Escape… from Freedom
Eric Fromm is an inspiration to me. Therefore, I post here an excerpt from my favorite of his works, Escape from Freedom, a book intended to explain psychologically how the German people could embrace the Nazis in post-WWI Germany. I have found this work to be very well done, and thought-provoking.
“There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual . . . . However, if the economic, social and political conditions . . . do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality in the sense just mentioned, while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden. It then becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this kind of freedom into submission or some kind of relationship to man and the world which promises relief from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of his freedom.”