Skip to main content

The Art of Loving - Eric Fromm

The premise of this book is that love is not a sentiment, but a productive process that requires effort and other qualities in the loving individual such as true humility, courage, faith and discipline. As Fromm puts it, "Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is it a pleasant sensation … something which one 'falls into' if one is lucky?"

Fromm then describes the problem of our society as an endeavor to being loved and to be lovable, rather than that of loving others. And so, we toil to make ourselves successful, powerful and rich, to be attractive, with pleasant manners, inoffensive and so on in order to experience being loved.

The second problem is the attitude that, "…to love is simple, but to find the right object to love is difficult i.e. it's not that we lack the capacity or ability or faculty to love, but that we have not found the 'right' person to love." Thus, the goal is to find the 'best' bargain of a partner, and then fall in love with them. However,  Fromm says"…there is no other activity, enterprise which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love."

Fromm recommends that we should take loving as art and master its theory and practice, just as we would any other art, such as music. Further, we need to make it our concern to really learn this art, dedicating more time to learning and practicing it just as we dedicate our efforts to money, success, power and prestige.

The rest of the book discusses the various kinds of love: brotherly love, erotic love, parental love, self-love and the love of God. It also goes into the depths of the various neurotic conditions including immaturity, of our contemporary society and their source in the early experiences of a child. The book ends by giving practical steps in setting off the process of learning and experiencing loving.

This is a simple, and yet complex book. Ideas expressed therein require deep reflection and thinking. It's also short, only 129 pages. I'd recommend it to just about anyone, including you. Because if you are human, you definitely require to learn the art of loving. Happy loving!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On thinking

Why do I believe what I believe? Why are my values what they are? Where do my thoughts come from? Are my ideals 'mine'? The question of thought, is a complex one, not least because thinking is so difficult. Many of us do not think, we take the thoughts of others and use them as the foundations, walls, or thatching of our mental structures. But we rarely think, and deep enough on important matters anyway. Thinking involves the admission that we do not know, an admission coming from a place of humility that we are ignorant and could do better. It does not, as is usually thought, have to be from a place of knowledge, even though knowledge can inform thoughts. If it was, then we would not necessarily be thinking, but just reorganizing previously known ideas. It begins with asking the question, why. Why do we go to school? Why do we marry and have children? Why do we work to earn money in order to buy things? Why do we elect leaders? Why do we go to places of worship and perfo...
Post a Comment
Read more

How well-meaning parents ruined us

Growing up, it was common for our parents to encourage us and tell us how we could be anything we wanted in life. "You can do anything you set your mind to do!" They would cheer us on. "Even the president?" We'd ask unconvinced. "Yes, you could even become the richest man in the world!" All this fascinated us. We vowed to ourselves that we'd in fact become people of substance who would be recognized in the entire world for our achievements. We'd ride in super-yachts like Abramovich and the rest of the mega-rich. We would produce life changing inventions, innovating our way to stardom. We'd become the next prodigy in music and sports. All this is well and good, meant to lift our spirits. Assessing our lives however, no matter how much effort we have put in to realize our dreams and visions, they have eluded us. We have become adept at doing other things though: commenting on FB posts, retweets, identifying the hottest political issue...
Post a Comment
Read more

Analyzing a carry trade proposal: Short USD, go long on bitcoin

I recently completed an assignment for an International Economics Policy class which entailed designing a carry trade. A carry trade is a financial transaction that involves borrowing (short) in a low interest currency, and lending (go long) in a high interest (yield) currency. For instance from Bloomberg 's rates for bonds, this would involve borrowing in Swiss francs (rate is -0.15 percent) and lend in New Zealand dollars (rate is 2.83 percent). All else remaining equal, the carry trade would yield a rate differential of 2.83+0.15 = 2.98 percent. Note: this is an unusual case where the interest rate we are borrowing from is negative; usually, this would involve subtracting the first interest rate from the second. For instance, borrowing in Japanese yen (0.04 percent) and lending in Kiwi dollars (at 2.83 percent) would yield 2.79 percent as profit. My carry trade in this case involves borrowing in USD at a rate of 2.33 percent, and buying bitcoins. But, what, you may ask, is the...
Post a Comment
Read more