1965j-e

Erich Fromm

Are We Still Sane?

Are We Sane? was first published in W. D.Nunokawa (Ed.): Readings in

Abnormal Psychology: Human Values and Abnormal Behavior, Chicago
(Scott and Foresman) 1965, pp. 64-70. - Copyright © 1965 by Erich
Fromm and 2004 by The Literary Estate of Erich Fromm, c/o Rainer Funk,
Ursrainer Ring 24, D-72076 Tuebingen; Fax: +49-7071-600049, E-mail:
frommfunk[at-symbol] aol.com.

If two individuals spoke coldly about experimenting with a device which would
destroy one quarter of the inhabitants in their city, including their wives and chil-
dren, and if they furthermore explained that they had to take this risk because
they were afraid otherwise the other guy would do it first–and in addition that he
could not be trusted because he did believe in God and beat his children--no
doubt they would be sent to a mental hospital and kept there under strict obser-
vation, as dangerous lunatics. Are we aware that we are behaving in just the
same manner?
Recently a civil defense official declared that 49,900,000 (note the price-tag
method in fixing the number) people could be killed at a first atomic attack on the
United States--and went on talking about this possibility in terms of the “hazards”
of an atomic war. Are we still sane?
Our civil defense plans envisage mass evacuations from our big cities in
case of an atomic attack, while we know that intercontinental missiles would
leave less than fifteen minutes for such evacuations. Are we still sane?
The foreign ministers of the West and of Russia spent six weeks in Geneva
making proposals of which both sides know that they< are unacceptable to each
other, while their inability to arrive at an agreement shoves the human race an-
other step closer to the abyss of an atomic holocaust. Are we still sane?
In the case of a polio or ‘flu epidemic everybody would do his utmost to pro-
tect himself and his family. In the case of the greatest of all threats to ourselves
and to the human race we hardly react, and remain passive and silent. Are we
still sane?
How can we explain the we, people who are intelligent, literate, well inten-
tional—that we lack even the most natural reaction, to do everything we can to
save ourselves and our families from being burnt to cinders—not to speak of pre-
venting the destruction of our whole civilization?
These are perplexing questions—yet they can be answered if we consider
the situation of the individual in contemporary industrial society.
Where is man today? Even though there are still many millions in the United
States living below the level which is the condition for a dignified human life, and
even though the rest of the human family, particularly the peoples of Asia and Af-
rica have only five percent of the income of the average American, and one half
of his life expectancy, we in the United States have achieved a material wealth
which would have seemed miraculous a hundred years ago; the standard of liv-
ing of the worker, largely through the activities of the unions, has risen consid-
erably, his working hours have been reduced from 70 to 40 hours per week.
Automobiles, radios, television sets, refrigerators, all sorts of gadgets, are within
the reach of the average man. When our forefathers dreamed of such a life of
plenty and of such an amount of leisure time they thought of it as a means to an
end. The end was a happy, rich, meaningful life for man, a life in which he could
develop all his human faculties and powers, and could truly become an inde-
pendent and proud individual. But what has happened?
The means have become ends. We produce in order to produce; we con-
sume, in order to consume. We talk a lot about freedom, ideals, God—yet the
fact is that our main interests are purely material and selfish, that we are in the
process of becoming little automatons, each one a little cog in the vast organiza-
tion machine of production and consumption. Our main interest is to produce
things and to consume things—and in the process we ourselves become trans-
formed into things. We make machines which act like men—and we become men
who act like machines. Concentration of capital led to the formation of giant en-
terprises, managed by hierarchically organized bureaucracies. Large agglomera-
tions of workers work together, part of a vast organized production machine,
which in order to run at all, must run smoothly, without friction, without interrup-
tions. The individual worker or clerk becomes a cog in this machine; their function
and activities are determined by the whole structure of the organization in which
they work. In the big enterprises, legal ownership of the means of production has
become separated from management and has lost importance. The big enter-
prises are run by bureaucratic management, which does not won the enterprise
legally, but socially. These managers do not have the qualities of the old owner—
individual initiative, daring, risk-taking—but the qualities of the bureaucrat: lack of
individuality, impersonality, caution, lack of imagination; they administer things
and persons, and relate to persons as to things.
The bureaucratically managed organization approximates more and more
