either "have" Or "have Not." In Fact, There Is No Such Thing As "freedom" Except As A Word And An Abstract Concept. There Is Only One Reality: The Act Of Freeing Ourselves In The Process Of Making Choices. In This Process The Degree Of Our Capacity To Make Choices Varies With Each Act, With Our Practice Of Life.

Man Is The Only Animal Who Does Not Feel At Home In Nature, Who Can Feel Evicted From Paradise, The Only Animal For Whom His Own Existence Is A Problem That He Has To Solve And From Which He Cannot Escape. He Cannot Go Back To The Prehuman State Of Harmony With Nature, And He Does Not Know Where He Will Arrive If He Goes Forward. Man's Existential Contradiction Results In A State Of Constant Disequilibrium. This Disequilibrium Distinguishes Him From The Animal, Which Lives, As It Were, In Harmony With Nature.

Religion And Nationalism, As Well As Any Custom And Any Belief However Absurd And Degrading, If It Only Connects The Individual With Others, Are Refuges From What Man Most Dreads: Isolation.

But Not Only Medicine, Engineering, And Painting Are Arts; Living Itself Is An Art In Fact, The Most Important And At The Same Time The Most Difficult And Complex Art To Be Practiced By Man.

Love Is The Active Concern For The Life And The Growth Of That Which We Love.

I Would Consider A Socialism A Mixture Of The Minimum Of Centralization Necessary For A Modern Industrial State, And A Maximum Of Decentralization.

To Have Faith Requires Courage, The Ability To Take A Risk, The Readiness Even To Accept Pain And Disappointment. Whoever Insists On Safety And Security As Primary Conditions Of Life Cannot Have Faith; Whoever Shuts Himself Off In A System Of Defense, Where Distance And Possession Are His Means Of Security, Makes Himself A Prisoner. To Be Loved, And To Love, Need Courage, The Courage To Judge Certain Values As Of Ultimate Concern – And To Take The Jump And To Stake Everything On These Values.

Chronic Boredom Compensated Or Uncompensated Constitutes One Of The Major Psychopathological Phenomena In Contemporary Technotronic Society, Although It Is Only Recently That It Has Found Some Recognition.

I Am A Socialist. However, I Have To Add That What I Understand By Socialism Is Exactly The Opposite Of What Many People, Or Most People, Today Mean By Socialism.

The Same Polarity Of The Male And Female Principle Exists In Nature; Not Only, As Is Obvious In Animals And Plants, But In The Polarity Of The Two Fundamental Functions, That Of Receiving And Penetrating. It Is The Polarity Of Earth And Rain, Of The River And The Ocean, Of Night And Day, Of Darkness And Light, Of Matter And Spirit.

The Ownership Of Industry By The State - That Is Not Socialism.

Man Is The Only Animal For Whom His Own Existence Is A Problem Which He Has To Solve.

Both Dreams And Myths Are Important Communications From Ourselves To Ourselves. If We Do Not Understand The Language In Which They Are Written, We Miss A Great Deal Of What We Know And Tell Ourselves In Those Hours When We Are Not Busy Manipulating The Outside World.

[sigmund ] Freud Did Not Under-stand That The Dream Is A Highly Creative Act, Written In The Universal Language Of Symbolism, And Only Secondarily Does Censorship Distort Those Parts That The Subject Refuses To Accept Even In Sleep.

Man Is The Only Animal That Can Be Bored.

One Of The Worst Forms Of Mental Suffering Is Boredom, Not Knowing What To Do With Oneself And One's Life. Even If Man Had No Monetary, Or Any Other Reward, He Would Be Eager To Spend His Energy In Some Meaningful Way Because He Could Not Stand The Boredom Which Inactivity Produces.

The Paradoxical And Tragic Situation Of Man Is That His Conscience Is Weakest When He Needs It Most.

We Try To Evade The Question Of Existence With Property, Prestige, Power, Possession, Production, Fun, And, Ultimately, By Trying To Forget That We- That I- Exist. No Matter How Much He Thinks Of God Or Goes To Church, Or How Much He Believes In Religious Ideas , If He, The Whole Man, Is Deaf To The Question Of Existence, If He Does Not Have An Answer To It, He Is Marking Time, And He Lives And Dies Like One Of The Million Things He Produces. He Thinks Of God, Instead Of Experiencing God.

