Erich Fromm - To Have or To Be? torrent

*To Have or to Be?

pdf version
Continuum, 1976


To Have or to Be? is a 1976 book by social psychologist Erich Fromm that differentiates between having and being.

Fromm mentions how the modern society has become materialistic and prefers "having" than "being". He mentions the great promise of unlimited happiness, freedom, material abundance, and domination of nature. These hopes got to their highs when the industrial age begun. One could feel that there would be unlimited production and hence unlimited consumption. The human beings including men and women have started dreaming about becoming the Gods of earth, but it wasn’t really the case. The great promise failed due to the unachievable aims of life, i.e. maximum pleasure and fulfillment of every desire (radical hedonism), and the egotism, selfishness and greed of the people. In the industrial age, the development of this economic system was no longer determined by the question that what is good for man, rather what is good for the growth of the system.

...In every mode of life, the people should ponder more on "being" nature and not towards the "having" nature. This is the truth which people deny and thus the people of modern world have completely lost their inner selves. The point of being is more important as everyone is mortal, and thus having of possessions will become useless after their death, because the possessions which are transferred to the life after death, will be what the person actually was inside.(wiki)