The Art of Being

by Erich Fromm

Faith in life, in oneself, in others must be built on the hard rock of realism; that is to say, on the capacity to see evil where it is, to see swindle, destructiveness, and selfishness not only when they are obvious but in their many disguises and rationalizations.

is not cynicism; it is uncompromisingly critical, a refusal to play the game in a system of deception. Meister Eckhart expressed this briefly and succinctly when he said of the “simple one” (whom Jesus taught) “He does not deceive but he is also not deceived.”[viii]

Indeed, neither the Buddha, nor the Prophets, nor Jesus, nor Eckhart, nor Spinoza, nor Marx, nor Schweitzer were “softies.” On the contrary, they were hardheaded realists and most of them were persecuted and maligned not because they preached virtue but because they spoke truth. They did not respect power, titles, or fame, and they knew that the emperor was naked; and they knew that power can kill the “truth-sayers.”

One might also define “trivial” as an attitude that is concerned only with the surface of things, not with their causes or the deeper layers;

addition, that triviality results from unaliveness, unresponsiveness, deadness, or from any concern that is not related to the central task of man: to be fully born.

If the mind of a monk inclines to talking, he should think thus: “I shall not engage in the low kind of talk that is vulgar, worldly and unprofitable; that does not lead to detachment, dispassionateness, cessation, tranquility, direct knowledge, enlightenment, Nirvana; namely talk about kings, thieves, ministers, armies, famine and war; about eating, drinking, clothing and lodgings; about garlands, perfumes, relatives, vehicles, villages, towns, cities and countries; about women and wine, the gossip of the street and the well, talk about ancestors, about various trifles, tales about the origins of the world and the sea, talk about things being so or otherwise, and similar matters.” Thus he has clear comprehension.

“But talk that is helpful for leading the austere life, useful for mental clarity, that leads to complete detachment, dispassionateness, cessation, tranquility, direct knowledge, enlightenment and Nibbana; that is talk on frugality, contentedness, solitude, seclusion, application of energy, virtue, concentration, wisdom, deliverance and on the knowledge and vision bestowed by deliverance—in such talk shall I engage.” Thus he has clear comprehension.[ix]

etc., and how rarely do these conversations go beyond the obvious—the strict partisan viewpoint—and penetrate to the roots and causes of the phenomena that are discussed.

Perhaps most trivial talk is a need to talk about oneself; hence, the never-ending subject of health and sickness, children, travel, successes, what one did, and the innumerable daily things that seem to be important. Since one cannot talk about oneself all the time without being thought a bore, one must exchange the privilege by a readiness to listen to others talking about themselves. Private social meetings between individuals (and often, also, meetings of all kinds of associations and groups) are little markets where one exchanges one’s need to talk about oneself and one’s desire to be listened to for the need of others who seek the same opportunity.

He is afraid of close contact with another and equally afraid to be alone and have no contact. It is the function of trivial conversation to answer the question “How do I remain alone without being lonely?”

The listener produces the illusion of a dialogue, when in reality there is only a monologue.

Bad company, on the other hand, is not only the company of merely trivial people but of evil, sadistic, destructive life-hostile people.

There is no contact between human beings that does not affect both of them.

lives. Who, after being with a certain person, has not felt cheered up, more alive, in a better mood, or in some cases even possessing new courage and new insights, even though the content of the conversation would not account for this change;

Who, after being with a certain person, has not felt cheered up, more alive, in a better mood, or in some cases even possessing new courage and new insights, even though the content of the conversation would not account for this change;

that it is desirable to avoid trivial and evil company altogether, unless one can assert oneself fully and thus make the other doubt his own position.

it is desirable to avoid trivial and evil company altogether,

unless one can assert oneself fully and thus make the other dou...

Inasmuch as one cannot avoid bad company, one should not be deceived: One should see the insincerity behind the mask of friendliness, the destructiveness behind the mask of eternal complaints...

