Escape from Freedom

by Erich Fromm

compelling need to avoid moral isolation

Unless he belonged somewhere, unless his life had some meaning and direction, he would feel like a particle of dust and be overcome by his individual insignificance.

parallel to the ADHD mental state: more adept at valuation (perception of worth) when comparisons co-exist; confidence (in possession of knowledge) is relative, not absolute. Implicit need for group/externals.

it is years before the child ceases to confuse itself with the universe.

God proclaims war between man and woman, and war between nature and man.

however, a society could be called neurotic in the sense that its members are crippled in the growth of their personality. Since

being adverse to human happiness and self-realization.

submit to the factual or alleged orders of these outside forces.

The child is put into a golden cage, it can have everything provided it does not want to leave the cage. The result of this is often a profound fear of love on the part of the child when he grows up, as “love” to him implies being caught and blocked in his own quest for freedom.

Love is subordination. To be Insubordinate... to reject "love" right up to the point of forgiveness

security against the torture of doubt.

is saved from making decisions, saved from the final responsibility for the fate of his self, and thereby saved from the doubt of what decision to make.

The masochistic bonds are escape. The individual self has emerged, but it is unable to realize its freedom; it is overwhelmed by anxiety, doubt, and a feeling of powerlessness.

Protestantism to Kant’s philosophy, can be characterized as the substitution of internalized authority for an external one.

Everybody is completely “free,” if only he does not interfere with other people’s legitimate claims. But what we find is rather that instead of disappearing, authority has made itself invisible. Instead of overt authority, “anonymous” authority reigns. It is disguised as common sense, science, psychic health, normality, public opinion. It does not demand anything except the self-evident. It seems to use no pressure but only mild persuasion.

"post-fact" world of today pulling the curtain on the Wizard of Oz, as politics, public opinion, common sense, etc. splinter. StarTrek: Starship exiting warp drive and becoming visible.

Nazism never had any genuine political or economic principles. It is essential to understand that the very principle of Nazism is its radical opportunism.

Radical opportunism is the insurrectionist/MAGA mantra.

The emotional satisfaction afforded by these sadistic spectacles and by an ideology which gave them a feeling of superiority over the rest of mankind was able to compensate them—for a time at least—for the fact that their lives had been impoverished, economically and culturally.

his need for a symbiotic relationship that overcomes this aloneness.

give them the feeling of absolute domination over a living being.”

sado-masochistic ambivalence between the craving for power and for submission.

like the Goldman Sachs intern: the whipping boy of the very finest elite regiment

The right to express our thoughts, however, means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own;

this powerlessness leads either to the kind of escape that we find in the authoritarian character, or else to a compulsive conforming in the process of which the isolated individual becomes an automaton, loses his self, and yet at the same time consciously conceives of himself as free and subject only to himself.

The child starts with giving up the expression of his feeling and eventually gives up the very feeling itself. Together with that, he is taught to suppress the awareness of hostility and insincerity in others;

my awareness of insincerity is indeed hobbled; a prolonged demonstration of insincerity is fueled by inner doubts (moral compass, self-worth)

A wide range of spontaneous emotions are suppressed and replaced by pseudo feelings.

To be “emotional” has become synonymous with being unsound or unbalanced.

DBT skills of emotion regulation

To be sure, thinking without a knowledge of facts remains empty and fictitious; but “information” alone can be just as much of an obstacle to thinking as the lack of it.

Yet all this bespeaks a dim realization of the truth—the truth that modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.

one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve.

he is deeply afraid of taking the risk and the responsibility of giving himself his own aims.

We have become automatons who live under the illusion of being self-willing individuals.

This loss of identity then makes it still more imperative to conform; it means that one can be sure of oneself only if one lives up to the expectations of others.

Societal (collective) loss of identity is the culmination of stunted "growth of personality" or devolution? Loss of identity is a condition imposed by humans onto animals, especially those consumed as food, entertainment, raw materials.

modern man is overcome by a profound feeling of powerlessness which makes him gaze toward approaching catastrophes as though he were paralyzed.

"crash the car" -- paralyzed, or hasten arrival of doom?

The despair of the human automaton is fertile soil for the political purposes of Fascism.

Reason, by becoming a guard set to watch its prisoner, nature, has become a prisoner itself; and thus both sides of human personality, reason and emotion, were crippled.

Rational mind. Emotion mind.

What holds true of love and work holds true of all spontaneous action, whether it be the realization of sensuous pleasure or participation in the political life of the community.

We produce not for a concrete satisfaction but for the abstract purpose of selling our commodity;

those without [recognition of] feeling of satisfaction upon completion... impaired dopamine pathway?

things become ours independently of any creative effort of our own in relation to them.

we regard our personal qualities and the result of our efforts as commodities that can be sold fo...

The "personal brand"

there is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.

Organic growth is possible only under the condition of supreme respect for the peculiarity of the self of other persons as well as of our own self.

In the same way we can know, if we want to, what is poisonous for mental life.

This attraction to what is harmful in life is the phenomenon which more than any other deserves the name of a pathological perversion.

This masochistic sacrifice sees the fulfillment of life in its very negation, in the annihilation of the self.

Only in a planned economy in which the whole nation has rationally mastered the economic and social forces can the individual share responsibility and use creative intelligence in his work. All

how could this possibly work? seems like contradiction

To solve this problem of combining centralization with decentralization is one of the major tasks of society.

If through these experiences the feeling of his own strength is weakened by fear, if his initiative and self-confidence are paralyzed, if hostility develops and is repressed, and if at the same time his father or mother offers affection or care under the condition of surrender, such a constellation leads to an attitude in which

active mastery is given up and all his energies are turned in the direction of an outside source from which the fulfillment of all wishes will eventually come.

waiting for God...

reacts to this threat psychologically and ideologically;

even if those forces contradict the economic interests of that class.

in the United States he described the “marketing character,” which motivates people to fulfill the requirements of the market and results in increased self-alienation.