Rev Left Radio - The Art of Loving: Existential Alienation and the Nature of Love

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

Megan Devine joins Breht to discuss philosopher Erich Fromm's famous 1956 text "The Art of Loving", in which Fromm employs Marxist, Psychoanalytic, and Eastern Philosophical analysis to explore a core problem at the heart of the human condition: the existential anxiety wrought by our fundamental separation and how Love, in its broadest universal sense, points toward its overcoming.  Philosophize This! on "The Art of Loving" Outro Music: "Paul" by Big Thief ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody, welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. On today's episode, I have my friend Megan Devine on to discuss Eric Fromm's The Art of Loving. It's a really interesting text that ties together, the social, the psychological, the political, and the spiritual. And I think it's just a fascinating way to not only understand certain aspects of human, existence, but also as a wonderful way to sort of put an end cap on this little sub-series I've just done over the last week or so, exploring different spiritual, psychological topic from Carl Jung through Buddhism and Hinduism, through the Michael Brooks tribute series episode to this one on The Art of Loving, sort of tying all these things together. I hope some of you really

enjoyed this little deep dive into these topics that aren't often covered on the left. As I've said in my last introduction, all of March is going to go back to, you know, political topics as usual. But I really wanted to investigate some of these ideas and I'll continue to as the show develops and unfolds. But you sort of got hit with a little rapid fire amount of episodes specifically on the psychological and spiritual topics that I'm deeply, deeply interested in. So this is a perfect little end cap to that. Really loved this discussion. As we say in the episode as well, there's this part in the book and that we discuss a little bit in the episode talking about the love of God, talking about Aristotelian logic, first

paradoxical logic, sort of eastern and western epistemic starting points that I found very interesting. And although we couldn't get into the full implications of that in this episode, I will read that segment from the book after the outro music on this episode. So if you stick around through the conversation, through the outro music, it'll pick back up with me reading that section from the Art of Loving by Eric Fromm because I think it is so fascinating and Eric Fromm puts it out there in such a wonderful way. So stay tuned for that if you're at all interested in that aspect. And the last thing I'll say is I would recommend anybody interested in this topic to check out a show that I've always loved. It's called Philosophies This. It's a show

that just covers philosophy topics and has been around for years and I've always loved it and been a fan of it. And he just released an episode on The Art of Loving, which was in large part in inspiration for this episode. And it's only 25 minutes and it sort of covers the topic much more succinctly than we do here. I think we go into much more detail, of course, but he has a really great engaging little summary of it. So if you're at all interested in checking that out before or after listening to this episode. It would just drive some of these points home and make the overall thesis that much more clear for anybody interested in the text. All right, without further ado, let's jump into this episode with my friend Megan Devine on Eric Fromm's

text, The Art of Loving. Enjoy. My name is Megan Devine. I use she-her pronouns. I'm from Rockford, Illinois, which is a Rust Belt City that's just outside of Chicago. A few years ago, I decided to drop out of grad school after realizing that I'm not quite the academic type. And I wanted to read and study whatever I wanted at my own pace and take time to have meaningful conversations with the people around me that were actually enjoyable and a bit more accessible than some of the conversations I was having in school. I met Brett after organizing the first mid-laws left assembly in 2019 here in Rockford. There I met some other comrades from Omaha and we've kind of just stayed in

touch ever since then. I organized in Rockford for a few years and kind of found myself having a rough go-ed it in some of our formal local organizing spaces. And in experiencing that, I decided I am going to take some time away for personal reflection, some personal growth and development, and maybe taking a look at different characters and personalities and sort of dig into what it looks like to organize with other people because I was just, I was seeing the clashes in the personalities and including myself. I'm not, I am not void of that. But so in doing that, though, when the organizing part sort of crumbled, to be honest, my self-worth kind of crumbled with it. And so did my sense of community. I was very confused about who I was and where I fit into

everything and that was a serious struggle and sign for me that it was time to rediscover what community is and rediscover who I am and my wants and needs and desires and with time I rediscovered a community with those who aren't necessarily preaching things like for example transformative justice or community care on the internet but are actually practicing compassionate and authenticity and patience with those around them every day and everything they do. And sometimes those people are coming from a place where you least expect it. So I'm mostly at this point in my life experiencing community and connections with the people in my workplace or the people who visit my workplace. I work at a cafe.

That to me has opened up a whole new world for what community means and where I fit into it. Yeah. So those sorts of relationships don't always look like the Instagram activist experience. And these people that I'm getting to know and have gotten to know don't necessarily wear their politics on their sleeves. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Or maybe these are people who have made mistakes and are in the process of deconstructing their ideology. And yeah, I just, I've opened up space for people who are very similar to me and people who are. aren't perfect and now my community is made up of people who are approaching the world with a more passionate grace and intentional love and in doing that I've realized that it's so difficult to do anything without that basis or framework yeah absolutely fascinating stuff and certainly when I wanted to cover this text which again is the art of loving by Eric Fromm just having you know, spend a little time with you at the Midwest Left Assembly and our organizations communicating during your organizing time. I just, your name sort of popped into my mind as,

you know, somebody that I thought would be interested in tackling this text together. And then I reached out to you. And you said that actually I've already read the text twice. I love it. It's on my bookshelf. And I was like, wow, perfect synchronicity on that front. And so we decided to tackle this text together. And I know you have outstanding interests in political philosophy, of course, in psychoanalysis. And Fromm combines these two things as well as some religious and mystical analysis as well, which is certainly write down my alley and probably to a large extent yours as well. Eric Fromm, of course, comes out of the Frankfurt School. Leveragesism Marxist critique is Jewish and is constantly referencing the Old Testament as

ways of understanding human consciousness and its development. Also weaving in psychoism analysis and many other things. And I just thought, you know, it's really cool to have this book, which on its face of it, you might not think is a political text or a text that has social implications with a title like The Art of Loving. But it absolutely does. And I think we'll get into that. So maybe the first question I could ask you before we get into the work itself is sort of, or maybe it is getting into the work itself. But basically what does Fromm set out to do in this work? And what about it do you personally find so interesting and so valuable. So this is a book, as you mentioned, that I read before and was very excited to read again

as a person who's sort of like maybe changed in their ways of thinking. But yeah, it's a book that that I first read years ago. And it's a book that I still find myself recommending to people who want to get a better understanding of the ways they either are or are not embodying love. within themselves and how that might relate to their relationship with others, whether it's platonic or romantic. And I mentioned this to you before, Brett, but something that spoke to me about the book when I first read it is that, yeah, at its surface, it appears like it's not a book that has political implications. But you dig into it and you realize that Eric Fromm is actually approaching this with a very socially aware, awareness or consciousness.

that makes loving more of a political act than just what we kind of think of it when we hear when we hear about love or loving. So it is a book that I'm continuously recommending to people just because I feel like it's relevant to everybody. And for me personally, I found that it was helpful in my pursuit of just inner peace and safety and seeking those things. I found myself for a while in a place where I was realizing that maybe some of the more like inappropriate or even abusive relationships that I'd experienced throughout my childhood were following me in some form or another into adulthood. And I think this realization came after attempts at therapy where the therapist kind of, you know,

was catering to the status quo, not really often. any new information to me and literally told me that I'd be happier and I would feel more secure if I just dated somebody with a better career. And that to me was actually jarring to hear that because I thought maybe this was something more about myself and not about somebody else's career of making me happy. But yeah, this therapist, you know, they started like dishing out self-help books to me like the five love languages which i'm not going to shit on that um it can be helpful but it's obviously very limited in its approach and and after this therapist began like venting to me me the patient um about her insecurities related to her her not having a sports

car and her husband not making enough money for her i decided all right okay uh i'm going to be the captain of my own ship for a little while. I didn't necessarily have the resources to find a better therapist or pay for one. This was like one that was somehow covered from like shitty insurance that I had for my job. And so I ended up diving kind of right into self-analysis, though at the time, I don't think I would have called it that. And since then, it's been a slow, arduous process with obviously like major setbacks and obstacles that kind of like have ebbed and flowed through the years. And I think it's the coupling of this attempt at inner work with some of the insights at the time I was having about capitalism and alienation and these like very tangible alternatives

to the economic system that we live in. It made this book, The Art of Loving, just another tool for me. I don't think this book has all of the answers, and I don't think it's the end-all be-all, and I don't even think it's like, it's not like my number one recommended book. I don't think it's amazing. But I do think that from does a pretty good job of explaining in only 120 pages, the relationship between commodity culture and the ways it's overtaking ourselves and our interpersonal relationships. And even though Fram's analysis is kind of limited in some respect, again, it's only 120 pages. And to be quite frank, it's somewhat like heteronormative and outdated, which we kind of expect from a text written in 1956. But to us in 2021, it's a little bit jarring. All of that being said, though I think it's important to maybe critique that in our own way. as we approach it. That's not the point of his book. That's not his main argument to go down that path. And actually, he is offering an optimism that's really inspiring and hopeful. And that's

something that I personally appreciate. It's reminding us that we don't have to be this way forever because love can be practiced like anything. And it's not a mystery and we can change. Yeah, absolutely. And that heteronormative part is very important. important. The sort of reifying of, you know, gender binaries and categories is obviously something that, as you said, is going to come out of any text written in the 50s in the U.S., and it certainly does, but, you know, those aspects of it can be critically engaged with and sort of seen through, and the overall point is still very much there and is accessible, I think, to everyone. And the accessibility is, I think, another advantage of the text. It is

written in plain language that there could be a part, like when he talks about the love of God, that depending on where you're coming from can be kind of challenging or maybe even uninteresting, although I find it to be one of the most interesting parts of the book. But, I mean, overall, it's written in a very accessible way meant for a popular audience. And I think he achieves his goal in that. And, you know, I've been more interested in some of the recent episodes that we've done here on Rev. Left and just in my personal life about the full maturation and development of the entire personality and the character, specifically with regards to how those developments can be utilized in the active transformation of the social and the political world, the building of a better world.

