Humainologie creative dialogue on Nonviolence with related book synopsis and Zoom link for Wednesday

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand." --Karl A. Menniger

On Wednesday we choose a theme for this month’s dialogues. One possibility is Active Listening. Here is a good TEDx talk on the power of listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saXfavo1OQo

Another possibility is the Art of Loving. I will append below this email the synopsis of Erich Fromm’s classic book, The Art of Loving which I’d sent out last year. Either of those possible themes for the month (Active Listening, the Art of Loving) would be easy to relate to our topic for the dialogue on Wednesday. The topic will be Nonviolence. Here once again is the link to a trailer for the film “The Third Harmony” that Shinobu has arranged for us to see on Wednesday: https://vimeo.com/453487010

And here is the Zoom link provided by Shinobu:

Topic: Humainologie creative dialogue Time: May 5, 2021 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Jun 30, 2021, 9 occurrence(s) Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system. Weekly: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/tZIkcOuorT8rG9cjSFnQ1NKSWMIQFmFI6pUN/ics?icsToken=98tyKuGupzwoGteRsRiERpwAHY_Ca_TztilcjfpelizDDRECTCjFAc9rA5RyNvGG Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86972034113?pwd=M2g3MzEvMWs5dXhHcFVCbVNkVG1idz09 Meeting ID: 869 7203 4113 Passcode: 12345

Arthur

Book: The Art of Loving (Erich Fromm, 1956)

“Is Love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one ‘falls into’ if one is lucky? This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe in the latter.” Love is an art. As such, there is both theory and practice of the art. Both are essential if you want to master the art of loving. More than half of the book is about theory. A much smaller section discusses an approach to practice, but you have to do that yourself.

The Biblical story of Adam and Eve, of their separation from the garden of Eden, is about an essential difference of the human experience from that of non-human species: our separateness. “This separateness is the source of intense anxiety. “Man – of all ages and cultures – is confronted with the solution of one and the same question: the question of how to achieve union, how to transcend one’s own individual life and find at-onement.” Historically, there have been various religious, philosophical, cultural, and psychosocial efforts at a solution. The “madness of crowds” is related to orgiastic union, which has taken many forms – sometimes using drugs to achieve trance-like states. “All forms of orgiastic union have three characteristics: they are intense, even violent; they occur in the total personality, mind and body; they are transitory and periodical.” However, the historically dominant solution is exactly the opposite of orgiastic union. It is “the union based on conformity with the group, its customs, practices and beliefs.” We may think of ourselves as highly individualistic and be scarcely aware of a strong need to conform to the values and beliefs of some group, to “belong.” We may identify with a particular ethnic group or nation or religion or political party. But belonging to a group is largely habitual and lacking in intensity, and for this reason is insufficient to overcome the anxiety of separateness. “The incidence of alcoholism, drug addiction compulsive sexualism, and suicide in contemporary Western society are symptoms of this relative failure of herd conformity.” A third type of solution is creative activity, in which the artist or carpenter or goldsmith plans and produces and sees the result of that effort. She or he is thereby absorbed with (achieves union with) the process, the materials, and the product. (This experience, recently called “flow,” has been studied by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.)

And yet: “The unity achieved in productive work is not interpersonal; the unity achieved in orgiastic fusion is transitory; the unity achieved by conformity is only pseudo-unity. Hence, they are only partial answers to the problem of existence. The full answer lies in the achievement of interpersonal union, of fusion with another person, in love.”

Fromm refers to a passive form of symbiotic union, submission, in the form of masochism. The active counterpart to this is sadism. “Hitler reacted primarily in a sadistic fashion toward people, but masochistically toward fate, history, the ‘higher power’ of nature. His end – suicide among general destruction – is as characteristic as was his dream of success – total domination.”

“In contrast to symbiotic union, mature love isunion under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity.” Love is characterized by giving, in which more joy is to be found than in receiving. Fromm emphasizes four basic elements found in all forms of love: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. The mother cares for her child; she is active in providing for its needs. She takes responsibility for its well-being. Yet she has true respect for the child because she is aware of that child’s unique individuality. More than that, she must seek true knowledge of the child, in the sense of that ancient wisdom, “Know thyself.” Love involves an effort to know the other person, even when that person is angry, an effort that sees through the anger to its origin in the suffering of the angry person.

Motherly love is unconditional, whereas fatherly love is conditional upon the child’s growth as a competent person. If the child becomes a mature adult, she (or he) can then internalize motherly and fatherly love, to become the source as well as the recipient of both. Yet it is the failure of motherly and fatherly love in practice, of parental love in specific families, that causes so many children to slip into various forms of neurosis as adults. Fromm describes in some detail the specific failures and their relationship to specific forms of neurosis.

In Part III, “Love and Its Disintegration in Contemporary Western Society,” he begins with the observation that an individual’s capacity to love will be influenced by the culture in which that person lives. Western culture and society are not conducive to the development of love. “Capitalistic society is based on the principle of political freedom on the one hand, and of the market as the regulator of all economic, hence social relations, on the other.” The first of these principles gives individuals the illusion of freedom; the second produces conformity to dictates of the commodity culture. As a result, “Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature.” The resulting despair is mitigated in part by entertainment (amusement). Fromm quotes two of the anesthetic slogans from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: “Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today” and “Everybody is happy nowadays.”

Husband and wife may be counseled to support each other in various ways, amounting to superficial patterns of behavior and words. As a result, they try to make each other feel better but remain strangers all their lives. This may mitigate an otherwise unbearable sense of isolation, but it is neither love nor intimacy. Nor does sexual technique provide the key to successful marriage, any more than a life of unrestricted sexual gratification brings happiness. Fromm provides an extensive examination of various forms of “pseudo-love” and tragically misguided reasons for parenting.

In Part IV, “The Practice of Love,” the author emphasizes that to love is a personal experience that must be found in your actual practice and cannot be conveyed to you by any “expert.” Nonetheless, he offers a conceptual framework which may be helpful as you begin your practice. Mastering the practice of any art requires discipline. It is not done casually or “when you are in the mood.” Modern man tends to have relatively little self-discipline except in the workplace, the “9-to-5.” A second requirement for the mastery of any art is concentration. Many aspects of modern life (social media for example) make concentration all but impossible. Fromm illustrates the problem by pointing out our reluctance to be alone, a close associate of our inability to concentrate. The ability to be alone, to stand on one’s own, is essential to mastering the art of love. If I cannot stand on my own feet, if I am dependent on another for my peace of mind, “he or she may be a lifesaver, but the relationship is not one of love.” Of primary importance in concentration with another person is the ability to listen. It is equally important to be able to listen to yourself, what you are feeling, and to understand yourself.

Also essential are patience (you work at each related skill until you get it right) and a supreme concern with the mastery of the art. For the mastery of the art of loving, an all-important factor is the overcoming of one’s narcissism. When upset with another person, we tend to see the fault in the other person. Masters in the art of love, by contrast, step back from their emotional reaction and see the other person (and themselves) objectively, “The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility.” Just as a physician must seek to see the patient’s problem objectively in order to be effective, the master in the art of loving must constantly enhance their skill at objectively understanding a situation.

Because love is “the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence,” and because our own society’s values are inherently at odds with love, our present culture simply does not address the “ultimate and real need in every human being.” It is therefore likely that our culture will eventually perish of its own contradictions. We can move in a more positive direction, toward a sane society. “To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man.”