Sending Democratic candidate My Definition of love/from Fromm/Buber. Sending a copy of this to Trump who I have respect for – especially when he follows his own Doer Instincts and Doesn’t Completely Listen to The Map is the Territory Intellectuals Around Him.
Ms. Williamson, I am encouraged to discuss some ideas with you again because you are a different kind of Presidential candidate and, perhaps, you will understand.
I was thinking about North Korea some more. How can we understand their brutality? I was deeply influenced by reading Erich Fromm a long time ago.
I think Brutality/Sadism is a means to an end. It is a means to Power. One way people who have had their self-actualizing tendency blocked say I AM, I can effect you, effect life. I can effect you with my brutality, experience your fear – and from that I get a sense of power I am not getting from self-actualization.
North Korea seems to be a country with no resources. In addition, they have been hit by sanctions which make the situation worse. It is equivalent to taking a very bad, sociopathic boy and trying to change him with punishment.
There are needs in North Korea – physical needs as well as existential needs which are not being met.
How do you cope with a hungry population you cannot feed, a population whose physical and needs for meaning you cannot meet, who would likely overthrow you if they had the power? You control them and you get a sense of power yourself, by torturing them, by effecting them through making them suffer. That is how Erich Fromm might explain the destructiveness of the North Korean regime.
Now let’s talk about the opposite – how to activate, let express itself the self-actualizing tendency in people/nations are composed of people.
The self-actualizing tendency unfolds in the conditions of love you talk about. What is love? Fromm defined it as knowledge – knowing a person/nation. You get to “know” a person/nation by listening and confirming – not all their behavior, but their essence – their right to be – their free speech to say what they really fear, want, dream, aspire to etc.
Fromm talked about love as caring. Nation-states show caring. I would say they don’t have to bankrupt themselves in giving other nations fish/but rather – when asked – they might help them learn to fish/send advisors etc.
We show patience. We allow nations to make mistakes and have a space to grow without judging them as irredeemable.
We show respect. Trump is, perhaps, the first President to show the North Korean President respect – to step into his country – to speak to him with an attitude of respect – much as the person who might for the first time talk to a sociopathic troubled boy and try to confirm him/not his behavior/but in his essence – as a child of God who has a right to be.
Unlike what I perceive the Democrats believe, I believe in the concept of Nation-States. I self-published a book once – The Search for Being.
In it I discuss the ideas of people like Murray Bowen who talked about the process of differentiation – you can think of it as establishing boundries/as distinct from emotional fusion/group think/one world.
The most meaningful Ideas I wrote about were those of Martin Buber. From him I absorbed the importance of community – as opposed to ideas of collectivity/think – the New World Order. One develops I-Thou as opposed to I-It relationships – whether as a person or as a nation – when we work on differentiation and relationship. You need to be an “I” – to have a strong sense of identity – for instance, as a unique Nation-State with a unique history/experiences. But you also need to be able to relate to others in saying Thou – to exist as Buber calls it – in-the-between (I would call this the formula for peace).
If we want North Korea to change – we need to stop mind-reading what it will do, stop treating it like an object we understand – and relating to the North Korean leaders as people. I think Trump has begun that process (although I am not so sure about his advisors, the map is the territory intellectuals who will actually do the negotiating). I think I-Thou relating can only happen when you suspend “assumptions”/your maps. Trump seems to me to be a person without maps/not an intellectual. I think of him as an Extraverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving Type – a doer – a doer in a concrete/not abstract (maps) way/world.
We need to let North Korea talk – to tell us what they need (I am not a care-taker who thinks we should take care of people/but a person who when asked might help a person learn how to “fish”/take better care of themselves).
Then I think we need to have an open, honest (non-manipulative/our intelligence agencies need to learn this) relationship with North Korea in which we tell them what we need/our real thoughts/real feelings etc. Perhaps, the two countries can also share their dreams for a better world (which I hope would be NOT be the nondifferentiation/one world/New World Order – but a world of unique Nation-States engaged in ever-ongoing I-Thou dialogue). That would be my formula for peace – ongoing Dialogue between Nation-States who are different, with a strong sense of “I” – who can say “Thou” to other Nations and exist in the-between of Real Dialogue.
So the crux of what I am discussing with you is a definition of love – Erich Fromm’s and the idea of a world of INDIVIDUAL, strong individual Nation-States engaged in ever ongoing I-Thou Dialogue. I think that is the Formula for Peace – a world of Process – not a world we manipulate to achieve outcomes – but a world of ideals/process we engage in.
I’m sending a copy of this to President Trump – the Doer – even though this was written for Marianne Williamson who would be the most understanding, I think/an assumption, of the language of love – Erich Fromm’s definition of love, Martin Buber’s ideas of I-Thou – of which I am speaking.