Last week President Bush appeared before an audience in Kansas and boasted about violating the constitution by ordering the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. He received thunderous applause from the carefully vetted conservative audience. To be sure, some of enthusiam for presidential lawbreaking can be attributed to Kansan exceptionalism. But several polls are showing that a narrow majority of Americans support this violation of constitutional law in the "War on Terror".
There has always been a segment of the American population that longs for authoritarian rule and is uncomfortable with democratic institutions such as the free press or Congressional oversight of the Executive. To gain some insight into this I recently reread Escape from Freedom (1941)(German version: Die Furcht vor der Freiheit) by the German-American pyschoanalyst and thinker Erich Fromm. Fromm was forced to flee Germany in 1934 along with other members of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. While the main purpose of Escape from Freedom was to analyze the origins of National Socialist totalitarianism in Germany, the book was written in the United States, and Fromm points out the dangers of authoritarian thinking even in his new homeland.
In the first half of Escape from Freedom Fromm traces the development of human individualization from the Middle Ages through the Reformation to modern Capitalism. The Reformation freed man from the old feudal structures and guilds. On the other hand, in medieval society man was not alone; his role in society was clearly defined and his meaning was derived from the role. Modern Capitalism has freed man from the repressive strictures of the past, making true individualism possible: a full realization of potentialities, together with the ability to live actively and spontaneously. But at the same time, modern Capitalism has led to a profound alienation of man as he competes in the in the anonymous and irrational marketplace: his labor has been transformed into a commodity. He is an "individual" but at the same time he has become isolated, powerless, an instrument of purposes outside himself. Rather than moving forward to a positive freedom of true realization of his potential, modern man is driven by fear into a new type of bondage, longing for the security - the Geborgenheit- of the medieval state. This fear manifests itself in the following ways:
1. Authoritarianism: We compensate for our own powerlessness by submitting to a power greater than ourselves - a state, a leader, a political party or a cult. We worship those with power and hold in contempt those whom we perceive as powerless. In its most extreme form, authoritarianism leads to sadism and masochism:
"The annihilation of the individual self and the attempt to overcome thereby the unbearable feeling of powerlessness are only one side of the masochistic strivings. The other side is the attempt to become a part of a bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to submerge and participate in it. This power can be a person, an institution, God, the nation, conscience, or a psychic compulsion. By becoming part of a power which is felt as unshakably strong, eternal, and glamorous, one participates in its strength and glory. One surrenders one’s own self and renounces all strength and pride connected with it, one loses one’s integrity as an individual and surrenders freedom; but one gains a new security and a new pride in the participation in the power in which one submerges. One gains also security against the torture of doubt. The masochistic person, whether his master is an authority outside of himself or whether he has internalized the master as conscience or a psychic compulsion, 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, He is also saved from the doubt of what the meaning of his life is o who “he” is. These questions are answered by the relationship to the power to which he has attached himself. The meaning of his life and the identity of his self are determined by the greater whole into which the self has submerged. " (Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom)
2. Destructiveness: In the most extreme instances, we attempt to escape the fear by obliterating ourselves, or obliterating our world itself so it can no longer harm us. We see examples of destructiveness everywhere, in alcoholism, drug addiction, epidemic obesity. The destructive tendency can be harnessed on a large scale for terrorist organizations or for perpetual war.
3. Automaton Conformity: This is the most common form of escape that we see today. We flee from our true selves by hiding in the safety of masses. By going along with the crowd, by not drawing attention to ourselves we have the illusion of being part of a whole, of belonging. The flip side of this automaton conformity is that those who refuse to conform are punished and shunned. Fromm sees this tendency of automaton conformity as a threat to real democracy, since democracy depends on the active participation of free and thinking individuals.
The edition of Escape from Freedom that I have contains a forward that Erich Fromm wrote 25 years after the original publication. By then the world had barely escaped a destructive nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Fromm was not convinced that we were any closer to achieving the "positive freedom" of true individuality:
"The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, there there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself. Man represses the irrational passions of the destructiveness, hate, envy, revenge; he worships power, money, the sovereign state, the nation; while he pays lip service to the teachings of the great spiritual leaders of the human race, those of Buddha, the prophets, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed - he has transformed these teachings into a jungle of superstition and idol-worship. How can mankind save itself from destroying itself by this discrepancy between intellectual-technical over-maturity and emotional backwardness?" (Erich Fromm, Forward to Escape from Freedom)
Forty years after Fromm wrote these words, and more than sixty years after the publication of Escape from Freedom, Fromm's pessimism about humanity - man's tendency to turn back from realizing "positive freedom" - appears more valid than ever.
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