Art of Loving

1 Pages 242 Words

According to Erich Fromm, love is the best answer to the problem of human existence. Love is the most satisfying fulfillment of humanity’s most powerful desire: the desire of interpersonal union. Having a capacity of critical thinking and self-awareness, humans realized their aloneness and separateness, their individuality and their short life span. “The desire for interpersonal fusion is the most powerful striving in man. It is the most fundamental passion, it is the force which keeps the human race together: family, clan, society, nation, world.” As mentioned above, love, turns out to be the most satisfying of all approaches to transcending boundaries of individual life. There is orgiastic state, which may have the form of sexual orgasm, alcohol, drugs and etc. All forms of orgiastic unions are intense, and even violent; they are transitory and periodical. Orgiastic unions result in an ever-increasing sense of separateness. Another form of union to overcome separateness is conformity. Union by conformity is calm and it is permanent. “It is a union in which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the herd.” People try to be equal by performing tasks and feelings prescribed by the system and trying to follow the same rules, the same pattern of life from the age three or four. Unfortunately, “equality today means ‘sameness’, rather that ‘oneness’.” This form of...