And too often, as I say all the time, there's this false dichotomy created between development of the inner world, spiritual or psychological development, and political, social outward struggle. And I think those two things are part and parcel. and you introducing yourself and saying a little bit about some of the challenges you had in organizing and being on the left, whether it's online or in your case in real life organizing, you certainly bump up against the reality that even though a lot of these people have well intentions, they want to build a better world, so much of our inner lives are dominated by egoic myopia, by, you know, insecurity, by the need to outshine. others, a lot of things that when unexamined and left to flourish can be the end of organizations. It can limit what is possible in the social and the political. And so, you know, I think weaving these two things together is really important. And this is one text that attempts to do that. So let's go ahead and get into the text a little bit more. And in the opening chapter, Fromm argues that love is an art form and therefore requires knowledge and effort or

theory and practice. However, he says most people do not think there is anything to really be learned about love. Can you talk about his reasons why modern people are confused on this front and how people tend to understand love in our society? Yeah, so in general, I think from is claiming that most of us are concerned, first and foremost, above everything, with being lovable and being loved, rather than learning how to love and practicing how to love. And like we said before, he's also saying, okay, we're not separate from the social implications of what he's calling Western society. But more generally and like economically speaking,

I think we can kind of call this capitalism. The way he's describing it, I think, is in general, a big chunk of what he's saying is specific. specifically related to capitalism. So that being said, we are when looking for love, Eric Frum is saying that we're essentially seeking the best bang for our book. Love is just another commodity. It's a possession or we're making a bargain with somebody. And today, we think of love as, okay, we found the best item on the market. This person checks all of the boxes. Maybe that's a message coming from, you know, your family telling you to like have a

person that meets these specific needs. And in the end, all that's doing is totally eliminating the personhood from the person. And you are then idolizing the idea of a person, which in general, I think we can all agree that that's something that's not very productive in trying to have any sort of human relationship. There's a psychoanalyst named Karen Horny, who actually worked closely and had her own intimate relationship with Fromm, who wrote a book called Neurosis and Human Growth. And I think if I had one book to recommend, it would be that book as it relates to the art of loving. Because she's making essentially the same claims as Eric Fromm is making in terms of human growth. It's like a three or 400 page book, which isn't so bad, but

it's a little dense at times, but I'm telling you it's totally worth the journey to go through it because she's taking some of these concepts that Eric Trump has and actually expanding on them in ways that, to your point earlier, Brett, it's sort of like a tool for self-realization. And it's not just like, you know, a self-help book. It's actually like improving the ways that you might like envision yourself as it relates to just you or other people. But anyway, I'm sorry, I'm probably going to plug that book and Karen Horny a couple more times. But in that book, she's making some of the same claims where she's saying, she's encouraging us to deconstruct that transactional relationship that we're used to having and learn how to

actually love with our eternal being. And the way she is presenting it in the book is in short, kind of presenting these like three personality types, which that is really basic and vague. But that's kind of the point right now. But she goes in depth as to like what these could look like in the ways they manifest. And not just because she's trying to like, you know, create boxes for us to put ourselves in, but because it's actually really helpful to have some sort of system and way of thinking about relationships because, I don't know, as you said before, like, this is something that is so important, no matter what we're doing, especially in terms of organizing, like, we cannot continue organizing and thinking that human relations are just our secondary. Like, that's

something that I am realizing now is that when I got into organizing, I jumped right in and expected that myself and other people were sort of acknowledging the human aspect of all of this, but it actually, that tends to be avoided. And that is just a recipe for disaster. Like, these two things have to be interrelated, no matter how much we think that love is, is not related to organizing and creating a better world. It very, very obviously is. So in a understanding that love is meant, like a real true mature love, as Eric Fram calls it, when we know that the point of that and what makes that flourish is deconstructing these transactional relationships and decommodifying love and decommodifying people,

it's very obvious to us then that capitalism is not going to encourage this behavior. And as long as love is commodified, it's going to be difficult to master real mature love. And it's actually going to be difficult to even remotely care about it, let alone make it our ultimate concern in life. And, yeah, mastering love is not going to create a profit for you. I'm sorry, I hate to break it to you. It's just that's not the point. and when we are learning to love and when we're actually loving with the whole of our being

our full selves it's not actually going to be catering to capitalism or prestige or money or power and in fact if it is that's not love at all yeah absolutely i love how you frame that and i think it also helps to think about it in terms of love as a noun this passive thing that you either get or you don't get and love as a verb. And I think that's encapsulated in the title, the art of loving. Art is a, you know, if you want to get good at any sort of art, which Eric Fromm makes this point, it's not a passive process. It's one that involves discipline, the concentration, it's a lifelong commitment to get really good at mastering an art. And as long as we think of it as a passive thing that will come to me eventually, particularly

if I build up the right personality and character traits, we're missing out and we're actually stumping and preventing our ability to fully love. And love in this context, too, it needs to be noted, is a universal form of love. In fact, if you don't have that universal component to love, the ability to love an individual person or object is only, as he would call it egotism. And he says it actually quite well in this quote. He says, love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person. It is an attitude, an orientation of character, which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one object of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow

men, his love is not love, but a symbiotic attachment or an enlarged egotism. Yet most people believe that love is constituted by the object and not by the faculty. And that, I think, really in a really good way, gets at the core of his conception of love and why it is inherently social, and inherently progressive and why it could be summed up in the Christian tradition as love your neighbor as thyself and even talks about how that gets

that gets actually stripped away from its profundity and turned into do one to others as you would have them do one to yourself right? It's almost like a fairness of exchange rather than love and he's like we must

that's not the golden rule and that's a shallow version of what is the real commandment which is to love other people as you love yourself which is actually a very radical life commitment with extreme political and social consequences. And as you said really well, in our society, a commodified transactional society, love itself takes

those forms. And so especially, you know, immature people, but all of us were young once, just dipping our toes into romantic relationships. And I think we all commit this error, which is seeing love as fundamentally being loved and as transactional, you know, as like, I will love you under these conditions and you will love me under these conditions. And Fromm talks about a personality market, you know. And that's why sometimes you can even see two people get together in their teen years or in college. And let's say one of them all of a sudden becomes famous, right? And like, you know, somehow becomes a famous, rich person. Often they'll

leave that person behind because if you think about it as transactional and you think about it in terms of a personality market, one of the two people's stock went up and the other person's stock declined or stagnated and therefore there's a trading up, almost as if you trade up a nicer car. I'm actually now in a position where I can get somebody more conventionally attractive or with better personality traits. And that is a destruction of love and it actually prevents you from ever being able to love, this idea of what can you do for me? And I think it manifests so often in romantic relationships, but in other ones as well, as a sort of interpersonal tyranny, where people see love and relationships as fundamentally you needing to meet my needs. And the moments you stop

meeting my needs, I'm going to be dissatisfied. It's going to start fights. I might cheat on you or I might end this whole thing. Because ultimately, this form of love, this stunted form of love, is an outgrowth, as Fromm says, of egotism, of an enlarged ego. And it's really about what that person can do for you. And so often it leads to very unhealthy relationships interpersonally and prevents somebody from being able to love more broadly. And the last thing I'd say in this section as well is he makes it very clear that if you're not able to love generally, you're not able to love yourself and all human beings, then you are structurally unable to truly love another human being on an individual level. And I think that's a profound idea to take very

seriously and try to develop this capacity and break beyond the bonds that are so artificially put up in our society. Totally. And just to go off of what you're saying here, I think that that's where we'll kind of get into this later from later in the book offers up like practices that are practical. But actually, I think this is where. there's like a question presented that I don't know that he fully responds to so he he talks a lot about this development of one's own character and as you mentioned this like inability to love

other people if you can't love yourself and I remember like hearing people say that um like like it's almost it's a really great cliche but it is a cliche at this point that that you have to of yourself if you want to begin loving other people. And I remember hearing that and thinking, wow, that's great. That's profound. Like, that is true. And yet, like, I actually didn't understand, like, how to love myself, though. But how do I actually go about doing that? Like, and maybe this is typical of my character and that I have a dependency issue or something where in order to feel full, there's like a dependency in making two, one or something. And I just remember hearing that and it being like so difficult for me to understand how to love myself. And

this is where I think Karen Horny comes in. And she's saying, here are some things to know about yourself. Like I think, I guess my point is, I think what you're saying in terms of loving yourself, I'm not sure that Eric Fromm totally covers, like, practices on how to fully love yourself. And that, like, that shit is work. Like, that is some work that is not going to be figured out in 120 pages. And, I mean, Eric Fram says that in the beginning. He says, like, if you're looking for a self-help book to try to, like, resolve all of your problems, this ain't it. And, yeah, I guess I just, you saying that made me think about how.

