CraigJustCraig

Tag: books

  • The Myth of BBC

    Every time I hear “BBC” or “Queen of Spades,” I hear chains rattling. You call it kink. I call it inheritance. Direct bloodline from slave breeding, buck breaking, and the auction block. You’re not inventing anything new—you’re just reciting the script they wrote for you.

    Look at the record. Fearing the Black Body. Killing the Black Body. Medical Apartheid. These aren’t metaphors. They’re history. White women and white men making Black flesh their experiment, their economy, their revenge toy. From the fields to the clinic to the brothel, Black sex and Black reproduction were turned into currency.

    And yet—here we are. Snow bunnies smiling, QOS branding themselves, Black men bending into roles carved centuries ago. “BBC.” Commodity. Property. A dick first, a man last. Read They Were Her Property. Those white women weren’t passive victims—they were active owners. They orchestrated the breeding, the selling, the violations. That’s your so-called “taboo” lineage.

    And don’t mistake it for liberation. You’re not flipping power. You’re not getting reparations by fucking someone’s wife. You’re just feeding into the old market, the one Cedric Robinson names in Black Marxism, the one Walter Rodney lays bare in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. The same market that kept you bound as labor, breeder, body.

    I hear people say “don’t yuck someone’s yum.” And yes—consent matters. Choice matters. Adults can play as they will. But don’t confuse consent with context. You can choose to reenact the plantation, but don’t lie and call it freedom. Don’t pretend the whip is just a toy when the welt is still on our history.

    Read The Delectable Negro. Read Caliban and the Witch. Read Yurugu. Read Discrimination and Disparities, The Color of Law, The Color of Money. All of it points to the same truth: our flesh has been the stage for their fantasies, our bodies the engine for their wealth. To step blindly into BBC/QOS is to step willingly into that machinery.

    This isn’t about shame. It’s about clarity. Desire isn’t pure. Desire is trained. And when desire is trained through centuries of slavery, eugenics, and apartheid, you better question it before you call it “just kink.”

    You can fuck who you want. Love who you want. But if you carry those acronyms like a crown, understand: you are crowning yourself with chains.

  • The Edge of Philosophy

    I watch the way psychology, therapy, and even spirituality crawl toward science, begging for legitimacy. They borrow its words. They dress themselves in its lab coats. Neurology here. Quantum energy there. “Manifestation” renamed as physics. Reincarnation recast as particles. Even hypnosis and NLP sold with borrowed jargon, as if subjective fire needs a scientific candle to make it real.

    (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). A modern echo of classical rhetoric.
    Aristotle named rhetoric a techne—a technology. Not philosophy, but a weapon sharpened for public speech, forged so the ethical might stand against sophists. Two thousand years later, we still polish those same blades.

    But NLP is not just a tool. It is a philosophy in disguise. It does not simply speak—it models. It does not merely persuade—it reframes how thought itself moves. Classical rhetoric implies answers. NLP builds them outright.

    Three questions crown philosophy:

    • Who are we? (Ontology — metaphysics, psychology, anatomy)
    • How do we know? (Epistemology — the sciences, the tools of proof)
    • How do we live knowing these things? (Ethics — the ground of action, the craft of politics, the birth of technology)

    Classical rhetoric assumed these foundations. NLP enacts them. It uses the answers to conjure techniques, interventions, transformations.

    And yes—critics claw at the “Neuro.” They want proof in the synapses. They note that Chomsky’s seventy-year-old linguistic scaffolding never held. And they are right. The science is brittle. But the praxis—the method—the work—remains.

    Cognitive science offers sturdier ground. Placebo still whispers. Belief still fuels change. Yet the techniques do alter lives. That is philosophy in action, even if the temples of science frown.

    CBT challenges what you think. NLP transforms how you think. Together, they forge something sharper: Socratic interrogation married to sensory reprogramming. One drills into the content. The other bends the frame. Both aim at the same altar—freedom from faulty thought, the power to choose again.

    Even in play, the truth sings. Dirty talk—ritual, rhythm, erotic spellcasting—is NLP alive in the flesh. Words arranged not as decoration, but as transformation.

    Do not forget: Bandler and Grinder birthed NLP not in ivory towers but in rebellion. They spat at psychiatry and psychology, turned from the academy, and courted the alternative fires of the seventies. Their hypocrisy was blatant—condemning capitalist therapy while selling NLP to salesmen and managers to manipulate markets and staff. Liberation twisted into profit. Fire bottled and sold.

