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"Advocating Economic & Personal Change"


Romantic Love

Social psychologist Erich Fromm has analyzed how the dominant values of an economic system invariably determine or strongly influence those of individuals, and relationships between individuals. Thus do the prevailing values of capitalism--such as narcissism, dishonesty, jockeying for advantage, and a generally superficial world-view, overlay themselves on marriage and all other relationships.

With a divorce rate in the United States of 50% and climbing, we'd better begin paying attention to Dr. Fromm and his prescription for change:  a transition to a society based on the most powerful and morally evolved human values such as brotherly love, based on the recognition that all human beings are brothers and sisters in one human family. Indeed, these are exactly the values embodied in the Cooperative program, that a Cooperative system will be based on, would incorporate and manifest in its institutions, and would inculcate into every person from childhood onward.

Dr. Fromm argues that only when individuals develop the generalized capacity for deep and genuine love for their fellow human beings, their brothers and sisters in the human family, can the capacity for love toward one special individual develop, in kind, making for romantic and emotional relationships of real substance and profundity--unlike those fleeting and temporal "relationships" of today, that fly apart at the seams so easily, and comprise our high rates of divorce and infidelity.



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