Free Man Is By Necessity Insecure, Thinking Man By Necessity Uncertain.

Knowing Means To Penetrate Through The Surface, In Order To Arrive At The Roots, And Hence The Causes; Knowing Means To "see" Reality In Its Nakedness. Knowing Does Not Mean To Be In The Possession Of The Truth; It Means To Penetrate The Surface And To Strive Critically And Actively In Order To Approach Truth Ever More Closely.

We Are A Society Of Notoriously Unhappy People: Lonely, Anxious, Depressed, Destructive, Dependent - People Who Are Glad When We Have Killed The Time We Are Trying So Hard To Save.

In The Nineteenth Century The Problem Was That God Is Dead. In The Twentieth Century The Problem Is That Man Is Dead.

From My Personal Experience I Can Conclude That Many Dreams Are Clearly Written But There Are Some In Which One Meets Distortions To Decipher. And It Is Really In Knowing When One Must Prefer The One Or The Other Approach, Or A Combination Of The Two, That Remains One Of The Important Elements Of The Art Of Dream Interpretation.

I Need You Because I Love You.

We Are All Equal In The Sense That No Man Must Mean - Must Be - The Means For The Purposes Of Another Man; But Each Individual Is An End In Itself.

Man Today Being Concerned With Production And Consumption As Ends In Themselves, Has Very Little Engergy Time To Devote Himself To The True Religious Experience.

The Revolutionary And Critical Thinker Is In A Certain Way Always Outside Of His Society While Of Course He Is At The Same Time Also In It.

The Destruction Of The World Is The Last, Almost Desperate Attempt To Save Myself From Being Crushed By It

The Only Concern Which I Have Today Is That We Have A Policy, A Foreign Policy, Which Enables Us To Avoid A Catastrophe; Which, If One Understands It Properly, Is Indescribable.

To Hope Means To Be Ready At Every Moment For That Which Is Not Yet Born, And Yet Not Become Desperate If There Is No Birth In Our Lifetime.

In His Condemnation [karl] Marx Referred To Institutionalized Religion,that Has Precisely The Function Of Anesthetizing Men Till They Do Not Notice The In- Justice Of Which They Are The Perpetrators And The Victims.

Love Is The Only Sane And Satisfactory Answer To The Problem Of Human Existence.

Modern Capitalism Needs Men Who Cooperate Smoothly And In Large Numbers; Who Want To Consume More And More; And Whose Tastes Are Standardized And Can Be Easily Influenced And Anticipated ... What Is The Outcome? Modern Man Is Alienated From Himself, From His Fellow Man And From Nature.

Love, Experienced Thus, Is A Constant Challenge; It Is Not A Resting Place, But A Moving, Growing, Working Together; Even Whether There Is Harmony Or Conflict; Joy Or Sadness, Is Secondary To The Fundamental Fact That Two People Experience Themselves From The Essence Of Their Existence, That They Are Only One With Each Other By Being One With Themselves, Rather Than By Fleeing From Themselves.

Love Is Active Penetration Of The Other Person, In Which My Desire To Know Is Stilled By Union. In The Act Of Fusion I Know You, I Know Myself, I Know Everybody - And I "know" Nothing.

There Is Only One Meaning Of Life: The Act Of Living Itself.

Meaning Of Life

Love Isn't Something Natural. Rather It Requires Discipline, Concentration, Patience, Faith, And The Overcoming Of Narcissism. It Isn't A Feeling, It Is A Practice.

There Is Hardly Any Activity, Any Enterprise, Which Is Started Out With Such Tremendous Hopes And Expectations, And Yet Which Fails So Regularly, As Love.

It Seems That Great Minds A Hundred Years Ago Saw What Would Happen Today Or Tomorrow, While We To Whom It Is Happening Blind Ourselves In Order Not To Be Disturbed In Our Daily Routine.

Fairness Means Not To Use Fraud And Trickery In The Exchange Of Commodities And Services And The Exchange Of Feelings.

True Love Is Like A Pair Of Socks: You Gotta Have Two And They've Gotta Match.

I See Socialism In The Direction, Of Management, Of Enterprise, By All Who Work In The Enterprise.

For The Most Part, Biophiliacs,lovers Of Life, Are Found Among Simple People, Without Pretensions.

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Charles Babbage

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