Escape from freedom?

This op-ed of mine appeared in the Sunday Gazette-Mail.

Sometimes I get in the mood for a big fat Russian novel. It’s kind of like having a craving for a corn dog.

One hot mess of a novel that’s been on my mind lately is Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. It’s about the relationships between three brothers, the passionate and impulsive Dmitri, the saintly Alyosha and the tortured intellectual Ivan.

(If you think your family is weird, this book just might make you feel better.)

The most memorable part for me is the discussion about freedom and authority. It’s a riff on the New Testament story of the temptation of Jesus by Satan in the wilderness at the start of his ministry. In the novel, it takes the form of a “poem” or story told by Ivan about an imaginary encounter between Jesus and the Grand Inquisitor at the height of the Spanish Inquisition.

In it, Jesus appears as he did on earth even while heretics are being burned at the stake. He doesn’t make a scene but the people recognize him instantly and, drawn by his love and compassion, surround him asking for healing and his blessing.

The Grand Inquisitor is having none of it. He orders Jesus to be arrested immediately. The people are so used to being obedient to authority that they don’t object. That night he visits his prisoner in the dungeon and harangues him, asking “Why have you come to hinder us?”

In his view, Jesus’ fatal flaw was wanting people to be free to choose to follow him without coercion. The Inquisitor argues that freedom is the last thing people want and need, saying “nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom … I tell Thee that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.”

In other words, what people really crave is a strong authoritarian leader who will tell them what they want to hear and overawe them with spectacle. The “wise and dread spirit” who tempted Jesus in the desert called it: Give the people “miracle, mystery and authority” (or at least the lying promise of it) and they will throw themselves at the feet of the charismatic leader.

Jesus listens in silence, gazing gently at his jailer. In the end, “he suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips.” The old man shuddered, opened the cell door and told him to go away and never come again.

Jesus disappears into the night.

As for the Grand Inquisitor, “The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.”

This story within a story isn’t really about an unfortunate period in European history. It’s about an unfortunate but periodically recurring tendency in humanity to willingly submit to authoritarian leaders, systems and regimes.

This was also the theme of Erich Fromm’s classic study “Escape From Freedom,” which was first published 1941. Fromm had fled Germany shortly after the Nazi takeover, which also prompted him to write the book.

His basic argument was that modern capitalist societies affect people in two contradictory ways: people become “more independent, self-reliant, and critical” while also becoming “more isolated, alone, and afraid.”

This leaves us with two alternatives: We can either move toward “positive freedom,” the often difficult step of creatively relating to others in work and love; or we can surrender to authoritarianism or conformity, both of which come at the cost of an authentic life. Of these, the former is more dangerous, particularly in hard times, while the latter is more common.

Those who give way to authoritarianism are aroused by and ready to submit to powerful leaders, whether they are individuals or institutions. They are also contemptuous of the weak and frequently target marginalized groups. For them, “the world is composed of people with power and those without it, of superior ones and inferior ones” and the lack of power of the “losers” is seen as a sign of guilt and inferiority.

Leaders of authoritarian political movements play on these feelings and on the resentments and frustrations of people in uncertain times. In “Mein Kampf,” for example, the worst of the lot wrote that the German masses really wanted after years of defeat and depression was “the victory of the stronger and the annihilation or the unconditional surrender of the weaker.” They “are far more satisfied by a doctrine which tolerates no rival than by the grant of liberal freedom …”

He described in detail how authoritarian movements help people overcome their sense of isolation:

“The mass meeting is necessary if only for the reason that in it the individual, who in becoming an adherent of a new movement feels lonely and is easily seized with the fear of being alone, receives for the first time the pictures of a greater community, something that has a strengthening and encouraging effect on most people. … If he steps for the first time out of his small workshop or out of the big enterprise, in which he feels very small, into the mass meeting and is now surrounded by thousands and thousands of people with the same conviction … he himself succumbs to the magic influence of what we call mass suggestion.”

That sounds like a contemporary political rally. It’s not a coincidence that both the Washington Post and the New York Times have recently published columns and news stories about the renewed debate on fascism in the United States and around the world.

Authoritarian movements and leaders can be tempting. At different times, many admirable peoples and cultures have fallen for them. The results generally aren’t good, either for their victims or supporters. The temptations of “the wise and dread spirit” and the Grand Inquisitor will always be there and at times they can seem very alluring.

It comes down to a choice.

(Note: Over 20 years ago I listened to a recorded lecture on this topic by now retired Barnard College professor Dennis Dalton. I found it fascinating but remote at the time. Recent events prompted me to revisit the sources.)

Kamae

Kendo practioners in upper and lower kamae positions. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Welcome to Cool Japanese Words Week at Goat Rope. Each day will include a discussion of a useful but hard to translate concept from the Japanese martial art and Zen tradition, which are kind of intertwined. It is El Cabrero's belief that some of these ideas can be helpful in making the world less violent and more just.

Today's word is kamae, which is sometimes translated as stance, posture or ready position, although there's a lot more to it. In a deeper sense, it refers to a state of calm alertness before action. It doesn't imply a fixed position or attitude or a pre-conceived rigid plan but rather a focused awareness prepared to respond to the moment.

