Subject:  (Florez) TGIF ... interesting paragraph (fwd)
Date:     Fri, 16 Apr 1999 085933 -0500 (CDT)
From:     "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To:       emfguru <rbeavers@llion.org>
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 09:37:12 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" 
To: emfguru 
Subject: TGIF ... interesting paragraph (fwd)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 13:50:03 -0400 (CST)
From: Victor Manuel Quintero Florez 
To: Roy Beavers 
Subject: TGIF interesting paragraph

I think that is very interesting for the list, I found this text in an
interesting book, and I think that it is very important for the group. 

The next paragraph is taken of the book: " The heart of man" by Erich
Fromm

"... Our approach to life today becomes increasongly mechanical. Our main
aim is to produce things, and in the process of this idolatry of things we
transform ourselves into commodities. People are treated as numbers....
the question is wether people are things or living beings. People love
mechanical gadgets more than living beings. The approach to men is
intellectual-abstract. One is interested in people as objects, in their
coomon properties, in the statistical rules of mass behavior, not in
living individuals. All thsi goes together with te increasing role of
bureaucratic methods. In giant centers of production, giant cities, giant
countries, men are administered as if they were things; men and their
administrators are transformed into things, and they obey the laws of
things. But man is not meant to be a thing; he is destroyed if he becomes
a thing; and before this is accomplished he becomes desperate and wants to
kill all life.

In a bureaucratically organized and centralized industrialism, tastes are
manipulated so that people consume maximally and in predictable and
profitable directions. Their intelligence and character become
standardized by the ever increasingrole of tests which select the emdiocre
and unadventurous in preference to the original and daring . Indeed, the
bureaucratic-industrial civilization which has been victorious in Europe
and North america has created anew typy of man; he can be described as the
organization man, as the automaton man, and as homo consumens. He is, in
addition , homo mechanicus; but this I mena a gadget man, deeply attracted
by all that is mechanical, and inclined against that which is alive. It is
true that mans biological and physiological equipment provides him with
such strong sexula impulses that even homo mechanicus  still has sexula
desires and looks for women. But there is no doubt that te gadget man's
interest in women is diminishing. A New Yorker cartoon pointed to this
very amusingly; a salesgirl trying to sell a certain brand of perfume to a
young female customer recommends it by remarking: " It smells like anew
sport car." Indeed, any oserver of male behavior today will confirm that
this cartoon is more than a clever joke. There are apparentely a great
number of men who are more interested in sports  cars, television and
radio sets, space travel, and nay numbers of gadgets that they are in
womwn, love, nature, food; who are more stimulated byu the manipulation of
nonorganic, mechanical things than by life. It is not even too far-fetched
to assume that homo mechanicus is more proud of nad fascinated by devices
which can kill millions of people across a distance of several thousands
miles within minutes, than he is frightened of and depressed by the
possibiulity of such mass destruction. Homo mechanicus still enjoys sex
and drink . But all these pleasuresare sought within the frame of
reference of the mechanical and unalive.  He expects that there must be a
button which, if pushed, will bring happiness, love, pleasure. He looks a
women as one would at a car: he knows the right buttons to push , he
enjoys his power to amke her "race" and he remains the cold, watching
observer. Homo mechanicus becomes more and more interested in the
manipulation of machines rather than in participation in and response to
life. Hence he becomes indifferent to life, fascinated by the mechanical,
by the death and the total destruction....

...   They take the thrills of excitement for the joys of the lifeand live
under the illusion that they are very much alive when they have many
things to own and to use. The lack of protest against nuclera wra, the
discussion our "atomologists" of the balance sheet of totla or half-total
destruction, shows how far we have alreday gone into the "valley of the
shadow of death..."



best wishes


Victor M. Quintero


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VICTOR MANUEL QUINTERO FLOREZ
vflorez@atenea.ucauca.edu.co
FACULTAD DE INGENIERIA ELECTRONICA Y TELECOMUNICACIONES
UNIVERSIDAD DEL CAUCA
POPAYAN COLOMBIA

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Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html