Competencies for Sustainable Human Development with Gender Approach
When I started this book I definitely had no idea what I was trying, the only thing that gave me an idea was the title, but I still felt that the title was very ambiguous. I like reading about love stories as much as the next person, but I like to learn about love. Many times love stories project a wrong idea about relationships and love, do not mean that they fulfill their purpose of entertaining and making people feel, but those erroneous ideas can get to conflict a lot, to the degree thatWe do not understand how the relationships that surround us work, make us doubt our abilities to feel and love, affect our way of committing us. So that’s why I like to learn about love and what involves someone who seeks to talk about these issues in a realistic way, and that makes you understand why and how of these issues. And I feel that this was what I found when reading the book "The art of loving" by Erich Fromm, in this book he tells you from a beginning that is not the book indicated for anyone who is looking for easy answers about the art of loving, whichOn the contrary, he wants to demonstrate that learning to love is not something simple for anyone, regardless of age, maturity or the amount of relationships someone has had. Erich Fromm does not pretend that you stop believing in love, no matter how much it may seem, you just want you to understand that you cannot love someone, without learning to love others without humility, faith, etc., And so on the process, you will learn to love yourself.
The art of loving is divided into technically four chapters, but I feel that it is divided into three parts: is love an art?, The theory of love and practice of love. And then I will try to explain those three parts in the best possible way. Erich fromm thought that most of the time we misunderstood what love was for a wide variety of reasons. First, we see the problem of love from the point that someone loves us, instead of one can learn to love someone. We try to be millionaires, popular or very attractive, when we could try to learn to love. Most of the time we think that finding love means finding something or someone to love, when we should learn to cultivate that love so that it can be something of truth and that it grows at the root. Many times love movies distort what love is, for example, when in the movie they show you how after two people are looking for each other for a long time, there comes a point where they connect, fall in love and the movieIt ends, but that’s when the difficult part comes, which is the one that a couple is happy forever. And that is where Fromm tells us that we believe it is difficult to find someone to love and easy to love a person, when it is totally the opposite. Finally, we do not know how to distinguish between getting in love and falling in love with someone. When two people who had states alone for a long time suddenly are one to the other, it can become something very exciting for both of us, but those feelings do not last forever. Love really involves getting in love with is a person, an art that is learned after years of practice and love of oneself, just as we would learn any other skill. Real love is something we learn to do, not something that suddenly falls from heaven.
The section of the theory of love divides it into three parts, 1) love, the response to existence, 2) love between parents and children and 3) love objects. The problem of human existence is that of separatality, the human was given the gift of being able to reason, he has the power to be aware of his life itself, with this gift of life comes to be aware that this separation exists,We are born alone and we die alone. This is the product of all our anxieties, being separate means, that we feel helpless, with shame, fear and guilt. Love is divided into sections, these are: fraternal love, maternal, erotic, oneself and love to God. Erich Fromm uses separatality to make us understand how and because we work as humans when it comes to our relationships and the love involved in them.
Separatity is the state of separation that is created when one is born since as one begins managing in the womb and at the time we are born, this separatality is created and this is how we stop being one with our mother and we began to be onein the world.
And from that moment on we are created a feeling of eternal loneliness that for the rest of our lives we seekWe are going happy forever, but things are not always like that, at first if it is real, you are in a state of falling in love but as the years go by, you stop feeling that emotion and in what you least realize you begin to startFinding that feeling outside your relationship with someone else, because that feeling makes you feel good and feel less alone, and as you are already with someone, you have that feeling that together they can face anything. So from that you feel this again, you stop feeling the separatality again and that becomes a vicious cycle every time you fall in love with someone new, this happens because we want to fill that void bringing another personTo our lives, when the right thing would be to learn to fill that void and that loneliness from ourselves. Definitely learning to meet ourselves is one of the most complicated things we face humans during our lives, since it puts into play our way of being rational, our fears and our passions, but if you manage to meet and love yourself you will learn yourselfknow others and what surrounds you. Good mental health is something very important when learning to meet oneself, since many times we refuse to really know each other because we are afraid of our own demons, as you could love you first if to achieve it you have to learnto face and let everything that has hurt you and everything that you have been wrong. It is not easy, that is why many people carry the lives and relationships they carry, for example, the people who go from one relationship after another without ever being single for a moment, it is because these people do not know how to be alone, because neverThey have learned to know themselves, except to love themselves. Accepting yourself is the key to being happy and obviously to really love.
Fromm says that concentration and patience are essential for love, and this must be in all spheres of our lives. This discipline that we exercise in all areas must be a voluntary expression, not an authoritarian plan. The activity at this time must be the only one that matters. In addition to this, the sensitivity to our thoughts, which has a realistic and objective vision of the world based on humility, instead of an egocentric, is also important. The love process involves replacing the egocentric vision of the world (based on our own desires and fears), with an objective.
Loving may require emerging from our clan and growing and connecting with the world, and this requires faith, which in turn requires courage and risk. Finally, the development of these features in the personal sphere is not enough, they must be practiced in the social sphere with all.