I think that is maybe part of the limitation. And you're not going to read this book and all of a sudden say, I love myself and I can love other people. It's just like, that's a concept we should live by and start putting in the work of like, how do I get to know myself more and how can I love myself better? And it's so true that in doing that, you learn how to love other people. I mean, instead of thinking like, hey, what's this person going to do for me? I can start thinking of myself as a whole person and this other person as a whole person, and I can find enjoyment in the fact that we are two whole people that are enjoying each other's company and making a decision to be around each other. I think we kind of, and rightfully so,

get caught up in like, how can another person ease my anxiety? Like, I'm anxious about this thing or maybe I haven't come to a realization about this specific thing as it relates to myself. And so I'm going to then like pull on this other person to sort of make up for my lack or something. Right. Yeah, that's a huge aspect, I think, of so many people's relationship as they're developing through life. And, you know, in my 20s, I struggled with infidelity. And, you know, over time, I came to realize how much of that infidelity was rooted in this idea that I had a fundamental lack or void in myself that I was trying to fill with other people

and it was based in this narcissistic transactional idea of you need to make me feel good the moment you stop doing that the moment I stop feeling like I'm getting all of the love and the satisfaction that I think I need to be happy I'll go on and find somebody else to meet that and I think Fromm talks about that in this book of this sort of neuroticism that can take place when you think of love in this way. And I've come to realize that not only did that sort of rampant infidelity not make myself happy. It caused utter suffering for everybody else. I was never able to fill the void in myself. I heard a lot of good people as well as myself along the path. And I created a world of endless conflict and drama and exhaustive sort of combativeness

because as a natural outgrowth of my inherent selfishness. And I think that root of insecurity, whether it manifests in infidelity or a million other things, that root of insecurity and thinking that the other person, their job is to make those feelings stop, that is the root of a lot of problems in and of themselves. And as far as your idea of loving yourself, that's a very complicated idea,

certainly is in some sort of dialectical relationship with loving the whole, loving humans generally and loving others, a service to others can kind of get out of this obsessive individualism of a consumer capitalist society where it's all about you and what you like and your desires and consuming, right? It's certainly not rooted in narcissism. It's not rooted in like, you know, people talk about self-care, but often they just mean like pampering yourself or like, you know, consuming something that makes you feel good about yourself in that moment. And that's not the way either. That that's a dead end in an inevitable.

itself so while there's no concrete answer to how to love yourself properly it's hinted at i think in the very end and it's certainly he provides examples of what is not the path to loving yourself and and i think that's just as important in some ways as trying to figure out what the path is yeah so let's go on and move to the next question and this is at the root i think of a lot of the the the philosophy of the text and that's the idea of separation so what role does separation and the anxiety that grows out of it play in this text? And what are some common ways that people try to escape that underlying anxiety that stemmed from their separation? So I think in the past and in the present, I don't want to, I don't want to be too pessimistic here,

but in general, I think we can look to the past and see examples of people overcoming any feelings they may have of separation with more communal experiences or ritual even that are nurturing connection and oneness and filling in the gaps of what we're seeking. And when we think about this, it might look like spending more intentional time in nature or developing systems of reliability between our neighbors or those just physically close to us. Furthermore, I think we might actually think about the ways that we are one with the work that we're doing or whether that's creative work or, you know, the ways that we survive. I think when we look back at the past and craftspeople, we can see a connection to the work that they're doing in that, you know,

maybe the craftsperson is like deciding what is going to be done today and how it's going to be done and when they're going to do it and, you know, things of that nature. And when we think about that and we fast forward to today, it typically looks much different. And again, that's not to say that we don't see these communal experiences and relation to our labor happening in healthy ways, I suppose. But I feel like when we do notice these things, it's typically after like something catastrophic happens. So let's say there's like a natural disaster or something. And we see people coming forth with, you know, mutual aid or, you know, conversely like charity or something. But there are, you know, there's just so many examples of like a disaster happening

in a community and people coming together and getting through that shit together because there's no other option like I think when something that serious happens there's no other option than to come together and like get shit done and keep ourselves safe and and again this is something that we witness as more and more people are realizing the irrelevance of like police in our communities we're seeing people actually come together and be there for each other in, and again, this has happened. This is not like a new thing, but I think it's becoming more popularized and apparent to people who maybe never noticed it before. So yeah, I don't want to like downplay the ways communities have been existing and cooperating together for a really long time. But I think in general,

if we kind of like zoom out, it looks pretty different. We see people kind of coping by themselves more often in ways that tend to just intensify the alienation or responding to it, whether it's contemplating or attempting suicide or using substances to cope, And quite honestly, like, rightfully so. I'm not, I don't, it's hard for me to, to feel like shame or, or think that it's inappropriate to act in this way. Like, I totally get it. And I think, like I said, the problem is that this actually isn't resolving the feelings of separateness in the long term. So it's helping us get through the day to day, which is okay, but we see that this is actually

causing deeper problems. So unlike what I was talking about before, like rituals or communal experiences, the use of substances in this way or like negative self-talk or anything like that is usually going to then result in some sort of addiction. or guilt or remorse and inevitably even for their separateness from what they're trying to escape from in the first place. And in terms of labor, wow, well, we're much more alienated from the work we do now, I think more than ever when we just log on to the Internet or onto social media for a second

and start reading about Amazon. It's like abundantly clear that we are on just like two different playing fields here. But the process of what we're creating is not at all any longer decided by us as the craftsperson. In fact, I don't even think we're viewed as a craftsperson. Eric Frum uses the word automaton's over and over again in the writing. And I actually think that that it's so accurate as pessimistic as it is. Um, that's where he's saying where we're at. Uh, you know, we're decided, like I said, we're not deciding what we create. And that might be decided by the employer, or it might be decided by,

you know, what is just socially acceptable and what is considered productive work even. It's just not up to us in any sense. Um, essentially we're doing what we have to do to survive. and we're going to do it at any cost and we're going to cope in the ways that we have to cope in order to get through it and in this case the cost is our livelihood and our connectedness and and this here this whole problem is what from is calling the problem of existence and we have this constant desire as people for interpersonal fusion is what he's calling it but it's essentially love. And this is where some scholars start to think that, you know,

things can kind of go wrong. So this is something that Fram calls a symbiotic union. He's claiming that our sadistic and masochistic tendencies are dependent on one another. And I tend to like my girl Karen Hornie's vocab better. She uses this term called morbid dependency. which I think is more like telling of what the problem actually is. So she's saying that the way we're depending on another person is like I was saying earlier, essentially to like ease our anxiety and to cater to our neuroses.

And at this point, like in understanding those things, I think it's clear as to how and why this could not and should not be considered real. or again, Eric Fromm keeps using the term like mature love, which I think is pretty okay. But he's saying that, or Karen Horny and Eric Fromm are kind of saying the same thing in that it's this love that I'm describing is a love built on exchange value and what is easing our anxiety for now. Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to read a quote from the book that really,

makes this problem as vivid as it can be so Fram says man is gifted with reason he is life being aware of itself he has awareness of himself of his fellow man of his past and of the possibilities of his future

this awareness of himself as a separate entity the awareness of his own short lifespan of the fact that without his will he is born and against his will he dies that he will die before those whom he loves or they before him the awareness of his alone and separateness of his helplessness before the forces of nature and of society.

All of this makes his separate, disunited existence an unbearable prison. He would become insane, could he not liberate himself from this prison and reach out, unite himself in some form or other with other people, with the world outside. The experience of separateness arouses anxiety. It is indeed the source of all anxiety. Being separate means being cut off without any capacity to use my human powers. Hence, to be separate means to be helpless, unable to grasp the world, things and people, actively. It means that the world can invade me without my ability to react.

Thus, separateness is the source of intense anxiety. And a little bit later, he sums it up by saying, The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness. The absolute failure to achieve this aim means insanity, because the panic of complete isolation can be overcome only by, such a radical withdrawal from the world outside that the feeling of separation disappears because the world outside from which one is separated has disappeared and I think that that really

drives home the core existential problem of humanity and helps us understand all the different ways that humans struggle and strive to overcome that anxiety rooted in separation and importantly as you said very well, how the incentive structures and the alienation, inheritance, and capitalism actually play into and exacerbate that basic problem as opposed to solving it. And the thing it does toss up as the solution is consumption. But anybody that's ever tried to find happiness or a release from their anxiety through consumption knows that that can only ever be a false path, a dead end, and an empty way to actually go about solving the root cause of the problem. And so tying up that existential separateness and anxiety with modern capitalism, pointing out the fact that it's always existed throughout time.

But in the past, for better or worse, there's been different structures and different ways to deal with it that were in some ways much more advantageous, much more deep and healthy than the ways propped up by capitalism. So having said that, you know, you get an idea of his conception of love. You get an idea of the existential source of the anxiety, which he's trying to alleviate and actually is arguing that love in the ultimate sense points toward the actual way out of this anxiety and this problem. He then moves into a breakdown of different types of love. And I think it's kind of interesting to think about all these specific iterations of love in connection to the love in the general sense.

