Rainer Funk

This book consists of excerpts from books by Fromm and interviews with him, organized topically by the editor. This approach emphasizes a few points in each chapter, often rather redundantly. Fromm criticizes modern civilization for how it tends to change human character. Every society shapes its members, beyond their individual dispositions, into what that society needs: warriors, farmers, factory workers, etc. Fromm sees industrial society as reducing individuals to workers and consumers, show more trapping them in the dynamics of "having", which interferes with their broader human potential for "being". show less