C. W. Nicol, a British martial artist who studied karate in Japan in the early 1960s came close to it with these words describing the katas or forms of advanced students:

In perfect stillness, they exuded strength. I saw it, and I thought of herons, poised above a pool, ready to spear a fish; of high-soaring falcons ready to stoop; of a cat, sitting patiently by a mouse hole...

My own favorite description of it comes from Erich Fromm's discussion of hope:

It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like the crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come...

Without good kamae, one can miss opportunities for action (and in some cases, get clobbered in the bargain). As Hamlet said, "the readiness is all."

RECOVERING THE RECOVERY? The economic recovery bill cleared a major hurdle in the Senate yesterday, with a final vote expected for today. After that, the bill goes to conference where differences between the House and Senate versions will be reconciled.

The Senate version weakened some key provisions of the House bill that would affect those hardest hit by the recession. For more details of the differences, click here. Some of these defects may be improved in the final version, but that will depend in part on how much noise people make.

The American Friends Service Committee is still making a toll-free number to the Capitol switchboard available for those who want to support the bill. AFSC recommends a passage without delay and without reducing aid to families and states. It also opposes the flawed “E-Verify” measure and the $1 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration. The number is 1-800-473-6711.

THE S WORD is discussed here.

A NOD TO CHUCKIE D. Darwin, that is.

POSSIBLE ALZHEIMER'S BREAKTHROUGH? New research suggests that a naturally occuring protein can stop or reverse cognitive impairment in animals.

NOTE. It's been a long day on the road, so I'm scheduling this post to be published a few hours from this writing. Here's hoping nothing really bad happens between now and then.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS

Caption: This one's for Emily Dickinson.

Along with links and comments on current events, the theme for this week's Goat Rope is optimism and pessimism. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries.

A while back, I worked on a project about hope. This was kind of ironic since at the time I didn't have a whole lot on hand.

It wasn't a huge problem for me--I can run pretty well on grim determination and Appalachian fatalism. In fact, the main thing that got me through the Bush years was the story of the hopeless struggle of Leonidas and the Spartans against impossible odds at Thermopylae (this was way before the movie came out).

Moulon labe, baby!

Back to the hope thing...To start with, I tried to look at the literature and research on the subject and found quite a bit. One book that caught my eye was an older study by Ezra Stotland called The Psychology of Hope. His definition of hope spoke to me:

an expectation greater than zero of achieving a goal.

Short and pithy. Spartan even.

It occurred to me that despite my tragic existential streak, I might not be that much of a pessimist after all. Especially if you define hope or optimism in limited and practical rather than cosmic terms.

Pessimism notwithstanding, I've generally found it to be true that if you want to accomplish something that's doable and are willing to put in the effort, then with skill, technique, allies, strategy, intuition, determination and luck you can sometimes do it--even if it's really hard.

(Note: this may require interval training or similar distasteful efforts.)

Even in a universe that often appears indifferent and drifting towards entropy. Go figure.

I especially liked some quotes on the subject of hope by Erich Fromm:

Hope is paradoxical. It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like the crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come….To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime...

There is no sense in hoping for that which already exists or for that which cannot be. Those whose hope is weak settle down for comfort or for violence; those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born.

As pessimistic as I sometimes am, from my own experience I can't escape the truth of William James' statement that "Belief creates the actual fact." In other words, the belief or faith that something is possible often leads to the actions that demonstrate for all the world to see that this is indeed the case.

I may be an optimist in spite of myself...

SURVEY SHOWS SKEPTICISM. More working Americans are doubting the attainability of the American Dream.

GOVERNMENT BY CONTRACT. Imagine a whole government provided by private military contractors...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GOOD CROWD, BAD CROWD

Caption: This is a bad crowd.

Large groups of people have a pretty bad reputation in many circles.

The Christian existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said "The crowd is untruth."

In 1841, Charles Mackay wrote the popular Extradordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, wherein he said,

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

Our old pal Nietzsche said that "Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule."

Freud, in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, saw in any crowd a potential mob, noting that

when individuals come together in a group all their individual inhibitions fall away and all the cruel, brutal and destructive instincts which lie dormant in individuals as relics of a primitive epoch, are stirred up to find free gratification.

Gustave Le Bon, an earlier writer who influenced Freud, said "In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated."

Erich Fromm, in Escape from Freedom described the ways people sometimes seek to evade anxiety by seeking submersion in a larger group.

The dangers of the egotism and imperialism of groups was the theme of the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's classic Moral Man and Immoral Society (although Niebuhr had some doubts about the morality of individuals as well).

Earlier series and posts in this blog looked at the problems caused by obedience to authority and conformity.

Some interesting things have been written recently, however, that talk about the good side of groups. But that will keep until tomorrow. As Scarlett said, "Tomorrow is another day."

THIS COULD GET INTERESTING. West Virginia native and country music star Kathy Mattea is starting to speak out about mountaintop removal mining and climate change, as Ken Ward reports in today's Charleston Gazette. She is currently working on a project of coal-related music.

ATTACK OF THE GIANT PENGUINS. This is not a burning issue of our time, but scientists have discovered a 5 foot tall penguin that lived 36 million years ago in Peru. This baby had bigger jaw muscles than the current crop and a foot long beak.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED