Saturday, October 27, 2012

Erich Fromm Interlude - the irrational belief in power

Since I’m talking about Erich Fromm these days, I thought I’d post a short quotation from The Art of Loving (p. 116) which might offer some inspiration to activists:

To believe in power that exists is identical with disbelief in the growth of potentialities which are as yet unrealized. It is a prediction of the future based solely on the manifest present; but it turns out to be a grave miscalculation, profoundly irrational in its oversight of the human potentialities and human growth. There is no rational faith in power. There is submission to it or, on the part of those who have it, the wish to keep it. While to many power seems to be the most real of all things, the history of man has proved it to be the most unstable of all human achievements.

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