So what specific types of love just Fromm sort of outline in the middle section of this text? And how are they ultimately expressions of love in the big sense that he means it? In a general sense, I think that this section, in this section, Fromm is claiming that everything that he's listing are types of love that can exist but are not necessarily available to everyone. And as long as we don't find value in the art of loving, it may be difficult to find some of these forms of love, if that makes sense. And I think he's also claiming that some of these types of love are not inherently healthy or necessary. Or maybe rather than that can be manifested in ways that can quickly turn into something.

healthy. I'll just let me let me go over some of his love types here. So I think that I want to just give a very brief like synopsis of what I think these types of love mean to me. But Brett, feel free to like add or like jump in to any of these explanations that I'm coming up with here. So he's got a few different types of love that he goes through any lists. And it's all quite interesting. But the first thing that he is bringing up is brotherly love, which in short is a love for all human beings. The love that you experience with your neighbor and just in general, any sort of like love and compassion that you can offer other people that are not yourself and are not your parents and not your romantic partner. Kind of like solidarity in the broadest sense.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. He does talk quite a bit about like paternal love, like motherly love and fatherly love. And this, this, as I'm reading it, I'm like, okay, this makes sense. But actually, this was something that was like a little profound for me in understanding later on the ways that the ways that we understand motherly and fatherly love as it relates to the love of God. is is kind of profound anyway so he's calling motherly love essentially love that is unconditional it's something that you have to earn it's something that you know will always be there and and he's saying like the unfortunate thing about motherly love is that if it's not there it's not there it's not a thing that you can earn or make up or or or have it appear out of thin air. It's something that either exists or it doesn't. That's what he's saying. And fatherly love in comparison, he's calling essentially a love that is earned or a love that you have to prove that you deserve. So in like the broadest sense, if we think of like a mother

figure and a father figure, the mother figure is typically, as he's saying, like this nurturing figure. It's the nurture. And the fatherly love is the more like, we think of like mother, mother nature and father culture as like fatherly love kind of offering something that's a little bit more like tangible and earned. So then he's also talking about obviously like erotic love, which is different than all of the former types of love that he's describing. Because this is, an exclusive fusion and union with other people and more specifically it's a decision and a promise you're making to this other person or these other people and yeah that that's like differing quite a bit from the other forms of love that he mentions it's exclusive in a in a very specific way

you know right yeah exactly and then of course he's talking about self-love which brett kind of already mentioned and we've kind of talked about the importance of it. But he's calling this a love for oneself that is inseparable from the love of all other life. And he makes the point he drives at home that this actually is the opposite of selfishness. So for some people that maybe have a difficult time experiencing self-love with themselves because they feel like it's an act of selfishness. He is saying, no, there is a difference between being selfish and loving yourself. Do you have anything to add to any of that, Brett, before I say anything about the love of God? Sure, yeah, just two things. I think it's best, and you hinted at this as well, to understand

motherly love and fatherly love in a sort of archetypal context, not as like a, I mean, although he does tie it to like neuroticisms that can come out of having like a mother that doesn't offer unconditional love or the sort of neuroticisms that could the insecurities that come out with trying to please a father that is overly authoritarian etc so he does tie it to actual parental relationship but he is also talking about it in these ideal almost platonic ways as archetypes and then in the self-love concept you said it perfectly it has to be the opposite of selfishness and it has to be sort of understood in the context of this broader love of of all life, of sentient beings.

And one way I think about it, and I've talked about it a little bit, is how easy it is often to, you know, especially for people on the left, to feel compassion for other people, people that you don't know, like the victims of imperialism or poverty, to even be brought to tears by the struggles and suffering of another human being so easily.

But yet it's very difficult to feel compassion for yourself with the negative self-talk, sort of beating yourself up, not thinking you're worthy enough or that you're pretty enough or whatever the case may be. And so, you know, tying that in as sort of an idea of having compassion for yourself and insofar as you love and can connect with the suffering and struggles of strangers, you should try to be able to sort of push that love back in toward yourself and have some compassion and open-heartedness for your own self, not a sort of self-indulgent narcissism, but rather a love and compassion

for yourself as another human being who suffers in your own unique way. And I think that can get you, you know, partly down the path of understanding his conception of self-love. Yeah, exactly. I think that that sort of brings it all in and hits it all on the head there. If you don't have anything else you want to add on that front, then maybe I mentioned the love of God. Yeah, let's go. So the love of God, as Brett mentioned earlier, is sort of like We could go on and on and go on, like, so many different tangents about this part. But I do think it's worth, like, mentioning a little bit in depth just because it's really quite interesting.

And Brett and I, before we were recording this, talked about how maybe earlier on in our lives, we maybe would have looked at this section. I'm saying this as if it's abstract. When I read this the first time, I read this section and was kind of. of like, I don't want to say he necessarily turned off by it, but was pretty much like so separate from this concept that it was a little bit out there for me. And I think Brett had mentioned maybe in his new atheist phase would have like tossed this in the trash after getting to this part. But after after, you know, kind of growing up and out of

that phase, which I also found myself in at one point, you realize the value. You realize the value in what Eric Fromm is saying in this part specifically. So he is using the love of God as a way of overcoming separateness, which is what we've been talking about the whole time, by uniting with God. And this is particularly interesting to me because the interpretation of God and the love of God depends so much so on the growth and development of the individual experiencing it. If, for example, somebody is viewing God as this archetypal, you know, fatherly figure as Christians typically do, and again, I don't mean the good Christianity, but the love

in that experience is then not unconditional, but in fact is earned by being obedient or following the rules like Brett was mentioned about the fatherly love archetype. So if our view of God is identical to this paternal attachment or the social structure that we live in, we can kind of see how we become submissive to God's authority. And God is saying, or God, Fromm is saying that this is the opposite of a mature love for God. So we've been talking about a mature love for oneself and for others and all of the work that it takes to develop this mature love. And he's saying that this mature love for God is not exclusive to that and reminding us that we don't attain a love for God by obeying or thinking or even believing in God.

He's saying that we experience the love of God when we live God or experience a oneness with God. So this, you know, Western emphasis that we often find ourselves in related to, you know, thought. over action and specifically in some of the like mainstream Christianity that we witness, there is there is this over emphasis on thought over the action of God or loving God. And that is where we experience the dogmatism that often comes up in some of these religions like Christianity even. And this is where there's like a superiority complex in that as long as long, as I believe in God, I am superior to living God, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think that's an incredibly interesting point. At the end of this episode, after the outro music, I'm going to read that entire section just to drive home the point even more, because this can be sort of difficult to grasp on a first sort of flight over it. But I think you said it really, really well, and just to reiterate some of those aspects, there's this idea of, and he says in the book, like, mysticism versus religion, right? so like a religion in the way that we usually think about it. And he says, quote, in mysticism, the attempt is given up to know God by thought, beliefs, rituals, etc., and is replaced by the

experience of union with God in which there is no more room and no need for knowledge about God. And so there's this different way of relating to God as a concept through thought and relating to God as an experiential union with everything that is. And God in this mystical sense, you can give it the flair of, you know, your specific idea of God in the Christian tradition or whatever. But I think, you know, really, I think Fromm is pointing to a Spinozian concept of God, like this idea that God is everything, that everything is included. You can even think of it almost as a synonym for nature itself or the cosmos itself. In Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, they talk about this underlying will as if like this whole process that gives

birth to life and consciousness has this undergirding sort of reality to it that you can tap into and become one with, not intellectually, not thinking that you're one with the thing, but experientially feeling it as you feel the sun's heat on your skin or whatever. It's that immediate and that obvious and it's going, it's actually realizing that that deeper connection can only come in lieu of thought, in the ceasing of the intellectualizing about. the idea and the actual experiential melting into the thing itself. And so I think that is a very interesting, mature conception of God. And he frames it as living within God as opposed to believing in God, which I think is also interesting. But again, I'll read that section in full at the end of

this episode. So people who are really interested in that can hear the full argument. And then I would just also say, you mentioned the new atheist phase I went through in a previous phase that you went through Megan where this might not have seemed profound to you. And it is sort of interesting that as we develop personally, we almost go through these stages. And now people can get stuck at different stages, but you know when you're a very small child, you have this sort of superstitious animated sense that everything around you can be alive or like there's ghost or spirits or, you know, things are alive in and of themselves. And then you move into being conditioned into a monotheistic approach where God is this fatherly figure up in the clouds,

looking down and judging you. And then a lot of us, right, we track through like the enlightenment civilizationally where it's like, then you grow up a little bit and maybe you become suspicious of that idea. Maybe you actually rejected in favor of scientific materialism, the sort of main paradigm of our world today coming out of the enlightenment. And then a small section of people, I think, are beginning to come around to this other idea. like going through atheism and through regular religion coming toward and it's only just happening I think on a large enough scale towards this idea of union width of this mystical idea of religion as opposed to the thought-based idea of religion and a lot of people only understand it

vaguely or just sort of intuitively interested in it without having a great grasp on it but I think this thing is emerging civilizationally and it seems to be like with the problems of climate change this force pushing us as a species to sort of evolve to the next stage. Particularly if you buy into this idea that human consciousness has developed from sort of pre-civilizational forms of being and believing and understanding themselves through monotheistic and feudalist forms, through scientific materialist, capitalist forms, and then this new thing is emerging. We don't exactly know what it is, but it's very, very interesting to think of the parallels

between personal development on those fronts and civilizational development. And you can only sort of get as far as your civilization as a whole has gotten and maybe you can be on the leading edge of pushing it to that next stage. But you could never, by definition, be two or three stages ahead of it. We wouldn't even know what that means or if that's even possible. But yeah, you just made me think about that a little bit. And it's not something that he really goes too deep into here, but I think it's food for thought at least.

Yeah, and just one more thing. I think that why it's so profound to me, this whole section that he has on the love of God. And also it's worth noting that this is a section that he like does spend a lot of time on. I think that the reason why it's so profound to me now today are all of the things that you already mentioned. But this like this search for oneness with God, whether it is what you said before like a cosmos or or a oneness with nature or whatever that may mean for you. I think that that is also a key to this, what we were describing earlier as like personal development and like setting aside your narcissism. And like it's not this this totally like external like outward separate thing from yourself, this love of God.