    Still, the root remains. NLP is not science, though it steals its language. It is rhetoric reborn. A living philosophy. A technology of persuasion, healing, transformation, and yes—manipulation.

    Those who seek in it pure science will always leave disappointed. Those who wield it as tool, weapon, ritual—will know its power.

  • If You Want to Change the World, You’ve Got To Tell a Better Story

    People live by stories.
    Not fairy tales — scripts. Spells. Programs.

    Every culture runs on myth,
    a code written so deep you forget it’s there.

    you have heard this myth:
    pain is holy, pleasure is sin.

    you still drinks from that poisoned well

    pretending to despise indulgence. But

    fast food, sex , and dopamine. are all right!
    That’s not pleasure. That’s slavery

    you cannot kill a story without replacing it.

    Shatter the old script, and watch them grasping for anything that gives them belonging,

    You want to change

    Don’t argue. Don’t beg.
    Don’t drown people in facts.

    Tell them a story worth listening to

    This is the art of fucking with reality.
    Magick is nothing but story weaponized.
    Belief as technology.
    Identity as wet clay.
    You mold it. You break it.
    You fuck it into existence.

    The old myths told you your body is dirty.
    That desire is dangerous.
    That submission is weakness.
    I tell you the opposite:

    Your body is altar.
    Your desire is compass.
    Your submission is freedom.

    You are not chained by stories —
    you are the author.
    And if the story doesn’t liberate you,
    burn it. Rewrite it. Birth your own myth.

    This is not safe work.
    This is not polite.
    This is shadow-dancing, taboo-breaking,
    villain-level work.

    But if you dare —
    if you stop parroting what they said

    if you let yourself be corrupted into freedom —
    you will see the truth:

    Culture is not facts.
    It is not rules.

    It is story.

    So tell a better one.
    Live a better one.
    Enact a better one.

    That is how you change the world.

    And I?
    I am here to give you the dangerous story,
    the story where darkness is holy,
    pleasure is sacred,
    bondage is freedom,
    and you —
    yes, you —
    are god now.

  • Finished The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm Review

    A Masterclass in Emotional and Intellectual Dragging. Let me tell you something: this book hit. Hard. I picked up The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm thinking I was about to get some soft, philosophical musings on romance and relationships. What I got instead was a complete philosophical takedown of society, ego, capitalism, and our inability to connect. Fromm doesn’t just explain love — he dissects it, deconstructs it, demands better from us. And he does it all with the most elegant, intellectual side-eye I’ve ever read.

    The tone? Everything.

    It’s like watching someone set up dominoes — precise, methodical — and then knock them down one by one until suddenly you’re left staring at the last one, trembling. And that last domino is you.

    Fromm builds to this absolutely chilling indictment of modern society:

    “Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy… man is an automaton—well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function… If it is true… that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes… the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction.”

    Read that again. That’s not a quote, that’s A warning.

    Fromm breaks down why love is missing in the modern world — how we’ve confused love with consumerism, performance, control. He talks about why we don’t know how to love, how it all got tangled up in the machinery of profit and productivity, and why learning to love is not just cute or noble — it’s essential to our very humanity.

    And the way he says it? Impeccable.
    There is shade in every sentence. It’s not preachy — it’s precise. It’s like being read for filth by someone in a velvet smoking jacket, sipping wine, quoting Hegel, and daring you to catch up. It’s the politest, nastiest intellectual takedown I’ve ever read. A masterclass in soft-spoken audacity.

    The tone is calm but cutting. Thoughtful but brutal. High-key shade on every page. There’s a scoff baked into every sentence. I swear, I could hear the arched eyebrow.

    And yet… underneath all of it is this beautiful, radical, sincere hope. A belief that love can be cultivated. That we can unlearn this disconnection. That society can be reshaped in the image of true love — not the romanticized fluff we’re sold, but the real, difficult, honest kind rooted in care, discipline, humility, and commitment.

    I took so many notes. My notes are chaos. My brain is cooked.

    And let’s talk about that last chapter — the one I will be re-reading every month until further notice. It cracked me wide open. If you talk to me anytime soon, be warned: I will be quoting this book like scripture. I see why bell hooks cited it in All About Love.

    10/10, no notes. Except, you know, the entire notebook I filled.

  • Romance, Brought to You by Late-Stage Capitalism: Fromm, Freud, and the Marketplace

    Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving critiques several prevailing—yet deeply flawed—conceptions of love in contemporary Western society, often presenting them in a satirical or critical light by contrasting them with the idea of genuine love.

