Love is a positive, not a negative emotion, something that grows within a person.
- Fromm, The Art of Love
People usually think that love is an instinct, at least everyone loves, and as for the tragedy of love, the reason is attributed to the object of love, not love itself.
Unsuccessful love is only because you love the wrong person, and just as successful love is because that person is attractive. Worthy of love is a combination of many good qualities, humorous, funny, successful, cultured, elegant, and so on.
However, Fromm believes that love is an ability, like any skill, that it needs to be practiced the day after tomorrow, and that the problem of love is not the object, but the problem of the person who made it.
At the same time, there is a difference between falling in love and being in love, the former is often associated with sexual attraction, and the latter is the "skill" that needs to be learned.
01
The Art of Loving, Chinese translated as the art of love, but in fact, Fromm's "art" has a more primitive meaning of "skill", love is a skill that needs to be understood and practiced, just like carpentry, painting, and playing musical instruments.
Since love is a skill, it is necessary to learn love in the same way as learning a skill.
Learning a craft usually requires learning a few things: theory, understanding the current situation, and practice.
The same is true of love, and after explaining that love is a skill, "The Art of Love" goes on to explain the theory of love, the current state of incomplete love in modern society, and how to practice love.
Fromm examines the theory of love in the history of mankind, and he believes that the theory of love is actually a theory of man.
Love is the answer to the problem of human survival.
People are filled with emotions of insecurity, anxiety, fear of separation, fear, etc., and the root of these emotions is loneliness.
People use many ways to get rid of loneliness, such as indulgence, collective life, the establishment of city-states, religious organizations, artistic creation, etc., these activities/organizations help people get rid of the state of separation, find inner harmony and peace, and forget the external world around them.
But these methods have drawbacks, such as the temporal nature of indulgence, the uniform obedience that comes with collective life, the fact that artistic creation is only effective for a few people, and love is the only widely applicable way to fight separation.
Although Fromm criticized Freud many times in the book, his approach was actually the same as Freud's, returning to human childhood and finding the reason for the structure of adult social organization.
For example, Fromm believes that the love of the mother is unconditional, the love of the father is conditional, and only when the child completes a certain task, or meets certain requirements of the father, can he get the love of the father.
In religion, the love of God is the love of the Father, and in religion God is a pronoun for abstract norms.
Although Fromm's analysis is not impeccable, and not to mention whether the mother's love is unconditionally well-founded, there is no biological theory that the child will secrete a substance that loves the child unconditionally, or there will not be so many abandoned babies. It may seem far-fetched to justify the organized forms of society from childhood, but of course these do not affect the inspiration given by Fromm's theory of "love."
02
The object of love is not only the child, God, but also the self.
People are used to equating love for themselves with selfishness or narcissism, and for a time in the West, loving oneself was sinful.
Fromm believes that loving oneself and loving one's lover are not contradictory, and since they are also human beings, why can't they love themselves if they love others?
It can even be said that loving oneself is the basic ability of love, and if one does not love oneself, one cannot love others.
Selfishness is the opposite of loving oneself, selfish people do not love themselves, to be precise, they do not know how to love themselves, selfishness only covers up their vulnerability and inability to pay attention to their true selves.
Similarly, a man who is too selfless does not love himself, he is not capable of loving.
True love is to love others as much as you love yourself.
The problem of love is even more acute in modern society. Modern society has expelled God, and man is just a screw in the machine, all for better output and consumption.
There are two misconceptions about love in modern society.
The first is "hugging for warmth". People refer to their lovers as "teammates", which is an expression extension of industrial production habits, what kind of team is this? Get rid of the lonely team with the task of accomplishing a certain goal (parenting or starting a family, etc.). Equating a happy marriage with a well-functioning team.
Among them, lovers are also required to have the qualities of excellent employees: independence, tolerance, cooperation, enterprising...
The second misconception is that love is a product of sex. This understanding reduces love to animal instinct. In reality, however, on the contrary, sex is the product of love.
