A writing that arose from the steam of glasses from the mask
2021-01-08 11:10:11
TiranaPost
By Joan Ollen / Erich Seligmann Fromm, German psychologist and philosopher of Jewish descent, published in 1941 the book sEscape from Freedom¨. The book was published in the United States, in English, because at that time, in Europe, the level of fear was much higher than the level of freedom. Some of us later read this book, along with ¨The Art of Love¨, when we listened to Dylan songs but did not understand them well. The fog caused by my glasses and mask made me return to Fromm, just like someone returning home.
It was a beautiful reunion experience with our slavery, with the Lutheran view that God and in the absence of the church could lead us contrary to the Calvinist theses of a perfect, heavenly dictatorship. Fromm singles out these three main concepts to escape freedom, concepts that have led the century. XX: authoritarianism, destruction, conformity. First, authoritarianism is the implementation of the will of a person or group of people who want to control others for the sake of a ¨superior¨ idea. Fromm mentions his compatriot Hitler and his government based on the idea that he belonged to a superior race and how his proposals proved attractive to the middle class of the population, apparently in need of pride and security. The second, destruction, according to Fromm, consists in the destruction of everything which you cannot control, as happened during the Holocaust. And the last, conformity, is the molding of beliefs, norms, way of thinking, unconsciously by the government to the population. This makes the crowd believe that they have chosen to think like this, at the same time it does not allow the citizens to develop their free thoughts and causes a terrible anxiety.
Covid brought us another connection to power; to make our insecurity in the face of the unknown easier, he dictates to us how to behave and how to act for the common good, fining us and depriving us of our personal freedom because that is what the ¨council of experts¨ instructs, precisely this was written by Fromm, literally, 80 years ago.
There is not a day that we do not feel sorry for the damage caused by the pandemic to one sector or another through various measures by this government or another. People get upset because they notice that there is opposition to the measures that have been put, such as groups of people on public transport, forced to put on the same mask as a lonely man in a forest or a virgin beach. But no, today the expression pi'piove, ¡porco governo is no longer valid! Today we, with the greatest mastery, have the opportunity, the privilege and the obligation to be the protagonists of ourselves and our personal or common future.
Fromm concludes with these words: etaLife has only one meaning, to live it. But to live it you have to be very close to those with whom you share the world¨.
Albana Murra
* Joan Ollen, director of the Barcelona Theater, professor at the Theater Institute, in the years (1992-2001) director of the Sitges Teatre International. He has staged several works by Mario Vargas Llosa, Javier Cercas, Albert Camus etc. The article was translated for Tirana Post by Albana Murra.