    He argues that these modern understandings actually represent a “disintegration of love.”

    He writes:

    “No objective observer of our Western life can doubt that love is rare, and that its place is taken by a number of forms of pseudo-love, which are in reality are many forms of the disintegration of love.”

    He says we often treat love like a commodity, focusing only on two things: being loved and being lovable

    This leads men to chase success, power, and wealth, while women cultivate attractiveness. But these are STRATEGIES!!!!!! (I’m going to write about strategies one day)

    Fromm sharply points out how capitalism has influences our character:

    The owner of capital can buy labor and command it.
    The owner of labor must sell it or starve.

    He says this mindset is tied to the idea that finding love is simple—that the hard part is finding the right OBJECT
    He argues our entire culture is built on capitalism, and our idea of love follows it. We emphasize the importance of the OBJECT against the importance of the function. Our culture revolves around mutually favorable exchange.

    Happiness?
    Fromm says it lies in the thrill of looking for the best and buying all that you can afford. In dating, this translates to a neatly packaged “attractive” set of qualities sought after on the personality market. And what makes a person attractive? That depends entirely on the fashion of the time both physically and mentally.

    In the 20s, a drinking, smoking, tough, and sexy woman was attractive.
    Today? The fashion demands domestic coyness.
    At the turn of the 20th century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious.
    Today? Social and tolerant.

    But either way, the sense of “falling in love” is just people feeling like they’ve found the best object available on the market, given the limitations of their own exchange value.

    We’re out here marketing ourselves. And the OBJECT must be desirable, socially valuable, complete with hidden assets and future potential.

    This was written in 1956. My grandmother was 4. My grandfather was 6. And yet it feels like he could have written this yesterday. We’re still following the same tired pattern of exchange that governs the commodity and labor market—and we’re still calling it love.

    Then Fromm drags another contradiction:
    The idea that love is just a spontaneous feeling or an “irresistible emotion,” especially when it’s mixed with sexual attraction. He says this mindset completely neglects the importance of WILL.

    Love, he insists, is a decision, a judgment, a promise.
    If love were only a feeling, then loving someone forever would be impossible.
    The only forever is an ACT.

    Love is an act of will. A commitment.
    And fundamentally? It does not matter to who.

    Let me bring up another contradiction that caught me:
    Fromm breaks down different kinds of love—Love of God, Mother, Father, Brother, Erotic Love.

    What stopped me in my tracks was his take on Mother Love vs Father Love:

    • Mother Love is unconditional love. Love for the helpless.
    • Father Love is earned. Conditional. Merit-based.

    He even shows this in how religious systems reflect it.
    Matriarchal religion? That’s Mother Love: all-protective, all-enveloping, unconditional. We are all equal before Mother Earth.
    Patriarchal religion? Father Love: making demands, setting rules, establishing laws.

    Then he speaks on Brotherly Love—love among equals. He writes:

    “If I love my brother, I love all my brothers; if I love my child, I love all my children; no, beyond that, I love all children.”

    Each kind of love is different, but by their very nature, they aren’t meant to be limited to one person.

    Erotic love, though? That’s the craving for complete fusion with ONE other person. It’s exclusive—not universal. Why?

    Fromm directly challenges the belief that love is just the byproduct of sexual pleasure. He says just because two people learn to sexually satisfy each other doesn’t mean they love each other. Sexual desire is often mistaken for love. People think they love someone when really, they just want other.

    But fusion isn’t just physical.
    He says love is not the result of good sex—what we’re really seeking is relief from the painful tension and anxiety of separateness.

    Without love, physical union never leads to true connection. It remains orgiastic and transitory, leaving two people “as far apart as they were before.” So we keep chasing the high with a new person. A new stranger. Over and over again. Because closeness, like novelty, fades.

    Yo!!! Like… are you feeling that in your chest too?
    I damn near cried.

    Then Fromm goes in on Freud. Freud claimed:

    “Man, having found that genital love offered him his greatest gratification, made it the central point of his life.”

    That idea was revolutionary in the 1890s—but Fromm calls it conformist. It completely misses the mystical essence of love: the root of intense union with another person—the feeling of fusion, of oneness—the “oceanic feeling.”(im definitely going to write about the oceanic feeling or the sea of orgasmic bliss)

    To Freud, love was irrational. And the thinkers of the time?
    They were busy trying to prove capitalism matched the natural state of man:

    • That we are naturally competitive, insatiable, hostile.
    • That we’re driven by limitless desire for sexual conquest.
    • And that only society prevents us from going full feral. ( and they have the nerve to call anyone savage)

    So love, hate, ambition, jealousy?
    Freud chalked them all up to variations of the sexual instinct.

