Wishtank
Five pages from Fromm: The Revolution of Hope
by: Editor and Erich Fromm
Humans host the single most developed pieces of cognitive equipment on the planet (i.e. our brains). Why then, do so few know how to operate this equipment to its potential? I’m not taking a shot at the human race, or insinuating something stupid like “we only use 10% of our brain” — this is one among many common misconceptions about the brain — I’m posing a very real question, as to why the majority of Earth’s population fails to live up to its potential, given the advanced nature of our minds.
Given my experience, growing up in America, I suspect the answer lies in the design of our culture, and its reliance on structure. Structure is so embedded into our culture, that it has compromised our ability to make meaningful decisions in any sort of daily continuity. Let me state, before we continue, that this is a generalization, and is in no way true for all humans. There are truly independent thinkers, artists and genius types in this world who maintain control of their minds. They are either too intelligent, or too wild in nature, to have forfeited their autonomy for the gentler, more automated existence. But, these humans are a minority, and far outnumbered by a more common class of human who opt into a culture of ease and convenience.
Every morning we wake up and immediately have decisions to make. Every action we make — whether we realize it or not — from getting out of bed in the morning or crawling back into it at night, is the result of a mental decision. But how aware are we of these decisions? It seems that most of these decisions have become routine, and are made with little thought or contemplation. At face value, this might seem efficient, or even favorable — humans have refined their routines enough so that they are able to cruise through their day with very little effort. But in so doing, we have developed a lifestyle that requires very little thought, or mindfulness of our actions.
We are introduced to structured environments early in life. We can look as early as preschool or kindergarten and begin to see where our brains are relieved of, or even denied, decision-making responsibility. Most of us go to school at age five, and enter a classroom where every minute of our time is pre-determined and scheduled for us. We learn to read from 8:00 to 9:00, to count from 9:00-10:00, eat snacks from 10:00-10:30, draw from 10:30-11:30, and on, and on. Rather than learning to navigate our own time, we are trained to be passengers, always relying on someone else to determine the course of our day. When a student makes a decision that he doesn’t want to finger paint from noon to 12:30, while the rest of the kids are, it is labeled “acting out.” Just examine that label — acting out. Acting out of what? Outside the group? At an early age, we are taught that taking control of decision making is not acceptable, that we must adhere to the decisions and courses that are laid out for us.
This blog isn’t about education, though, for a more thorough assessment of the public education system, read the essay “From Schools to Learning Communities,” by Dr. Ron Miller. What I want to examine here is the bigger picture, the results of growing up in such a highly structured culture.
We leave the classroom and enter the work force and it’s the same thing: wake up, take a shower, eat toast, drink coffee, drive to work, work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed and do it all again tomorrow. This is the typical day for the majority of adults in our society who aren’t filthy rich or homeless. Which is fine, people have to work, but how many people, if given the choice to do their job, or something else everyday, would choose their job? Humans, far more often than not, float in a current rather than swim. Swimming takes work, a lot of work, and when there is a strong current behind you, it is far easier to go with it, than to swim against it. This analogy, again, is not true for the entire race of humans — truly successful people out there have recognized the current for what it was, and realized that they could overcome it with a lot of hard work. Mastering our minds and making purposeful decisions leads us not only out of the current but out of the water entirely. Boats are being built everyday by people who understand the sea and the best way to navigate it.
Humanist philosophers like Erich Fromm, among others, identified this phenomenon a long time ago. If you haven’t read it, I whole-heartedly recommend Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope Toward a Humanized Technology. It’s an old book (copyright 1968), the pages of my copy are mustard yellow, but reading it forty years after it was written, it is amazing how accurately Fromm’s assessment of our culture was both then and today in the 21st century. This was the book I was reading when we were building Wishtank last year at this time and it helped me construct our humanist perspective. I thought you would appreciate reading the first few pages, so I photographed them for you.
I think it’s important to address the title “The Revolution of Hope.” While this blog may come across a bit pessimistic, it is only that way because it is incomplete. I just wanted to address some real observations that I see not only in my life, but in the lives of so many folks I meet. I do have hope, I remain optimistic, and we will discuss this in part two next week.
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