Escape From Freedom

Escape from Freedom Paperback – September 15, This item:Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm Paperback $ Erich Fromm was a German-born U.S. psychoanalyst and social philosopher who explored the interaction between psychology and society.
Table of contents

When someone does not have a reasonable source of income through a decent job, then they are certainly not as "free" as one who has adequate finances.

Bullying, Identity, and the "Escape from Freedom" | Psychology Today

When they are underemployed or need to work several jobs then they aren't free. When they have to line up at the soup kitchens then they aren't free. Their options are limited by circumstance and their "freedom" is replaced by an urgent survival imperative. Freedom means having many true options which can realistically be chosen from: More money gives more options and there should be a balance between work and income that is satisfactory on both sides of the scale.

When all the local manufacturing jobs are shipped overseas, then there is a big problem. When eight fat -arsed billionaires own half the world's wealth, then there is a problem because those fat-arses have stolen the freedom from the "peasants. Then those people will gladly gravitate to anyone who offers the smallest glimmer of hope: Meanwhile the fat-arses in Germany were all living in luxury throughout the great depression while people starved right up till the time the Nazis confiscated large parts of their the fat-arses wealth.

Escape from Freedom

It is fascinating to see that the Communism experiment ended in the current oligarchy in Russia of which Putin is a huge player , and that the great Darwinian Capitalist Economic experiment in the west has also ended in an oligarchy where the big corporates control all and democracy is but in name only. America has the ""best damn democracy that money can buy. So when someone says that there is more freedom, I say that in fact there is a whole lot less and the average man in the street is not fooled by the cynical platitudes of elitists or leftists, or any other kind of "ists".

The problem comes from the insular and myopic education system of America: The "leaders" are educated in an intellectual la-la land which does not exist for the vast majority of the working class. That distorted education system especially MBAs teaches and fosters the type of psychopathic individualism that we now find is running the whole country. Trump is just the crowning glory of the Ivy League style of Economic Darwinism that America has grown to love whether or not he was formally educated within it.

But the average man in the street just sees his paycheck shrinking, his security of employment disappearing and his job being replaced by overseas workers on some exploited overseas employment visa. Trump was quite seriously, the best choice out of a bad bunch. With the Democrats, it would just have been more of the same slow decline for the next 4 years with yet more jobs disappearing overseas. With Trump there is at least some hope that the status quo can be shaken up a bit. I see an oligarchy as being similar to a multi-headed monarchy or autocracy.

This is what we have now in most of the western world and the average man in the street in America and in the UK is sick of it. He sees his freedom eroding through loss of economic power and is forced with no "freedom" to do otherwise to constantly be on the lookout for ways out of the mess he is in or is about to be in. It is only the academics in their pretend fairyland that can philosophize about some ephemeral fairy floss of a new theory du jour that has nothing to to with life at street level.

Those self same academics who got their predictions about Brexit and Trump so wildly wrong. As venture capitalist Peter Theil once said: The wave of change is just starting and it cannot now be stopped, as it has been gathering momentum for many decades. It is the inequity in economic circumstance between the elites and the vast majority of the world that is the real driver of what has been, and of the tidal wave that is yet to come.

It is about "freedom"; but it is about the lack of it for most workers. As a teenager in high school I worked at minimum wage jobs on weekends and I worked full-time during the summers to earn money to help pay for college. I worked off and on while in college as well. I graduated cum laude with honors.

I took lower-paying jobs at first in order to get my foot in the door of the industry I wanted to be in. I lived very, very frugally for the first 10 years or so. Unlike most women I decided not to have children; instead I wanted to concentrate on my career. It was a good choice for me. Eventually I got hired into the "big time", a good-paying job at my "dream company". Even so, I also took part-time jobs in order to save up enough money for a big down-payment on a house. I took a mortgage on a small home less than I was qualified to borrow and have now paid it off.

Twenty years at my dream company got me an excellent pension and K.


  • Erich Fromm, Mechanisms of Escape from Freedom ().
  • Escape from Freedom - Erich Fromm - Google Книги!
  • Economics for Helen.
  • ;
  • AdvancED CSS.

