Excerpted from Conflict of Ideals: Changing Values in Western Society

Our greatest hope for the future is that rationality-scientific spirit and rationality-may establish dictatorship in people's spiritual life with the progress of time. The essence of rationality is a guarantee. In the future, rationality will definitely make people's emotional impulses and their own decisions get their due status. However, this universal compulsion of rational advantage will prove to be the strongest joint bond between people and can lead people to the road of further joint.

Fromm believes that human life is not necessarily controlled by irrational impulses, but guided by acceptability. Fromm reminds us that this is a great insight into all humanistic ethical systems in the past. Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza and, more recently, john dewey all urged that people can point their impulses in a certain direction with reason, so that it can be satisfied and most useful.

Some of these basic human problems are deeply rooted in the essence of human existence; It is these problems that Fromm called "the dichotomy of existence". These contradictions cannot be eliminated, but people can deal with them in various ways. The most fundamental dichotomy is: (1) the contradiction between life and death; (2) the contradiction between people's long-term imagination and people's short life; (3) realize that a person is lonely (he is an individual), but at the same time he must have relations with others (he must live in society). All religions, ideologies and philosophies of mankind have been devoted to solving these basic problems of human existence. The human mind is looking for answers to these contradictions. He (people) can relax and adjust various ideologies to calm the mind. He can try his best to escape from his inner anxiety through endless enjoyment or business activities. He can try his best to abolish his freedom, turn himself into a tool of some external forces and immerse himself in those forces. But he is still dissatisfied, anxious and uneasy.

Fromm put forward a humanitarian solution to this basic human dilemma. There is only one way to solve his [man's] problems, that is, to face the facts, admit that he is lonely in a universe that doesn't care about his own destiny, and realize that there is no power beyond himself to solve the problems for him ... If he calmly faces the facts, he will realize that man has no meaning to life except to exert his strength and give it meaning through a productive life.

Fromm said that a productive person is aware of his own potential and becomes a creator, not an automaton completely subject to authority, or an animal dominated by his irrational enthusiasm. A truly productive person actually creates himself. There is nothing novel about this idea; Existentialists regard it as a basic principle; But thousands of years ago, Aristotle paid attention to man's self-realization, that is, man played his potential to mark that man was superior to animals. Faust learned a lesson: "Only those who conquer freedom and survival every day can get them." Faust was thus saved-he was no longer an unproductive man.

Mature people can find a balance between being alone and being with others, between thinking and doing, between loving and being loved, and between doing good and worshiping. If we emphasize any one of these ingredients and ignore the others, we will not reach maturity. People must be active, but they must also benefit from quiet moments. In short, people with productive personality seek an appropriate balance between work, love and reason, and neither overemphasize nor ignore any part of mature life. Such people will not be selfish about accumulating property; What he cares about is to realize his potential while trying to make others develop harmoniously. For him, the joy of life is far more important than any destructive desire.

According to Fromm, a person's productive tendency towards life will be reflected in his conscience. If he is still controlled by an authoritative conscience, which makes him feel guilty to punish him for disobeying the internalized voice of power, then he has not achieved productive survival. Fromm basically agrees with Freud's analysis of typical authoritative conscience. He regards authoritarian conscience as an irrational internalization commitment, promising that a person's society will tell him what to do in order to conform to society. However, a productive person is not a person without conscience, but a person with humanistic conscience, who evaluates the behavior that contributes to the development of human personality as good and condemns any behavior that is harmful to human personality as evil.

Fromm described humanitarian conscience as follows: humanitarian conscience is the response of our whole personality to its normal or abnormal function ... conscience judges our functional activities as human beings; It (as the root of the word conscientia shows) is an inner understanding of human beings and an understanding of our own success or failure in the art of life. In the sense of humanism, conscience is the voice of our true self calling us to live a meaningful life.

Frome is most worried about the situation of people in the modern world. Most people don't even realize that they become more like robots than real people under subtle conditions. Fromm, like an existentialist, reminds us that life is by no means absolutely safe, and we are not absolutely sure about the future. A person who dares to think seriously about life will not seek safety, but will try to "tolerate insecurity without panic and excessive fear."