1958 interview with Erich Fromm

A profoundly thought-provoking interview from 1958 with pyschologist and philosopher Erich Fromm, that is even more relevant today than it was five decades ago. Mike Wallace plays the role of the devil's advocate to near-perfection, and in doing so he provokes a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation. 

"We have turned means into ends."

In that one sentence, Fromm summed up what is wrong with modern Western society, then and now. He also made the key point that socialism is not Soviet totalitarianism, which is still how it's portrayed by most right-wing American politicians today.

Paul Kimball

Scene from the Mall

"Time stops by the 3rd floor railing
next to the food court
(no real food actually served)
as I endure a non-event horizon
of the never-ending grey glop mush of
mediocrity which passes for the
heirs of Voltaire these days,
the screens of their blackberries
the only illumination they'll ever know.
If they all dropped dead
no one would miss them,
least of all themselves...
an inconspicuously conspicuous mass of
conspicuously inconspicuous consumerites,
legions of the lacklustre for
the new imperium of the lowest
common denominator."

Written by yours truly last year, while waiting for a friend to finish shopping at MicMac Mall. Meanwhile, apropos of conspicuous consumption, I highly recommend The Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord.

Paul Kimball