Asad Jütah
It may include my own viewpoint of Love, but most of this is the review of Erich Fromm’s book “The Art of Loving” and his conception of “Love”.
Man of all ages and cultures confronted with the question of how to overcome separateness, how to achieve union, how to transcends one’s own individual life & find at-onement. The awareness of himself as a separate entity, his own short life span that without his will, he’s born & will die.
As Ustad Ibrahim Zouq said:
لائی حیات آئے قضا لے چلی چلے
اپنی خوشی نہ آئے نہ اپنی خوشی چلے
The awareness of his Aloneness and separateness, helplessness before the forces of nature and society makes his disunited, separate existence unbearable prison. This experience is indeed the source of all anxieties. The answer of the question to overcome existence varies, it can be answered by animal worship, human sacrifice, by obsessional work, by artistic creation, by the Love of God, and by the Love of Man. To Fromm’s view, child sense of aloneness is cured by the presence of mother, because he feels one with her, only to the point, child develop his sense of separateness and individuality. Mother love is the only one which is said to be unconditional because child is the part of him, while fatherly love is conditional, he loves and demands in return. By analysing these all means, to Fromm: “Love is only sane and satisfactory answer to this feel of separateness from everything & everyone.” Love is the mature answer to the problem of existence.
But what this Love actually is? In our cultural means, Love is a desire to be one with your love object, to overcome the vacuum between, it’s not only a submission in which one’s mind participate, but one’s whole body. As Khawaja Farid said;
رانڄھݨ انڳ لڳایا
سٻ غیر ڊا وہم ٻھلایا
In our folk stories, Heer and Sassi crave to overcome their separateness, to be one with their loved ones. Sassi submitted to Punno, the one has exploitive nature, he hurts, humiliate while other is exploited, hurted, exploited. Ranjha plays with the heart strings of Heer, their is a prose depicting Heer;
رانجھا رانجھا کردے نی میں آپے رانجھا ہو گئ
There’s much more confusing in terms “oneness” and “sameness”, sameness of feeling, ideas and by the all means. While “oneness” is to be one without escaping out from own unique individuality. Another form of symbiotic union, in term of masochism, where a masochistic person escapes from the unbearable feeling of separateness and alone by making himself part and parcel of another, who’s his life and oxygen. The power of the one to whom one submits is inflated, may he be a person, or God, he’s everything, I’m nothing. Mansur Halaj is the example in this case. While in the view of Erich Fromm,
“The mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality, Love is an active power in man; a power which break through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with other; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”
In modern capitalist society, love is often nothing but a favourable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market. Each person is a “package” in which several aspects of his exchange value are blended into one: his “personality,” by which is meant those qualities which make him a good salesman of himself; his looks, education, income, and chance for success – each person strives to exchange this package for the best value obtainable. Even the function of going to a party, and of social intercourse in general, is to a large extent that of exchange. One is eager to meet the slightly higher-priced packages, in order to make contact and possibly a profitable exchange.
Every single attempt you have made, at love, has failed. Why should this be the case, if we’re supposedly putting in so much effort to have enduring love in our life. The answer for Fromm is that, most of us are using horrible strategy and the slogan for that strategy if there was one, is that to find “Love”. If you’re not currently in love, become more loveable. Go to the gym, buy some cool clothes, advance your career, learn to play musical instrument, that always seems to work. But are these really things that are going to increase your odds of finding love. Fromm thinks all you’ve really done here is turn yourself into product to be consumed on what he calls the personality market & how fitting to Fromm that in our modern capitalist society, we’d be so inclined to turn our love lives and the love life of other peoples in the commodities to be marketed, bought, sold & traded. You improve something about yourself you improve your value in the market. You look around at all the options pick the best one you can get with your current stock price and then you enter into a mutually beneficial transaction with this person where you receive in return a rush of emotions and endorphins and feels and all of a sudden in a fleeting moment you just realize, it has happened, I’m in Love now.
Erich Fromm calls it a type of immature Love which is to say a type of narcissistic love, a transactional love, where two needy people decide they’re going to setup an arrangement where each one of them appease the insecurities and weaknesses of the others. Team up their egos, in other words, the type of person that I would fall in love with would have the characteristics which I want. Finally, I found somebody who makes me feel this way. This is a kind of transaction, not Love. This is what can you do for me & what can i do for you in return.
When we consider the rate at which relationship fails, how often things run there course or people get bored of someone. Fromm would say the two of you are essentially just consumable products of similar value on the personality market. Off course, you gonna get bored when you see them in this way. This is a reality of our modern consumer life. When we commodify our love lives & choose to love people on order to what benefit they can provide for us we essentially turn our partners into that game of monopoly. How many of you out there have ever felt like somebody has only love the idea of you, not “YOU”.
