A quote from Erich Fromm and a link to Dr Lewin's wonderful lectures served up in completely free ogg format.
To Have or To Be (1976) was Erich Fromm's last major work. In it he argues that two ways of existence were competing for 'the spirit of mankind' - having and being. The having mode looks to things and material possessions and is based on aggression and greed. The being mode is rooted in love and is concerned with shared experience and productive activity. The dominance of the having mode (as he argued in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness) was bringing the world to the edge of disaster (ecological, social and psychological). Erich Fromm argued that only a fundamental change in human character 'from a preponderance of the having mode to a preponderance of the being mode of existence can save us from a psychological and economic catastrophe' (1976: 165) and set out some ways forward.
I have never read this book, but now it seems a sensible thing to do. It appears to express what I feel about the nature of the descent into totalitarianism and greed that poisons the world.
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