Moses Maimonides, recognizing the effect of bad company, made the drastic proposal: “If you live in a country whose inhabitants are evil, avoid their company. If they try to force you to associate with them, leave the country, even if it means going to the desert.”

“If you live in a country whose inhabitants are evil, avoid their company. If they try to force you to associate with them, leave the country, even if it means going to the desert.”

If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being “aso...

We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hu...

How many lives have been ruined by this ne...

but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few

who may have a justified claim for explanation.

But in the social sciences, art, and literature courses, and in elementary and high schools, the same tendency is present. Make it easy and take it easy! The professor who insists on hard work is called “authoritarian,” or old-fashioned.

executives, requires people with a smattering of knowledge as our colleges provide it. Second, our whole social system rests upon the fictitious belief that nobody is forced to do what he does, but that he likes to do it.

requires people with a smattering of knowledge as our colleges provide it.

Force is camouflaged by consent; the consent is brought about by methods of mass suggestion. As a consequence, study too should be felt as pleasant, not enforced, and all the more so in fields in which the need for serious knowledge is minimal.

by methods of mass suggestion. As a consequence, study too should be felt as pleasant, not enforced, and all the more so in fields in which the need for serious knowledge is minimal.

machine. In the second industrial revolution, thinking and memorizing are replaced by machines up to the large computers. This liberation from hard work is experienced as the greatest gift of modern “progress.”

And it is a gift—provided that the human energy thus liberated be applied to other, more elevated and creative tasks.

The liberation from the machine has resulted in the ideal of absolute laziness, of the horror...

The good life is the effortless life; the necessity to make strong efforts is, as it were, considered to be a medieval remnant, and one makes strong efforts only if o...

Related to the no-effort doctrine is the no-pain doctrine.

Pain is referred to here in the broadest sense of the word, not merely physical and mental pain. It is also painful to practice musical scales for hours every day, to study a subject that is not interesting yet is necessary for acquiring the knowledge one is interested in; it is painful to sit and study when one would like to meet his girlfriend, or just walk, or have fun with friends. These are indeed small pains.

It is also painful to practice musical scales for hours every day, to study a subject that is not interesting yet is necessary for acquiring the knowledge one is interested in; it is painful to sit and study when one would like to meet his girlfriend, or just walk, or have fun with friends.

Regretfully, one must be willing to accept them cheerfully and without fretting if one wants to learn what is essential, wants to correct...

hierarchy. As far as more severe suffering is concerned, it must indeed be said that to be happy is only the lot of a few, to suffer is the lot of all men. Solidarity among men has one of its strongest foundations in the experie...

Another obstacle to being is the phobia against anything that is considered authoritarian, that is to say, “forced” upon the individual and requiring discipline.

(Jean-Paul Sartre in his concept of freedom has given the philosophical rationalization for this ideal.)

roots, we cannot understand the passionate character of the wish for liberty unless we take into account that this wish was also rooted in a powerful existential passion: The need to be oneself and not a means to be used for the purposes of others.

With changing methods of production, particularly the increasing role of machines, and with the change from the idea of hard work and saving to the ideal of consumption (“happiness”), overt personal obedience to a person was substituted by submission to the organization: the endless belt, the giant enterprises, governments which persuaded the individual that he was free, that everything was done in his interests, that he, the public, was the real boss. Yet precisely because of the gigantic power and size of the bureaucracy of the state, army, industry, the replacement of personal bosses by impersonal bureaucracies, the individual became more powerless than he was, even before—but he is not aware of his powerlessness.

overt personal obedience to a person was substituted by submission to the organization:

awareness, he has now built up an ideal of absolute, unrestricted “personal” freedom.

revolution. It tried to establish the freedom of whim instead of the freedom of will.

It tried to establish the freedom of whim instead of the freedom of will.

A whim is any desire that emerges spontaneously, without any structural connection with the whol...

but because of the compulsive need to act out what even he has conceived as a wish.