To Have or To Be
"It's no exaggeration to say that the foundations of today's Europe were forged in the events of the late Ice Age, between about forty-five thousand and twelve thousand years ago."
-- Brian Fagan; Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans; Bloomberyy; 2010; page 3.
I'm sitting on a balcony, overlooking the beach and ocean while on a rare vacation in Virginia Beach. My old bones are aching, so while my wife & daughters are out being tourists, I am in the hotel room ....reading Fagan's book, The Essential Fromm (Continuum; 1993), and attempting to finish my latest book on the environment. Spiral notebooks, newspaper clippings, EPA reports, and the transcripts of two federal court cases I participated in are scattered on the table beside me. My youngest daughter left her computer in this suite, to allow me internet access while she is touristing.
"Cro-Magnon" is perhaps an outdated term: these people were fully "modern humans." The author makes interesting, though speculative, theories on how these people may have interacted with the other human group in Europe, the Neanderthal. He believes that there was sporadic, though relatively limited, contact between the two. And he bases his theories on the interpretations of the latest scientific discoveries -- at least from three years ago, though new technologies are always adding to what we know.
I find one of his basic concepts fascinating: while Cro-Magnon peoples had friendly relationships with others of their own type, including "strangers" they had not encountered before, they likely viewed the Neanderthals as "others" -- of lesser status than themselves. And he may, to a large degree, be correct. That dynamic is certainly common throughout modern human history.
Last week, I went out "arrowhead hunting." There were two people that I didn't recognize in the fields where I went. I attempted to strike up a casual conversation with them, but they were not interested in communicating with me. Although there were three large fields plowed -- more than enough ground for each of us to cover -- they left a short time later.
That evening, I went to a grocery store. I saw a young couple; the female had on a sweatshirt with the infamous image of Charlie Manson, from the cover of LIFE magazine, on its back. Yikes! I found myself wondering: What message is she attempting to send to others with this? And what might it say about the manner in which she views herself?
The Fromm book is, like all of his writings, outstanding. Erich Fromm is, in my opinion, the most important "thinker" of our modern era. His writings are surely as important today, as when he authored them decades ago. "To Have or To Be" remains the question of our times. It involves the way in which we view others -- from those inhabiting a very different cultural reality than our own, to a young person wearing a strange sweatshirt. It determines if we seek to live our life as a product for sale on the competitive market (and perhaps the seller, if we are lucky), or do we seek to experience life in a very different way -- one that is increasing difficult in the current socio-economic conditions?
Fromm addresses issues such as why the majority of people accept being victims of a structure that robs them of their humanity? Why they morph into willing participants of a destructive life-style that threatens not only their health and well-being, but that of their children, of all children, and of all future generations? Included in this is an examination of why these same people often resent those who attempt to make meaningful changes in that system.
There is, obviously, the internal conflict for me: to write a book on the damage that toxic industrial waste dumps has done to a population, and then to connect it to hydrofracking -- a process that injects many of these same toxins into the ground -- comes natural for me. Yet I must try to make it a product that the publisher believes will sell. Yikes!
Peace,
H2O Man
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