Escape from Freedom — Part Two

In his well-known book Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm asks us whether freedom can become a burden heavier than we are able to bear—something from which we continually try to escape.

Fromm continues: the person who flees from freedom completely accepts the personality that culture and society give him, becomes one like everyone else, and finds relief from loneliness in the disappearance of any distance between “I” and those others in the outside world. A person who loses freedom and individual personality ultimately becomes one machine among millions of other machines that do not feel alone; but the price they pay for release from the anxiety of loneliness is very high. That price is the destruction of the “self.”

Nietzsche warns us that becoming one's true self is the highest and most difficult human task. We are afraid of our higher self because, when that self speaks, it will demand things of us without ceasing. In Nietzsche's view everyone has the capacity for greatness, yet most of us disappear into the human herd and therefore remain mediocre.

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche asks us, “Who is ready to become the person he is?” And in The Gay Science he again calls to us: “Listen to your conscience and see what it tells you: you must become the person you are.”

Nietzsche reminds us that every person knows in the heart that he or she is unique and will live this life only once, with no second chance. We know this, and we try to conceal the knowledge from ourselves. We try to be like others, one among thousands in the herd of humanity, and along this path our laziness and inertia are even stronger than our fear.

Kant defines freedom as our power to change the world and believes that freedom is the one idea that is wholly present and real in our life and in the world.

Richard Bach, in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, also places this question before us:
“Why is the most difficult thing in the world to convince a bird that it is free?”
It is a question each of us must ask ourselves and answer.

Aydin Areta