Like it is a love of the self as well. Yeah, self with like a capital S. Yeah, right, right. And I think, you know, in Buddhism we talk about no self. and in Hinduism they talk about true self and it's like two ways of getting at the same thing either the expansion of the self to include everything or the negation of the self

which gets at it from the back door and you're still at the same place and so however you prefer to use the language to discuss it I think it's sort of poking and prodding in the same direction which is I mean I think utterly fascinating now let's go on and talk a little bit about psychoanalysis I know you're somebody that is interested in psychoanalysis and have been for some time

And in this text, it's certainly psychoanalytic on some profound level, although it's critiquing Freud and Freudianism, or at least some strains of psychoanalysis, from within the psychoanalytic tradition itself. And in this text, as I say, Fromm just outwardly critiques Freud. So I was just wondering if you had any thoughts as somebody who's interested in this stuff on the critiques of Freud from the psychoanalytic perspective that Fromm puts forward. Yeah, I'll start by saying that. I am not a Freud scholar, nor have I read much of him as a primary source outside of, like, psychology class in college. But more recently, I have read some more modern, like, Neo-Froidian authors that have actually helped me understand the valuable parts of Freud, while also maybe, like, rejecting some of the,

like, hard-nosed conclusions that, like, I feel like I'm receiving from him or something. something. Most of the critiques that I've engaged with speak of some of his later work that's like maybe hyper-focused on human nature and rejects some of like his earlier claims. Like for example, like I'm not going to really go into it, but some of his earlier claims like hysteria, for example. Some of those thoughts and claims that he had were adjusted to like make popular science or you know popular culture more comfortable with these ideas um so obviously they're catering to like the more like wealthy white men of society and um again that's like a general critique that that i don't even necessarily feel like super tied to um but most of the things i've read

have like addressed these things and i think it's totally relevant the critique that i currently feel most comfortable with actually aligns closely to this neo-Froidian perspective, which is pretty similar to that of Eric Fromm in this book. And none of these authors are necessarily claiming that Freud is inherently wrong in his thinking, but actually maybe add more of like a social or like social material approach to the ways that we become of this world. So for example, many like feminist writers or psychoanalysts like writing on these things at least in more modern times are addressing things like trauma and recovering from it and kind of taking Freud's ideas and using them but like turning them on their head just a little bit so while there's validity to what Freud is saying and Freud's theories like nobody is doubting that necessarily but like these theories of like the nature of why we are. and our instinctual drives, these feminist writers claim that there's kind of a lack of addressing a larger issue at hand, which is the effect of traumatic experiences at various times in our lives,

specifically as children, and maybe, you know, the ways that we're carrying those traumas in our minds, in our emotions, and in our bodies, like, even as we grow, not just after a traumatic experience, but our actual, like, bodily responses that often are, like, wrong. Sometimes we're, like, currently safe, but we're, like, triggered from something that happens in the past, and our body is responding to it before we can think critically about it and say, oh, no, I'm an adult, I am safe, and knowing these things. So I think, in short, I think the critique here is simply, like, taking Freud's main ideas and adding, like, a personal, more nuanced perspective that's tossing in a level of optimism that maybe isn't necessarily explicitly stated by Freud.

But I think what's happening is the question is becoming, how did we get here and how can I put in the work to change in the future rather than we are animalistically who we are, and to deviate that from that is neurotic. And again, I know that that's like super watered down. and I don't necessarily know everything there is to know about Freud, but from Fromm's writings and some of these other writings, that's kind of the vibe I'm picking up on. Yeah, absolutely. You know, one way that I frame it to myself, I think about it in terms of like three huge thinkers in different fields, Freud, Darwin, and Marx. You know, Darwin put forward and formalized the theory of evolution via natural selection, but he was not the end all, be all

of the paradigm, and everything came after him, updated him, challenged aspects of him, but the basic framework that he put out there was incredibly useful, and even those challenging him were challenging him from within the paradigm that he helped put forward in advance. Marx did the same with socialism and anti-capitalism, offering the first ever scientific analysis of what capitalism is, how it works, why it's inherently exploitative, and why it has inherent contradictions inside of it and what those are. Subsequent thinkers and political activists from France Fanon to Sylvia Federici to Lenin and Mao were operating within that that sort of paradigm but updating it challenging it having discussions within it and advancing it all along and I think the exact same thing

is true for Freudian psychoanalysis Freud put the psychoanalysis on the table he pointed to the unconscious and a lot of the specifics of his theory have now turned out to be limited sometimes straight up wrong, but often the best critiques of Freud come from within the paradigm of psychoanalysis because that paradigm takes Freud seriously. It doesn't attempt from the outside to dismiss and just ignore the contribution or deem it irrelevant, but it takes it very seriously and therefore the critiques that is generated within it are more substantial, are more meaningful, and those critiques advance the project of psychoanalysis. You can see it in feminist thinkers in the Freudian tradition, neo-Froidians. You can see it in Jung and other thinkers like that. And even you can

see it in Eric Fromm. Eric Fromm is operating within psychoanalysis, bringing in things like Marxism to create a more robust critique. And then there's the Marxist idea broadly that ideas are generated within material conditions. And I think Fromm does a great job of placing Freud in the material conditions. And I'll just read this quote really quickly because I think it does exactly that, which says, Freud offered us some wonderful things, but you have to understand he was limited by the material context in which he operated, and unbeknownst to him, you know, would reproduce some of the things that were taken as assumptions within the society itself. So Fromm says, Freud's ideas were partly influenced by the spirit of the 19th century.

Partly they became popular through the prevailing spirit of the years after the First World War. Some of the factors which influenced both the popular and the Freudian concepts were first, the reaction against the strict mores of the Victorian age, the second factor determining Freud's theories lies in the prevailing concept of man, which is based on the structure of capitalism. In order to prove that capitalism corresponded to the natural seeds of man,

one had to show that man was by nature competitive and full of mutual hostility. While economists, quote unquote, proved this in terms of the insatiable desire for economic gain, and the Darwinists in terms of the biological law the survival of the fittest, Freud came to the same result by the assumption that man is driven by a limitless desire for the sexual conquest of all women and that only the pressure of society prevented man from acting on his desires. And he goes on to talk about materialism and talk

about how Marx actually took the materialism in a much better direction. And it's all incredibly fascinating. But I really like that idea of thinking about opening a paradigm and then the best critiques of that paradigm often coming from within it. And I think that helps make sense of some of this. Would you agree? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, I think it's really interesting.

I love discussing psychoanalysis and all this stuff. And you introduced me to Karen Horny as a thinker, so I'll definitely be looking more into her and her work. And I'm particularly interested in having done enough work in understanding feminists within the psychoanalytic tradition, critiquing and updating psychoanalysis. So that's something I think I'm going to turn my attention to just in general. but the last chapter, and we're getting towards the end here, and I think I'm going to skip the question about Marx and Materialism, unless you have something really important to say, because I think

we touched on it so much throughout this entire conversation already. But the last chapter of the book is called The Practice of Love, in which after covering his theory of love, he gives some advice on how to develop it in practice. What elements of this chapter did you personally find most useful or interesting. This whole chapter really was pretty interesting because from, he kind of like goes off listing specific practices to guide the reader into, you know, healthy ways of loving and being compassionate. And he's kind of just listing them off.

So I'm not going to do that. But essentially he's suggesting that we make the practice of loving a priority just as we would with any other art form. So if we want to learn how to paint, it's because we enjoy it and we also enjoy the learning process. And to force ourselves to be a painter for the sake of being a painter is really rooted in ego. It's not real. And it should actually be pleasurable to master the art. Like it shouldn't be something that you're dreading. So he's saying like we shouldn't approach love in this way either. When we're practicing love, it shouldn't be something that is like pulling teeth or or is so difficult. It should actually like be presenting us like in my experience

like with immediate results. And those results feel so good. And I think that in any art, that's what we're experiencing when we want to do it. So yeah, I guess I wouldn't have any advice necessarily for the person who thinks that that's like dreadful work to do it. Like maybe it's just not the time and that's okay too. But in that whole section, I think the most beneficial and relevant reminder he offers, in my opinion, is that even mature love is not free of conflict. And he's saying that this conflict, though, is not a projection of some larger neurotic tendency, and it shouldn't be destructive. So he's calling it real conflict, and he's saying that real conflict is cathartic, and it strengthens

a relationship, and it should not be something that is destroying your relationship with another person. It should sort of, like, inhibit growth, and we should, this is our way to actually practice communicating from the center of who we are in the center of my existence and this other person's existence. And this actually is a time for healing and growth. And I guess I think that that's so important because, I mean, most people know at this point that any relationship, no matter how perfect it may appear, has its own struggles and difficulties. But even when we know that, I think we're still kind of like neurotically operating from this place of like my relationship, can be perfect and this shouldn't be this difficult or something like that.

And Eric Fromm is like, hey, no, this is difficult, but in the same way, it's difficult to master the art of painting, not it's difficult because it's tearing me apart. I mean, unless that part that it's tearing apart is your false self, then that's kind of nice, but it shouldn't be like actually destroying you and making things like difficult for the sake of difficulties sick. Yeah. So in doing this, he's saying we should be overcoming our narcissism and seeing people and things as the way they are, like going back to what I said before about seeing people as they are and not constantly wishing that they were somebody else or something else. That is what's important. And that is the part in my experience that all of this

really it takes work like it takes work to actually um you know go through the inner processes of overcoming these sort of practices that are like ingrained in who we are at this point like we didn't necessarily ask for it but that's the reality yeah absolutely and you know i also think in this whole section he's clearly pointing and it explicitly says and even outlines how to do it meditation and you know whether he's talking about humility or courage or patience or faith or any of the other things that he says are part and parcel with this maturation process all of those things in their own way in the general sense can be cultivated consciously within the practice of meditation and the capacity to be alone with oneself the capacity for solitude to be out let's say

in nature by yourself for extended periods of time to get comfortable in your own company seems to be a prerequisite for the ability to love others in the way that they deserve to be loved. And again, this is antithetical in many ways to the incentive structures within our society, which is all about if you're not being productive, then you're not being worthy. Like, you're wasting your time and energy unless you're being productive in the specific ways that capitalism needs you to be productive. And meditation, in and of itself, I think he even makes the point in the book, is on its surface the absolute opposite of everything seemingly productive and valued within the capitalist framework, but is actually one of the

