A rant a week

Today Doodle is wonderful. It speaks an important truth.

If you ever read Erich Fromm’s “To have or to be?” you should be aware of the famous ethics dichotomy. It’s an easy guess that Fromm sees more ethics in “being” than in “having”, despite western cultures are largely based on the concept of “private property”. After reading Fromm I ended up with a slightly different idea, one that comes from my personal experience with my family, friends and co-workers.

As far as “being” is the foundation of self-definition and self-definition is the foundation of ethics, I think today’s society should be based on “doing”. What am I doing? What drives me day after day? What could I do to help others to be and do something of themselves?

Today’s Doodle sings this mantra: I don’t care what you give me, I don’t care who you are. Loving means doing something together, sharing a goal, walking day by day towards it, together. That’s how our lives can be spent and not wasted, this is the root of success, this is the root of a family, the gift of children, the immortality of an opus. We must love each other (broadly speaking) not just to achieve a more comfortable level of “existence” but to roll our sleeves and do something that can last behind us.

They say love lasts forever: how to make it live on when we pass away if not with the changes we left behind?

Thanks Google! You gave Valentine’s day the meaning it had long lost.

PS: for all that find this vision inspiring, give a read to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.