Questions: Why are people addicted to falling in love? What is “the problem of human existence”?
Part I. The Pathology of “Falling in Love.” See page 4.
1. The excitement of “breaking down walls” during the initial dating stage is confused with love. When this excitement fades, the “love” fades and people go through the whole process all over again.
2. “Breaking down walls” becomes an addiction or a conquest.
3. All crappy love songs are about “breaking down walls” but not love itself.
4. After “breaking down walls,” inevitable disappointment and disenchantment occurs.
5. After disappointment occurs, people try to rid themselves of this horrible feeling by leaving the person and staring the whole process all over again with another person.
6. People confuse the intensity or craziness of infatuation with love.
7. People believe they have to be in a constant state of intensity or craziness, not just with their lovers but with their consumer products, like cars, iPods, jeans, etc. Thus worshipping infatuation is a disease that goes beyond the pathology of “falling in love.”
8. The media and advertising inculcate us into believing we can’t be happy unless we’re in a constant state of infatuation.
9. Since we believe we must be in a constant state of infatuation, we believe we must have the same effect on others. Therefore, we hype ourselves and become performers instead of real people because want to razzle-dazzle people just as we expect people to razzle-dazzle us.
10. The more intense we “fall in love,” the more we prove how lonely and desperate we are. Even-keeled people don’t have high highs and low lows. They don’t have super infatuation spells followed by emotional hangovers where they crash and feel the abyss of despair.
Part II. The Problem of Human Existence
1. Humans aren’t like animals living fully by instincts. Rather, humans are only partly instinctive and must learn to find a quality of life through a combination of instinct and the powers of reason and critical thinking. See page 7. For example, a dog doesn’t consult a dating website to find the perfect mate. However, humans pour over thousands of personality profiles to find the right match. We’re using far more than our instincts for mating. See page 7.
2. As we grow older and establish independence from our parents, our lives our filled with more and more uncertainty, which creates intense anxieties. We have to forge our own identity and destiny without any master if we are to achieve full maturity and independence. See page 8.
3. We are aware of ourselves and are self-conscious of “how we are doing.” In other words, we as humans feel compelled to constantly access “where we stand in life.” Are we failures? Are we successful. Is everything right inside our souls? Is something nagging us in the back of our minds and we can’t quite put our finger on it? These are the kinds of questions that plague thinking human beings. See page 8.
4. More specific than our general awareness, we are conscious of how separate we are from other humans and this awareness of our separateness causes anxiety, shame, guilt, and a sense of helplessness, which compels us to overcome our separateness in effective or self-destructive ways. See page 8.
5. The awareness of our separateness from others without a sense of reunion with the human race through love results in shame, guilt, and anxiety. See page 9.
6. The absolute failure to connect with others and remain imprisoned in our separateness is the definition of insanity. Another word for this type of insanity is solipsism. See page 9.
7. If we don’t understand the psychology of separateness, we will be at the mercy of advertisers who prey on our anxieties. For example, there was a Lexus commercial 10 years ago where the man walked through the door and his fleshed merged with the leather seats. He became one with the car. He overcame his separation anxiety by purchasing a Lexus. Another ad for Mercedes showed a man lost on a mountain. Soaked with sweat, he ran to the top of the mountain and saw in the constellation of stars a Mercedes Benz hood ornament and he was glowing with peace and tranquility. Buying a Benz overcame his separation anxiety. Or buying an iPod will give you a sense of belonging with the pack of other iPod cult followers.
8. Some of us avoid the awareness of our separateness from others by never leaving our emotional ties to our mother. This results in emotional retardation. Or a man thinks he’s left his mother only to marry a woman who acts like his Mommy. He, too, suffers from stunted emotional growth. See page 10.
9. Some rely on sex as a way of creating the illusion that they have overcome their separateness from others.
10. Sex is not the only way to reach a heightened, aroused state to escape our sense of separateness. Fromm talks about “orgiastic states” that result from not only sex, but drugs, ancient tribal rituals, Super Bowl parking lot rituals, toga parties, Fraternity ritual rites involving beer bongs. These states of communal drunkenness help us cover the guilt and shame of our separateness. See pages 10 and 11.
11. Some of us overcome our separation anxiety by creating web communities on My Space or Face Book in which we become addicted to how “friends” we’ve amassed. We can so other people, “I have five thousand friends on my My Space Account.”
The Characteristics of Orgiastic Union
1. intense, often to the point of violence (hazing) see page 12
2. they occur in the total personality of mind and body.
3. They are short-lived or transitory.
4. The sense of individual self disappears into the herd or the tribe like someone at a David Matthews Concert.
5. Participation in orgiastic union requires blind conformity. If you’re at someone’s house and they serve a goat’s head and you don’t eat it, you offend everyone. Vegetarians often suffer feelings of rejection. In high school some are labeled as losers for drinking or smoking gnarly bud.
6. One achieves “equality” in the worst sense, that is “sameness.” The best sense of the word “equality” is “oneness.” See pages 14 and 15.
Other Forms of Union: Conformity (being a nine to fiver) and creative expression.
The Strongest form of Union: Love on page 17
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