most profound maturing things that you could healthy activities that you could ever engage in. And it is sort of forms the foundation of being able to apply some of these general principles to the specific art of developing your capacity to love. And he has this, he has this great quote too that I think sort of gets at this concentration which could just be called mindfulness right and this idea of the capacity for solitude he says you do many things at once you read you listen to the radio talk smoke eat drink you are the consumer with the open mouth eager and ready to swallow everything pictures liquor knowledge this lack of concentration is clearly shown in our difficulty in being alone with ourselves to sit still without talking smoking reading drinking

is impossible for most people. They become nervous and fidgety and must do something with their mouth or their hands. And I think that's incredibly true. And there's actually been empirical scientific studies on this fact where I forget the exact confines of the study, but it's basically you put somebody in a quiet room with nothing to look at, nothing to do,

and you say sit in here for, let's say, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, I forget the specifics, and just be alone with your thoughts doing nothing or you can get out of this quiet nothing to do room by administering a little painful shock of electricity to yourself and people will sit there and after a couple minutes they'll fucking take the pain of the shock because at least it's something you can do something with your hands you can feel something and you can get out of that room and uh i think i think the ability to cultivate your your capacity to sit still to sit by yourself without having to do anything, which in its most formal form is just meditation, I think

can get you a long way in building up these basic general capacities. Yeah, totally. And just to kind of like piggyback off of that, something that from, you know, briefly mentions is how, you know, that kind of becomes difficult when we're living in a society that's like expecting more and more of us. And that's something I think that I another thing that like is worth diving into further beyond the book is from has all of these suggestions. And I'm not saying that he he's not acknowledging at all how difficult some of these things can be. And I'm also not trying to come up with excuses as to why I don't want to do these things. But I for my own personal experience and something I've experienced very recently, I do find within myself this desire

to want to be alone with my thoughts. And like that doesn't feel scary to me. I want to do it, but like have a really hard time finding the time to do it, or not just the time, but the actual like space and setting to do it. You know, especially you're living with another person. You're working all week or whatever it may be. Sometimes it can be hard to find that space to, allow yourself to think about those things and yeah i guess i guess i just wanted to add that

little bit about sometimes this is actually very difficult definitely and i think that's it's very common particularly when people become interested in something like meditation and they want to do it there's this contradiction between a real deep desire and a very clear seeing of how it would benefit you and then trying to find the time or the willpower when the moment comes to actually do the thing. And there's many reasons for it, and you're absolutely right to point out how difficult it is in a modern context.

Some people do have to resort, for example, to waking up an hour before they have to go to work and their partner are still sleeping and trying to find it at that time. But I also think that doing it over and over and over again like anything else, if you can find the time, and it's not easy, but if you can do it to try to make it into a habit, by doing it so much that,

and I think he talks about this with discipline and concentration, of trying to turn some of these things into habits where they just sort of automatically happen. And with meditation for me, it took getting over those initial sometimes like those contradictory feelings where I want to do it, but I just, there's this inherent restlessness to me or I can't find the time forcing myself to do it over and over and over again before it actually became enjoyable. But there's a contradiction there too because you don't want to make it like this beating yourself over your head and being this tyrant in your own head that says you need to do

this because then when you don't you feel guilt and shame about it so it's like almost an impossibly tight rope to walk at times but you just got to keep trying i guess yeah totally it's it's definitely as you mentioned it's totally something that he's addressing in the book by saying okay um you know if if you want to master the art of painting like you make it a priority and he's he's also saying like make this a priority like like don't don't like put it off make it a priority like you would any other art but then you know the problem comes in when you're just like like oh hey i i'm like i've been pretty interested in like learning how to do stained glass but i actually haven't done that because i don't like have the time to do it and anyway not to like continue on this tangent but

there is like there is definitely a relationship between i mean we're not going to like sit back in our armchairs and say like, you know, like shit on people for not taking the time to master the art of loving. Like, we're trying to survive here. Yeah. Exactly right. Exactly right. All right. Well, let's go ahead and end this conversation, this wonderful conversation with sort of a dual question. Is there any specific quote or quotes that you like from this text and ultimately what do you take away from this book or what can others who engage with it ultimately take away from it and apply meaningfully in their own life? So as I mentioned before, we started recording, I do have a bad habit of reading through

like especially short and sweet text like this one and like highlighting all of those like, hell yeah, like this moment. And so this time around, I really was intentional in avoiding doing too much of that, just in hopes that I could like paraphrase and formulate my own opinions instead of like reiterating the text like I want to sometimes. That being said, at the end of the book, there was, or maybe it wasn't the end, but it was closer to the end. There was this paragraph that I read over at least three times because it was feeling

like it was hitting deep. And I feel like it's a really good example of a central argument. He's saying, love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence. Hence, if one of them experiences himself from the center of his existence. Only in this central experience is human reality. Only here is aliveness. Only here is the basis for love.

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 this existence, that they are one with each other by being one with themselves rather than by fleeing from themselves. There is only one proof for the presence of love, the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned. This is the fruit by which love is recognized. I just, to me, that wasn't even like necessarily at the very end of the book,

but I felt like that was something that could be put at the very end as like a leaving off point. because I feel like it's actually taking so many of his ideas and putting them into one place. And I just really appreciated that one. Yeah, that's wonderful. And I think actually, just to add a little bit, I think, I think like that's kind of like that quote specifically. I think is like his way of debunking that cliche that's kind of like, oh, hey, we are like pieces of one puzzle or like the other half trope that like monogamous couples find themselves using. And I think that most of us have kind of like realized at this point that we have to be whole. This is like what we were talking about before.

Like we have to be whole in order for any of our relationships to thrive. But I think that Fram specifically is adding an element of like self-development that has historically been kind of like dismissed or not dismissed but overlooked. Just this idea that love is bound to fail without developing one's total personality and it can't be achieved without practice. I feel like that's that's kind of what he wants you to take away from that. Yeah, absolutely. I'll do one quote and then we can say what we take away from the book. This is at the end and I think it sums up the dialectical relationship between individual sort of maturation and the social and political struggle that comes along with it. So he says, people capable of love under the present system are necessarily the exceptions.

Love is by necessity a marginal phenomenon in present day Western society. Not so much because many occupations would not permit of a loving attitude, but because the spirit of a production-centered commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself successfully 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 indebted. individualistic marginal phenomena. And I think that's the perfect way to understand his entire conception of love. It's not this navel-gazy, self-obsessive narcissism. It's the opposite of that. And it's inherently dialectically linked up with progress of the entire human species.

And this idea that to really love in the way that Fromm is advocating here is by necessity to be counterculture, to not conform or be conformed to this society. but to challenge it in every aspect, the outward as well as the internal. And I think that that is a huge lesson, ultimately, that I personally take away from this book. Would you want to give your thoughts on what you ultimately take away? You know, that's actually what I was also thinking. That's a really, like, intense point that he's making at the end there. And in just claiming that his principle of love, Fram's principle,

of love that he's describing throughout the entire book is incompatible with capitalism and in order for love to actually succeed the social conditions have to serve the people not the other way around like he's just saying those two things like for a mass sort of like movement around love in this way that he's describing he's saying like that's not going to just happen under these conditions and he's saying like mature love in capitalism is the exception and And, yeah, I guess one of the last things he says that I think is, like, important to think about. And actually, like, earlier we were talking about Freud and how, like, maybe some of Freud's concepts are a little bit, like, pessimistic or even, like, I don't know, dare to say, like, nihilistic. and from is kind of like again saying yeah what Freud is saying is fine but like let me offer you let me like throw you a bone

we can actually like if we just proceed with courage like that's something he talks about a bit is like having the courage to love and and having a courage and faith in humankind and our potentiality is going to be what saves us instead of this like destructive nihilism that's sort of like sitting in this pool of like you know we're we're inherently bad and we're inherently flawed and all these things and and I mean that's something that we see in human interactions is this assumption that other people are by default bad and and I that's that's I guess the point is we have to have the courage to believe that that's not true, and we have to have faith that that's not true. Absolutely. Absolutely, Megan. This is a wonderful conversation on a wonderful text. Highly

encourage anybody that's found any of this interesting to dive into the work itself. As Megan said a few times, it's only 120 pages. The work is the Art of Loving by Eric Fromm. Before I let you go, Megan, could you let me know and the audience know if there's any recommendations that you would offer anybody who is at all interested in the stuff we've discussed today? Yeah, I think it takes a bunch of forms and you could go any which way, but I do have some specific. So if you liked reading The Art of Loving, Eric Fromm also has a book called The Art of Being, which is similar in its demeanor. That one's pretty good. I mentioned a few times that book Neurosis in Human Growth by Karen Horny.

Another book is Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman. She's kind of like in that book comparing the experiences of like specifically women and children experiencing like, you know, having traumatic experiences and how that relates to even like the PTSD symptoms of people who are coming out of the military. That one's pretty good. There are two Rev Left episodes that I think are worth listening to or reading the book. Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff. I know there's an episode floating around somewhere out there about that book, but that is still a book that I hold in my heart as something that offers some sort of, like how I was just talking about the having faith in humanity.

That book resonates with me. And also when we were talking about like mental health and ways of coping, it made me think of capitalist realism by Mark Fisher. I think there is also a Rev. Left episode out there about that. and as we were talking and we were talking like stages of like human development and stuff I thought of this book that's like a little weird but I'm going to throw it in there anyway it's this book called Theory of Everything by Ken Wilbur and it's it's I've read it I love it oh really you've read it yeah oh wow okay cool yeah I'm like a little bit into Ken Wilbur

yeah but but I never know how that's going to be taken same So I'm like nervous to mention it. But I think theory of everything is totally like a good starting place for just like understanding some of the concepts of like people being at different places at different times. And then there's a few podcasts that I've been listening to lately. I really, really am enjoying the Y Theory podcast with Todd McGowan. They're constantly going over things related to what we talked about today. like psychoanalysis and stuff like that. There's also this like Irish theologian that I'm pretty into named Peter Rollins.

