CraigJustCraig

Tag: philosophy

  • Harmonics of Desire And Being

    The air around me vibrates, a current I can feel, a hum that threads through the body and mind. It speaks of erotic, profane, sensual, the unbroken pulse of existence itself.

    The divine is not a building, a book, or a word whispered in quiet halls—it is here, in my heart, in my mind, in my actions, in the raw exchange of energy, in the collision and surrender of force that courses through flesh and intention alike.

    BDSM and kink are not merely acts of sensation—they are conduits, living currents of energy. Every touch, every bind, every strike is a spark along a web of resonance, a pulse that threads through time, intention, and body alike.

    The scene becomes a lattice of energy, woven with consent and focus, a deliberate choreography of power, release, and expansion.

    The first brush of rope against my skin, the pull of restraint, the guiding presence of force—these are not physical alone. They are channels. They are currents awakening the body and attuning the mind.

    The most intimate corners of desire become nodes in a network of energy, conduits to states of awareness that surpass flesh, that echo through the marrow, that vibrate with the raw pulse of the universe.

    Ritual is the shaping of energy. Intention is the spark. Every scene begins in alignment, a negotiation of currents, limits, and flows—a preparation of the field. The room, the tools, the light, the sound—they are instruments. The bodies themselves are altars, resonating in harmonic convergence, amplifying and channeling the energy that moves between them.

    In this exchange, Dominance and Submission are forces. One guides, one receives. One channels, one becomes a conduit. The push and pull, the surrender and control, the ebb and flow—these are currents of creation. To submit is to release tension, to dissolve the ego, to allow the energy to flow unimpeded. To dominate is to focus, to shape the movement, to guide the current, to hold the field in sacred tension.

    Restraint is not merely containment; it is anchoring. The ropes, the binds, the ties—threads of potential, of manifestation, of energy focused and honed. Every knot is a pulse, every tension a charge, every release a cascade through the system. Impact, sensation, rhythm—they are catalysts, transmuting the mundane into altered states of awareness, refining raw energy into sharpened presence, into heightened resonance.

    Even sensation itself is alchemy. Deprivation, overstimulation, the dance of extremes—they fracture ordinary perception, letting energy seep into spaces normally locked away. Pleasure and pain become the same frequency, the same current, vibrating across nerves and marrow, dissolving the boundaries of self, opening channels to uncharted energetic realms.

    Fluid exchange is not literal; it is energetic communion. The flow of essence, the intermingling of force, the resonance of two systems meeting and harmonizing—this is the altar of the body, the purest conduit for energy, a sacred exchange of power and vitality that ripples outward, reshaping perception, attuning the senses, igniting the currents of existence.

    To ritualize these acts is to channel them. To infuse touch, gaze, movement, and breath with deliberate intent. To let energy move freely, without judgment or resistance, and to witness its transformation in yourself and in the space around you. Aftercare is not recovery—it is grounding, integration, the settling of currents into coherent resonance, the honoring of the forces that moved through the field.

    This is the path. Not devotion to form, not obedience to dogma. It is surrender to flow, mastery of current, communion with the raw pulse of being. Every gesture, every sensation, every moment becomes an offering, a prayer, a conduit. Pleasure, pain, power, release—they are all energy. And the sacred is not separate from the sensual; it is exactly in the convergence, in the rhythm, in the luminous chaos of bodies and currents, in the resonance of all that moves through us.

    Step into the field. Align your currents. Let energy flow through you as devotion, as ritual, as revelation. Let your body become the altar. Let your desire be the spell.

  • Surrender as Paradox

    Masculinity and femininity are not cages. They are archetypes. They are currents. You do not have to be a man to flow in masculine energy. You do not have to be a woman to flow in feminine. These are maps, not mandates.

    The modern world teaches us to name, to limit, to box. They build empires on fear, guilt, and obedience. They call it virtue. They call it love. They cage the soul and call it salvation. But the Tao whispers: It is and it is not. It slips through fingers, yet runs through your veins. It is the paradox of living fully, of embracing contradiction.

    You walk into shadow, not out of sin but out of curiosity. Pleasure is ritual. Indulgence is liturgy. Hedonism, taboo, debauchery—these are altars. Each gasp, each tremor, each whispered yes—a prayer written in flesh. Plant medicines, shrooms, entheogens—they open corridors of mind, gates to ecstasy, doorways where the self dissolves and the divine bleeds through muscle, bone, and blood.

