What I learned on the way to the dentist

With so blasted great wisdom in the world, how is it that it took me so long to find it? Ever think that? 

The radio is on. I'm off to the dentist. I'm not sure what program, but it's NPR so there's always somebody talking about something. It's a woman--don't remember her name, don't remember her topic. She'd published a book. Don't know the title, don't even remember the substance.

What grabbed my attention was her mentioning Erich Fromm. Name rang a bell, a distant bell. Something told me that somewhere along the line in college, I read a book by the guy, Erich Fromm--didn't even know how to spell it, k or ch, one m or two? The woman referred to his book about freedom and said how it is that people should read that book because it's just as relevant today as it was when he wrote it. I didn't catch the title.

I turned up the volume somewhere around "million dollar corner."

She said what this man named Erich Fromm had said (I know I've read something by the guy, somewhere in college) was that there were two kinds of freedom. That's what she said, and then she explained something about those two species and how we human beings want both, but often at different times. Some want "freedom to" do things--to build a new house or a new life, to have a say in what goes on in any number of institutions--family, church, government, life itself. Some--well, many--don't have such freedom. He called that "positive freedom."

This man Erich Fromm claimed there was yet another kind--"freedom from," which is a bit more negative in reach and mission, but similarly human, a "negative freedom."  

Now the radio interview wasn't about Erich Fromm. It was about the woman's book, a book whose title I don't remember. She didn't go on and on about Erich Fromm; she just mentioned Escape from Freedom and two kinds of freedom Fromm had worked out.

What she did mention is that Fromm was writing just prior to World War II (the book was first published in English in 1941) and that he was German, writing amid the growing power of Adolf Hitler. She said Fromm, in his discussion of the two kinds of freedom, had maintained that human beings seemed attracted to authoritarianism (think Hitler, think Lenin, think Mao, think Putin) when they perceive things around them falling desperately into ruin. 

I'd never heard of the book, never heard of two different types of freedom. But the whole topic seemed really fascinating in light of what's happening around us. I've never quite understood how people could "like" Trump's inaugural speech, stuffed as it was with despair and decay--"American carnage," some still call it. 

There are too many stories about people going in the ditch because they're looking at smart phones. So I waited until I got to the office, hung up my coat, sat down amidst a throng of teenagers with braces, and, like them, pulled out my phone. It didn't take five minutes--it's amazing--and I was reading Escape from Freedom. 

That's when the nurse came to get me. I had two cavities to fill. 

Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom is in my phone, on this computer, and on the Kindle beside me. With any luck at all, this Erich Fromm and all his talk about freedom will get clearer when it gets in my head. 

What a world.