Having versus being (Fromm)
Two modes of existence. In the having mode you relate to everything, including knowledge, people and yourself, as possessions to acquire and hold. In the being mode you relate through activity, experience and engagement. The same act can be done in either mode: you can have a degree or be learning.
What drives it
Having gives security and identity ('I am what I have'), but what you have can be lost, so it breeds anxiety and greed. Listen to how someone talks about their partner, their knowledge or their faith.
How it shows
Work
Collects credentials, titles, followers and logos; treats ideas as positions to own and defend ('my framework'); hoards information; scores meetings by what was won. The being mode looks absorbed in the problem, changes its mind easily and gives ideas away.
Relationships
'My wife' and 'my team' said possessively; love as ownership and jealousy as defence of property; conversation as an exchange of positions; holidays photographed rather than lived.
Self
Anxiety about losing what you have, and treating your own experiences as acquisitions ('I've done Japan').
What tells it apart
Marketing orientation (Fromm): The marketing orientation is about selling yourself; having is about acquiring and holding. One wants to be bought, the other wants to own.
Hedonic adaptation: Hedonic adaptation explains why new possessions stop pleasing; the having mode explains why the person keeps acquiring anyway, because identity rather than pleasure is at stake.
Status motive: Status seeking needs others to see the rank; the having mode extends to private possessions and knowledge nobody else knows about.
A test
Watch how they handle losing something they own (a title, a deal, an idea credited to someone else); distress out of proportion, or a shaken sense of who they are, points to the having mode.
Questions to carry
- When a title, a deal or credit for an idea was lost, how shaken was the person's sense of who they are?
- Which thing I have, a degree, a role or a belief, would leave me unsure who I am if it went?
How strong the research is
weak. Fromm's distinction is philosophical; research on materialism finds a reliable negative link with wellbeing (Dittmar and colleagues' meta-analysis, 2014), and work on experiential versus material purchases finds a smaller, contested advantage for experiences (Van Boven and Gilovich, 2003).
Where it comes from
Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be?, 1976, drawing on Gabriel Marcel
Sources
- Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? (1976)