CraigJustCraig

Tag: philosophy

  • Do Nothing

    Sometimes I think about weird things all the time and prompted by the weirder things still. Recently, I was talking to a friend and I asked them what were they doing, and they replied, “Nothing.” That set me off for some reason. I have friends that seem to always be doing nothing even when they are clearly doing something. Then I started to wonder—why are we so encouraged to do nothing?

    I thought doing nothing is our rest, but rest is our rest. Rest is an action, just like nothing is an action. Then I wondered, who benefits from us doing nothing? Obviously, it’s us—but really? Do we benefit from nothing? No. Well, then I thought no one benefits from nothing. And I thought that again is not true—all the people that would much rather you do nothing would definitely want you doing that than anything that could possibly hinder their objective or agenda.

    This led to a series of thoughts and ideas till I got to: action comes from ideas, and ideas are not always our own. Ideas are not forced onto us. They don’t have to. Persuasion often works through cues we barely register. Things are phrased the way they are phrased because it’s a nudge to point you into a given direction. The more your perspective widens, the more you realize you have no clue what is actually happening around you and how your perception is just a series of filters that shape your possible thoughts and narrow your inside reality.

    Ideas take root in your mind whether you want them to or even notice it. They live inside our minds and wait for you to water the seeds. Our culture is amused by distraction. We talk at each other. We entertain one another, but we can no longer challenge one another. We cannot be allowed nuance in our rigid reality. We no longer talk to each other because we’re all wearing team jerseys. We no longer exchange ideas, we exchange the illusion. We are fed a constant stream of information designed for you to take no action at all. Our stories are stripped of implication, leaving us with inescapable anxiety.

    Our inaction is a tactical decision designed to get you to look no further, think no deeper, and feel no longer. Grow comfortable with nothing. This is the perfection of slavery, because while you give and consume, the very key to your freedom is hidden in plain sight.

    This brings me back to Yurugu again and again—our worldview is shaped by so little, and it feels so natural. We never resist what we never see. So we continue to do nothing at all.

  • Language vs. Reality: A Conversation on Thought, Culture, and the Limits of Words

    Language was built by ancient minds drawn toward fixed ideas—stability, constants, categories, and quick solutions. But the world language tries to describe is change, growth, complexity, and connection. This mismatch creates a gap between lived reality and the rigid thought structures we often use to interpret it.

    In a recent discussion, several voices came together to explore how language shapes thought—and how thought, in turn, shapes language. Here’s how it unfolded:

    @transbuoy offered a compelling starting point:

    “I don’t think it’s language doing this directly—it’s our minds that want to fix some things as unchanging. A static concept is easier to hold than a dynamic one. But of course, everything is changing at different rates—including language itself.

    Descriptive language always comes after the thing it’s describing. It’s the signifier, not the signified.”

    This opened the door to deeper cultural and linguistic questions.

    @CraigJustCraig responded with a cultural lens:

    “I see your point, but I’m approaching this from the angle that not all languages work like English. Especially non-colonial languages—they don’t impose the same rigid structures we see in American English.

    Our dominant language reflects a cultural mindset that codes time as linear, progress as staged, and reality as something to categorize. This supports a worldview that craves order and rationality, but it limits how we perceive the fluidity of existence.”

    @transbuoy agreed and added:

    “I don’t know much about American culture specifically, but colonial culture, yes—language becomes a tool of control, narrower than its potential.”

    The conversation deepened when @LadyJouissance stepped in:

    “Ah, the classic chicken-and-egg of linguistic structuralism—does language shape our thoughts, or do our thoughts shape language?

    I highly recommend Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude Levi-Strauss on this.”

    To which @CraigJustCraig replied:

    “Cooking through Levi-Strauss now—I’ll add Saussure to the mix!”

    @LadyJouissance followed up with a personal insight:

    “I’ve always wondered how my thinking would be different if I’d grown up speaking Mandarin.

    Language influences our thought patterns, but I don’t believe it’s an inescapable cage—just one most people don’t even know they’re in.

    I also believe there are thought processes that happen outside of language. We fixate on language because it’s our bridge to each other. And tracking how meanings shift over time is fascinating—like how ‘sick’ went from bad to good.”

    @CraigJustCraig responded with depth:

    “Yes—breaking free from language’s limitations takes awareness and effort. Much of dominant-language structure discourages self-awareness and conditions people to obey authority. It moralizes needs, labels people, and distracts from empathy and responsibility.