True love has no purpose.
"Ma Bao Man", "Masochism", "Masochism", etc., will not really love people, but use people as tools and means. This situation also happens to parents to their children, parents with strong control will take their children as the focus of shifting their own life problems, and controlling parents will not reflect on their own problems, but will only project to transform others.
In modern society, all activities are subordinate to economic goals, people have become "tool people", they have become commodities, and the relationship between people has become instrumental relations, and there is only the attribute of "exchange".
So being able to truly love oneself and others can resist/make up for the alienation of people in modern society to a certain extent. (Fromm's views here have long been criticized for being too naïve.) ）
03
Love needs to be practiced.
Acquiring a skill requires many qualities: discipline, concentration, patience, great interest.
In modern society, eight-hour work a day is not self-discipline, but a kind of other discipline, and people are forced to work. Regular daily working hours are for some external purpose, not out of his own will.
True self-discipline is from the heart, even if there will be pain in the beginning, but perseverance will be internalized into human habits.
Just as Baudrillard argues in Consumer Society that exhaustion is a positive antagonistic mood, Fromm sees laziness and not wanting to do anything after work as a rebellion against modern society.
The ability to focus is even more scarce in modern society.
Modern society has stuffed too many things, people can do many things at the same time, while watching movies while chatting and eating, etc., can not stop for a moment, walking on the road pedestrians have to listen to headphones, or hold mobile phones to watch videos. Being alone seems like a great difficulty for modern people.
This highlights the importance of patience.
Patience in modern society is not only scarce, but also not approved, because modern society pays attention to speed and acceleration, and the faster the unit time, the more output is produced.
This makes people also have no patience to wait for anything, time is always used to do something, and once there is nothing to do, the time is consumed (kill time).
Finally, there is the interest, the interest in making this skill the first priority of life. Even if you will take a detour, even if what you have just learned has nothing to do with this skill, you will not complain.
Practicing the ability to love also requires these qualities, and Fromm gives some practice advice.
People need to focus on themselves in order to be alone and focused.
People who cannot be separated from others and cannot be alone will not love others, because lovers are "lifesavers" for him, and only independent people can love others.
Meditation is a good practice of solitude, in many ways, to feel the presence of "me."
Practice focusing away from trivial conversations, in today's parlance, useless socializing, which is not just time-consuming, but distracting.
Enjoy the moment. Don't think about what to do next, in love, two people must also learn to get along with each other, rather than always running away.
Be sensitive to yourself. Perceiving the body, perceiving emotions, the former is easier and the latter is more difficult. Know why you're not happy and why you're depressed.
If there is no sensitivity to the self, it is impossible to perceive a complete life, and it will not love people.
How to perceive a complete life? Be objective.
The so-called objective vision is an ability to see things as what they are.
In work, it is usually said that "the right thing is not right for people", but it is difficult for people to do it, which requires an objective vision, the rationality behind the need, the so-called empathetic thinking.
In love, people who cannot objectively look at their families without reason can also look at strangers objectively, and vice versa.
Love also requires faith: confidence in oneself, confidence in one's partner. This confidence is not blind confidence.
Irrational beliefs are blind obedience to authoritative leaders and the opinions of the people. Rational belief is based on confidence in one's own knowledge and past experiences.
Faith in others is trust in that person's abilities, responsibility, and love.
Only those who have faith in themselves can have faith in others, and the two complement each other.
This confidence is a condition of commitment.
In turn, blind obedience to power, authority, opinion, etc., is essentially the person's lack of confidence in personal potential.
The first step in cultivating confidence is to notice the things that make you lose confidence, when you want to run away, and be cowardly. The second step is to take action.
The action of love has no purpose, and love itself is the highest purpose.
I love you not because you are useful to me, not because I can't live without you, not because of your identity or status.
What I love is you as a person, yourself, your pure consciousness.
Because you are the only you.