    Sound familiar?
    I’ve been trying to tell y’all—you only think the way you think because you live here, and some old fuck told you to.
    This brings me back to Yurugu (which I will write about one day).

    Freud didn’t see that the key to understanding life is not the body, or hunger, or sex, or possessions—it’s the totality of human existence. That’s a very Eastern thought, one that echoes in the Tao and ATR.

    Fromm ties this all together and says:

    Our character (in capitalism) is shaped by the need to exchange, to barter, to consume.
    Everything—material and spiritual—becomes an object of exchange.

    We are automatons with personality packages who have forgotten how to love. We seek security in the herd—and in not being different: not in thought, not in feeling, not in action. Everyone tries to remain as same as possible while remaining utterly alone—racked by insecurity, anxiety, and guilt.

    Our palliatives? A strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work—where you remain unaware of your desires, unaware of transcendence, unaware of unity. You overcome your unconscious despair with the routine of amusement, passive consumption, and the hollow satisfaction of buying new things—then exchanging them for others. You are sedated, compliant, obedient—and you like it. Hoping for a fair bargain.

    This shows up nowhere more clearly than in marriage—a union structured like a corporate team.

    In the Victorian age and in many other cultures: love was not a spontaneous personal experience that might lead to marriage. Marriage was contracted by convention, and love was expected to follow after the paperwork was signed. This is the background of what we call marriage: a contract to exchange objects.

    The ideal partner is well-functioning employee: independent, cooperative, and tolerant, and yet ambitious, and aggressive. Intimacy is but as a refuge from unbearable loneliness. We enhance “collaboration,” by adjusting our behaviors for mutual satisfaction, pooling common interests, and teaming up against a hostile world.

    But this, Fromm argues, is pseudo-love.

    It’s the disintegration of love. True love, he says, is an art—one that requires discipline, concentration, patience, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

    And it is completely incompatible with the consumerist, market-driven, alienated society we live in.

  • Rope Is for Every Body

    You’ve been lied to. Trained to believe there’s only one kind of body that belongs in rope—slender, small, silent. To be hung like meat. Obedient and aesthetic.

    You’ve been starved on a diet of sameness. The same images, the same silhouettes, the same bodies looped and lifted as if worth can be measured

    But I’m not here to offer comfort. I’m here to burn down illusions. whispering truths to the willing. And I say this now, with fire in my gut and reverence in my hands:

    Rope is for Every Body.

    I’ve seen too many souls turn away from the altar because their body didn’t match the propaganda.Because they didn’t look like the rope virgins paraded on page after page of curated feeds—fragile, bird-boned, suspended like relics in a gallery.

    They ask me, : “Do I belong?”
    And my answer is always: If you have breath in your lungs and blood in your veins. This art is yours,

    But let’s name the demon: Rope culture as it stands is saturated in the worship of a singular aesthetic. You search “Shibari” or “Rope Play” and you’ll find an ocean of low-BMI bodies. A flood of the familiar. Rarely a ripple of difference. We inherited this from Japan

    And what happens when the zealots of the West try to replicate what they do not understand?
    We end up building temples where only the thin feel welcome.

    I don’t tie rope to please a camera or win a crowd. I tie rope to summon power. To invoke transformation. To crack open shame and pour salve into burning wounds. if you bring your body to me, no matter its size, I will honor it with the same hunger and heat as any other. Because this practice isn’t about shrinking—it’s about becoming.

    In my temple, flesh is sacred. Thickness is worshipped. Scars are sacred. And every rope I tie is a hymn to the holy monster in you.

    To those of you who feel like outsiders, know this:
    You were never meant to shrink yourself to be seen.
    You were meant to be bound in the fullness of who you are.
    And if they’ve never made space for your body in their ropes—then they never deserved your submission to begin with.

    Rope is not just for the pretty. It’s for the primal. The wounded. The voluptuous. The venerated. The hungry.

    Rope is for Every Body.

    It is the prayer.
    It is the offering.
    It is the altar.

    Let the others tie for beauty. I tie for ecstasy.

    And if you’re ready to enter, step through the threshold.
    I’ll be waiting—hands outstretched, rope in hand, ready to bind your doubt

  • The Friction Device: Vulnerable Geometry

    When we tie a knot, we are not just manipulating rope—we are bending it to our will. Quite literally.