I'm now at the beginning of a very comfortable retirement. Nobody should be afraid of working extra jobs or starting at the bottom in order to achieve your goals. America was built by those willing to work very hard. I feel honored and privileged to live here. Thank you for this well-considered response--I don't necessarily disagree. But when civil liberties LGBTQ rights and human dignity women, Muslims, Mexicans , are implicitly linked to economic realities, we are fear-mongering. And, when the incendiary rhetoric of leaders opens that door You got part of it but missed what makes the world go round.

We have a major global wealth grab going on. There are a lot of bad actors. Obama administration was actually pushed to accept many of these progressive policies. If I am right - pay attention to the "if" - Trump's wife is an immigrant. If am right, in the inner circle of Trump's employees, the most powerful is a woman. I think that nowadays people do not listen, do not read and academics has lost the meaning of critical thought.

Before write, look, observe, research and come to your conclusions. Or, go back to learn how to think. The destruction of self is the dictatorship of being politically correct. The father who exposed his child is a mad man.

Nothing to do with Trump era, but all related to psychopathology. The Pothole of Liability as showcased in 13 Reasons Why, season 2. Comedy, humiliation, and the "Impractical Jokers. Back Find a Therapist.


  • Vorrede zu der Geschichte des Maltheserordens nach Vertot von M. N. bearbeitet (German Edition).
  • Post Comment!
  • .
  • 1000 Best Baby Bargains (Complete Book of Baby Bargains: 1,000+ Best Ways to Save)!
  • !
  • The Associate.
  • ;

However, it has not always occupied such a prominent place in people's thinking and, as an experience, is not necessarily something that is unambiguously enjoyable. A major chapter in the book deals with the development of Protestant theology , with a discussion of the work of Calvin and Luther. The collapse of an old social order and the rise of capital led to a more developed awareness that people could be separate autonomous beings and direct their own future rather than simply fulfilling a socioeconomic role.

This in turn fed into a new conception of God that had to account for the new freedom while still providing some moral authority. Luther painted a picture of man's relationship with God that was personal and individuated and free from the influence of the church, while Calvin's doctrine of predestination suggested that people could not work for salvation but have instead been chosen arbitrarily before they could make any difference. Both of these, argues Fromm, are responses to a freer economic situation. The first gives individuals more freedom to find holiness in the world around them without a complex church structure.

The second, although superficially giving the appearance of a kind of determinism actually provided a way for people to work towards salvation.

Navigation menu

While people could not change their destinies, they could discover the extent of their holiness by committing themselves to hard work and frugality, both traits that were considered virtuous. In reality this made people work harder to 'prove' to themselves that they were destined for God's kingdom. As 'freedom from' is not an experience we enjoy in itself, Fromm suggests that many people, rather than using it successfully, attempt to minimise its negative effects by developing thoughts and behaviours that provide some form of security. These are as follows:. Fromm analyzes the character of Nazi ideology and suggests that the psychological conditions of Germany after the first world war fed into a desire for some form of new order to restore the nation's pride.

This came in the form of National Socialism and Fromm's interpretation of Mein Kampf suggests that Hitler had an authoritarian personality structure that not only made him want to rule over Germany in the name of a higher authority the idea of a natural master race but also made him an appealing prospect for an insecure middle class that needed some sense of pride and certainty.

Trump promised to free his constituents from the fear of freedom.

Fromm suggests there is a propensity to submit to authoritarian regimes when nations experience negative freedom but he sounds a positive note when he claims that the work of cultural evolution hitherto cannot be undone and Nazism does not provide a genuine union with the world. Fromm examines democracy and freedom. Modern democracy and the industrialised nation are models he praises but it is stressed that the kind of external freedom provided by this kind of society can never be utilised to the full without an equivalent inner freedom.

Fromm suggests that though we are free from totalitarian influence of any sorts in this kind of society, we are still dominated by the advice of experts and the influence of advertising. The way to become free as an individual is to be spontaneous in our self-expression and in the way we behave.

This is crystallised in his existential statement "there is only one meaning of life: Fromm counters suggestions that this might lead to social chaos by claiming that being truly in touch with our humanity is to be truly in touch with the needs of those with whom we share the world. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification.