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: Thoughts on Freedom
“We are confronted with the incontrovertible fact: At no time in the history of human society did masses of people succeed in preserving, organizing, and developing the freedom and peace they had achieved by bloody battles. We mean genuine freedom of personal and social development, the freedom to face life WITHOUT fear, freedom FROM all forms of economic suppression, freedom FROM reactionary inhibitions of development; in short, the free self-administration of life.”
-Wilhelm Reich, caps mine, The Mass Psychology of Fascism p. 331
“If human freedom is established as freedom TO, if man can realize his self fully and uncompromisingly, the fundamental cause for his asocial drives will have disappeared and only a sick and abnormal individual will be dangerous. This freedom has never been realized in the history of mankind, yet it has been the ideal to which mankind has stuck even if it was often expressed in abstruse and irrational forms.”
-Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, p. 296
“Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibility. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibility. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be replaced by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”
-Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning p. 155-156
“Each individual must be left free to follow his own path. America is peculiarly insane on these points. Her people are desperately anxious to make the Cingalese wear furs, and the Tibetans vote, and the whole world chew gum, utterly dense to the fact that most other nations, especially the French and British, regard 'American institutions' as the lowest savagery, and forgetful or ignorant of the circumstance that the original brand of American freedom -- which really was Freedom -- contained the precept to leave other people severely alone, and thus assured the possibility of expansion on his own lines to every man.”
-Aleister Crowley, Comment on AL I:31
Tags: axiomatic
“We are confronted with the incontrovertible fact: At no time in the history of human society did masses of people succeed in preserving, organizing, and developing the freedom and peace they had achieved by bloody battles. We mean genuine freedom of personal and social development, the freedom to face life WITHOUT fear, freedom FROM all forms of economic suppression, freedom FROM reactionary inhibitions of development; in short, the free self-administration of life.”
-Wilhelm Reich, caps mine, The Mass Psychology of Fascism p. 331
“If human freedom is established as freedom TO, if man can realize his self fully and uncompromisingly, the fundamental cause for his asocial drives will have disappeared and only a sick and abnormal individual will be dangerous. This freedom has never been realized in the history of mankind, yet it has been the ideal to which mankind has stuck even if it was often expressed in abstruse and irrational forms.”
-Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, p. 296
“Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibility. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibility. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be replaced by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”
-Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning p. 155-156
“Each individual must be left free to follow his own path. America is peculiarly insane on these points. Her people are desperately anxious to make the Cingalese wear furs, and the Tibetans vote, and the whole world chew gum, utterly dense to the fact that most other nations, especially the French and British, regard 'American institutions' as the lowest savagery, and forgetful or ignorant of the circumstance that the original brand of American freedom -- which really was Freedom -- contained the precept to leave other people severely alone, and thus assured the possibility of expansion on his own lines to every man.”
-Aleister Crowley, Comment on AL I:31
Tags: axiomatic
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