“Domination springs from impotence and turn reinforces it. If an individual can force somebody else to serve him, his own need to be productive is increasingly paralyzed.” Erich Fromm
We engage in this mutually beneficial transaction with another person to escape from the feeling of being alone. But the solution to be able to actually love someone in real capacity is to learn to be alone. To Fromm, Love is not an object it’s faculty. In other words, Love is a Verb.This all does not mean real Love not exist as Fromm said:
“Love is relatively real phenomenon & it’s place is taken by a number of forms of pseudo love.”
Love is a passionate affirmation of an object. It’s not an effect but an act of striving and inner relatedness the aim of which is the happiness, growth and freedom of its object. It’s the readiness which in principle can turn to any person and object including ourselves.
Fromm’s conception of Love says nothing about even considering what the person can do for me. The main idea of his book, “The Art of Loving” is that you’ll never be able to Love any other person until you can love everyone because you will always be picking and choosing the people you love in terms of what benefit they can provide you. Fromm says this kind of Love more resemble, symbiotic attachment or enlarged egotism than anything that has really to do with love. This also explain his view, it’s not until you learn to be alone, that you can truly love because it’s only for that place of not having some needs checklist, you’re constantly trying to complete, that you can see people & things for who & what they’re and not what they can do for you.
Love is not something that happens to you, there doesn’t need to be some external cue that causes you to have love for someone, they don’t need to look a certain way, they don’t need to do something nice for you or compliment your shoes the right or admire your career at the level you approve of. Love is a choice you make, it’s an active choice to shine love outward to everything and everyone. As Fromm says, if you truly love someone you love them for who they’re, not who you want them to be. Otherwise you’re just making them an extension of your own ego projecting your own desires & expectations onto them this is why love is only sane and satisfactory answer to this feel of separateness from everything and everyone.
This is connection that isn’t reliant on any external factors. It’s the connection to give to others, that you choose for yourself and that’s the thing, if you choose not to give love to others you probably won’t be seeing it at anytime soon yourself. Really great lines from his book, when he essentially says; If you’re somebody that goes around in your life, never interested in anything that you’re never going to find anything interesting. While in the same way if you go around your life never projecting this love outward into the world, You’re probably going to be living a pretty loveless existence. But Fromm would say as easy as it is to understand that, shift in theory that needs to happen for finding love, putting it into practice is much easier said than done. Love is a relatively rare phenomenon remember and it is. Because it’s very difficult to master and even more difficult to sustain. This is not a part-time job, if Fromm had to give a love a category to be a part of, he’d have to say that love can best be described as an Art.
“The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just like living is an art; if we want to learn how to love, we have to perceive in a same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting.”
If we think of a person dedicates himself to an art, these are peoples that have given themselves over to this artistic process. People who have dedicated their lives so much to their craft that they actually perceive the world a different way than other people. To become a true master of an art requires an immersion that is with you 24/7. Not just when you feel like doing it. It’s so much a part of the fabric of who you’re that it becomes inseparable. Art is a part of you and you of it. Love is a promise otherwise how could you possibly vow to love someone forever. Love is not about searching harder and finding the right person, love is about improving a skill. So how do we achieve mastery of that skill. Other interesting thing Fromm want to pursue that modern society also works against people pursuing a mastery of love or loving at all.
“Love is an act striving for the growth and happiness of the loved person rooted in one’s capacity to love.” Erich Fromm
We’re supposed to immerse our lives in this act of striving. But modern society strives for success, prestige, money & power. All of this is contrary to all the process of Love. If you’re going to love in a truly artistic fashion, you’re necessarily going to have to be counterculture as well. So, the amount of effort & concentration and patience required to love well wasn’t enough of a barrier for you well. Here’s a cultural barrier which can tack on there as well. Love is not a passive process or something that just happens to you. Love is something “You” and you do it every single day with discipline the same you practicing any other art.
“The capacity to love demands a state of intensity, awareness, enhanced vitality, which can only be the result of the productive and active orientation in many other spheres of life.” Erich Fromm
Love is ultimately about giving and the thing you are giving to the other person, is ultimately yourself, and it doesn’t matter how much time you spend trying to develop “Yourself”, as an artist. The quality of that art can only be guaranteed if you take care of yourself and many other areas of your life.
“Love of others & love of ourselves are not alternatives, on the contrary an attitude of love towards themselves will be found in all those who are capable of loving others. Love in principle is indivisible as far as the connection between objects and one’s own self are concerned.” Erich Fromm
Love is not placing yourself at the mercy of others, it’s the ability to see the best in them & their potentials. From the concept of Love in the modern capitalistic society, masochistic concept of ours to the Fromm’s view of love and my my own experience I’m just ending it by the lines of Joun Elia;
محبت کچھ نا تھی جز بد حواسی
کہ وہ بندِ قبا ہم سے کھلا نئیں
