Erich Fromm, Fear of Freedom

The basic thesis of Fear of Freedom is this. We want more freedom for ourselves, but at the same time we are afraid of it. As individuals, we grow up and become more independent. But the more independent we are, the more alone, the more isolated we are: the help of our elders is taken away and at the same time we see others as competitors for the same goods – success, attention, comfort. It’s hard to be alone and embattled for too long.  So it becomes natural to seek refuge in a group, in a system which gives us guidance and protection. We say we dislike authority, then, but at the same time we want it. At a deep level, we feel a need to submit to something which makes us feel part of something bigger: membership of a religion, of a class or a political movement can all do this.

All of this is part of Fromm’s attempt to explain the rise of fascism in the twentieth century, the phenomenon of modern society renouncing the freedoms it has won and embracing the most authoritarian of codes. Here are three kinds of authority which Fromm talks about: these we can call external, internal and invisible.

External authority we can cover very quickly. It is simply anyone out there who is in some position to tell you what to do, or stop you doing something. Parents, teachers, policemen, religious leaders, doctors, perhaps writers – depending on the circumstances, people such as this will have some authority over us. That authority might be legitimate or illegitimate, we might be right to obey it or morally obliged to rebel against it, it might be exercised benignly or maliciously, it might have been acquired honestly or by corruption. The only point here is that it is external to us, we can clearly see that it comes from outside us.

The second kind of authority is internal. This is when the rules we gathered from the outside become internalized, become part of the way we regulate ourselves. The whole point of making young people go to bed at certain times, I suppose, is that eventually this becomes second instinct. In the same way, the various codes and values that we pick up in our early lives will get internalized. To a large extent, they become our conscience, the little voice inside us telling us what’s right or wrong. Conscience is actually a massively important element in Western culture. In the Protestant Reformation, a huge weight was placed on the importance of the individual conscience, which took over from the external authority of the Church. Moral philosophers like Kant elaborated on this idea at length. Just possibly we might be living at a time when that idea is weakening. I can only speak anecdotally, but there seem to be many examples of people acting without any reference to internal conscience at all: some MPs bleating that their expenses were within the rules is a case in point. But I suspect that a lot of the anger directed at politicians comes from an uneasy feeling that they in some way reflect our own behaviour. What can I get away with? How can I play the system? We all dislike those who remind us of our own faults.  Is conscience still a strong determining factor in modern daily life? Maybe it is. In today’s paper, the boarding card airport shop story, where retailers have been making millions in VAT savings and not passing them on to cutomers;  on another page, City of London people collectively lifting a car off someone who’s got hurt. Evidence points all ways.

After external and internal, Fromm’s third type of authority is what he calls ‘invisible’. This is when you’re obeying an authority without even realizing it. How does this work? If you’ve ever seen someone being hypnotized, you’ll know how easy it is to plant ideas in another person’s mind. A person can genuinely believe he is lost and feel distressed, for example, simply because those thoughts have been put in his mind by the hypnotist, even though he has no recollection of having these suggested to him. According to Fromm, you and I are for much of the time in a very similar condition. We all have, say, likes and dislikes in music, political opinions, preferences for particular clothes and so on. But how did those ideas arise? Much as we like to think that we figured it all out ourselves, we would also recognise that a lot of opinion forming is going on around us: advertisements, newspapers, and so-called common sense can all provide us with pre-packaged views that we willingly make our own. And, like the hypnotized man, we come to believe they are our own. It’s useful. We don’t have time or energy to think through the whole of politics for ourselves, for example, so we read our preferred newspaper to learn what our opinions are on a range of subjects. Influential figures in the media can help us too. Except, of course, we think those really are our opinions. Here’s a scenario to illustrate the point.  You watch a football match on TV. You listen to the analysis of an authority figure, a pro. You think, yes, that makes sense. And, later, when someone asks you your opinion of the game you more or less repeat what he said. Only, when you’re saying it, you actually think it’s your own analysis. I’ve expressed opinions on books and films and realized later that I’ve really just repeated a review I read. And I’ve heard highly educated people do just the same thing. Partly it’s because we all need to belong to a group – it’s a basic human requirement – and membership depends on sharing the same ideas as others in the group. The group might be a religious community, or a class, or a union, or a group of political activists; or we might yearn to be accepted into a wine-tasting and opera-loving set, or a merry band of computer game fanatics. Any such group will have its required set of beliefs which you need to embrace to get the full benefits of membership.  And pretty soon and pretty painlessly you’ll believe that they really were your own private views and tastes all along.

So, one suggestion in this book is that while we’re considering, and maybe resenting, one external authority we’re very much in the grip of another authority altogether, the current of popular opinion that carries us along.  Does it matter? To some extent, it must be inevitable that we simply pick up certain views from what’s going on around us. It’s impossible to think everything through individually, and there’s no great shame in adopting at least some of the fashions of the time. But if we really want to stand as individuals, we should leave some space to think some things through ourselves. Academic work provides some opportunity for that, though maybe not much. But everyone knows the satisfaction that comes from thinking something through in some area of life. You might really think about the football match and find Alan Hansen thinks the same thing. Fine, your thought is original because it originated in you, not outside you. Man is a pack animal, and we will all to an extent go with the pack. But we also have a capacity to pull away for a moment, and do the incredibly hard work of actually forming thoughts and judgements in our own minds. We can draw on external authority if it helps; we are free to reject external authority, if we have good grounds for doing so and it’s not just disagreement for its own sake. That way we begin to develop our own voice, to be authentic. That is where our real authority as persons begins.