    Masculinity is fire, motion, structure, force. Feminine energy births, guides, nurtures, flows. Archetypes are currents, not cages. The wound of fathers, the pain of inherited expectation—acknowledge it. But do not let it dictate your devotion. Brotherhood, communion, consent, accountability—these are your rituals. Pain is fuel, but not excuse. Desire is guide, not theft.

    The Tao is paradox. Pleasure and pain. Surrender and control. Chaos and structure. Shadow and radiance. Life and death. There is no either/or. There is only AND. Sacred kink, conscious ritual, intentional embodiment—these are the crucibles where paradox becomes revelation. Breath, sensation, trust—they are the path, the Way, the alchemy of living fully.

    The Way cannot be held, but it can be walked. The truth cannot be named, but it can be felt. It is invisible, inaudible, subtle. It is and. The sacred, the taboo, the ecstasy—they are not separate from spirit; they are the gates. Pleasure is meditation. Desire is devotion. Shadow is sacred.

    When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. Let the paradox bind you, guide you, teach you. Step fully into the shadow. Embrace the fire. Revel in the forbidden. Surrender. Indulge. Explore. Touch. Be.

    This is your altar. This is your communion. This is your liberation.

  • Discipline of Touch

    The first time I witnessed tantric massage, it was not cheap arousal, not casual play. It felt like rite and revelation. A quiet room. Breath deepening. A man trembling as skilled hands touched him not with greed but with reverence. Watching his release, I understood: this is not indulgence. This is invocation.

    Tantric massage is not some spa trick. It is ritual. It is a way of treating the lingam—the rod of life, the staff of flesh—not as a toy, not as a weapon, but as a sacred vessel. Every stroke becomes liturgy. Every pause becomes scripture. The lingam is not just genitalia—it is the altar, the axis, where pleasure becomes prayer.

    Consent is the first and last law here. Not a formality. Not a checkbox. Consent is the living breath of the ritual. Nothing begins without his yes. Nothing deepens without his yes. Every gesture is a dialogue of spirit and flesh. To proceed without it is desecration.

    And when the yes comes, the gates open. Release flows—not pornographic, not performative, but luminous. Seed and sigh, trembling and tears. His body shakes, dissolves, empties—and I am not conqueror but witness, steward, priest of his surrender.

    For him, surrender is power. To let himself be touched without shame, without performance, is rebellion. To feel pleasure without guilt is reclamation. To give himself fully is devotion. In that moment, he is both god and worshipper, both vessel and fire.

    For me, it is discipline. Devotion. To guide him toward his own release while refusing to steal it for myself. To touch without taking. To serve without conquest. His trust is the altar. His pleasure, the hymn. My role is not thief, not consumer, but conduit.

    This ritual is carnal and divine braided together. Every moan, every pulse, every whispered “yes” is both body and psalm. A sacred transaction: one offers surrender, the other offers devotion. And in the end, what remains is not orgasm—it is communion.

  • 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.

  • Sacred Exchange: Building and Navigating Spiritual Dynamics

    I want to explore living a deliberate spiritual power dynamic as a path of discipline, growth, and freedom.

    Spiritual dynamics are a different caliber of connection. They demand more vetting, smaller contracts, ongoing renegotiations, and lots of communication. I share this because I’ve failed here and paid a price. That loss is real and painful — a reminder that spiritual power exchange requires patience and respect. Build carefully. Communicate openly. Be willing to grow.

    A spiritual power exchange dynamic is not casual.

    That means you need:

    • A vetting period: Spend time learning each other’s limits, triggers, communication styles, and values before jumping into big commitments.
    • Smaller contracts: Start with limited agreements — maybe rules that apply only during specific times or certain activities.
    • Regularly revisit your agreements: People change, situations change, and a spiritual dynamic demands intentional ongoing consent and communication.

    Building Your Dynamic

    • Only add one rule at a time, so you don’t overwhelm yourselves or create conflicts.
    • Keep your total number of rules manageable so you both can remember and follow them.
    • Enforce rules consistently — a rule ignored is a rule dead.
    • Be ready to drop or modify rules if life changes or they just don’t work.
    • Decide what the power exchange covers. Interaction with other partners? Goals? Motivations? Drives?
    • Decide when the dynamic applies. Only during in-person play? Only when a collar is worn? There’s no right or wrong.

