(no subject)

Blah. This was really too vague. The apartment search will have to continue.

*headdesk*


Finished E. Fromm's Die Kunst des Liebens (The Art of Loving)

Even while he does echo some of my own apprehensions about the superficial materialism of our time, my inner historian always balks a little at those sweeping moral decline of the modern world statements (in this case, how the values and mentality of capitalist society make it impossible for us to really love), because for millennia people have always been decrying what the world was coming to, and part of me thinks it's our (my own, even) conservative tendencies that sometimes obstruct our view of possible future developments... But it might well be that he has a good point.

Also his insistence on the dichotomy of male and female and gender stereotyping (leading him to claim that real love can only happen between a man and a woman) seems a little out-dated today, and, what's more, it contradicts what he says only a few pages later about the male-female polarity within all of us. (Der Mann wie auch die Frau finden die Einheit in sich selbst nur in Gestalt der Vereinigung ihrer weiblicn und männlichen Polarität.) Not to mention it is rather presumptuous to paraphrase the myth from Plato's Symposion about how we all long to re-join the lost halves of ourselves, and purposefully neglect to mention that for Plato this didn't exclusively mean male-female, but also male-male and female-female.
But given the time the book was written, this is perhaps explicable, though even so it really makes little sense to insist on the limitation of gender in human relationships when later he proceeds to argue how our perception of god has to transcend the human way of thinking in such polarities, and argues for the inclusiveness of paradox logic instead of the exclusiveness of aristotelic logic.

These reservations made, on the whole, I found it a very inspiring book. It makes a lot of sense to me that to be able to love, you first have to be sure of yourself, instead of using the other person as a crutch or saviour; or that we have to be mature enough not to (consciously or subconsciously) expect a partner to fulfill the role of a parent. (Personally speaking, I've been realising recently to what a large degree I've been [am?] defined by my need for reassurance, for praise, something which almost certainly comes from trying to please [be loved by] my father, and never quite succeeding.)

In many ways the book was... not even so much a revelation, but a confirmation that I may be moving in the right direction, telling me that where I am is maybe not such a bad place to be, that I can proceed from there. (Explaining/justifying, too, my almost instinctive dislike for people who find it impossible to put themselves in another's place, who cannot look at the world with any degree of objectivity and humility.)

Maybe my break from academia was the right decision - I've come to think it made me realise things about myself I might not have seen, if I'd focused all my mental energy on my diss, especially as I'm not sure at all to what extent the whole archaeology thing wasn't tied up with my parental issues, trying to do something my father wanted to do himself, but wasn't allowed to by his father. Maybe I can break this chain of cross-generation neuroses.

(no subject)

oookay...


*backs away slowly*


communicative! Trent?


*prepares for the apocalypse*