And he has a podcast called like, I think it's called like the Peter Rollins Pyro Theology Archive. And in that he is specifically talking about psychoanalysis and the ways it relates to different religions and things like that. he's just really great to listen to. And then this one's kind of out there. It's a podcast called Big Hormone Inneagram. And that one, if you're interested in anything we were talking about related to like character patterns or personality types or like defense mechanisms and things like that, this is just like a group of people that made a podcast and talk about those things in a way

that's like funny and fun and also like really helpful surprisingly so yeah that's what i got awesome yeah i love the why theory podcast i listen to almost every single episode they release they just dropped one on civilization and his discontents which is fascinating um so highly recommend i'll check out those other two too they sound super interesting and megan thank you so much for coming on we can definitely do this again particularly if we want to like focus on a work by karen horny or or some other you know feminist in the psychoanalytic tradition, I think that'd be really, really interesting in something I would love to use the show to amplify and get out. So thank you so much for coming on. This was a wonderful discussion. Yeah, totally. Thanks for having me.

So all I did was Taking for spin Yeah, we hopped Inside my car And I drove in circles Round this freight train yard And he turned The headlights eyes

Then he pulled the battle out And he showed me What his love I'll be a running right Good night Shadow machine I'll be a record player baby if you know what I mean

I'll be a real tough cookie with a whiskey breath I'll be a killer and a thriller and the cause of our death In the blossom of the months I was sure that I'd get driven off with thought So I swallowed all of it

As I realized There was no one Who could kiss away my shit I'll be a morning, bright Good night, shadow machine I'll be a record player, baby If you know what I mean I'll be a real tough cookie

With a whiskey breath I'll be a killer in a thither and the cause of our death I'm sorry. I know you said that you'd take me anyway I came or went But I'll push you from my brain To see your gentle baby I couldn't say it'd only bring you pain

I would you sorry I'd love her a minute you saw I would hear it came out and we were only to call We were just to moon shining on the cusp of the breath And I've been burning for you days since the minute I left Since the evolution of the human race Shifted from a mother-centered to a father-centered structure of society As well as of religion We can trace the development of a maturing love

Mainly in the development of patriarchal religion In the beginning of this development, we find a. despotic, jealous God, who considers man whom he created as his property and is entitled to do with him whatever he pleases. This is the phase of religion in which God drives man out of paradise, lest he eat from the tree of knowledge and thus could become God himself. This is the phase in which God decides to destroy the human race by the flood, because none of them pleases him, with the exception of the favorite son Noah. This is the phase in which God demands from Abraham that he kill his only, his beloved son, Isaac, to prove his love for God by the act of ultimate obedience.

But simultaneously, a new phase begins. God makes a covenant with Noah, in which he promises never to destroy the human race again, a covenant by which he is bound himself. Not only is he bound by his promises, he is also bound by his own principle, that of justice, and on this basis God must yield to Abraham's demand to spare Sodom if there are at least 10 just men. But the development goes further than transforming God from the figure of a despotic tribal chief into a loving father, into a father who himself is bound by the principles which he has postulated. It goes in the direction of transforming God from the figure of a father into a symbol

of his principles, those of justice, truth, and love. God is truth. God is justice. In this development, God ceases to be a person, a man, a father. He becomes the symbol of the principle of unity behind the manifoldness of phenomena, of the vision of the flower which will grow from the spiritual seed within man. God cannot have a name. A name always denotes a thing or a person, something finite. How can God have a name if he is not a person, not a thing? The most striking incident of this change lies in the biblical story of God's revelation to Moses. When Moses tells him that the Hebrews will not believe that God has sent him, unless he can tell them God's name, could idol worshippers comprehend a nameless God, since the very essence of an idol is to have a name,

God makes a concession. He tells Moses that his name is, I am becoming that which I am becoming. I am becoming is my name. The I am becoming means that God is not finite, not a person, not a being. The most adequate translation of the sentence would be, tell them that my name is nameless. The prohibition to make any image of God, to pronounce his name in vain, eventually to pronounce his name at all, aims at the same goal, that of freeing man from the idea that God is a father, that he is a person. In the subsequent theological development, the idea is carried further in the principle that one must not even give God any positive attribute.

To say of God that he is wise, strong, good, implies again that he is a person. The most I can do is to say what God is not, to state negative attributes, to postulate that he is not limited, not unkind, not unjust. The more I know what God is not, the more knowledge I have of God. Following the maturing idea of monotheism and its further consequences can lead only to one conclusion, not to mention God's name at all, not to speak about God. Then God becomes what he potentially is in monotheistic theology, the nameless one, an inexpressible stammer, referring to the unity underlying the phenomenal universe, the ground of all existence. God becomes truth, love, justice.

God is I in as much as I am human. Quite evidently, this evolution from the anthropomorphic to the pure monotheistic principle makes all the difference to the nature of the love of God. The God of Abraham can be loved or feared as a father, sometimes his forgiveness, sometimes his anger being the dominant aspect. Inasmuch as God is the father, I am the child. I have not emerged fully from the childish wish for omniscience and omnipotence. I have not yet acquired the objectivity to realize my limitations as a human being, my ignorance, my helplessness. I still claim, like a child, that there must be a father who rescues me, who watches me, who punishes me, a father who likes me when I am obedient, who is flattered by my praise and angry because of my disobedience.

Quite obviously, the majority of people have, in their personal development, not overcome this infantile stage, and hence the belief in God to most people is the belief in a helping father, a childish illusion. In spite of the fact that this concept of religion has been overcome by some of the great teachers of the human race, and by a minority of men, it is still the dominant form of religion. Inasmuch as this is so, the criticism of the idea of God, as it was expressed by Freud, is quite correct. The error, however, was in the fact that he ignored the other aspect of monotheistic religion, and its true kernel, the logic of which leads exactly to the negation of this concept of God. The truly religious person, if he follows the essence of the monotheistic idea, does not

pray for anything, does not expect anything from God. He does not love God as a child loves his father or his mother. He has acquired the humility of sensing his limitations, to the degree of knowing that he knows nothing about God. God becomes to him a symbol in which man, at an earlier stage of his evolution has expressed the totality of that which man is striving for, the realm of the spiritual world, of love, truth, and justice. He has faith in the principles which, quote, unquote, God represents. He thinks truth, lives love and justice, and considers all of his life only valuable inasmuch as it gives him the chance to arrive at an ever fuller unfolding of his human powers, as the only reality that matters, as the only object of ultimate concern, and eventually he does

not speak about God, nor even mention his name. To love God, if he were going to use this word, would mean then to long for the attainment of the full capacity to love, for the realization of that which God stands for in oneself. From this point of view, the logical consequence of monotheistic thought is the negation of all theology, of all knowledge about God. Yet there remains a difference between such a radical non-theological view and a non-theistic system, as we find it, for instance, in early Buddhism or in Taoism. In all theistic systems, even a non-theological, mystical one, there is the assumption of the reality of the spiritual realm,

as one transcending man, giving meaning and validity to man's spiritual powers and is striving for salvation and inner birth. In a non-theistic system, there exists no spiritual realm outside of man or transcending him. the realm of love reason and justice exists as a reality only because and inasmuch as man has been able to develop these powers in himself throughout the process of his evolution in this view there is no meaning to life except the meaning man himself gives to it man is utterly alone except in as much as he helps another Having spoken of the love of God, I want to make it clear that I myself do not think in terms of a theistic concept, and that to me the concept of God is only a historically conditioned one, in which man has expressed his experience of his higher powers, his longing for truth

and for unity at a given historical period. But I believe also that the consequences of strict monotheism and a non-theistic ultimate concern with the spiritual reality are two views which, though different, need to be not fight each other. At this point, however, another dimension of the problem of the love of God arises, which must be discussed in order to fathom the complexity of the problem. I refer to a fundamental difference in the religious attitude between the East, China and India, and the West. This difference can be expressed in terms of logical concepts. Since Aristotle, the Western world has followed the logical principles of Aristotelian philosophy. This logic is based on the law of identity,

which states that A is A, the law of contradiction, A is not non-A, and the law of the excluded middle. A cannot be A and non-A, neither A nor non-A. Aristotle explains his position very clearly in the following sentence, quote, It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to belong and not to belong to the same thing and in the same respect. And whatever other distinctions we might add to meet dialectical objections, let them be added. is the most certain of all principles." End quote. This axiom of Aristotelian logic has so deeply imbued our habits of thought that it is felt

to be natural and self-evident, while on the other hand the statement that X is A and not A seems to be utterly nonsensical. Of course, the statement refers to the subject X at a given time, not to X now and X later, or one aspect of X as against another aspect. In opposition to Aristotelian logic is what one might call paradoxical logic, which assumes that A and non-A do not exclude each other as predicates of X. Paradoxical logic was predominant in Chinese and Indian thinking, in the philosophy of hieroclitis, and then again, under the name of dialectics, it became the philosophy of Hegel and of Marx. The general principle of paradoxical logic has been clearly described by Lao Tzu. Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical.