    When Conflict Arises

    Power exchange can be intense. When conflicts come up, resist the urge to “fix” things or walk away. Instead:

    • Step out of the role.
    • Remove symbols respectfully and with intention.
    • Speak as equals, using real names.
    • Aim to find solutions that work for both of you.

    Remember This About Spiritual Dynamics

    What makes a spiritual dynamic different is the purpose behind it — and that purpose is deeply personal. Whether you’re seeking to learn more about yourself through service to another, or seeking clarity through asceticism, that reason is personal.

    So, ask what your partner gets from protocols, and share what you get too. Make it personal.

    Rituals, symbols, and ceremonies matter — treat them carefully.

    Don’t copy-paste from past dynamics.

    Honesty is Rule Zero. Break that, and you break everything.

    Additional Notes

    • Non-monogamy and spiritual power exchange can coexist but require ongoing negotiation and Failsafe conversations.
    • Your dynamic will evolve as you meet goals, benchmarks, and milestones.
    • Discuss what breakup or transition out of the dynamic looks like — it’s a hard conversation, but important.
    • Mental health matters — depression or trauma affect dynamics deeply. Support your partner.
    • Narcissism kills spiritual power exchange; mutual respect and interest fuel it.

    Final Thoughts

    Living a deliberate spiritual power dynamic is a path of discipline, growth, and freedom. It’s messy, challenging, and deeply rewarding.

  • 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.

  • On time

    Magick is all about mythoform and mythology—the deep stories we tell that shape how we see and move through the world.

    One of the core myths we’ve inherited?
    That ever-present sinking feeling that we’re “wasting time.”
    I still feel trapped by it. Caught in an antagonistic system that breeds confusion, anxiety, and fear.
    That’s not an accident—it’s a built-in feature.

    “Where do these white people run to every morning? To their workplaces, of course. Why do they have to run to something that is not running away from them? They do not have time.”

    I had to say this word in French because there is no equivalent in the local language. The conversation came to a halt when the elder had to ask what this “time” is.
    (Malidoma Somé, Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community)

    Let that sink in.

    This isn’t just a philosophical take—this is about how myth (yes, even modern, “rational” cultures have them) is silently scripting our lives.
    Because “time” we’re so afraid of wasting—it doesn’t exist the way we were told.

    This is my second time coming across this.

    In Yurugu by Marimba Ani:

    “Time” in this view moves ceaselessly towards some point never reached in the “future.” This sense of telos (Greek for “end,” “purpose,” or “goal”) is an important aspect of European mythology—the stories a culture uses to explain the world, its origins, and the fundamental aspects of human existence.

    It gives meaning to European life.

    Yet the “future” creates more problems than it resolves. Ironically, this “future” is approached by the ever-present line of time through which the European seeks fulfillment, but at the same time assures her/him of never being fulfilled.

    The “future” represents unattainable perfection.
    It is an abstraction that is unreachable and, therefore, unknowable.
    And what is unknowable for the European causes anxiety.

    The European psyche needs the illusion of a rationally ordered universe in which everything can be known.

    A future that never comes.
    A perfection you never reach.
    A loop of anxiety, fear, and shame dressed up in suits, clocks, and productivity.

    And the gag is—this was all by design.

    European mythoform—the unconscious structural pattern shaping its worldview—creates an unknown and unknowable future whose only relationship to the past and present is that it determines them, but cannot be determined by them. This antagonistic situation causes emotional confusion, anxiety, and fear for the European.

    Yet this oppressive future cannot be avoided,
    Because the clock moves them toward it at an uncontrollable pace—
    Which seems to move faster and faster.

    All of this is an effect of the limitations of lineal, secular time.
    It is neither phenomenal nor sacred nor spiritual.
    Participants in the culture have only one recourse against the fear: Science (Purchasing of “insurance” a attempt to escape the fear.)

    They seek to relieve their anxiety by gaining control over what controls them. Failing, in the end, to find fulfillment. Because the European conception of science is above all secular, alienating, literate, rationalistic, and linear.

    This abstract and oppressive future continues to threaten, to intimidate, to frighten. They move inexorably toward it, a movement that imparts value (“progress”), and yet the perceived destiny is fear-producing.

    The European worldview doesn’t just teach this logic—
    It hides it beneath the illusion of being “universal.”
    Then turns around and sells that illusion to the rest of the world back to US

    The culture teaches its logic. It hands you its worldview.
    You absorb it, bury it, act on it—and forget it’s not truth, it’s programming.

