Pipe Dreams

Staying Sane in a Crazy Time

Social psychologist Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom (1941) and its sequel The Sane Society (1955) are top of mind these days. Writing in the wake of societal mass murder (Escape) and with the prospect of global nuclear annihilation (Sane), Fromm asks: what can make entire societies of humans lose their minds?

He fretted about wholesale dehumanization—man’s inhumane treatment of his fellows, exemplified by the Holocaust, Stalin’s murdering regime, and development of nuclear weapons, all horrifying evidence of an entire species on a mad rush to extinguish itself, embracing irrational mass murder.

He also wrung his hands over dehumanization resulting from modern industrial society’s love affair with efficiency and the machine. “The bureaucratization and managerialization of Capitalism,” he wrote, would zap humans of our “individual initiative” and creativity. We could become “automatons,” people who have the “greatest material power” the world has seen but “without the wisdom to use it.” People “whose reason deteriorates.”

Fromm knew nothing of Chat buddies, or hedge fund and private equity ownership of things that previously operated in the public’s interest—hospitals, medical practices for humans and pets, and schools.

Insanity, it seems, can be a collective condition.

Freedom

As Fromm understands it, humans emerged as a “freak of nature,” “having lost most of the instinctive equipment” to survive in nature that other animals enjoy, but having developed other attributes—“a capacity for thought” and “imagination” that make not only survival possible, but the good life too.

Our basic nature is one of freedom, freedom from animal instincts and freedom to create our world.

Freedom is our curse and our salvation. We find freedom from natural instincts liberating, but our increasing disconnection from the natural world alienating. And maddening.

Freedom is scary. We crave structure and order. We long to belong, to love and be loved, but we find the freedom to create “meaningful” communities based on “reason and love” hard work.

Freedom to is almost too difficult. We must use our brains and reason together. No doubt it requires face-to-face relationships.

Modern Society

Despite how tough the task, “Modern society” began with people at the very least envisioning a sane society, one “whose members have developed their reason . . . to a point . . . when they know the difference between good and evil,” . . . and “the capacity to love their children, their neighbors, all men [and women], themselves, all of nature.” People “who can feel one with all, yet retain their sense of individuality and integrity; who transcend nature by creating, not by destroying.”

Fromm’s good society is a societal vision from yesteryear that stands in extreme opposition to our present moment. Nirvana maybe, but nonetheless a positive, hopeful, inspiring and aspirational vision.

Creating, not destroying. That’s something to ponder.

Reason, Love, and Creativity

Our ability to reason, love, and create are attributes, Fromm argues, that set human beings apart from other animals and, when realized, result in happiness. In well-being.

Sadly, as a species, Fromm writes, we find it exceptionally difficult to realize our collective potential because in large measure we made the production of war materiel profitable. This was the Fifties, when Dwight Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex.

Fromm thought modern industrial society created anxiety for the less materially well off, and boredom for those whose material wants had been met, and then some. Me thinks that explains why extremely wealthy men want to rule the world. They are bored, and incredibly boring.

You know what they say about idle hands.

Mass anxiety causes us to flee freedom, to lay down our collective burden to create, and instead seek “security in submission to a leader, race or state.” Fromm calls it “medieval.” We might call it “reptilian.”

Our Troubles

Fromm knew a thing or two about anxiety and alienation, but he knew nothing about the unsettling, underlying conditions that now make us crazy.

We live in a troubled time. We are experiencing multiple, simultaneous revolutions so radical that they not only destabilize our sense of what it means to be human, but challenge our individual and collective conscience. And they frighten us.

Minimally, we’re trying to cope with the deadly effects of a rapidly changing planet—floods, droughts, and excessive heat—and the rapid pace of technological change and its ubiquitous hateful buddy, social media.

No wonder humans seek refuge in authoritarianism and blame displaced peoples the world over for all our troubles. No wonder we embrace simple answers to complex problems, and con men who say “give me your freedom and I will solve all your problems.”

We’d rather embrace simple responses than solve complex problems.

Tylenol anyone?

Seriously, Get Real

What is a responsible, conscientious, individual to do? What should a society of people who share Fromm’s vision of the good society do?

Fromm states boldly that “Despots and ruling cliques can succeed in dominating and exploiting their fellow man, but they cannot prevent reactions to this inhuman treatment. Their subjects become frightened, suspicious, lonely,” and “their systems collapse . . . because fears, suspicions and loneliness eventually incapacitate the majority to function effectively and intelligently.”

Got that? A frightened, suspicious, and lonely people cannot function “intelligently.”

Reactions: Creativity and Mother Nature

Reason, love, and creativity: the antidote to insanity; a prescription for the good life, individually and collectively.

Individually, we should take a walk in the woods, create and tend a garden, plant seeds with a young child; write, draw, paint, photograph, make music; create a meal and hug our friends. Use our noggins, consult our reason, think about our vision of a sane society, the collective good life, how we wish to be treated, and act accordingly.

Use that conscience our species spent millennia developing.

Collectively, we should get involved with a group whose mission is to ease someone else’s path.

Final Analysis

Fromm did not argue that human beings are by nature good or evil.

Rather, he held that “Creation and destruction, love and hate, are not two instincts which exist independently” but “both answers to the same need.”

“The will to destroy,” he wrote, “must rise when the will to create cannot be satisfied.” Satisfying “the need to create leads to happiness; destructiveness [leads] to suffering, most of all, for the destroyer himself.”

If only.