and by Chungzu. That which is one is one. That which is not one is also one. These formulations of paradoxical logic are positive. It is and it is not. Another formulation is negative. It is neither this nor that. The former expression of thought we find in Taoist thought, in Heraclitus, and again in Hegelian dialectics. The latter formulation is frequent in Indian philosophy. Although it would transcend the scope of this book to give a more detailed description of the difference between Aristotelian and paradoxical logic, I shall mention a few illustrations in order to make the principle more understandable. Paradoxical logic in Western thought has its earliest philosophical expression in Heraclitus's philosophy. He assumes the conflict between opposites is the basis

of all existence. Quote, they do not understand, he says, that the all one conflicting in itself is identical with itself, conflicting harmony as in the bow and in the liar. Or still more clearly, quote, we go into the same river and yet not in the same. It is we and it is not we. Or one in the same manifests itself in things as living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. In Lautzou's philosophy, the same idea is expressed in a more poetic form. A characteristic, a characteristic example of Taoist paradoxical thinking is the following statement. Gravity is the root of lightness, stillness, the ruler of movement. Or, the Tao in its regular course does nothing, and so there is nothing to which he does not do. Or, my words are very easy to know and very easy to practice, but there is no one

in the world who is able to know and able to practice them. In Taoist thinking, just as an Indian and Socratic thinking, the highest step to which thought can lead is to know what we do not know. To know and yet think we do not know is the highest attainment. Not to know and yet think we do know is a disease. It is only a consequence of this philosophy that the highest God cannot be named. The ultimate reality, the ultimate one, cannot be caught in words or in thoughts. As Lao Zhu puts it, quote, the Tao that can be trod in is not the enduring and unchanging Dow. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name. Or in a different

formulation, we look at it and we do not see it, and we name it the equable. We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it the inaudible. We try to grasp it, and we do not get a hold of it, and we name it the subtle. With these three qualities, it cannot be made the subject of description, and hence we blend them together and obtain the one. And still another formulation of the same idea. Quote, he who knows the Tao does not care to speak about it. He who is however ready to speak about it does not know it. Brahmanic philosophy was concerned with the relationship between manifoldness of phenomena and unity, Brahman. But paradoxical philosophy is neither in India nor in China to be confused with a dualistic standpoint. The harmony, unity, consists in the conflicting

position from each that it is made up of. Brahamical thinking was centered from the beginning around the paradox of the simultaneous antagonisms, yet identity of the manifest forces and forms of the phenomenal world. The ultimate power in the universe as well as in man transcends both the conceptual and the sensual sphere. It is therefore neither this nor thus. But as Zimmer remarks, quote, there is no antagonism between real and unreal in this strictly non-dualistic. realization. In their search for unity behind manifoldness, the Brahmin thinkers came to the conclusion that the perceived pair of opposites reflects the nature, not of things, but of the perceiving mind. The perceiving thought must transcend itself if it is to attain true

reality. Opposition is a category of man's mind, not in itself an element of reality. In the Rig Veda, the principle is expressed in this form, I am the two, the life force and the life material, the two at once. The ultimate consequence of the idea that thought can only perceive in contradictions has found an even more drastic sequence in Vedantic thinking, which postulates that thought, with all its fine distinction, was, quote, only a more subtle horizon of ignorance, in fact, the most subtle of all the diluting devices of Maya. Paradoxical logic has a significant bearing on the concept of God. Inasmuch as God represents the ultimate reality,

and in as much as the human mind perceives reality in contradictions, no positive statement can be made of God. In the Vedantus, the idea of an omniscient and omnipotent God is considered the ultimate form of ignorance. We see here the connection with the namelessness of the two, the namelessness name of God who reveals himself to Moses, of the absolute nothing of Meister Eckhart. Man can only know the negation, never the position of ultimate reality.

Meanwhile, man cannot know what God is, even though he be ever so well aware of what God is not, thus contented with nothing, the mind clamors for the highest good of all. For Meister Eckhart, quote, The divine one is a negation of negations, and a denial of denials. Every creature contains a negation.

One denies that it is the, other." It is only a further consequence that God becomes, for Meister Eckhart, the absolute nothing, just as the ultimate reality is the Ensoff, the endless one for the Kabbalah. I have discussed the difference between Aristotelian and paradoxical logic in order to prepare the ground for an important difference in the concept of the love of God. The teachers of paradoxical logic say that man can perceive reality only in contradictions and can never perceive in thought the ultimate reality unity, the one itself. This led to the consequence that one did not seek as the ultimate aim to find the answer in thought. Thought can only lead us to the knowledge that it

cannot give us the ultimate answer. The world of thought remains caught in the paradox. The only way in which the world can be grasped ultimately lies, not in thought, but in the act, in the experience of oneness. Thus, paradoxical logic leads to the conclusion that the love of God is neither the knowledge of God in thought, nor the thought of one's love of God, but the act of experiencing the on the oneness with God. This leads to the emphasis on the right way of living. All of life, every little and every important action, is devoted to the knowledge. of God, but a knowledge not in right thought, but in right action. This can be clearly seen in oriental religions. In Brahmanism, as well as in Buddhism and Taoism, the ultimate aim

of religion is not the right belief, but the right action. We find the same emphasis in the Jewish religion. There was hardly ever a schism over belief in the Jewish tradition, the one great exception, the difference between Pharisees and Sadducees, was essentially one of two opposite social classes. The emphasis of the Jewish religion was, especially from the beginning of our era on, on the right way of living, the halacha, this word actually having the same meaning as the Tao. In modern history, the same principle is expressed in the thought of Spinoza, Marx, and Freud. In Spinoza's philosophy, the emphasis is shifted from the right belief to the right conduct of life. Marx stated the same principle when he said, quote, the philosophers have interpreted the world in

different ways, the task is to transform it. Freud's paradoxical logic leads him to the process of psychoanalytic therapy, the ever-deepening experience of oneself. From the standpoint of paradoxical logic, the emphasis is not on thought, but on the act. This attitude had several other consequences. First of all, it led to the tolerance which we find in Indian and Chinese religious development. If the right thought is not the ultimate truth and not the way to salvation, there is no reason to fight others whose thinking has arrived at different formulations. This tolerance is beautifully expressed in the story of several men who are asked to describe an elephant in the dark. One, touching his trunk, said, this animal is like a water pipe. Another,

touching his ear, said, this animal is like a fan. A third, touching his legs, described the animal as a pillar. Secondly, the paradoxical standpoint led to the emphasis on transforming man rather than to the development of dogma on the one hand and science on the other. From the Indian, Chinese, and mystical standpoints, the religious task of man is not to think right, but to act right, and or to become one with the one in the act of concentrated meditation. The opposite is true for the mainstream of Western thought. Since one expected to find the ultimate truth in right thought, major emphasis was on thought, although right action was held to be important too.

In religious development, this led to the formulation of dogmas, endless arguments about dogmatic formulations and intolerance of the non-believer or heretic. It furthermore led to the emphasis on believing in God as the main aim of a religious attitude. This, of course, did not mean that there was not also the concept that one ought to be living right, but nevertheless, the person who believed in God, even if he did not live God, felt himself to be superior to the one who lived God, but did not believe in him. The emphasis on thought has also another and historically a very important consequence. The idea that one could find the truth in thought led not only to dogma, but also to science. In scientific thought, the correct thought is all that matters,

both from the aspect of intellectual honesty, as well as from the aspect of the application of scientific thought to practice, that is to technique. In short, paradoxical thought led to tolerance and an effort towards self-transformation. The Aristotelian standpoint led to dogma and science, to the Catholic Church, and to the discovery of atomic energy. The consequences of this difference between the two standpoints for the problem of the love of God have already been explained implicitly, and need only to be summarized briefly. 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 most radical formulation has been given to this goal by Meister Eckhart. Quote, if therefore I am him changed into God, and he makes me one with himself, then by the living God, there is no distinction between us. Some people imagine that they are going to see God, that they are going to see God as if he were standing yonder, and they hear, but it is not to be so. God and I, we are one. By knowing God, I take him into myself. By loving God, I penetrate him. End quote. We can return now to an important parallel between the love for one's parents.

and the love for God. The child starts out by being attached to his mother as the ground of all being. He feels helpless and needs the all-enveloping love of mother. He then turns to father as the new center of his affections, father being a guiding principle for thought and action. In this stage, he is motivated by the need to acquire father's praise and to avoid his displeasure. In this stage of full maturity,

he has freed himself from the person of mother and a father as protecting and commanding powers. He has established the motherly and fatherly principles in himself. He has become his own father and mother. He is father and mother. In the history of the human race, we see and can anticipate the same development. From the beginning of the love for God as the helpless attachment to a mother goddess, through the obedient attachment to a fatherly God,

to a mature stage where God ceases to be an outside power, where man has incorporated the principles of love and justice into himself, where he has become one with God, and eventually to a point where he speaks of God only in a poetic, symbolic sense. From these considerations, it follows that the love for God cannot be separated from the love for one's parents. If a person does not emerge from incestuous attachment to mother, clan, nation, if he retains the childish dependence on a punishing and rewarding father or any other authority, he cannot develop up a more mature love for God. Then his religion is that of the earlier phase of religion, in which God was experienced as an all-protective mother or a punishing and rewarding father.

In contemporary religion, we find all the phases, from the earliest and most primitive development to the highest still present. The word God denotes the tribal chief as well as the absolute nothing. In the same way, each individual retains in himself, in his unconscious, as Freud has shown, all the stages from the helpless infant on. The question is to what point he has grown. One thing is certain. The nature of his love for God corresponds to the nature of his love for man. And furthermore, the real quality of his love for God and man often is unconscious,

covered up and rationalized by a more mature thought of what his love is. Love for man, furthermore, while directly embedded in his relations to his family, is in the last analysis, determined by the structure. of the society in which he lives. If the social structure is one of submission to authority, overt authority, or the anonymous authority of the market and public opinion, his concept of God must be infantile, and far from the mature concept, the seeds of which are to be found in the history of monotheistic religion.