Where Fromm joins Freud is in asserting that the very development—consciousness—that brought about our rise and then our fall is the only one that can release us from this pervasive sense of aloneness. The problem is that the consciousness bestowed on us is just barely sufficient; if we are to achieve inner freedom, it is necessary that we become... See more

The great Borges thought it best to look upon our broken inner state as one of life’s great opportunities—to prove ourselves deserving of the blood pulsing through our veins. “Everything that happens,” he wrote, “including humiliations, misfortunes, embarrassments, all is given like clay,” so that we may “make from the miserable circumstances of... See more

For the human race, the gift of thought and emotion created both the glory of independence and the punishment of isolation; on one hand the dichotomy made us proud, on the other lonely. It was the loneliness that proved our undoing. It became our punishment of punishments. It so perverted our instincts that we became strangers to ourselves—the true... See more