21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

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metaphysics becomes the primary concern. Instead of: ‘How should we live?’ — the first question becomes: ‘What is the world like?’ What is compassion as an ideal — in the abstract? The result is that truth, knowledge and belief far outweigh relationship in terms of trying to become more compassionate and to act more justly. It is something that occurs because of a long-standing bias toward objectivity and abstract truth — particularly in Western culture. It is suggested here and throughout this work that this is not a good approach. Erich Fromm contrasts the notion of being with that of becoming:

‘… the idea that being implies change, ie. that being is becoming, has its two greatest and most uncompromising representatives at the beginning and at the zenith of Western philosophy: in Heraclitus and in Hegel. ‘The position that being is a permanent, timeless, and unchangeable substance and the opposite of becoming, as expressed by Parmenides, Plato, and the scholastic ‘realists’, makes sense only on the basis of the idealistic notion that thought (idea) is the ultimate reality. If the idea of love (in Plato’s sense) is more real than the experience of loving, one can say that love as an idea is permanent and unchangeable. But when we start out with the reality of human beings existing, loving, hating, suffering, then there is no being that is not at the same time becoming and changing. Living structures can be only if they become; they can exist only if they change. Change and growth are inherent qualities of the life process.’

Erich Fromm — To Have or to Be? (Author’s emphases.)

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