A Commentary on Erich Fromm’s Book “To Have or To Be?”

Perceptual maps and secular idolatry

“The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. And a man will worship something. That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the contemporary world, it is unpopular to say that one is religious. Religion, for most, seems a thing of the past, an irrational worldview that has to be overcome in order for true rationality to bloom. But have people truly become secular, or do they only think that they have? In order to find it out, first, we have to look into what the word “religion” means.

A few posts ago we’ve already talked about the difference between the esoteric and exoteric religiosity. We’ve also discussed the Indian Shad Darshanas and have developed a better view of Indian religious and philosophical thinking. Today, I’d like to approach the question of religion from another angle. Let’s try to look at it through the eyes of a German psychoanalyst and polymath Erich Fromm.

Erich had an interesting and rather different (indeed, a very psychoanalytical) view of what being “religious” means. In his book “To Have or To Be” he wrote:

“To clarify, “religion” as I use it here does not refer to a system that has necessarily to do with a concept of God or with idols or even to a system perceived as religion, but to any group-shared system of thought and action that offers the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion. Indeed, in this broad sense of the word no culture of the past or present, and it seems no culture in the future, can be considered as not having religion.

In the eyes of the writer, religion serves as a map that guides people in a certain direction through the act of devotion, which is not just personal, but also social. This conception can involve quote-on-quote “classic religiosities” (such as Judaism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, etc.) or “secular religions” (take for example Communism, Fascism, or Capitalism.) Even though many people believe that they have left their religious idols, I would like to argue that they are just as religious as ever. What has changed is the objects of devotion, not the process itself.

Humans are one of the few (if not the only) species that are able to think abstractly. Thus, from our birth to our deathbed we develop and modify our mental models of the world, explaining to ourselves what it is and how we should act while being in it. In this sense, we are in the world, while the world is also in us. Our brains are filters that sort out all that we sense, feel, and perceive. In doing that they create abstract maps of our surroundings, defining them and giving them meaning.

But to have a map is not enough. We also have to act it out. In order to do that a person needs an aim (an object of worship), something that will guide his or her actions and move one in a specific direction. What moves one forward is either a belief that:

a) this is the way of how life should be lived and conducted (an ethical perspective);
b) if I do ‘x’, I will receive ‘z’ (a gain-oriented perspective).

As written further by Fromm:

“The definition of “religion” does not tell us anything about its specific content. People may worship animals, trees, idols of gold or stone, an invisible god, a saintly person, or a diabolic leader; they may worship their ancestors, their nation, their class or party, money or success. Their religion may be conducive to the development of destructiveness or of love, of domination or of solidarity; it may further their power of reason or paralyze it.

As mentioned by the writer, the person’s framework is not created by himself alone. Often he himself (or rather his perception of who he is) is a byproduct of the surrounding culture, its norms, and values. Even when a person thinks that his thoughts and worldviews are his, most of the time they are merely an amalgamation of interpretations gathered through the teachings of his parents, school, or other mediums of socialization.

In other words, if the greater society values wealth, often the person’s religion will be that of acquisitiveness and hoarding. If what is valued is status — the object of worship will be status. If the object of worship is the idea of communal ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange… Well, we can take a look at the examples of North Korea, SSRS, or Mao China and see how that ends up. The previously mentioned countries are great examples of what happens when what is proclaimed officially does not correspond with what has been established practically. For this reason, Erich Fromm adds:

“We are what we are devoted to, and what we are devoted to is what motivates our conduct. Often, however, individuals are not even aware of the real objects of their personal devotion and mistake their “official” beliefs for their real, though secret religion. If, for instance, a man worships power while professing a religion of love, the religion of power is his secret religion, while his so-called official religion, for example, Christianity, is only an ideology.”

Being and having

Without knowing how life is outside the confines of one’s culture one is deeply susceptible to the influence of charismatic leaders. They have promises as grandiose as the ones of the religious prophets, yet they guise it a language of the current day, pointing towards a “brighter future.” At first, people such as Mao, Lenin, and Hitler highly appealed to the deep-rooted wants of their citizens, yet the consequences of their rule were dire. Now we have other leaders that appeal to their group’s shadows and move humanity not toward a sustainable future, but a destructive end.

A leader is no one without his people. Unfortunately, lay people are not angels themselves. Their map of the world is often aimed toward an inextinguishable thirst for wealth, power, and status, instead of simply being and experiencing. Now, there is nothing wrong with neither wealth, nor power, or status. The problems start only when they become ends in themselves, the only things to strive for.

Once a person’s predisposition becomes aimed toward having as the end goal, he will not be satiated by only one thing, not in this day and age. As the age of unprecedented production and consumption carries on, he will want more, maybe more than he can actually muster. Knowing that limits have been placed on one’s ability to clutch, anger and jealousy will follow. “Why do they have more than I do?”, “They must have stolen it.” Or even worse… “Their prosperity has come only on our behalf. We have to rightfully take back what is ours.” With this mindset, fighting, antagonism, and war cannot be avoided. This is actually THE mindset of war.

Contrary to the mentality of “having” there is an alternative — an orientation toward “being.” As explained by Erich Fromm:

“By being I refer to the mode of existence in which one neither has anything nor craves to have something, but is joyous, employs one’s faculties productively, is oned to the world.”

