Modern life is a life of constant attack. Organizations continually try to make their message heard, and sometimes by any means necessary. Marketers, companies, etc. they want the consumer to continue purchasing and owning more items and for the ownership of the products to complement them. However, even if they promote their products or services to improve your life, do they really do it? Religions, spiritualists, etc. they believe that happiness in life is found only from within, from a fulfilling inner peace. While this seems like the logical path to happiness, they have a nemesis called capitalism. This essay will explore the having orientation, the being orientation, and a critique of capitalism in its relationship to having through my interpretation of Erich Fromm's Having or Being. The Having OrientationIt might be assumed that having is the normal orientation in which people live. their lives in modern societies of Europe or North America. Erich Fromm stated, “Purchasing, owning, and making a profit are the sacred and inalienable rights of the individual in industrial society” (Dal 1976:57). Fromm clearly explains that having and possessing is the dominant norm and having is tied to an individual. Being individualistic is inherent in having because only one can have property. If having is shared, it loses its individualistic characteristic. The having orientation is the belief that to be fulfilled in life it is necessary to exclusively possess one or more physical or immaterial objects such as ideas, thoughts or in some cases people. To explain further, the orientation of physical ownership, ownership over objects is the ability to hold, possess, and control over them. Ownership of intangible assets is more of a... means of paper......iolation of capitalistic having. The having system controls our mind and our way of life. If we, as a capitalist society, were truly concerned about costs, we would do more of it. Being is free and takes practice, but it saves a lot of money. In concluding this essay, having and being are states of mind and having is associated with tangible physical property. Having is selfish, while being is selfless and economical. Being aware of capitalist having brings awareness of its destructiveness and sheds light on what we have become. Defining ourselves by our career title instead of who we truly are as people shows the degradation of our society. We long to own, but we always seem to forget that even the richest people in the world can't take their stuff with them. References Fromm, E. (1976). To have or to be? New York, NY: Continuity.