    Each knot imposes a curve upon the rope, and in doing so, initiates a series of physical tensions. The inner strands of the rope compress; the outer strands stretch and strain. The tighter the curve, the greater the imbalance. The more acute the bend, the more each fiber is stressed, and distorted. A knot, then, is a site of vulnerability. It is where the rope is most likely to fail.

    And yet, this frailty is where the power of the knot resides.

    A knot is a friction device. Its structure—the crossings, wraps, tucks, and overlaps—generates resistance. This resistance is what holds the rope together. But that same friction weakens the rope, reducing its ultimate breaking strength (UBS). In fact, when rope breaks under stress, it almost always breaks at the knot.

    So we must focus on the knots.

    After tying a knot, you are not finished. A freshly tied knot is still in flux. It needs to be shaped—tensioned and coaxed into its final form. Neglecting this step invites instability in knot. Poorly set knots can loosen, unravel, or deform and accelerates catastrophic failure.

    So you must

    • Study knots from every angle.
    • Tie them in different orientations, even with your eyes closed.
    • Practice with one hand behind your back.
    • Compare similar knots to feel how they differ.
    • Take knots apart. See their internal architecture.

    Let your fingers learn by doing. Let your mind learn by questioning.

    The Four Virtues of a Good Knot

    As you move deeper, remember the four virtues that define a “good” knot:

    1. : It is easy to tie
    2. it should be stable under load
    3. it does not reduce significantly the UBS (ultimate breaking strength) of the rope
    4. it is easy to untie. – Ideally

    Not every knot holds all four qualities. Some will distort under tension, reshaping into more efficient forms.

    To tie a knot is to enter into a conversation with the rope. The knot is alive. Its fibers remember your touch, your tension, your intention. As you shape it, it shapes the rope in return

    So tie slowly. Tie mindfully. Breathe with your rope.
    and Listen. It’s always telling you something.

  • Finished The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm Review

    A Masterclass in Emotional and Intellectual Dragging. Let me tell you something: this book hit. Hard. I picked up The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm thinking I was about to get some soft, philosophical musings on romance and relationships. What I got instead was a complete philosophical takedown of society, ego, capitalism, and our inability to connect. Fromm doesn’t just explain love — he dissects it, deconstructs it, demands better from us. And he does it all with the most elegant, intellectual side-eye I’ve ever read.

    The tone? Everything.

    It’s like watching someone set up dominoes — precise, methodical — and then knock them down one by one until suddenly you’re left staring at the last one, trembling. And that last domino is you.

    Fromm builds to this absolutely chilling indictment of modern society:

    “Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy… man is an automaton—well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function… If it is true… that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes… the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction.”

    Read that again. That’s not a quote, that’s A warning.

    Fromm breaks down why love is missing in the modern world — how we’ve confused love with consumerism, performance, control. He talks about why we don’t know how to love, how it all got tangled up in the machinery of profit and productivity, and why learning to love is not just cute or noble — it’s essential to our very humanity.

    And the way he says it? Impeccable.
    There is shade in every sentence. It’s not preachy — it’s precise. It’s like being read for filth by someone in a velvet smoking jacket, sipping wine, quoting Hegel, and daring you to catch up. It’s the politest, nastiest intellectual takedown I’ve ever read. A masterclass in soft-spoken audacity.

    The tone is calm but cutting. Thoughtful but brutal. High-key shade on every page. There’s a scoff baked into every sentence. I swear, I could hear the arched eyebrow.

    And yet… underneath all of it is this beautiful, radical, sincere hope. A belief that love can be cultivated. That we can unlearn this disconnection. That society can be reshaped in the image of true love — not the romanticized fluff we’re sold, but the real, difficult, honest kind rooted in care, discipline, humility, and commitment.

    I took so many notes. My notes are chaos. My brain is cooked.

    And let’s talk about that last chapter — the one I will be re-reading every month until further notice. It cracked me wide open. If you talk to me anytime soon, be warned: I will be quoting this book like scripture. I see why bell hooks cited it in All About Love.

    10/10, no notes. Except, you know, the entire notebook I filled.

  • Romance, Brought to You by Late-Stage Capitalism: Fromm, Freud, and the Marketplace

    Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving critiques several prevailing—yet deeply flawed—conceptions of love in contemporary Western society, often presenting them in a satirical or critical light by contrasting them with the idea of genuine love.

    He argues that these modern understandings actually represent a “disintegration of love.”

