Hello from "Escape from Freedom"

  In my very first blog post, I would like to share some quotes from Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, one of my favorite books. This book was published in 1941 at the height of the Second World War, highlighting psychological conditions that facilitated the rise of Nazism. Fromm questioned how did the German allow Hitler’s totalitarian government and even support with ardent and enthusiastic support. He discusses how human in modern society constantly feel insecure, alienated, and even dehumanized. One's free self may become his burden and he needs to find a rock to chain his self. Many years have passed but I could find Fromm’s analysis of humankind still stand in today’s society.

  When given ultimate freedom, would I be strong enough to cherish it? Or would I choose not to be free and be submitted? Whenever I make important decisions in life I always try really hard to figure out if this is truly what I want. I get older everyday but answering to that question never gets easy. I would love to communicate with fellow steemit bloggers about this matter. Let’s figure out how to be free and feel secure at the same time together!

  “The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie his self to; he cannot bear to be his own individual self any longer, and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden: the self.”

  “Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows 'what he wants,' while he actually wants what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own.” 

 “Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort.”