Excelent book .Pablo Franzani Florida USA

books:

	• The Sane Society Erich Fromm Holt Paperbacks, 1990 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Sane Society - Review

The Sane Society can be thought of as a summary of Fromm's thoughts on the problems of current society. His main premise is that society can produce 'socially patterned defects' that are so widespread they are seen as normal. For individuals who have more humanistic goals in life, society will inevitably judge them as irrational or insane. So life practices that that detrimental to human development are seen as normal because everyone does it. Fromm moves on to talk about how people have culturally evolved from primitive societies rooted in nature to the current stage where the achievement of a truly humanistic society is within our reach. Blocking progress is the increasing abstractification of life, depriving us of a human perspective on things. We have become slaves to our creations and placed them above humanity, which means we have become things, not people. The means have become more important than the ends. This analysis is interesting as it covers sociology, economics and psychology to give a compelling sketch of recent history. Fromm then moves on to suggest remedies for the increasing insanity in society. We must move towards regarding individuals as unique people who are are not to be exploited. Humanistic socialism can point the way to a more community centred society that wants to realise the potential of humanity and not subjugate them to the need to have, but rather to be.

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A great criticism though slightly biased

The social criticism is awesome. Unfortunately, Fromm missed the simple truth that the unalienated condition depends on connectedness with nature and not on its domination.

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Excelent book .Pablo Franzani Florida USA

Excellent book. In a brilliant thesis Mr. Fromm expose the insanity and violence that comes within our Western Society. He writes about the selfish and blind hunger of "developed countries" (on the name of civilized society) killing and destroying millions for their selfish purpose (reminds me of Iraq war).

This book was written about 50 years ago and still up-to date, I just copied this small paragraph that give an idea about the core of Fromm message:" The western world have created a great material wealth more than any other society in the history of the human race. Yet we have managed to kill of millions of our population in an arrangement, which we call war. During these wars, every participant firmly believes that he was fighting in his self-defense, for his honor, or that he was backed up by God. The groups with whom one is at war are, often from one day to the next, looked upon as cruel irrational fiends whom one must defeat to save the world from evil. But a few years after the mutual slaughter is over the enemies of yesterday are our friends, the friend s of yesterday our enemies, and again in full seriousness we begin to paint them with appropriate colors of black and white. "
Fromm message is a one that should be heard by all human beings: love between neighbors , love in societies , countries and nations, is the only solution to the violence and individualism that is destroying western society, I just think about how much violence we have here in the USA, everything is solved with violence, that's the basic relation that is in the core of this society that supposed to be Christian. the book is a must read and I really recommended it to anyone.

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ecological economics

A few chapters in, I was concerned the book was too "dated". Fromm does talk a lot about individualism as a fundamental human characteristic, and this can come off as ethnocentric at times (individualism is a Western value, not shared by all cultures to the extent we value it). He also criticizes cultural relativism, seeing it as one of the reasons Western humanity is "insane". Having been an anthropology major in college, this was hard to swallow, but I kept reading. And I was surprised. I found a remarkable similarity in Fromm's book to the some of the tenets of Ecological Economics, or EcolEcon (see Daly & Farley, "Ecological Economics"). For example, Fromm says in the last chapter, "economy must become the servant for the development of man" (p. 314, 4th Fawcett Premier Printing, January 1967); compare this to the EcolEcon tenet that the economy is a subset of the ecosystem and, as such, expansion of the economy should be limited, environmental impacts curbed, so that it does not detract from our quality of life (which depends, ultimately, on a healthy ecosystem).

Towards the end of the book, I was feeling pretty optimistic: about society, the "Western World", and even about some personal decisions I was facing in my life at that time. Even if it is not very good sociology (as some other reviewers contend), The Sane Society is a good book and I recommend it.

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Reply to Carlson

Just a comment about Mr. Carlson (or Dr. Carlson, if he is a PhD and commodity in the market). Think about how many people you know that suffer of anxiety, depression, insonia, and other psychological problems, or think about the narcissistic people around you. Try to discover how many americans have sleeping problems, high blood pressure, etc. Finally ask yourself why the United States are the world champion of obesity. And then think if you really need more ''quantitative data'' to support Fromm's ideas.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

The Sane Society is a continuation and extension of the brilliant psychiatric concepts Erich Fromm first formulated in Escape from Freedom; it is also, in many ways, an answer to Freud?s Civilization and its Discontents. Fromm examines man?s escape into overconformity and the danger of robotism in contemporary industrial society: modern humanity has, he maintains, been alienated from the world of their own creation. Here Fromm offers a complete and systematic exploration of his ?humanistic psychoanalysis.? In so doing, he counters the profound pessimism for our future that Freud expressed and sets forth the goals of a society in which the emphasis is on each person and on the social measures designed to further function as a responsible individual.

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