    He writes:

    “No objective observer of our Western life can doubt that love is rare, and that its place is taken by a number of forms of pseudo-love, which are in reality are many forms of the disintegration of love.”

    He says we often treat love like a commodity, focusing only on two things: being loved and being lovable

    This leads men to chase success, power, and wealth, while women cultivate attractiveness. But these are STRATEGIES!!!!!! (I’m going to write about strategies one day)

    Fromm sharply points out how capitalism has influences our character:

    The owner of capital can buy labor and command it.
    The owner of labor must sell it or starve.

    He says this mindset is tied to the idea that finding love is simple—that the hard part is finding the right OBJECT
    He argues our entire culture is built on capitalism, and our idea of love follows it. We emphasize the importance of the OBJECT against the importance of the function. Our culture revolves around mutually favorable exchange.

    Happiness?
    Fromm says it lies in the thrill of looking for the best and buying all that you can afford. In dating, this translates to a neatly packaged “attractive” set of qualities sought after on the personality market. And what makes a person attractive? That depends entirely on the fashion of the time both physically and mentally.

    In the 20s, a drinking, smoking, tough, and sexy woman was attractive.
    Today? The fashion demands domestic coyness.
    At the turn of the 20th century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious.
    Today? Social and tolerant.

    But either way, the sense of “falling in love” is just people feeling like they’ve found the best object available on the market, given the limitations of their own exchange value.

    We’re out here marketing ourselves. And the OBJECT must be desirable, socially valuable, complete with hidden assets and future potential.

    This was written in 1956. My grandmother was 4. My grandfather was 6. And yet it feels like he could have written this yesterday. We’re still following the same tired pattern of exchange that governs the commodity and labor market—and we’re still calling it love.

    Then Fromm drags another contradiction:
    The idea that love is just a spontaneous feeling or an “irresistible emotion,” especially when it’s mixed with sexual attraction. He says this mindset completely neglects the importance of WILL.

    Love, he insists, is a decision, a judgment, a promise.
    If love were only a feeling, then loving someone forever would be impossible.
    The only forever is an ACT.

    Love is an act of will. A commitment.
    And fundamentally? It does not matter to who.

    Let me bring up another contradiction that caught me:
    Fromm breaks down different kinds of love—Love of God, Mother, Father, Brother, Erotic Love.

    What stopped me in my tracks was his take on Mother Love vs Father Love:

    • Mother Love is unconditional love. Love for the helpless.
    • Father Love is earned. Conditional. Merit-based.

    He even shows this in how religious systems reflect it.
    Matriarchal religion? That’s Mother Love: all-protective, all-enveloping, unconditional. We are all equal before Mother Earth.
    Patriarchal religion? Father Love: making demands, setting rules, establishing laws.

    Then he speaks on Brotherly Love—love among equals. He writes:

    “If I love my brother, I love all my brothers; if I love my child, I love all my children; no, beyond that, I love all children.”

    Each kind of love is different, but by their very nature, they aren’t meant to be limited to one person.

    Erotic love, though? That’s the craving for complete fusion with ONE other person. It’s exclusive—not universal. Why?

    Fromm directly challenges the belief that love is just the byproduct of sexual pleasure. He says just because two people learn to sexually satisfy each other doesn’t mean they love each other. Sexual desire is often mistaken for love. People think they love someone when really, they just want other.

    But fusion isn’t just physical.
    He says love is not the result of good sex—what we’re really seeking is relief from the painful tension and anxiety of separateness.

    Without love, physical union never leads to true connection. It remains orgiastic and transitory, leaving two people “as far apart as they were before.” So we keep chasing the high with a new person. A new stranger. Over and over again. Because closeness, like novelty, fades.

    Yo!!! Like… are you feeling that in your chest too?
    I damn near cried.

    Then Fromm goes in on Freud. Freud claimed:

    “Man, having found that genital love offered him his greatest gratification, made it the central point of his life.”

    That idea was revolutionary in the 1890s—but Fromm calls it conformist. It completely misses the mystical essence of love: the root of intense union with another person—the feeling of fusion, of oneness—the “oceanic feeling.”(im definitely going to write about the oceanic feeling or the sea of orgasmic bliss)

    To Freud, love was irrational. And the thinkers of the time?
    They were busy trying to prove capitalism matched the natural state of man:

    • That we are naturally competitive, insatiable, hostile.
    • That we’re driven by limitless desire for sexual conquest.
    • And that only society prevents us from going full feral. ( and they have the nerve to call anyone savage)

    So love, hate, ambition, jealousy?
    Freud chalked them all up to variations of the sexual instinct.

