The Premise
Right off the bat, the author turns to the power of metaphor to situate the central premise of his book: everything about modern civilization is based on the fundamental belief that, generally speaking, it is a system based entirely on sane decision-making. Just because a million people do a crazy thing doesn’t mean that it’s not crazy:
“Many an inmate of an insane asylum is convinced that everybody else is crazy, except himself.”
The Two Greatest Dangers of Our Time
What would you, the reader, suggest are the two greatest dangers facing modern man at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the new millennium? Lot to choose from, no doubt. When the book was originally published in 1955, maybe most would have picked one of the choices which Fromm proposes, but the other? Not likely, even though he does mean it entirely in metaphorical terms. Today, of course, it takes on new meaning: the metaphor is still ripe, but one must consider his second choice on a more literal level as well:
“Our dangers are war and robotism.”
Alienation
The central problem which leads to robotism as a metaphorical condition is alienation. There’s little use in defining the term as used by the author here since it represents a sizable chunk of his own text, but one of the aspects of alienation for modern man is the distancing from the very things he creates to the point that he is not just alienated but can no longer even recognize the relationship he has to his creations:
“Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. Yet this whole creation of his stands over and above him. He does not feel himself as a creator and center, but as the servant of a Golem, which his hands have built.”
"Ten million Americans can't be wrong”
The move is eventually made from the abstraction of whether society is actually sane simply because we think it is to something much more specific and dangerous. In fact, the author argues, just because a million people do a crazy thing not only doesn’t mean it’s not crazy, but that it must actually necessitate the exact opposite. Or, at least, that is the way society has come to view things over history as a result of the move toward democratic self-rule based on the will of the majority.
The generic advertising slogan quoted here that a certain number of Americans can’t all be wrong if they like a particular a product extends to the concept of majority rule: just because the majority of people voted one way does not automatically translate into that being the right way. (Although it would certainly make the process of electing a President genuinely democratic instead of an ironic joke.)
They Can't all Be Gold
Not every idea or concept that an author illuminates through the technique of metaphorical comparison can be expected to be gold. Sometimes an author takes a chance and things just don’t pay off. Which is not to suggest that the future may not prove him right someday. Just not so far:
“In a few years, no doubt, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time.”