    “Experts” dig that logic back up, slap a label on it, and sell it as universal truth.

    They present it with such authority—it can only be the only valid way to think.
    But what they’re really pushing is their assumed reality, dressed up as logic and objectivity.

    And because of the way it’s delivered, It gets imposed. Globalized.

    Meanwhile, its roots—Christian morality, Western value systems, white fear, capitalist logic—stay camouflaged under this fake-ass pseudouniversalism.

    It’s clever.
    It’s violent.
    And it keeps us divided.

    In a magickal practice, we don’t work with those stories—we create new ones.
    We bend time.
    Pause it.
    Let it circle back.
    Let it disappear.

    We can reclaim time, redefine time, and name our own rhythms.
    We can create moments that are timeless.
    This is the beauty of the path.

    The further I go, the more I realize this isn’t just about rope, or candles, or chants.
    It’s about epistemology.
    It’s about which stories get believed—and why.
    It’s about what we can do once we stop believing the lies.

    Because the mythoform of the dominant culture is designed to make you chase something you can never catch.
    It tells you time is linear, scarce, and slipping away.
    That if you’re not productive, you’re not valuable.
    That rest is lazy.
    That pleasure is dangerous.

    But we know better.
    This requires deep consideration of all the bullshit that’s been assumed.
    We remember who the fuck we are.
    We strip it.
    Burn it.
    Build Anew.

  • Nihilomancy: “divination from nothingness”

    I’ve been reviewing some old material for an upcoming class on bondage as a tool toward spiritual release. This book is one of my hard-to-find treasures: Earthly Bondage by Brigett Harrington. https://www.passionandsoul.com/blog/soul/earthly-bondage

    I’ll be teaching this class with Goddess Dior and the House of Diamond, About the Many Path Of Earthly Bondage and one of the core paths we’ll be diving into is the art of Nihilomancy: divination through nothingness.

    “I call upon thee, wisdom in darkness…”

    From that invocation, the chapter plunges us into a world where silence, restraint, and the absence of external stimuli become gateways to the divine.

    The practice of Niihilomancy dark and sensuyal exploration of how sensory deprivation can be used not just for kink, but for deep inner work, divination, and astral travel. It walks a fine edge between mysticism and embodiment, showing how blindfolds, hoods, vows of silence, bondage, and mummification are not only tools of restraint, but instruments of revelation.

    By removing outside distractions (sight, sound, movement), the body and mind enter an altered state where messages can rise from deep within the soul, and from the spirit world.

    It’s where the world is stripped away until only the question remains:

    • Where do I go from here?
    • What choice is mine to make?
    • What truths lie beyond the body?

    Their is a ritual to preparing for this; laying out sacred items and calling upon spiritual forces before entering the sensory void. With each layer :rope, hood, scent, silence. you get closer to the inner realm where wisdom lives.

    What stands out most is the gravity of ritual. Each object whether rope, oil, or spandex becomes charged with intentionality. There is a rhythm to the preparation, an architecture to the ritual that feels devotional, erotic, and sacred all at once. The ritual explores both the somatic and the spiritual experience of sensory deprivation as a threshold art: the portal.

    Think less “nothingness” in the empty sense, and more the void, the liminal space, the fertile dark.

    Whether through fasting, purging, or embedding sigils within the wrappings and around your ritual space, it evokes/invoke something powerful. Death lingering in the margins: the surrender of control, ego, movement, consciousness. But instead of despair, it offers a promise… answers.

    while doing this ritual it describes you’ll feel the shadows settle around you. You’ll hear the call to your own dark silence.

    what is clear the path is laid in layers:
    Fasting or purging .
    Setting the ritual space
    Laying out tools.
    Invoking spirits guides or ancestors.
    Embedding sigils.

    With every layer, with every sense denied, a different kind of awareness opens.
    Sometimes, that leads to wisdom from self.
    Sometimes, it leads to channeling a presence.
    Sometimes, it leads to delicious dissolution.

    Let’s be clear:
    This is erotic mysticism: raw, reverent, and real.

    For those in our coven of kinky mystics and sensual scholars, that aren’t afraid to talk about getting ridden by godforms.

    Because even in darkness, we need witnesses.

    If you’ve ever longed to use your body as a spell, your silence as a question, and your restraints as a roadmap to spirit
    this one’s for you.

  • 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.