    Sound familiar?
    I’ve been trying to tell y’all—you only think the way you think because you live here, and some old fuck told you to.
    This brings me back to Yurugu (which I will write about one day).

    Freud didn’t see that the key to understanding life is not the body, or hunger, or sex, or possessions—it’s the totality of human existence. That’s a very Eastern thought, one that echoes in the Tao and ATR.

    Fromm ties this all together and says:

    Our character (in capitalism) is shaped by the need to exchange, to barter, to consume.
    Everything—material and spiritual—becomes an object of exchange.

    We are automatons with personality packages who have forgotten how to love. We seek security in the herd—and in not being different: not in thought, not in feeling, not in action. Everyone tries to remain as same as possible while remaining utterly alone—racked by insecurity, anxiety, and guilt.

    Our palliatives? A strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work—where you remain unaware of your desires, unaware of transcendence, unaware of unity. You overcome your unconscious despair with the routine of amusement, passive consumption, and the hollow satisfaction of buying new things—then exchanging them for others. You are sedated, compliant, obedient—and you like it. Hoping for a fair bargain.

    This shows up nowhere more clearly than in marriage—a union structured like a corporate team.

    In the Victorian age and in many other cultures: love was not a spontaneous personal experience that might lead to marriage. Marriage was contracted by convention, and love was expected to follow after the paperwork was signed. This is the background of what we call marriage: a contract to exchange objects.

    The ideal partner is well-functioning employee: independent, cooperative, and tolerant, and yet ambitious, and aggressive. Intimacy is but as a refuge from unbearable loneliness. We enhance “collaboration,” by adjusting our behaviors for mutual satisfaction, pooling common interests, and teaming up against a hostile world.

    But this, Fromm argues, is pseudo-love.

    It’s the disintegration of love. True love, he says, is an art—one that requires discipline, concentration, patience, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

    And it is completely incompatible with the consumerist, market-driven, alienated society we live in.

  • Romance, Brought to You by Late-Stage Capitalism: Fromm, Freud, and the Marketplace

    Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving critiques several prevailing—yet deeply flawed—conceptions of love in contemporary Western society, often presenting them in a satirical or critical light by contrasting them with the idea of genuine love.

    He argues that these modern understandings actually represent a “disintegration of love.”

    He writes:

    “No objective observer of our Western life can doubt that love is rare, and that its place is taken by a number of forms of pseudo-love, which are in reality are many forms of the disintegration of love.”

    He says we often treat love like a commodity, focusing only on two things: being loved and being lovable

    This leads men to chase success, power, and wealth, while women cultivate attractiveness. But these are STRATEGIES!!!!!! (I’m going to write about strategies one day)

    Fromm sharply points out how capitalism has influences our character:

    The owner of capital can buy labor and command it.
    The owner of labor must sell it or starve.

    He says this mindset is tied to the idea that finding love is simple—that the hard part is finding the right OBJECT
    He argues our entire culture is built on capitalism, and our idea of love follows it. We emphasize the importance of the OBJECT against the importance of the function. Our culture revolves around mutually favorable exchange.

    Happiness?
    Fromm says it lies in the thrill of looking for the best and buying all that you can afford. In dating, this translates to a neatly packaged “attractive” set of qualities sought after on the personality market. And what makes a person attractive? That depends entirely on the fashion of the time both physically and mentally.

    In the 20s, a drinking, smoking, tough, and sexy woman was attractive.
    Today? The fashion demands domestic coyness.
    At the turn of the 20th century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious.
    Today? Social and tolerant.

    But either way, the sense of “falling in love” is just people feeling like they’ve found the best object available on the market, given the limitations of their own exchange value.

    We’re out here marketing ourselves. And the OBJECT must be desirable, socially valuable, complete with hidden assets and future potential.

    This was written in 1956. My grandmother was 4. My grandfather was 6. And yet it feels like he could have written this yesterday. We’re still following the same tired pattern of exchange that governs the commodity and labor market—and we’re still calling it love.

    Then Fromm drags another contradiction:
    The idea that love is just a spontaneous feeling or an “irresistible emotion,” especially when it’s mixed with sexual attraction. He says this mindset completely neglects the importance of WILL.

    Love, he insists, is a decision, a judgment, a promise.
    If love were only a feeling, then loving someone forever would be impossible.
    The only forever is an ACT.

