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The Soul’s Journey
Everything has become business, everything has to work and be usable. There is no sense of identity, there is an inner emptiness. They have no conviction, no genuine purpose. The merchant nature is the human being completely alienated, devoid of any other interest other than manipulating and functioning. This is exactly the type of human in accordance with social needs. You can say most men become what society wants them to be in order to be successful. The company manufactures human types as well as it manufactures types of shoes or clothes or cars: goods for which there is a demand. As a child, you learn which type is the most wanted. “
— Erich Fromm (1900–1980), The Art of Living
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Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to give up customs one barely had time to learn,
not to see roses and other promising things in terms of a human future;
no longer to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands;
to leave even one’s own first name behind,
forgetting it as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange to no longer desire one’s desires.
Strange to see meanings that clung together once, floating away in every direction.
