Escape from Freedom - a Book Review

“[E]ven being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone. Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation.” - page 18

Escape from Freedom was the third book of Erich Fromm’s that I read. It had been on my reading list ever since I took a fabulous psychology course when I was an undergrad called Personality. I highly recommend this seminal masterpiece! It’s Social Psychology and an exposition on why it is that the majority of people do not want to embrace their freedom but in fact run away and hide from it, due to how terrifying it really is on the human psyche in a vast, uncaring universe and world filled with hoards of people who contribute to our feelings of smallness.

One of the things it deals with is the rise of capitalism and how it turned humans into anxiety-ridden, self-doubting, insignificant cogs and addresses capitalism's negative effects and parallels with politics. Fromm explains in which ways capitalism and the Reformation made people freer while also "enslaving" them for their own purposes in different ways than Europeans were "enslaved" in the Middle Ages and how and why people unconsciously run away and escape from the freedom both systems offer. The systems then feed on that for a vicious cycle where man now feels more insignificant and powerless than ever.

Fromm also deals with sadomasochistic relationships and why such symbiotic relationships exist as an unconscious way of overcoming feelings of individual powerlessness, self-doubt and insignificance by losing oneself in another person, either as a way of expending flimsy feelings of seemingly self-enhancing power (a facade of power that belies weakness) that is in actuality merely inflicting abuse on a helpless, subservient subject or by relinquishing all sense of self and individuality as an object of masochism and helplessness, giving all power to the sadist in the process.

This leads him into a discussion on the authoritarian personality that gave rise to Nazi Germany. He also goes into great detail about the political and social circumstances in Germany post-World War I and how they affected the different economic classes that led to Nazism and why those classes reacted in the ways they did as a defence mechanism. The ways in which the masses can be manipulated are fascinating, and it is extremely imperative that they be understood.

I especially enjoyed the section on hypnosis and dream analysis and how so many of our thoughts and feelings come from without rather than from within. He expounds on the ways we try to rationalize those thoughts and feelings as being our own, just like in hypnosis; only media and societal hypnosis is what fools/hypnotizes the masses on a grand scale as we internalize both media and society without even realizing it.

He also elaborates on where he is in agreement with Freud, and where he believes Freud went wrong. Fromm covers so much in this book, and anyone who’s interested in psychology, sociology and/or philosophy should definitely give it a read. It is absolutely profound and was groundbreaking for its time and will always be relevant within the study of human nature and the dangerous path the human race tends to tread on. And the solution that he posits for the problem is a very Nietzschean one, which I love: the individual living creatively and spontaneously for the full realization and cultivation of the self and the true, positive freedom that is realized and experienced along with it. 

“The problem we are confronted with today is that of the organization of social and economic forces, so that man - as a member of organized society - may become the master of these forces and cease to be their slave.” - page 269

Rating: five stars!

Staring at the Sun - a Book Review

“[D]espite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind. Perhaps, as Plato says, we cannot lie to the deepest part of ourselves.” - Pages 5-6

I haven’t written a book review in a long time, but after reading this existential, psychological masterpiece, I feel I must. 

I’ve always been tormented by the fact that I’m going to die one day. It began suddenly when I was eight years old. However, given I was raised Catholic, it was the terror of burning in hell for all eternity that consumed me. Thankfully, though, I started doubting the existence of God when I was 17. After some time, the doubt finally erupted in full fruition when I was 24, permitting me to completely come to my senses and stop believing in any of that eschatological nonsense. I became an atheist without any belief in the afterlife whatsoever (though I'd like to be wrong about that and am open to the possibility of one). 

My death terror then became about ceasing to exist completely and the universe going on and on forever and ever without me after I’m gone, blotting me out as if I never existed at all. It’s that thorough, unrelenting feeling of insignificance coupled with never being able to be aware of anything again that now gets me, and it’s only gotten worse with age (I’m turning 40 in July) due to the inexorable speed of time and my worldly-centred, fiery love of life. Leaving this world, and my mind ceasing for all eternity, absolutely terrifies me! The whole thing seems like a sick, twisted, impossible joke!

