What It Means To Be Free
Image: friday2022
In The Art of Listening, psycho-analyst Erich Fromm states that despite our obvious choice in any life situation to go this way or that, the idea of having a complete freedom of choice is an illusion. So, in what capacity does individual freedom of choice exist? What are its impediments? And if we feel trapped in whatever way, shape, or form; can that situation be changed?
The short answer to the last question is: yes. But before we go there, we need to understand the principle that freedom can only be obtained from imprisonment, because if there’s freedom already, there’s nothing to be liberated from.
Imprisonment, or, rather, the feeling of imprisonment, manifests itself physically by the boundary of our skin and the shape of our body. We can’t fly like birds or live in the ocean like fish, and contrary to what many parents tell their children: we can’t become anything we want. Mentally it can manifest itself because our past, the situation in which we were born and raised, and our particular individual construction, have a tendency to keep us imprisoned in certain thought and behavioural patterns.
Fromm elaborates on the creation of the feeling of mental imprisonment by describing three examples of familial bribery to demonstrate how a child’s ‘free’ psyche is increasingly restricted by the repeated acceptance of ‘bribes’ from his parents.
Here’s Johnny, a Catholic boy who played with a Protestant friend. At one point, Johnny’s mother bribed him:
“It’s really better for you to not play with your friend anymore, but I’ll take you to the fair instead.”
At first, Johnny protests and says he likes playing with his friend, but after a while, he accepts the invitation to the fair in exchange for not hanging out with his friend anymore. That is his first mistake, his first loss. In his own will, his own integrity, something is now broken. Here, the process of restricting his freedom of choice has begun.
Accepting his mom’s invitation to the fair marks a big step in the process of restricting Johnny’s freedom of choice later in life. Image: Sekau67
Ten years later, Johnny falls in love. His parents, however, do not think the girl is appropriate for him at all. Yet, instead of saying that it is out of the question, as would have been the case in the past, now the manipulation card is played:
“She is a really sweet girl, but you have very different backgrounds and to make each other happy you both have to have the same background...but of course it is completely your choice to marry her if you really want to. But you know, why don’t you go to a city of your choice for a year and think about it, and if you come back and you still want to marry her, then marry her.”
Johnny accepts. That is his second mistake, his second loss. However, it was less difficult to make this ‘choice’ because Johnny had already made the first mistake (and a series of smaller ones), which made him think he was getting the best of both worlds: a year of travel and marrying his beloved - a promise that was of course wrapped in the message: ‘You can travel and marry the girl.’ However, the moment he accepts the plane ticket - the bribe - he has already given up on the girl, without knowing it. At first he writes beautiful love letters, but that wears off after a few months.
Inevitably the girl at some point understands that Johnny’s ‘distractions’ during his trip are way too interesting to give up, therefore she’ll most likely give him up to prevent further emotional pain. Image found on smart-alarms.shop
Then, at 23, Johnny goes to college. He wants to become an architect and has been interested in architecture his whole life, so he insists on studying architecture. However, his father, the owner of a successful law firm, wants Johnny to become a lawyer and study law. So he works on his sense of guilt:
“Why do you have to go on about this architecture business and let us down like that, after all we’ve done for you? You know my heart’s already not in the best shape, so who’s going to take care of your mother and the business when I’m gone? And how much do you even make as an architect anyway?”
Johnny puts up some feeble kind of a struggle, but eventually gives in. Moreover, if he accepts to study law he gets a nice car from his father, but it is never said that something is expected in return for the bribe. That is precisely what makes it a bribe, as opposed to a regular transaction. For as Fromm aptly points out: once you accept a bribe, you must deliver!
That is the moment, Fromm states, when Johnny is checkmated:
“He's sold himself out completely, lost his pride, his self-respect, his integrity. He does something he doesn't like and will probably do it for the rest of his life, then probably marries a woman he doesn't really love, and his life most likely descends into ultimate boredom and resentment.”
It is, therefore, no wonder that we are incessantly being bombarded with mindless news and entertainment, and avalanches of commercials and advertisements, because we need distraction from the frustration and meaninglessness of feeling like a square peg that tries to endlessly squeeze itself through a round hole. But the sustainability of such distractions can only last so long.
When the so called pleasures have all become worn out, predictable, and thus boring, the next distraction will inevitably have to take place in the realm of pain, of which the brutalities in the Colosseum in Rome were a direct result. Moreover, I believe this to be one of the reasons why many contemporary Western political leaders seem to be in favour of increasing their national war machines – just like large parts of the political and academic classes of Western Europe thought it was just a swell idea to start the massacre we now know as the First World War.[1]
In order to keep the populace distracted, the acts in the Colosseum became more depraved and brutal as a result of habituation to ‘old’ acts. Image: waldomiguez
Another characteristic to cover that’s not helpful in creating circumstances for change is our system of rewards and punishments. Broadly speaking, we get rewarded for a job well done, and we’re being punished when we make mistakes. Yet, we all know that learning is only possible through making mistakes. So if we punish each other for making mistakes, particularly by means of naming and shaming; or, which is at least as harmful, if we fervently try to prevent each other from making mistakes, we’re effectively robbing ourselves from our ability to learn. If that becomes deeply ingrained in our psyche, there’s a good chance we will feel like caged animals for the rest of our lives: terrified of making mistakes, and when we do, lacking the learning ability to change course in the future.
Now, then; once we have woken up to our individual and unique form of imprisonment, where can we find the means to escape? Advertisements naturally proclaim that the answers to all our problems, particularly emotional ones, can be found in products and services. That is to say, in our external world.