    Love is an act of will. A commitment.
    And fundamentally? It does not matter to who.

    Let me bring up another contradiction that caught me:
    Fromm breaks down different kinds of love—Love of God, Mother, Father, Brother, Erotic Love.

    What stopped me in my tracks was his take on Mother Love vs Father Love:

    • Mother Love is unconditional love. Love for the helpless.
    • Father Love is earned. Conditional. Merit-based.

    He even shows this in how religious systems reflect it.
    Matriarchal religion? That’s Mother Love: all-protective, all-enveloping, unconditional. We are all equal before Mother Earth.
    Patriarchal religion? Father Love: making demands, setting rules, establishing laws.

    Then he speaks on Brotherly Love—love among equals. He writes:

    “If I love my brother, I love all my brothers; if I love my child, I love all my children; no, beyond that, I love all children.”

    Each kind of love is different, but by their very nature, they aren’t meant to be limited to one person.

    Erotic love, though? That’s the craving for complete fusion with ONE other person. It’s exclusive—not universal. Why?

    Fromm directly challenges the belief that love is just the byproduct of sexual pleasure. He says just because two people learn to sexually satisfy each other doesn’t mean they love each other. Sexual desire is often mistaken for love. People think they love someone when really, they just want other.

    But fusion isn’t just physical.
    He says love is not the result of good sex—what we’re really seeking is relief from the painful tension and anxiety of separateness.

    Without love, physical union never leads to true connection. It remains orgiastic and transitory, leaving two people “as far apart as they were before.” So we keep chasing the high with a new person. A new stranger. Over and over again. Because closeness, like novelty, fades.

    Yo!!! Like… are you feeling that in your chest too?
    I damn near cried.

    Then Fromm goes in on Freud. Freud claimed:

    “Man, having found that genital love offered him his greatest gratification, made it the central point of his life.”

    That idea was revolutionary in the 1890s—but Fromm calls it conformist. It completely misses the mystical essence of love: the root of intense union with another person—the feeling of fusion, of oneness—the “oceanic feeling.”(im definitely going to write about the oceanic feeling or the sea of orgasmic bliss)

    To Freud, love was irrational. And the thinkers of the time?
    They were busy trying to prove capitalism matched the natural state of man:

    • That we are naturally competitive, insatiable, hostile.
    • That we’re driven by limitless desire for sexual conquest.
    • And that only society prevents us from going full feral. ( and they have the nerve to call anyone savage)

    So love, hate, ambition, jealousy?
    Freud chalked them all up to variations of the sexual instinct.

    Sound familiar?
    I’ve been trying to tell y’all—you only think the way you think because you live here, and some old fuck told you to.
    This brings me back to Yurugu (which I will write about one day).

    Freud didn’t see that the key to understanding life is not the body, or hunger, or sex, or possessions—it’s the totality of human existence. That’s a very Eastern thought, one that echoes in the Tao and ATR.

    Fromm ties this all together and says:

    Our character (in capitalism) is shaped by the need to exchange, to barter, to consume.
    Everything—material and spiritual—becomes an object of exchange.

    We are automatons with personality packages who have forgotten how to love. We seek security in the herd—and in not being different: not in thought, not in feeling, not in action. Everyone tries to remain as same as possible while remaining utterly alone—racked by insecurity, anxiety, and guilt.

    Our palliatives? A strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work—where you remain unaware of your desires, unaware of transcendence, unaware of unity. You overcome your unconscious despair with the routine of amusement, passive consumption, and the hollow satisfaction of buying new things—then exchanging them for others. You are sedated, compliant, obedient—and you like it. Hoping for a fair bargain.

    This shows up nowhere more clearly than in marriage—a union structured like a corporate team.

    In the Victorian age and in many other cultures: love was not a spontaneous personal experience that might lead to marriage. Marriage was contracted by convention, and love was expected to follow after the paperwork was signed. This is the background of what we call marriage: a contract to exchange objects.

    The ideal partner is well-functioning employee: independent, cooperative, and tolerant, and yet ambitious, and aggressive. Intimacy is but as a refuge from unbearable loneliness. We enhance “collaboration,” by adjusting our behaviors for mutual satisfaction, pooling common interests, and teaming up against a hostile world.

    But this, Fromm argues, is pseudo-love.

    It’s the disintegration of love. True love, he says, is an art—one that requires discipline, concentration, patience, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

    And it is completely incompatible with the consumerist, market-driven, alienated society we live in.