“The frightening thought of inevitable death, Epicurus insisted, interferes with our enjoyment of life and leaves no pleasure undisturbed. Because no activity can satisfy our craving for eternal life, all activities are intrinsically unrewarding. He wrote that many individuals develop a hatred for life - even, ironically, to the point of suicide; others engage in frenetic and aimless activity that has no point other than the avoidance of the pain inherent in the human condition.” - pg. 78

Something that’s always fascinated me is how people deal with their own mortality, which is why one of my favourite books of all time is The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. It’s so deep, razor sharp, eloquent and penetrating. So when I heard of Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Dr. Irvin D. Yalom, author of Existential Psychotherapy and When Nietzsche Wept, I simply had to get it, in the hope that it would help appease all this dreadful fear and anxiety within me while I delved deeper into a topic that I find absolutely enthralling. 

Well, I finished it on the train ride home yesterday, and it was a truly brilliant, unabashed look at death head-on. Dr. Yalom uses many of his case studies from personal sessions and successes with patients suffering from death terror and death anxiety. Sometimes he had to reveal to his patients, as it was revealed to him in doing so, that death anxiety was at the heart of what was the matter with them, the dilemma at their emotional and psychological core. Often their struggle with death was really just their struggle with regret and the fear of dying without fulfilling their lives. He also talks about close friends and mentors he’s had, and how they’d helped and learned from each other before they inevitably passed on. And his dream analyses of his patients are absolutely amazing, almost as if executed with acute precision. 

One thing I really enjoyed and was delighted to see was that he talks a lot about Epicurus and Nietzsche in it, two philosophers I love greatly, especially Nietzsche. He uses their existential thoughts on mortality, living, and nothingness post-death in his therapy sessions with his patients who are having death anxiety, experiencing a life crisis or are at a crossroads. He even reads Nietzsche’s eternal return passage with the demon and the spider to his patients who might gain value from it, and often do, which then accelerates the work of the sessions.

One Nietzschean theme is the annihilation of the dread of death through the complete consummation of one’s life through self-cultivation and living life to the fullest. I love that, as it naturally rings so true for me.

As for it helping me - though he offers several ways of thinking and being to help allay death terror (none of them involving an afterlife) - it was the reading through of the book itself that gave me a heightened sense of peace with my own finiteness, which I really started to feel on page 210 or 211 (it’s 277 pages in total up till the end of the Afterword). But such a powerful book as this - at times humorous, by the way - can only affect everyone differently.

“Let’s not conclude that death is too painful to bear, that the thought will destroy us, that transiency must be denied lest the truth render life meaningless. Such denial always exacts a price - narrowing our inner life, blurring our vision, blunting our rationality. Ultimately self-deception catches up with us. 

“...raw death terror can be scaled down to everyday manageable anxiety. Staring into the face of death, with guidance, not only quells terror but renders life more poignant, more precious, more vital.” - pg. 276

I agree. And, quaintly, as I walked home in the new area that I live in here in Tokyo, I came across statues that I started taking photos of and which led me to a cemetery that I then proceeded to walk through, through the nature that was intertwined with it. And though my senses were heightened, I felt at peace. 

Rating: five stars!