However, as is rather evident; over our external world, which is everything outside of our body, we have very little control. For instance, roughly 95% of information from the outside world that enters us via our sense organs, is outside of our control. Think of sights, sounds, temperatures, and smells, in any kind of environment: we pick them up, whether we want to or not, and our brain has to process them into something mentally digestible.
Yet, over our internal world, our own body and mind, the contemporary sage Sadhguru says that we have full control:
“What comes our way is largely not determined by us, but what we do with whatever comes our way, is 100% ours!”
In other words, nobody but you should be able to make you happy, angry, sad, joyful, or freak you out. Your life is about you, therefore what happens within you, should be of your making, not anyone else’s. Once others have the power to determine how we feel and what we think and do, we have become their slave and prisoner.
Gautama the Buddha found out for himself that whatever came his way, whatever situation he found himself in, how he handled it was 100% of his own making. After this realisation, he went on to teach the Dharma until he died. Image: Alexis
That sounds wonderful, but for lack of an internal mood-switch, we’ve all experienced the unpleasant and uncomfortable feelings when our buttons were pushed. We can tell ourselves that we’ll never become angry again until we see blue in the face, but an important lesson from Johnny’s story is that, as small children, we’re more or less helpless against parental bribery (intentional or not), which has a large impact on our emotional development and feeling of imprisonment later in life. Moreover, by the time we’ve figured out what’s going on, many of us feel to have turned into the proverbial old dog who can’t be taught new tricks anymore. Effectively that means for people like Johnny, for instance, that his parents can push his buttons more and more often and easy as time passes, due to a continuous build-up of resentment towards them as a result of knowing that he’s been tricked.
Unfortunately, many who are in a similar situation tend to resign to their fate. However, since there is always a choice, let’s return to Fromm’s Art of Listening to create a point of departure from where we can begin the road to mastery of our own emotional state of being, which begins with recognizing the phenomenon of transference in ourselves:
“Transference expresses a need of a person to have somebody else who takes over the responsibility (over one’s life – ed.), who is a mother, who gives unconditional love, or who is a father who praises and punishes, and admonishes and teaches. --- We have to consider the whole human situation in which the human being is so helpless, so confused to a large extent by the misinformation (s)he gets about life through her/his culture, so frightened, so uncertain, that it is a general human longing to have somebody (else) whom we can choose as our idol, to whom we can say: “You are my god or goddess.” This is the person who loves me, who guides me, who rewards me, because I cannot stand of myself.”[2]
As Sadhguru already pointed out: as soon as we have made someone else responsible for our feelings, emotions, and basic state of mind, we have become their prisoner and slave. That is why Fromm states that the beginning of emotional development and spiritual growth, lies in the fact (& act) of becoming free. Practically that means:
“Liberation begins with liberation from parents.”
The obvious question arising from that statement, then, becomes: How do we know if we are liberated from our parents? Three factors make that clear:
When we no longer need their approval for our decisions;
When there is no longer any fear of their opinions;
When we no longer do things to defy them, because then their opinions still matter to us.
The questions we need to ask ourselves to know whether or not we are liberated from our parents (or others), are thus:
Do I still need approval from my parents (or others) for my decisions?
Do I still fear the opinions of my parents (or others) on whatever I decide and do?
Do I still actively try to defy my parents (or others) in any way, shape, or form?
If any of these questions are answered affirmative, that means we’re still tied to them with a psychological umbilical cord (aka ethereal cord). And then the same rule applies as with a physical umbilical cord: if it’s not cut at the moment when it’s supposed to, at some point it turns into a ball and chain, imprisoning us emotionally, and preventing us from maturing into a balanced, joyful, and free human being.
An image of ethereal cords, which, if they’re not cut when they’re supposed to, can imprison and enslave us to the person(s) we’re still in this way connected to. Image found on: valeriemoonhealing.com
However, when we have matured into a situation where we no longer need approval from others for our decisions, and if we don’t fear their opinions anymore on whatever we think, decide, and do, we obviously have come to trust our own nature enough to have faith in our own ability to make the right decisions, at the right time, in every life situation. This liberation from the anxiety of what others think of us, is a big step in our emotional development and spiritual growth.
Moreover, since the act of cutting an umbilical cord can be regarded as a form of detachment, we immediately discover that a healthy detachment in every sphere of life actually has the potential to change our basic state of being from anxious to joyous; which is by default the case when the faith in our ability to think and decide for ourselves has become fully integrated. That is one of the reasons why many philosophical and religious texts proclaim that the highest wisdom lies in detachment, which is basically a synonym for the word liberation - of our own thought and behavioural patterns.
To bring that final point home, Alan Watts argues in Become What You Are, that:
“Detachment means to have neither regrets for the past nor fears for the future; to let life take its course without attempting to interfere with its movement and change.”
In practice, that means that we are able to fully enjoy pleasant moments when they happen, without wasting energy on wishing that they would never end; and that we are able to accept unpleasant moments when they happen, without wasting energy on resisting them and wishing them to end as soon as possible. Watts continues:
“To do this is to move in time with life, to be in perfect accord with its changing music, and this is called Enlightenment,” also known as: Freedom.
Jolly greetings,
Erik Stout
Notes & References
[1] “Einstein was one of the few exceptions who refused to endorse the war (WWI), but the vast majority of German and French intellectuals approved of the war.” Erich Fromm – The Art of Listening
Moreover, the self-enrichment of British upper classes and upper military ranks during WWI is well known, well documented, and brilliantly parodied by the series Blackadder Goes Forth.
[2] Fromm, E. (1994). The Art Of Listening. United States; Constable & Robinson.
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