Negative and Positive Liberties

I am currently reading “Escape from Freedom” by Erich Fromm. He published this book in 1941. Which means he wrote it in the years leading up to and the first horrific years of World War II. As you may have already guessed, Dr. Fromm was desperately trying to figure out how the most “civilized” place the planet had ever known (Europe) had lost its collective sanity and decided absolute destruction and the murder of tens of millions was the solution to all their problems. What made the situation even more maddening for him was the necessity of the “II” designation. This was the second time in fewer than fifty years his neighbors had chosen this “solution.”

His conclusions and arguments are compelling. I will be unpacking them more next week because they have a laser focused relevance to our circumstances today.

Fromm believed we modern humans have a habit of celebrating our negative freedoms as individuals and stopping short of their true purpose of existing: the freedom to become. 

An example of this might be free speech. The Constitution of the United States outlines our right to freedom of expression and hampers the ability of the government or other authorities to infringe upon it. We celebrate and defend our right to think, read, write, and speak what we will. Fromm argued the vast majority of the population of free societies stop there. He wanted to encourage us to go past negative liberty of freedom from regulation and embrace the positive freedom of learning how to think rigorously and independently.

He believed our lack of initiative in this area makes us easy prey for advertisers and propagandists alike.

Henry Ford is quoted as saying:

                Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

I find it interesting a man who so prided himself on his ability to think was bamboozled so easily by the anti-Semite propaganda of his day, but, on this quote, I think Erich Fromm would have agreed with him.

Fromm was concerned, as many are today, our inability to think well combined with our vast scientific knowledge brings many to despair. This despair is induced by cynicism and lack of belief in any personal significance, or meaning. This again creates a susceptibility to advertisers and propagandists.

So what was his solution?

Surprisingly, Fromm offered the same treatment as Jung:

                Acknowledge and face your fears of insignificance, separation from the whole of humanity and society, and lack of purpose and feelings of powerlessness. Once you have dealt with these insecurities you will be empowered to embrace your freedom to become.

Of course, being a psychoanalyst, Fromm, as well as Jung, wanted you to go through this process with an analyst to assist you. But, this is expensive and takes years, at best. Psychoanalysis is not an option for the average person in the United States of America. If Dr. Fromm’s solution is the correct one, and I have a hunch it is, the majority of us will have to go it alone. Which brings us right back to the heart of the problem, doesn’t it?

What do you think?

Do you agree with Erich Fromm? Does our lack of critical thinking skills make us susceptible to advertisers and propagandists to use as they will? Do you see signs of this in your community, church, government?

Do you see authoritarianism around the world or in your own country treating the masses as “prey” or a means to their own personal ends?

Tell me in the comments below.    

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How I Could Have Saved Time and Pain

To fully understand this post, first read Learning to Do Life Well. My post from 1/9/2017. 

It turns out some accomplished philosophers and psychologists have written about what I was going through in my twenties and early thirties. First, I had to do the work of living the ancient Greek maxim:

Know Thyself

The ancient Greeks claimed they got it from the even more ancient Egyptians. Had you asked me during the nearly two decades I was trying to figure all this stuff out, I would have said it was probably Shakespeare.

As I was learning about myself, I was also engaging in what Nietzsche called “The Will to Power” and what Jung called “Individuation.” Had I been exposed to these things before or during these particular struggles, I might have been far less concerned about why I didn’t seem to fit anywhere and never being satisfied as a joiner or a follower.

The process of learning who we are is often uncomfortable. Jung encourages us to confront and acknowledge our darker sides and to neither be ashamed or afraid of them. Nietzsche admonishes us to revel in the pain of the struggle. To see it as an opportunity to show the strength of our internal metal.

All through my mid- and late-twenties I had this recurring vision in my mind. I’d be working a job I hated for three to six months, falling farther and farther behind financially the entire time. I’d be working so hard to conform to what “god,” my church leaders, and society expected of me. And I’d be growing more and more miserable.

I could see this “other” me inside myself. He was nearly naked. Long hair, dirty. Aggressive. I had him in a cell of stone and ancient iron bars. There was a single, bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling that was always swinging side to side so no one could ever get a good look at his face.

I knew I had him caged, but any moment he was going to trick me into letting him out again so he could destroy the nice, sanitized, middle class life I was struggling to create. Complete with the two car garage and the white picket fence. Even though I didn’t want any of it.  

I was terrified of this other me and I knew I had no real power over him.

Had I been exposed to Nietzsche, Jung, and others, I might have learned this is normal. Instead of keeping this other me caged, I needed to learn to compromise with him and figure out how the two of us could live together in this one body and enjoy it.

It was perfectly fine that I wasn’t cut out to live the Monday through Friday life of modern Americans. Jung calls it the “average ideal.” I wasn’t designed to help fulfill the corporation’s vision, or the pastor’s vision, or anybody else’s vision. I was supposed to be finding and creating my own unique path. And I wasn’t supposed to be fighting my path, avoiding my path, or being ashamed of it.

On his debut EP, singer songwriter Joe Pug has a line I love:

I’d rather be nobody’s man than somebody’s child

This is how young Joe expressed his struggle of finding his unique path in life. I think he summed it well.

In trying desperately through my twenties and early thirties to conform to the jobholder lifestyle of the masses, I was literally harming myself and my family. It wasn’t who I was or who was designed to become. When I finally gave myself permission to accept myself as an artist I began the process of self actuation and my life began to get better. It was a painfully slow process, but it has made an enormous difference in every area of my life: mental, physical, emotional, financial, social, and career.

Life as an individual is good.