Escape from Freedom

The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them.

— Turkish proverb

Erich Fromm was a German/US social psychologist, philosopher and author. He wrote the seminal book Escape From Freedom during the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler was rising to power in Germany. Fromm describes how freedom is scary to some people, and how they will choose to give up their freedoms to a dictator like Hitler.

The common theme is fear. People give up their freedoms because they are afraid.

Fromm argued that freedom itself can sometimes be the cause of fear and anxiety, forcing us to find ways to escape from freedom. One of the ways to escape freedom, Fromm argued, is through authoritarianism. Let Big Brother make the decisions, it’s easier that way because then life’s responsibilities are lifted from our shoulders. Fromm argued that the rise of Hitler was a perfect example of escaping freedom through tyranny.

Dictators, tyrants, eco-lunatics, and medical bio-fascists are great at spreading fear. Politicians and school board members who allow boys into girls’ bathrooms to rape them (as happened twice in Loudon, County Virginia with the same perp) represent themselves as wood to the trees, even when the axe cuts into the tree trunk.

When I was growing up the fear was of nuclear annihilation. The US and the Soviet Union were in a great struggle, with nuclear bombs the ultimate weapon. Fear of nuclear war was used to frighten the population and resulted in a massive increase in “defense” spending and the creation of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial-complex.

During the 1960s to the present, climate change has also been a fear-mongering tactic used to scare the crap out of the global population. “A new ice age is coming” has alternated with “global warming will result in catastrophic loss of life on earth.” These two scare tactics are, of course, pseudo-scientific nonsense. Ice core data from Greenland and Lake Vostok in Antarctica show, over the last million years, constant temperature rises and falls, interspersed with Ice Ages. Ice ages occur approximately 100,000 years apart, and the last ice age ended about 18,000 years ago.

After 4 billion years of evolution, Gaia will not turn on humanity and the life it has created. The idea is, prima facie, absurd.

In 2020 and 2021, another and even more effective scare tactic has arisen: the invisible enemy. The propaganda and pseudoscience surrounding COVID-19 has destroyed rational argument. COVID-19 and the vaccines were in the beginning being developed and used to save lives.  Now we have unscientific and totalitarian vaccine mandates being forced, worldwide, on populations in many countries.

If the climate change fear and the pandemic fear tactics fail, the psychopaths who run our institutions will revert to their ultimate hole card: The fake alien invasion. This scare tactic is being held in reserve in case the lockdowns and mandates don’t work to squelch those pesky people who refuse to give up their freedoms. The scenario will be, “evil aliens with advanced galactic technology are here to destroy us.” OR, “the benevolent space brothers and sisters are here with life-saving technology to guide the human race to a utopian future.” Both sides of this scam hide its real purpose: the population of earth must unite in a Collectivist – communist, fascist, or technocratic – hive mind society ruled from above by a few with (supposedly) superior wisdom or technology. It’s happening right now.

ALL OF THIS FEAR-MONGERING IS CRAP.

Anti-social personalities, sociopaths, and psychopaths only have one motive: death, destruction, and personal gain. It’s easy to see through their schemes because all of them are based in fear.

All of them invite you to be cut down by the axe, because “the axe is one of us.” Don’t buy it.