Quiz Question: According to Fromm, what is the central problem of human existence?
Part One. Lexicon
One. Problem of Human Existence: The terror and eventual insanity of being alone, isolated and the attempts to overcome that separation.
Two. Orgiastic states: intense, transitory states of ecstasy and oblivion that can be a shared experience:
1. Kids smoking pot or taking drugs together.
2. Men going to a strip bar.
3. Young people going to a rave.
4. People going to a rock concert.
5. Sports fanatics cheering for their team.
6. A mob shouting protests.
7. In California Indian cultures, taking peyote and going on a walkabout up a mountain.
8. In southern states certain religious people poison themselves or allow poison snakes to bite them to prove that their faith has made them invincible. A charismatic religious experience.
Three. Social and Anti-Social Orgiastic States: Social ones are sanctioned by society and do not produce shame and guilt (11); Anti-social ones, like drug addiction, result in isolation and shame, which is self-feeding.
Four. The terror of aloneness makes people desperate to conform and to disappear into a mass experience.
Five. Pathetic and Fake “Individuality” 13; Goths and Emos and punks and mods and hipsters and fashionistas think they’re individuals but they’re lemmings in thin disguise.
Six. The Perversion of Equality in Modern Society: It used to mean we’re all entitled to equal dignity and justice; now it means sameness rather than oneness. 14
Seven. Herd conformity: is more dangerous than violent orgiastic ritual because it is insidious; it is the frog who dies in the pot of slowly warmed water. 15 and 16.
Eight. Creativity is only partial answer to need for union. 16, 17
Nine. Humans’ most powerful striving: 17 interpersonal fusion
Ten. False fusion: symbiotic union.
Part Two. Symbiosis: The 8 Signs.
1. Two weak people become mutually dependent to hide and reinforce their flaws.
2. Two people become mutually dependent on the other in order to stop changing, growing, maturing, and fulfilling their potential.
3. Two people use each other as a crutch and an excuse for their stagnation in life. Their relationship makes them part of the walking dead.
4. One person gets stronger and stronger or so he thinks while the other gets weaker and weaker. In truth, both get weaker and weaker because bother are more and more dependent on the other. This is called the Vampire Theory of Love.
5. Two people stay together, not because of love, but because they’re afraid of life.
6. In a symbiosis, both people are blind or fail to admit how dependent they are on the other. They don’t see it. They don’t want to see it. Their life is a lie.
7. To use a psychological cliché, both parties of the symbiosis are called “enablers,” that is they perpetuate each other’s dysfunctions. Another therapy lexicon is to call them co-dependent.
8. The stronger in the pair stays with the weaker because he or she is afraid of being challenged by an equal and wants the control that comes with being stronger but ironically is showing weakness.
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