Fromm believes that the principles of capitalist society, where speed is everything and singularity is discouraged, collides with the principles of love. However, it is optimistic that modern life offers enough non -conformity to allow love to exist.
It is said that these are the 4 activities that are necessary to love: care, one loves what works, and another what he loves. Fromm explains: ‘If a woman told us to love the flowers and we see that she forgot to water them, we would not believe in her" love "for flowers’. Responsibility – Being responsible means being able to answer. It is a voluntary act, and an element of love. Respect: respect can be defined as the desire for others to grow and develop as they are. Respect is not fear or fear but the absence of exploitation. Fromm adds: ‘Responsibility could easily deteriorate in domination and possessiveness, if it weren’t out of respect’. And knowledge: Fromm writes: ‘Respecting a person is not possible without knowing him;Care and responsibility would be blind if they were not motivated by concern ’.
When reading Erich Fromm’s art, I got a better understanding of what love really is. Fromm’s book puts love in perspective. Begins with several facts regarding the attitude in which people treat love. These are the problems of how to be loved, the purpose of loving, as well as the confusion between the initial experience of falling in love and the permanent state of being in love, which had a great impact on me, as to think about what love is.
The strangers are, break the social walls with each other, and feel united, as one. Supposedly they fell in love, for Fromm, falling in love is not love, it is more infatuation. Fromm describes it as ‘one of the most exciting and exciting experiences of life. Fromm argues that this sensation of initial infatuation loses it in a miraculous and natural way as the couple becomes more familiar and learns more and more about others. Fromm says that problem occurs when people confuse feelings of falling in love with the trial of the intensity of their love. The feelings of falling in love eventually disappear and the result is the desire of a new conquest, a new love with a new stranger. Again, the stranger transforms into the ‘intimate’ person, and again the experience of falling in love is exciting and intense and, once again, he becomes less and less and once again the cycle is repeated. Fromm says that these illusions are greatly helped by the deceptive character of sexual desires. Sexual desire can be stimulated by the anxiety of being alone, the desire to conquer, vanity or desire to hurt or even destroy someone. Some people make a mistake. With the sexual desire of the idea of love, they can easily be confused to conclude that they love each other when they want physically. Fromm affirms that, if a person’s desire for physical union is not stimulated by love, and that romantic love is not accompanied by other forms of love, it will never lead to a union other than an ‘organic and transitory sense’. So, what will end up happening is that the person who lets himself be marked by love will begin to destroy or sabotage love in the future, to avoid painful feelings associated with love that went wrong or to avoid vulnerability and, basically, notsurrender to love.
Fromm asks if love is an art, or if love is a pleasant sensation or sensation that experimenting is a matter of chance, that is, one ‘falls into’ if it is lucky. Fromm states that love is an art, and says that, to truly love, in all its forms, it must possess maturity, self-knowledge;and courage.
Many people pursue objects of affection or objects of love and treat them as possessions. He affirms that love is the ability to love in different ways, fraternal love, romantic love, maternal love, etc. Since Fromm says that love is an art that must be practiced, it can only be released with each other. You cannot treat others as objects or possessions for your own selfish ends because this behavior will only result in destruction and you will never cut or achieve true love.
Erikson’s psychosocial stages establish that to find intimacy and know ‘who you are’, you must resolve your conflict in the stage ‘Identity against roles confusion’. It can be thought that some individuals who never find true love have not successfully completed the stage. They never resolved their conflict, which resulted in a confusion of roles. Fromm states that, to love, you must have self-love. How can you love yourself, if you don’t know ‘Who are you?’This is what I feel that possessive love, hurtful love and love that is taken for granted.
Fromm describes what he calls the essential components that must be dominated for all forms of love: care, active concern for life and growth of what we love. Responsibility, power, be willing and ready to respond to the needs of others. Respect, concern that the other person can grow and develop like him / her by himself, and be aware of his unique individuality and knowledge.
I agree with Fromm that maternal love is unconditional. He says that a mother’s love for her son is formed at the time of conception. She will love her son regardless. A mother joins her son. It is a love that I don’t think a father can really understand because a man does not take the child for nine months. He does not feel it grow, kick and move.
I do not agree with part of Fromm’s paternal love theory. He affirms that ‘the father is of law and order, of discipline, of travel and adventure. The father is the one who teaches the child, who shows the way to the world ’. When I was a child, my mother was all of the above. She did all discipline and let us know what she expected of us. Of course, my father disciplined us, but he was less strict than my mother. My mother taught me about life, not my dad.
Fromm concludes that love is not a feeling, it is a decision, and it is a trial, a promise. Loving means surrendering and committing without guarantees, it is an act of absolute faith. I feel that I have a better understanding of what love is and that, if more people understood that true love is not about being loved, but about loving, this world would be a better place. In the end, although love is something difficult to learn and practice, it is worth more and easily important than money, fame, and power. Because the mystery of existence is revealed, if it does, through our relationship with nature, productive work and, above all, through our relationships with other people. Thus, to experience the depths of life, we must cultivate the art of loving.
Bibliography
- Fromm, e. (1956). The art of Loving. Harper.
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