In the early 70s, I lived in Austin where it was cool to cruise around listening to FM radio. Whenever Janis Joplin would belt out “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, I’d turn the volume up full blast. Because the Hippie Movement had started a promo on “freedom” and everyone was looking for it. But did we really know what we were looking for?
Erich Fromm (1900-1980) was a German Jew who fled from Germany and the Nazi regime. Before escaping, Fromm had trained as a psychologist. He was attracted to the concept of freedom.
Says Fromm: “The immature individual, not fully developed psychologically, requires an unhealthy symbiotic bond between active and passive authoritarians—a codependency. To satisfy their insecurities, active authoritarians need to control others, and passive authoritarians need to submit to authority. To be free and independent means to be alone and afraid. Authoritarianism offers an escape from freedom.”
Furthermore, says Fromm, freedom is not just the absence of external constraints, but also the ability to act according to one’s true self and desire. However, in the process of becoming freed from authority, we are often left with feelings of hopelessness.
To eliminate uncertainty in our lives, we become conformists and abandon personal freedom for the certainty of no longer having to decide for ourselves. Conforming helps us detach ourselves from ourselves by “copying and pasting” the ideals and thoughts of others. Conformists limit their lives and expect you to do the same. And, when you don’t, you become some kind of woke enemy. If humanity can’t live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably be tempted by authoritarianism.
“Man is the only animal for who his own existence is a problem which he had to solve.” Fromm
We are all influenced by the society we live in. The best way to become free as an individual is to express ourselves. Freedom is not just the absence of external constraints, but also the ability to act according to one’s true self and desires.
Free thinking means assuming responsibility for your own thoughts instead of sponging off the thoughts of others. A strong authoritarian is appealing to insecure people who don’t want to stress themselves with critical thought.
Says Fromm: “There is only one meaning in life: the act of living it.”
True freedom is maximizing your individual potential. So to keep yourself free, it helps to practice self-expression.
It was a time of transition when myth was being exchanged for philosophy and minds were eagerly finding new paths to explore.
Thales was from Miletus, a Greek city on the cost of Anatolia. Born during Greek’s archaic period, Thales experienced the massive increase in population that triggered new ideas. Last of the Seven Sages and considered the first Greek philosopher, Thales spent a lot of time watching the heavens. In fact, in the evenings he liked to walk outside the city limits to observe the sky. But one evening, so intent on looking at the stars, Thales didn’t watch the road and fell into a hole. Fully immersed in his thoughts, he was oblivious to everything else. An elderly woman who’d seen the fall yelled out to Thales: How can you expect to see what’s in the heavens when you can’t see what’s at your feet.
“Full immersion” is a term used to indicate the state of becoming completely involved in whatever you’re doing. The Greeks have their own word for it: Meraki (μεράκι). It also means doing whatever you’re doing with passion, to be in the moment.
In “Super Consciousness: the Quest for the Peak Experience”, Colin Wilson describes peak experience as an altered state of consciousness that occurs when a person is so emersed in the moment that they transcend their normal state of being. This transcendence can be invigorating and lead to a new level of consciousness.
During these spooky times, it’s nice to have a place where your mind can travel to, where your mind can transcend the surrounding world permitting you to stay close to your core. The world is still full of Awe & Wonder just begging to be discovered, just begging to lead you away from harmful thoughts. Besides, it’s better to be distracted by wonder than to be defeated by doubt.
So, when did it become fashionable to insult someone by referring to female genitalia? And when did calling men “bitches” instead of “bastards” start happening?
I’ve witnessed even women using “c*nt” as an insult. What’s wrong with them? Why are they degrading their own sex? Why are they promoting a negative image of women? Because if you use this word to insult someone, you send a subliminal message that women are bad.
We are living in a patriarchal society that already treats women as second-class beings. Women need to promote their womanhood, not belittle it especially since there’s an obvious war on women going on. Look at Incels, the involuntary celibates, for example. Rejection has made them angry. But hey, it’s not our fault if these boys are too weird to be wanted. They’re just WhiWis (pronounced weewees), Whimpering Wimps, who will never be men because they are not willing to assume responsibility for their own actions.
We are in an era of transition that promises much difficulty and drama. The struggle will not be easy. That’s why women need to unite and, together, promote and protect their womanhood.
Once upon a time there were both gods and goddesses. But somewhere on the timeline of evolution, the equilibriums were disrupted and hierarchies evolved.
In “Our Fragile Intellect” published in 2012, American biochemist, Gerald Crabtree, claims that the human intelligence peaked sometime between 2,000 and 6,000 years ago. However, since the arrival of agriculture and major urbanization, Crabtree says humans have been losing their intellectual and emotional abilities. Crabtree claims this is a result of “accumulating gene mutations that are not being selected against as they once were in our hunter-gatherer past.”
Well, this loss of intellectual and emotional ability could explain a few things.
In 2023, the Heritage Foundation, ultra conservative think tank, published “Project 2025”. Project 2025 defines its goal as that of assembling “an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.”
Although the project claims that it wants to return the government to the people, what the representatives of the project really want to do is to consolidate executive powers in the hands of selected rich, white supremacists who have zero empathy for their fellowman.
The project further heightens misogynist fantasies of men becoming even more macho by stepping on women. Aside from the rigid abortion laws criminalizing women (as if a woman got pregnant by herself), Project 2025 also states that it wants to “refocus on gender equality” by reviving the traditional patriarchal aka biblical marriage with the male as the boss. The project also puts down single parents and promotes cutting any kind of social support to single parents and children living in single parent families. In other words, as 80% of all single parents in the USA are moms, this is an obvious jab at women.
The two sexes should not be seen as competitive but as complementary. We were meant to enhance and complete one another and not to rip the other into shreds. Unfortunately, the patriarchal society does not promote equality or diversity or compassion for those less fortunate. And this lack of solidarity will dismantle our chances for survival.
The Narrative Within 