On Disobedience_ Why Freedom Means Saying _No_ to Power - Erich Fromm [10]
“I cannot believe that this is to be the end. I would have men forget their quarrels for a moment and reflect that, if they will allow themselves to survive, there is every reason to expect the triumphs of the future to exceed immeasurably the triumphs of the past. There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal, as a human being to human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, nothing lies before you but universal death.”
This faith is rooted in a quality without which neither his philosophy nor his fight against war could be understood: his love for life.
To many people this may not mean much; they believe that everybody loves life. Does he not cling to it when it is threatened, does he not have a great deal of fun in life and plenty of thrilling excitement?
In the first place, people do not cling to life when it is threatened; how else could one explain their passivity before the threat of nuclear slaughter? Furthermore, people confuse excitement with joy, thrill with love of life. They are “without joy in the midst of plenty.” The fact is that all the virtues for which capitalism is praised—individual initiative, the readiness to take risks, independence—have long disappeared from industrial society and are to be found mainly in westerns and among gangsters. In bureaucratized, centralized industrialism, regardless of political ideology, there is an increasing number of people who are fed up with life and willing to die in order to get over their boredom. They are the ones who say “better dead than red,” but deep down their motto is “better dead than alive.” As I mentioned earlier, the extreme form of such an orientation was to be found among those fascists whose motto was “Long live death.” Nobody recognized this more clearly than did Miguel de Unamuno when he spoke for the last time in his life at the University of Salamanca, where he was Rector at the time of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War; the occasion was a speech by General Millán Astray, whose favorite motto was “Viva la Muerte!” (Long live death!) and one of his followers shouted it from the back of the hall. When the general had finished his speech Unamuno rose and said: “. . . Just now I heard a necrophilous and senseless cry: ‘Long live death!’ And I, who have spent my life shaping paradoxes which have aroused the uncomprehending anger of others, I must tell you, as an expert authority, that this outlandish paradox is repellent to me. General Millán Astray is a cripple. Let it be said without any slighting undertone. He is a war invalid. So was Cervantes. Unfortunately there are too many cripples in Spain just now. And soon there will be even more of them if God does not come to our aid. It pains me to think that General Millán Astray should dictate the pattern of mass psychology. A cripple who lacks the spiritual greatness of a Cervantes is wont to seek ominous relief in causing mutilation around him.” At this Millán Astray was unable to restrain himself any longer. “Abajo la inteligencia!” (Down with intelligence!) he shouted. “Long live death!” There was a clamor of support for this remark from the Falangists. But Unamuno went on: “This is the temple of the intellect. And I am its high priest. It is you who profane its sacred precincts. You will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right