Being is an experience of life when one is not fettered to things, at least, not in an internal manner. Similar to the Buddhist doctrine of “Sunyata”, it is a state when the person experiences existence as nothingness (no-thingness), meaning, that he is able to see the world not as an amalgamation of separate, individual things, but as an interrelated web of appearances, clothed in words, ideas, beliefs, and conceptions. Just as the menu is not the food, the conception is not the world. Thus, a person is free from desiring that which he already is.

In order not to misjudge Fromm’s notions of having as inevitably “evil”, or opposed to being, the writer also mentions a type of having that does not antagonize with being:

“Human existence requires that we have, keep, take care of, and use certain things in order to survive. This holds true for our bodies, for food, shelter, clothing, and for the tools necessary to produce our needs. This form of having may be called existential having because it is rooted in human existence. It is a rationally directed impulse in the pursuit of staying alive-in contrast to the characterological having we have been dealing with so far, which is a passionate drive to retain and keep that is not innate, but that has developed as the result of the impact of social conditions on the human species.”

There is no problem with this orientation. Every person has to have at least the necessary minimum to sustain his life and to live with a degree of dignity. The problem arrives only when the lust to clutch oversteps the want to live peacefully and harmoniously both with your fellow man and nature as a whole.

The necessity for a reorientation

Even though our ecological crisis is deepening, we still spent resources, time, and effort fighting wars that further deters both the planetary and the human condition. People that are oriented to “having” (and having more at any cost) are as myopic as they’ve always been. The problem nowadays is that our technologies have advanced to such a degree that the desire to have may spell doom for all of us.

Fromm would most probably be rolling in his grave if he saw what is currently happening in the Russo-Ukrainian war, or the conflicts in Syria. The conflicts are as dumb as ever, especially taking into consideration not just the pollutive and deterring effects of bombing, but also the enveloping food crisis that will bring hunger back to the developing countries. Such conflicts cannot be avoided if the orientation not of just the leading branch, but also of their followers remains geared towards acquiring. Even greater a problem is a personal necessity to “keep face”, as a change in behaviour might show that one’s previous actions were wrong. As said by Fromm:

“If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I? Nobody but a defeated, deflated, pathetic testimony to a wrong way of living.”

Still, a reorientation must be achieved both on individual and societal levels if humanity as a whole wants to continue its life on this planet or any other for that matter. As offered by Fromm in the finishing chapters of his book “To Have or To Be?”, at least 6 things should be achieved on the societal level of each and any given community in order to bring them back to sanity:

• The production must serve the real needs of the people, not the demands of the economic system;
• A new relation must be established between people and nature, one of cooperation not of exploitation;
• Mutual antagonism must be replaced by solidarity;
• The aim of all social arrangements must be human well-being and the prevention of ill-being;
• Not maximum consumption but sane consumption that furthers well-being must be striven for;
• The individual must be an active, not a passive, participant in social life.

As societies are merely the expression of their citizens, even more must be done on the personal level. Here are a few suggestions from the writer’s chapter “The New Man”. Some of the qualities that a person wishing to live peacefully and in union with the larger whole should behold are:

• Love and respect for life in all its manifestations, in the knowledge that not things, power, all that is dead, but life and everything that pertains to its growth are sacred.
• Joy that comes from giving and sharing, not from hoarding and exploiting.
• Being fully present where one is.
• Shedding one’s narcissism and accepting the tragic limitations inherent in human existence.
• Making the full growth of oneself and of one’s fellow beings the supreme goal of living.
• Sensing one’s oneness with all life, hence giving up the aim of conquering nature, subduing it, exploiting it, raping it, destroying it, but trying, rather, to understand and cooperate with nature.
• Freedom that is not arbitrariness but the possibility to be oneself, not as a bundle of greedy desires, but as a delicately balanced structure that at any moment is confronted with the alternative of growth or decay, life or death.
• Security, sense of identity, and confidence based on faith in what one is, on one’s need for relatedness, interest, love, solidarity with the world around one, instead of on one’s desire to have, to possess, to control the world, and thus become the slave of one’s possessions.
• Happiness in the process of ever-growing aliveness, whatever the furthest point is that fate permits one to reach, for living as fully as one can is so satisfactory that the concern for what one might or might not attain has little chance to develop.

These guidelines are not easy to follow, but much has to be done to bring stability not just on a personal or societal level, but on the planetary level as a whole. Long have we been fighting and hoarding, but those days have to come to a rest. If not, this only proves that even though we have advanced technologically, psychologically we are still on the same level as we were hundreds of thousands of years ago. Most probably our ancestors knew better how to live communally and take care of their environment than contemporary people do.

If people will not reorient their lives towards ecological and planetary stability, we will continue to dig a hole too deep for us to leap. When the Earth will start piling dirt on our restless heads, maybe then we will realize the words of the great American comedian George Carlin:

“The planet is fine. The people are fucked.”

In order not to be in a position for his words to come true, we should learn how to reorient our aims, as to sin (translated from Greek ‘αμαρτία’) originally means ‘to miss the mark’. For now, most of us are sinners, as instead of aiming towards peace, mutual altruism, and reciprocity we tend to aim elsewhere. What can be done has been spelt in Erich Fromm’s ending chapters of “To Have or To Be”. What will be done depends on us: communally and individually.

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