In this last session we will look at two aspects of the most common escape from freedom mechanism found in our society: the automaton conformist. Then we will end with a deep dive into the nature of character and the social process.
The modern industrialized world has produced feelings of insignificance and powerlessness in individuals. The Fascist and Communist worlds have reacted each in their own destructive ways and we in the liberal democratic world have too. The ideal solution, a mature freedom, which is made up of a lingering loving attitude and creative productive work, is short circuited in our society too. Where the Fascist authoritarian character tries to dominate (or be dominated by) their object and the Communist destructive character tries to destroy their object, we in the west lose ourselves by “choosing” to conform to the outside world. We like to think of ourselves as free because we choose but often our thoughts, our will, and our sentiments are not our own rather they are induced from outside and we merely choose from among the most popular options in a way that is analogous to finding safety in numbers. In our conformist world the notion of individuality is an illusion. We are expected to believe we are free because we have the power to choose what we consume. Within that narrow band we have great freedom. Our conformity is in everything else. Our illusion of freedom is perpetuated by increasing the number of choices we can make. “Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.” The reason most give up their true selves to be an automaton is that it alleviates the feelings of insecurity, powerlessness, and insignificance. And yet this strategy of giving up one’s self comes with a high price: the loss of freedom and spontaneity.
But it does not have to be this way. “We believe that the realization of the self is accomplished not only by an act of thinking but also by the realization of man’s total personality, by the active expression of his emotional and intellectual potentialities. These potentialities are present in everybody; they become real only to the extent to which they are expressed. In other words, positive freedom consists in the spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality.” Spontaneity is the opposite of control, as such a spontaneous action is a free action. Fromm goes on to define “Spontaneous activity is not compulsive activity, to which the individual is driven by his isolation and powerlessness; it is not the activity of the automaton, which is the uncritical adoption of patterns suggested from the outside. Spontaneous activity is free activity of the self and implies, psychologically, what the Latin root of the word, sponte, means literally: of one’s free will. By activity we do not mean ‘doing something,’ but the quality of creative activity that can operate in one’s emotional, intellectual, and sensuous experiences and in one’s will as well.” Two further conditions that make spontaneous activity possible is first the acceptance of who one is in one’s entirety. That is that the individual acknowledges and accepts that there are flaws and negatives (from some perspective) that make up who they are. One should not be in despair (defined as hating or wishing to eliminate a part of oneself). Secondly that the notion that reason and nature are naturally in conflict, must be given up. If it appears that nature and reason are in conflict it is due to a lack of integration between the various facets of the personality likely due to the acceptance of unrealistic ideologies.
Spontaneity is quite rare in our society. It can be found in artists and small children. “Most of us can observe at least moments of our own spontaneity which are at the same time moments of genuine happiness…. In these moments we all know what a spontaneous act is and may have some vision of what human life could be if these experiences were not such rare and uncultivated occurrences.” The fundamental problem of maturity is the primal terror of aloneness. Most solutions sacrifice the integrity of the self by domination/submission, destruction, or conformity. However, the solution of spontaneity overcomes this terror of aloneness without sacrificing the integrity of the self. “[I]n the spontaneous realization of the self man unites himself anew with the world—with man, with nature, and himself.” All spontaneity has an element of overcoming this primal fear. Spontaneity expressed as love is the most meaningful and complete expression. It is “love as spontaneous affirmation of others, as the union of the individual with others on the basis of the preservation of the individual self. The dynamic quality of love lies in this very polarity: that it springs from the need of overcoming separateness, that it leads to oneness—and yet that individuality is not eliminated.” The second highest expressions of spontaneity is in productive work “not work as a compulsive activity in order to escape aloneness, not work as a relationship to nature which is partly one of dominating her, partly one of worship of and enslavement by the very products of man’s hands, but work as creation in which man becomes one with nature in the act of creation.” It is in the continuous activity of spontaneous action that we develop the strength of our character and our self. It is also the only way to create the authentic and genuine relationships with others and the things in the world. Those who follow the dictates of the outside create the pseudo self and therefore lack integrity to the degree that they follow a non-spontaneous escape from freedom. Integrity is the pride and happiness that come from our own thoughts, feelings, and sentiments. This is also what makes a mature, psychologically sane, free individual.
The book ends with an appendix on the theoretical basis for the social analysis of character and the social process. Fromm defines social character as the character structure most common to the most members any group. There are four basic political character structures (authoritative, destructive, conformist, and mature or sane), that is that have a dimension that affects politics. The social character develops from the basic common life experiences in the group. Some examples of larger scale groups are classes or nations. The social character is the main unit of study of a social psychology and should explain how and why human energy is channeled and operates in each society. Character “is the specific form in which human energy is shaped by the dynamic adaptation of human needs to the particular mode of existence”. In other words your character and your groups’ social character is created predominantly by the way you make a living and will determine your thoughts, feelings, actions and the very meaning of the words you use. For example, the word “love” for an authoritative character means “symbiotic dependence”; for a mature character “love” means “mutual affirmation and union on the basis of equality.” These definitions are not literally thought; they are felt emotionally and as such every doctrine, notion, or idea has an emotional matrix that represents the social character for each idea for each person. The emotional matrix is the key for understanding how different classes of groups within a society react to an idea. For example, the idea of compulsive work is attractive to groups losing their identity and usual means of livelihood (Europeans since the renaissance) but it would not be attractive to socially and economically stable societies. “ideas can become powerful forces, but only to the extent to which they are answers to specific human needs prominent in a given social character.” In other words, what is considered reasonable, rational, or common sense is so only given the character. If the individual character matches the social character then the individual is likely, in today’s words, privileged within that group or society. “[T]he subjective function of character for the normal person is to lead him to act according to what is necessary for him from a practical standpoint and also to give him satisfaction from his activity psychologically.”
The social process is the how and why of changes in the social character. As an individual or group discover what they need to do to survive and/or thrive, they internalize those requirements as their personal virtues. This has the double benefit of promoting material and psychological satisfaction. If the society gives people both benefits at the same time, the social structure of that society is being reenforced. However, times always change and so do the material conditions of a society. When this happens there is an uncomfortable (or even dangerous) lag or growing disconnect between the new requirements of material satisfaction and the old internalized personal virtues that no longer match what is needed for material satisfaction. When the psychological needs of a population can no longer be satisfied by the new economic requirements of survival, or when adapting to the new economic reality is too onerous, most people become desperate for an escape from their freedom; a positive freedom that is devalued as it diminishes. The cause of most social turmoil is the clashing of internalized psychological ways of finding satisfaction with new requirements of making a living.