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

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

They told us to wait

They said we should wait. The wazees were deliberating. They were discussing "important" issues of national security and interest. So, we walked out. We stood by the door. It was raining hard, and we strained to stand as close to the wall as possible, to avoid getting drenched. Inside, the air was exuberant. The wazees were laughing heartily as they imbibed to their fill with nyama choma and Tusker baridi . My stomach was grumbling. I looked around at my friend. She was shivering. "She's going to catch a cold if we don't get somewhere warm soon," I thought to myself. I could stay here and wait to see the wazees and tell them why we had come. Or I could save my skin and call it a day (or night). I chose the former. I motioned to Wanjiku to follow me. She seemed shocked. We had come so far, having walked in the wind and rain for two hours. She was heavy with child, and due any day now. We passed the Toyota VXs that had transported the wazees to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amka Afrika

The rise of the continent of Africa is imminent, it is ongoing and it is unstoppable. For a long time now, the land that is the home of the Black Man has been downtrodden, allowed only to eat the scraps, the leftovers from the white man's rule. This is changing. We are seeing more nations of Africa freeing themselves from the bondage of complete dependence and servility to nations of Europe and the Americas. Our people are standing tall. But this cannot be one man's dream. Nor can one nation go it alone in the process of gaining complete autonomy from the rule that keeps him serving the selfish ends of corporations. We must unite. We must unite not only to move forward, but also to survive. It is imperative that the nations of Africa see themselves as a brotherhood for the black soul. One nation alone will not survive the onslaught that is coming to anyone that dares challenge the status quo. We have seen what happened to those who dared go alone in the liberat...
Post a Comment
Read more