    I often wonder about the thoughts I never had—blocked by inherited language and cultural conditioning. What kind of mental landscape could we have grown into with a completely different linguistic foundation?”

    @LadyJouissance added a philosophical twist:

    “One of my favorite critiques comes from Nietzsche, who challenged Descartes’ ‘cogito ergo sum’ by pointing out that some languages—like Swahili—don’t even require a subject for a verb.

    Just because something is thinking doesn’t prove a ‘self’ exists. It really baked my noodle to realize how deeply language frames our sense of reality.

    The answer? Widen the world you inhabit. It makes breaking free a little easier.”

    @transbuoy chimed in again to affirm:

    “Absolutely—language and reality shape each other. I’ll still check out the book though 😄”

    Closing Reflection
    The power of language is that it both reflects and refracts reality. When we change the language we use—not just the words, but the structure and metaphors—we begin to change how we see, feel, and connect. The world isn’t static, and neither are we. Our evolution begins when we learn to speak not just about change—but in it.

  • Quote, from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Making sure I dont lose this again

    This describes the Tao, or the Way, as something beyond human perception and description. It is invisible, inaudible, and subtle, and these qualities prevent it from being captured by language or defined through description. The quote emphasizes that the essence of the Tao can only be understood by acknowledging these paradoxical qualities and blending them together.

    “We look at it, and we do not see it, and we name it the ‘invisible’. We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it the ‘Inaudible.’ We try to grasp it, and do not get hold of it, and we name it the Subtle.’ With these three qualities, it can not be made the subject of description; and hence we blend them together and obtain The One.” …bars

    There is a saying in the Tao Te Ching:

    “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”

    Tao is the paradox.
    It is what you can hold in your hand—and also what slips through your fingers.
    It is what you see and cannot see, what you hear and cannot hear.
    It is form and formlessness, presence and absence, action and stillness.

    “It Is and It Is Not”: The Paradox of Tao

    Many traditions point toward this paradox. Taoism names it explicitly. But for me, much of this thinking first came alive through African Traditional Philosophy—a cosmology where spirit, form, and formless energy are always in relation. Recently, I encountered this paradox again in The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm, where he contrasts Taoist logic with Aristotelian reasoning.

    Fromm describes Tao not as a static concept but as an unfolding—something to live rather than define. Where the West often seeks truth through dominance, Tao finds balance in contradiction. It says: both things can be true. And that’s the key.

    Acceptance Is the Natural State—But It’s Not Passive

    As one commenter, @L_D_F, said:

    “Tao is everything and nothing. The most important lesson I draw from it is that acceptance is the natural state of things.”

    But then they asked: How much acceptance can we actually tolerate?
    That’s the question sacred kink—and intentional spiritual practice—takes seriously.

    Because acceptance is not passive. It is not resignation. It is not spiritual bypass. It is a full-body embrace of paradox, of shadow, of contradiction. It is action. It is presence. It is alchemy.

    Sacred Kink as a Path to the Paradox

    When we engage in sacred kink, especially in extended or altered states of consciousness—subspace, top space, breath states, trance states—we often experience this paradox directly. We return to the truth that contradiction is not a problem to solve. It is a condition to inhabit.

    We don’t choose either/or—we become the AND.

    We experience pain and pleasure, surrender and control, resistance and release, chaos and structure. We allow ourselves to seek both conflict and harmony in the same breath. That tension creates resonance. And that resonance becomes a portal to deeper knowing.

    African Philosophy and the Tao: A Synergy

    Taoism speaks in symbols and silence. Western thought speaks in conquest and clarity. But African cosmologies? They speak in relationship—in conscious, spiritual coexistence with the universe. They hold reality not as something to dominate or define, but something to dance with. Something alive.

    This is where I feel the deepest synergy. Precolonial African philosophy and Taoist paradox both resist binary, rigid truths. They invite us into the liminal, into communion with the seen and unseen, into non-linear time and cosmic responsibility.

    And this is also what sacred kink opens: a space where body and spirit can meet outside the constraints of linearity, morality, and shame.

    The Way Is Not a Straight Line

    So, where does that leave us?

    With a Way that cannot be held, but can be lived.
    With a truth that cannot be named, but can be felt.
    With a path that must be walked in the dark, guided only by breath, sensation, trust, and paradox.

    This is the space sacred kink dares to enter. Not as entertainment. Not as escape. But as embodied metaphysics.

    As the Tao says:

    “When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.”

    We don’t fight the paradox.
    We let it tie us up—and teach us.

  • 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.

  • 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.