Family that moved to Russia for "trad" values followup: Husband being sent to the Ukraine frontline

[NJCher]

50. I solved that problem early in life

by finding a copy of Escape from Freedom in the school library. I can even remember finding it on the shelf, pulling it off the bookcase and scanning over the contents. Probably spent a day and a half reading it and I recall the feeling of "well that explains that." I bought a copy and still have it. I think I was around 12 or 13 when I discovered this.

For MAGAts, it's kinda' like Barbie saying "math is hard."

Here's a few paragraphs of a review:

This book gave me a bit of an existential crisis, but in a good way. In Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm explores the historical affinity of man towards external authority, from God, to kings, to fascism, and questions why the freedom societies fight so hard for becomes unbearable. According to Fromm, the separation of man from society to enjoy his individuality creates a positive and negative version of freedom. In the former, he can be “himself”, but in the latter, he is unable to be alone. This negative freedom results in a desperate search for solidarity that culminates in authoritarianism, which depends on the interdependence of sadism and masochism to fulfill the primal satisfaction of power and submission.

I also enjoyed Fromm’s discussion of the dilemma of freedom in modern democratic nations, where we are encouraged to be free, but this freedom is defined for us already and nobody truly has any thoughts, ideas or goals independent from society. Fromm isn’t recommending anarchy, but that society’s goals shift to the cultivation of minds and individuals rather than capital. Fromm’s solution to the freedom question is spontaneity, or a creative expression of love and work that unites man with nature and others and allows him to truly be himself without isolation.

There’s so much more that this book gets into, from how Protestantism created the ideological grounds for capitalism to how media in democracies is designed to placate the masses. In the end, this book made me think a lot more about what I really think, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s interested in redefining their perception of freedom and individuality.

Had I not found this book, I'd have been as puzzled as you were by anyone wanting to live in an authoritarian regime.

And notice in the above 3 paragraphs how we here at DU picked up on all this and we frequently criticize it (media, for example).