The Predicament of Humans

An excerpt from Erich Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.

Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have disrupted the
"harmony" that characterizes animal existence. Their emergence has
made man into an anomaly, the freak of the universe. He is part of
nature, subject to her physical laws and unable to change them, yet
he transcends nature. He is set apart while being a part; he is
homeless, yet chained to the home he shares with all creatures. Cast
into this world at an accidental place and time, he is forced out of it
accidentally and against his will. Being aware of himself, he realizes
his powerlessness and the limitations of his existence. He is never
free from the dichotomy of his existence: he cannot rid himself of his
mind, even if he would want to; he cannot rid himself of his body as
long as he is alive-and his body makes him want to be alive.

Man's life cannot be lived by repeating the pattern of his
species; he must live. Man is the only animal who does not feel at
home in nature, who can feel evicted from paradise, the only animal
for whom his own existence is a problem that he has to solve and
from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman
state of harmony with nature, and he does not know where he will
arrive if he goes forward. Man's existential contradiction results in a
state of constant disequilibrium. This disequilibrium distinguishes
him from the animal, which lives, as it were, in harmony with
nature. This does not mean, of course, that the animal necessarily
lives a peaceful and happy life, but that it has its specific ecological
niche to which its physical and mental qualities have been adapted
by the process of evolution. Man's e)l.istential, and hence
unavoidable disequilibrium can be relatively stable when he has
found, with the support of his culture, a more or less adequate way
of coping with his existential problems. But this relative stability
does not imply that the dichotomy has disappeared; it is merely
dormant and becomes manifest as soon as the conditions for this
relative stability change.

Indeed, in the process of man's self-creation this relative
stability is upset again and again. Man, in his history, changes his
environment, and in this process he changes himself. His knowledge
increases, but so does his awareness of his ignorance; he experiences
himself as an individual, and not only as a member of his tribe, and
with this his sense of separateness and isolation grows. He creates
larger and more efficient social units, led by powerful leaders-and
he becomes frightened and submissive. He attains a certain amount
of freedom-and becomes afraid of this very freedom. His capacity
for material production grows, but in the process
he becomes greedy and egotistical, a slave of the things he has created.

Every new state of disequilibrium forces man to seek for new
equilibrium. Indeed, what has often been considered man's innate
drive for progress is his attempt to find a new and if possible better
equilibrium.

The new forms of equilibrium by no means constitute a straight
line of human improvement. Frequently in history new achievements have led to regressive developments. Many times, when forced to find a new solution, man runs into a blind alley from which he has to extricate himself; and it is indeed remarkable that
thus far in history he has been able to do so.