You Never Stop Learning About Your Own Work

It's funny how some things turn out after a writer creates a story from scratch and then keeps learning about the thing he created and published years after the fact. When I first started writing my third book and magnum opus, Screw the Devil's Daiquiri, in 2012, I figured it could take place in either Canada or America and that it didn't matter which. But then, nearing the end of the project, I had my protagonist, John Hazel, tell the psychologist he's seeing that he wants his money back for the sessions he'd had with her (knowing full well that's not going to happen), which I figured meant the story would have to take place in America, since in Canada the sessions would be fully covered by our universal healthcare system. But then, well after the book was published by Melange Books in June of 2014, I realized something problematic: In a conversation between John and the dean of the university he teaches at part time, John says he dreads the idea of having to study for the GRE in order to apply for his PhD (due to his cognitive problems with math), which is one of the reasons he doesn't even want to bother. But since he'd already gotten his MA, he would have had to have done his GRE already if the story does in fact take place in the U.S. But, I found out recently that in Canada, at least in Ontario anyway, psychologists aren't paid by the government, since they can't prescribe medication, which means SDD could take place in Canada, which solves that contradiction. Then I noticed something by fluke a few days ago, over 8 years after writing the freakin' book: In the letter John writes to his father near the end of the novel, I (I think spelling it this way accidentally) had him write the words "Honours BA," and that "u" in the word Honours is British/Canadian style spelling (within a book that is all American spelling), something an American would never do. So voilà! Without even realizing it at the time, I made it so that the book has to take place in Canada, no two ways about it. It just means that, in John's mind, if he applies for his PhD, it would have to be at an American university, for the prestige, which is a common scenario. 

Anyway . . . that's enough of that. I just felt compelled to write that explanation out due to a comment I made in a 2019 YouTube interview promoting my fifth book The Chaos Cafe, where I make the error of saying SDD has to take place in America. And, yes, I realize how trivial the entire matter probably is to 99% of readers anyway, but what can I tell you? I have OCD. If you wanna know why I have it, read the book, which is semiautobiographical. It's just funny how some things work out. And after this whole outbreak, pandemic debacle, it looks like psychology could very well start being fully covered by Canada's healthcare system in the not-so-distant future. It's about damn time too.

The link again to the book, available in both paperback and Kindle, as are all my books: Screw the Devil's Daiquiri

And a link to my author page, where you can find all seven of my publications: amazon.com/author/raymemichaels 

Cherry-Picking Biblical Apologetics Debunked

You know what I find as annoying and disingenuous as fuck? When modernist Christians try to have their cake and eat it too in regard to wanting to believe in science, history, and the Bible all at the same time, and so will believe in evolution and act like it doesn’t have any bearing on the validity of the Bible. They simply say that the story of Adam and Eve is to be taken allegorically and that the story of the eating of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge isn’t necessary to be true in order for Christianity to be true. Meanwhile, according to St. Paul, Christ had to be sacrificed to save the world from the sin that "entered the world through ONE man" (Romans 5:12). "For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). So if the story of Eden didn’t actually happen, then there is no need for the sacrifice of Christ. Furthermore, as in that quote from 1 Corinthians 15, Paul (or rather the actual writer of the First Timothy epistle) speaks elsewhere of Adam and Eve as if they're real, historical figures:

"A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety." - 1 Timothy 2:11-15

What a nasty, misogynistic book the Bible is, eh? (And where the hell does the writer of First Timothy get off saying that it wasn't Adam who was deceived. It's pretty clear from Genesis 3:6 that, since both ate the forbidden fruit, BOTH of them were in fact deceived.) And they don’t only play this cherry-picking game with the story of creation and the fall of man. They conveniently play it throughout the Old Testament, for example with the story of Noah and the flood, and the talking, burning bush, and the splitting of the Red Sea by Moses, etc., etc. It’s mainly Catholics whom I’ve encountered using this form of apologetics, though I know Methodists, Anglicans and other denominations do as well. It's bizarre, though, because, again, Paul speaks of Moses like he was an actual historical person who once existed, for example when he says: 

"Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come."  - Romans 5:14

However, they don’t do this apologetical tap dance with the New Testament, and that’s what really gets to me. Because if they’re going to take the OT stories as mere allegories and symbolisms, then, to be logically consistent, they would have to do that with the virgin birth, Crucifixion and Resurrection as well. In fact, Genesis 1:1 - “In the beginning God” - would also have to be taken symbolically, which would ironically make the Holy Bible an atheistic book! In fact, why don’t they do the opposite? Why not claim that it’s the NT that’s purely allegorical symbolism and the OT that’s completely literal, hmmmmmmmmmm??