the operation of an electronic computer. Thousands of date is fed into the organi-
zation, the bureaucracy processes them in terms of the principles of economy
and efficiency, and the decisions made are the logical result of the data fed and
the principles underlying the processing. Nobody among the bureaucrats has a
plan—less a vision—he executes the decisions which the bureaucratic machine
makes for him.
We are not only governed by the managerial bureaucrats; as citizens we are
governed by the governmental bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats of the armed
forces and, it must be admitted, even the union leaders often have developed
into bureaucrats and run their organization in the same manners in which the
managers run their enterprise.
With the bureaucratic management of people, the democratic process be-
comes transformed into a ritual. Whether it is a union meeting, a stockholders
meeting of a big enterprise, or a political election, the individual has lost almost
all influence to determine decisions and to participate actively in the making of
decisions. Especially in the political sphere, elections become more and more re-
duced to plebiscites in which the individual can express preference for one of two
slates of professional politicians, and the best that can be said is that he is gov-
erned with his consent. The means to bring about this consent are those of sug-
gestion and manipulation, and with all that, the most fundamental decisions—
those of foreign policy which involve peace and war, are made by small groups
which the average citizen hardly even knows.
During eight hours of work, the individual is managed as a part of a produc-
tion team. During eight hours of leisure time he is managed and manipulated to
be the perfect consumer, who likes what he is told to like, and yet has the illusion
that he follows his own tastes. All the time he is hammered at by slogans, sug-
gestions, by voices of unreality which deprive him of the last bit of realism he may
still have. From childhood on, true convictions are discouraged. There is little
critical thought, there is little real feeling, and hence only conformity with the rest
can save the individual from an unbearable feeling of loneliness and lostness.
The individual does not experience himself as the active bearer of his own pow-
ers and inner richness, but as an impoverished “thing,” dependent on powers
outside from himself into which he has projected his living substance. Man is
alienated from himself, and bows down before the works of his own hands. He
bows down before the things he produces, before the state, and the leaders of
his own making.
As a result the average man feels insecure, lonely, depressed, and suffers
from a lack of joy. We could not stand the joylessness and meaninglessness of
life, were it not for the fact that the system offers us constant avenues of escape,
ranging from television to tranquillizers, which permit him to forget that he is los-
ing more and more all that is valuable in life. In spite of all slogans to the con-
trary, we are approaching quickly a society governed by bureaucrats who admin-
ister a mass-man, well fed, well taken care of, yet dehumanized, and depressed.
This means man forgets even to assert his will to live, and to defend himself and
his family against the danger of an all-destructive war. He leaves the solution to
the specialists—bureaucrats—and does not raise his voice to be heard.
Yet, this is exactly what is necessary today. Democracy was not meant to be
a system of manipulated consent, but a system in which each citizen participate
actively and responsibly in the decision making; a system, in which the citizen is
well informed, and not mis-informed as we are today in spite of our radio, and
newspaper communications. Democracy was not meant to be a system in which
the politicians’ appeal is like that of movie stars—but one in which it is based on
his competence, and his realism, intelligence and imagination.
There is a way out of the blind alley if every one of us wakes up to think and
feel, and stops being an automaton. There is a way out, if we make democracy
real—rather than only to talk about it. There is a way out—if we reverse the bu-
reaucratic trend and see to it that ideas, suggestions, demands flow from the
grass roots upwards, rather than being told that the bureaucrats above have the
answer.
Man today is in the verge of the most cultural choice he has ever made:
whether to use his skill and brain to create a world which can be—though not a
paradise—yet a place for the fullest realization of man’s potentialities, a world of
joy and creativity, or a world which will destroy itself either with atomic bombs or
through boredom and emptiness. Man must assert himself. Today, as Emerson
said, things are in the saddle and ride man. The task is to put man, the total, real,
independent man back into the saddle.

Copyright © 1965 by Erich Fromm

Copyright © 2004 by The Literary Estate of Erich Fromm
c/o Rainer Funk, Ursrainer Ring 24, D-72076 Tuebingen
Fax: +49-7071-600049, E-mail: frommfunk[at-symbol] aol.com.