Fromm asserts that “contemporary western society” is an impediment to the fulfilled, loving individual because this sick society fosters various “pseudo-loves”:
1. Being “loved,” that is to say, being popular because we look a certain way, enjoy powerful status, or own conspicuous items that other people want. See page 76.
2. In the hierarchy of values we measure the quality of our lives on our profit margin, which we value over people. Therefore the condition of “being solvent” becomes a sort of pseudo-love. 78
3. The bureaucracy’s needs squeeze out the individual resulting in impersonalization, which creates a pathological dependency on the institution. The institution becomes our “family” or our “team” or our “mothership.” This dependency is a pseudo-love. 79
4. We gain acceptance or pseudo-acceptance through docile conformity and we mistakenly see this acceptance as a form of love. 79
5. We judge our self-worth erroneously by looking at ourselves as commodities, which do or do not maximize profits. This type of self-acceptance is a pseudo-love. 80
6. Not living a life of real love, we capitulate to the pseudo-love of superficial pleasure by becoming consumer hedonists whose only joy in life is the consumption of goods and the pursuit of ethereal pleasures. This results in Impoverishment Through Substitution whereby the more we try to fill our emptiness with worthless trifles and baubles the more empty we become. 80,81
7. As “automatons” surrendering to a life of conformity, routine, and mindless consumerism, we pursue relationships in which we are “personality packages” looking for other “personality packages” of equal value in the romantic marketplace. 81
8. We do not look at marriage as a sacred entity but as a “smooth running team” that imitates the functions of a successful corporation. 81
9. We look at our marriage as a military unit at war with the competition so that our marriage is “egoism a deux,” an egotistical fortress of two against the world, which we confuse with love and intimacy. 81
10. We have a narrow view of the world limited to science and materialism, which sees love as childish illusion. In other words, there is no world or realm beyond the material real of goods and services, which define who we are. As such we are decrepit philistines.
11. We measure our value as lovers exclusively by our sexual performance since our sexual prowess is at the sole core of our potency, power, youthfulness, and makes us attractive; in other words, our sex appeal is a form of pseudo-love.
12. Since sex is the main focus of advertising, we look at sex as the ultimate form of loving, resulting in sexual addiction, also known as concupiscence (the insatiable appetites that war against our powers of reason)
13. Idolatrous love—when we are languishing in our lack of maturity and sense of worthlessness, we project our need to be somebody by projecting our desires on an object of love who becomes our idol or god. 92
14. Sentimental love—love is experienced as a fantasy, often in the past but never in the here and now. 93
15. Easy love—the ridiculous idea that love can be defined as an absence of conflict. 95
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