Erich Fromm on Happiness (1958 Mike Wallace Interview): "It's a Big Department Store" #Shorts

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Today, we talk a lot about equality, but I think what most people mean by it is sameness.

[00:00:07]That everybody is the same.

[00:00:09]And they are afraid if they are not the same, they are not equal.

[00:00:13]>> And happiness?

[00:00:15]>> Well, happiness is a very proud word of our whole cultural heritage.

[00:00:21]I think if you ask what people really mean by happiness today, it is the experience of unlimited consumption.

[00:00:30]The kind of thing Mr. Huxley has described in the Brave New World.

[00:00:35]I think if you would ask people what their concept of heaven is, and if they were honest, they would say it's a kind of big department store with new things every week and enough money to buy everything new.

[00:00:46]Happiness today, I think, is for most people uh the satisfaction of the eternal suckling to drink in more this, that, and the other.

[00:00:59]>> And what should happiness >> Happiness should be uh something which results from the creative, genuine, intense relatedness, awareness, responsiveness to everything in life, to man, to nature.

[00:01:16]Happiness does not exclude sadness. If a person responds to life, he's sometimes happy and sometimes sad. What matters is he responds.