Loneliness and love

In Fromm's book The Art of Love, Fromm argues that love is the answer to the question of human survival, and that each theory of love should be premised on the theory of man and the survival of man. The biggest problem facing human existence is loneliness, and how to get rid of this loneliness of imprisonment.

Man is born into an uncertain, completely open environment, knowing nothing but knowing that there is a final death.

Man has reason, a life that is aware of his own existence. Man is aware of the brevity of life, of involuntariness, of death, of his loneliness and isolation, of his powerlessness in the face of the power of society and nature. All this makes his special and lonely existence an intolerable imprisonment, from which man will go mad if he is not freed from it and is united with the people or the world around him.

Loneliness also inevitably evokes feelings of fear, shame and guilt.

Because loneliness means that people have no contact with the outside world, cannot exert human power, and means that the world can only be resigned. So there will be fear.

The reason for shame and guilt is that people in a state of loneliness need to achieve a new union between people through true love, and when people do not yet have the ability to love, they will feel ashamed and guilty.

Adam and Eve had absolute free will, and their ability to break God's commandments proves this, because God could have stopped their actions, but God did not. Of course, the proof of having free will is first and foremost the choice to break the commandments and disobey, otherwise how to manifest it? When they ate the fruit of the tree of discernment between good and evil, they realized their differences, but at this time they had not yet learned to love and achieve a new union, as evidenced by Adam's pushing the responsibility for stealing the forbidden fruit to Eve. In separation, without the power of love, shame and guilt arise.

Therefore, in Fromm's view, the greatest need for man is to overcome his own loneliness and get rid of the imprisonment of loneliness. In the process of trying to achieve this goal, people will go crazy if they fail completely. To achieve this goal, it is obviously to get real love.

Love exists only in people, and things similar to love in animals are mainly instinctive. Although man transcends the animal kingdom and transcends instinctive adaptability, man can never be completely detached from nature. Man continues to be a part of nature, separated from nature, and can never become one with nature. Man can only replace the original harmony with a new, human harmony.

Henan Yangxia Psychological Studio Zhao Qingwei