We are living unsettling and disquieting times: the climate crisis, increasing poverty even in rich countries, wars that the big powers are fueling rather than trying to stop…

A lot of people are trying to fight against all this the way they can, but they don’t seem to be able to achieve much at all.

In order to not get depressed, we need strong positive stimuli that can keep hope alive. Sometimes these stimuli may arrive unexpectedly, as if the Universe were trying to help.

For me one powerful stimulus materialized in an old little book that one retiring colleague at my university had left on a shelf for anyone to pick: The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm. Oh my God. I had read it such a long time ago and I remembered liking it a lot. I picked it up and started reading it again…such a good book! When I finished it, I felt a strong urge to read more, and I recalled another book by the same author I had read when I was just 19 years old: To Have or to Be. I could not remember much of it, either, only that it captivated me. So, without thinking twice, I rushed to the biggest bookstore in Kuala Lumpur and bought one copy, and what a book it turned out to be! It cheered me up and gave me back some of the hope and optimism I was beginning to lose.

After finishing it, I thought I had to write something about it, as I find To Have or to Be one of the most compelling, deep, and topical books I have ever read. Actually, every single thing Erich Fromm wrote portrays so clearly and vividly the times and predicaments we are going through at the present time.

Erich Fromm was a philosopher and a psychologist, a Jew (but he considered his worldview and beliefs close to nontheistic mysticism, such as Buddhism), who was born in 1900 and had to flee from Nazi Germany where he was born to settle in the United States. He was associated with the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, and passed away in Switzerland in 1980, leaving behind him literally hundreds of publications, both articles and books.

Among the many books he wrote, perhaps the most well-known are the two books mentioned above: The Art of Loving (1956) and To Have or to Be (1976), the book I’m focusing upon here.

In To Have or to Be, Fromm analyzes the two modes of living, the two “social characters” as he calls them, one based on having and the other one based on being. In his opinion (and I totally agree with him), some people base their lives, their (pseudo)happiness on possessing things and people, while some others on being, trying to be good, generous, and compassionate people in a fair society and clean environment, describing in details how these two modes differ. Of the two, he clearly sides with the being mode, even though the present economic system is all on the having mode, and keeps forcing people, most of the time through subtle brainwashing, to believe that they can only be happy through having—having money, having a car, a big house, a family, a reputation, success, and so on. Exactly the opposite of what the greatest philosophers and spiritual leaders have always believed and preached. As Erich Fromm wrote:

“The frequency and intensity of the desire to share, to give, and to sacrifice are not surprising if we consider the conditions of existence of the human species. What is surprising is that this need could be so repressed as to make acts of selfishness the rule in industrial (and many other) societies and acts of solidarity the exception. […] A society whose principles are acquisition, profit and property produces a social character oriented towards having, and once the dominant pattern is established, nobody wants to be an outsider, or indeed an outcast; in order to avoid this risk everybody adapts to the majority, who have in common only their mutual antagonism.”

At the time the book came out, all Western and Eastern governments were (and still are) clearly on the side of the having mode, whereas hippies, among others, were on the side of the being mode. Wars and warmongering, for example, are two of the clearest and most terrible outcomes of the having mode:

“The human desire to experience union with others is rooted in the specific conditions of existence that characterize the human species and is one of the strongest motivators of human behaviour. By the combination of minimal instinctive determination and maximal development of the capacity of reason, we human beings have lost our original oneness with nature. In order not to feel utterly isolated – which would, in fact, condemn us to insanity – we need to find a new unity: with our fellow beings and with nature. This human need for unity with others is experienced in many ways: in the symbiotic tie to mother, an idol, one’s tribe, one’s nation, one’s class, one’s religion, one’s fraternity, one’s professional organization. Often, of course, these ties overlap, and often they assume an ecstatic form, as among members of certain religious sects or a lynch mob, or in the outburst of national hysteria in the case of war. The outbreak of the First World War, for example, occasioned one of the most drastic of these ecstatic forms of ‘union.’ Suddenly, from one day to the next, people gave up their lifelong convictions of pacifism, anti-militarism, socialism; scientists threw away their lifelong training in objectivity, critical thinking, and impartiality in order to join the big We.”

Throughout the book Fromm cites Western thinkers, from the Greek philosophers to Karl Marx and Albert Schweitzer, and mystics such as Rumi and Meister Eckhart. Buddhism is also frequently mentioned, to the point that the Four Noble Truths are specifically cited as basic conditions for human change, for the realization of a Man and a society based on being and not on having.

More specifically, he listed eight specific conditions that he believed would need to be fulfilled to achieve the establishment of this new society based on the being mode:

>> All brainwashing methods in industrial and political advertising must be prohibited

>> The gap between the rich and the poor nations must be closed

>> Many of the evils of present-day capitalist and communist societies would disappear with the introduction of a guaranteed yearly income

>> Women must be liberated from patriarchal domination

>> A Supreme Cultural Council, charged with the task of advising the government, the politicians, and the citizens in all matters in which knowledge is necessary, should be established

>> A system of effective dissemination of effective information must be established

>> Scientific research must be separated from application in industry and defense

>> While all the suggestions made in the foregoing pages will be difficult enough to realize, our difficulties become almost insurmountable with the addition of another necessary condition of a new society: atomic disarmament

All this may sound perhaps a bit too optimistic, but as Fromm himself wrote, every step toward the establishing of a fair, happy, and sustainable society based on the being mode, no matter how small, will be an achievement that will give us immense satisfaction and get us a little closer to the final objective.

To Have or to Be is such a dense and meaningful book that no summary can make justice to Erich Fromm’s masterpiece. In my view, it is a book definitely worth reading—even though it was published nearly 50 years ago, it is so topical and so relevant to what is happening today. It talks about pollution and wars and other hot topics, in addition to offering solutions that no current politicians seem to be able even to think of.

If this article arose your curiosity at all, please go and get To Have or to Be!

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