tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1937731288853496.post8272070431733668247..comments2023-09-28T00:37:57.794-07:00Comments on Baha'i Dialogue: Erich Fromm on Universal Religion (4)Baha'i Dialoguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02868899435312560717noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1937731288853496.post-7722253722524702912009-09-25T06:42:29.795-07:002009-09-25T06:42:29.795-07:00Good to see you again, Jack. I last spent some tim...Good to see you again, Jack. I last spent some time in a room with you back in about 1962 in Etobicoke. Seeing your name always brings back good memories.-Ron Price, Tasmania<br />--------------<br />Here is a word or two on Erich Fromm.<br />------------- SOUND AND FURY<br /><br />Some of the last writings of Erich Fromm were published in 1994 in a book The Art of Listening, some fourteen years after he died. I came across this book just the other day and I gobbled it up. I'd always loved Erich Fromm. He'd been with me for most of my pioneering journey, especially in its first two decades(1962-1982), but I had not read one of his books since the early eighties with his To Have or To Be. <br /><br />The following poem is a reflection on some of Fromm's ideas in this new book. In particular, he tells me, in his clear and easy prose, that I should not take an inordinate interest in myself. Interest in oneself, concentration on one's own problems, "should and must go together with an increasing enlargement and intensification of one's interest in life,"1 in music, the arts, walking, the great ideas, the best of what has been written and thought. Only then do we come to form a set of directions, goals, values and convictions "which are not put in oneself by others."2 For the general goal is to penetrate through the surface of life "to the roots of existence."3 -Ron Price with thanks to Erich Fromm, The Art of Listening, Constable, London, 1994, 1p.166, 2p.167 and 3p.171,<br /><br />We all must overcome our narcissism;<br />We must struggle with it, understand it;<br />it's a lifelong task this battle with self,<br />the insistent self, He called it.<br />And I'm not talking about<br />that affirmative, loving, attitude<br />towards oneself called self-love.<br /><br />And one must recognize <br />the non-experiences<br />that people, here, call parties1<br />where there is no closeness,<br />just a three-ring-circus, short <br />conversational concentrations,<br />throw-away one-liners,<br />smiles and chuckles,<br />endless edibles and drinks,<br />enough to float away on,<br />leaving your brain completely<br />drained, a deep-emptiness,<br />as if you've been to a war,<br />not of guns and swords,<br />but words, popping all over<br />like those cap-guns <br />you used to buy as a kid,<br />which never make anything happen,<br />just a lot of sound and fury<br />signifying nothing at all.<br /><br />1 Fromm describes this 'American habit'(ibid., p. 178), but it is found here in Australia and approached with the same enthusiasm.<br /><br />Ron Price <br />8 December 2001Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13459686900548904521noreply@blogger.com