"If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am for myself only, what am I?
If not now--when?"
Talmudic Saying
Mishnah, Abot
"Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man."
Thomas Jefferson
The above quotes were taken from the beginning of Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom.
The first and only time I have heard Erich Fromm speak was at the counter commencement held at Columbia University in May/June 1968. I was extremely interested in hearing what he had to say, but as I recall I was in Butler Library while he and the other speakers including Dwight McDonald were outside in the centre of the campus perhaps speaking from the sundial which was the centre of student rallies. I had encountered Erich Fromm for the first time a couple years earlier while browsing in the Butler Library stacks where I liked to spend most of my time looking for books of interest although I did not have a study desk there at that time unfortunately. I noticed a book with a title Escape From Freedom that intrigued me. It brought to my mind the notion that people run away from freedom rather than embracing it thus giving it up. Interestingly, enough Erich Fromm notes in the section of his Anatomy of Human Destructiveness I describe below that people do not confront their conflicts either although I did not quote this bit below.
Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom was originally published in 1941 and re-issued in 1965. It had much, much more in it than I had suspected which entirely justified its title and my interest. So began my lifelong reading and re-reading of Erich Fromm's works. The counter commencement occurred as a result of the student uprising during the spring of 1968 at Columbia. The normal commencement was being held in the Cathedral of St John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue at 112th Street near the Columbia campus for security reason. This would usually have been held in the centre of the campus weather permitting. As the commencement ceremonies began, the protesting students walked out and proceeded up Amsterdam Avenue to 116th Street where they entered the centre of the campus for the counter commencement.
Erich Fromm spoke about the split which occurs in a person's personality when s/he is compelled to do something that is not liked or desired. This can be minor, he described, as simply not wanting to go to work which creates a conflict in the person who feels such a reluctance. He went on to describe the situation which had prevailed on the Columbia campus among the students as similar but far more serious in that they felt a deep conflict with respect to what the university administration was doing as it related to their experience and daily life. Out of this came the rebellion which involved the university constructing a gymnasium on public park land with a backdoor entrance for the Harlem community below Morningside Heights where the university was located. Essentially, the community had not been involved in this process. There was a strong element of student life for undergraduates which was largely neglected in a graduate school dominated university. And, of course, there was the issue of the Vietnam war, demonstrations against recruiting on campus and discipline against those who demonstrated inside campus buildings which was forbidden.
Erich Fromm went on to explain that when that conflict inside a person becomes serious, that person must do something about it, i.e., fight or flight. He pointed out that this is what had justifiably occurred at Columbia with the student protests that spring since the conflict had been extreme and was not being addressed or resolved by those in authority who were creating the problem. Thus, the students brought to the attention of the world, as it turned out, what was happening at Columbia. This ultimately resulted in complete changes at the university with respect to governance including faculty and student participation after a thorough investigation of what had happened and why had been carried out.
I bought a paperback copy of Escape From Freedom in 1984 for a second reading since my first reading almost 20 years before had been with a library copy. I've just picked this book up again after writing what is below and noted some quite significant comments by him which I had marked over 20 years ago. One of these deals with the sadistic character which is noted below as well as having been dealt with in earlier web journal entries as defined by Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. Sadism is the key character element which drives this surveillance activity against me. There are a larger number of those with a sadistic character in this environment than would be found in a normal population. Erich Fromm makes these comments about the sadistic character in Escape From Freedom:
"What is the essence of the sadistic drives? Again, the wish to inflict pain on others is not the essence. All the different forms of sadism which we can observe go back to one essential impulse, namely, to have complete mastery over another person, [emphasis added 1984] to make him a helpless object of our will, [emphasis added 1984] to become the absolute ruler over him, [emphasis added 1984] to become his God, to do with him as one pleases. To humiliate him, to enslave him, are means to this end and the most radical aim is to make him suffer, since there is no greater power over another person than that of inflicting pain on him, to force him to undergo suffering without his being able to defend himself. [emphasis added 1984] The pleasure in the complete domination over another person (or other animate objects) is the very essence of the sadistic drive." (Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, Avon Discus Books, New York, 1965, pps 178-9)
This precisely characterises the behaviour of Lt Harry Bird, BS and others with their use of the surveillance technology against me for the past eight years and five months 24/7. BS has been at it the entire time without absence. Lt Harry Bird arrived in February 2001 and, after a few months, has been completely dedicated to being here 24/7 along with BS. The enslavement and inability on my part to defend myself against the surveillance technology while they carry out as much abuse as possible intended to cause suffering and harm is exactly what they are doing with a great deal of pleasure 24/7 continuously for all these years along with those of similar character who join in and/or support them from a position of authority which allows this to go on unabated. In fact, Lt Harry Bird says frequently "He's suffering" and in the last few days as noted here "We hurt him."
I have been well aware of this essence of sadism which I clearly annotated in my 1984 second reading of Fromm's Escape From Freedom. The point in such understanding is to avoid such behaviour oneself while recognising it in others in order to avoid becoming the victim of a sadistic personality. As it has turned out with the advent and promulgation of surveillance technology, the sadistic character has found a new method of acting out her/his destructive behaviour against which the target has no defence. This inability to defend is the same violence that the child abuser acts out against children who cannot defend themselves against these giants of adults. Hence, this child abuser group of adults redirected that violence against me after I reported their child abuse which had been carried out against children and got surveillance technology installed and put at their disposal to carry out the same violent abuse against a defenceless target. Those in authority made the decision to do this and have continued to allow it to go on with the full knowledge of all that occurs.
There must be a clear understanding of this abuse which accrues to the use of surveillance technology as it currently exists so that those with psychological problems are prevented from using it. Such is not the case here since the mother of the abused children whom I reported for her child abuse is carrying out her sadistic revenge and retaliation against me for having done so and has been allowed to carry on with this by those in authority whose job it is to know better. That is the most serious problem with this situation which I keep addressing in any way I can to bring it to a stop. What happens instead is that the observers take a sadistic delight in creating such a conflict situation while watching my fruitless efforts in trying to defend myself against this abuse. It keeps them employed while they rationalise the violent abuse against me in various ways by blaming me the victim. That's why I call this institutionalised ritual abuse. in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness Fromm calls sadism the religion of the psychic cripple.
1. Last night I posted the following [see below] entry on BBC News' Have Your Say which was actually posted publicly by them. The limit to 500 characters is a good one but does result in a compression of ideas, and somehow I feel the need to expand upon this theme described in the posting. I have done so in this web journal recently. The fundamental dishonesty I mention below refers to having people carry out activities which they fundamentally oppose as human beings. I don't mean policies per se but those policies which run counter to fundamental human decency and basic standards and values which are claimed to exist in a democratic society.
When the surveillance abuse I've experienced for eight years and five months 24/7 since August 1998 is carried out, there are those who have an extreme aversion and many people some degree of aversion while there are those who have no aversion to this abuse of a human being by obvious torture, total invasion of privacy, tracking and R&D experimentation including medical experiments. This creates a conflict within people and people generally shutdown to some degree as a result except for those who are unaffected. What happens to the individual psychologically also happens on a collective basis in an organisation which reflects the sum of its collective human behaviour. An experimental example of this is the well known and highly regarded Sydney Milgram 1963 Yale University experiment "Behavioral Study of Obedience." Erich Fromm provides an excellent analysis of this experiment in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness in his section On Pyschological Experiments in Part 1 Chapter 2 Environmentalists and Behaviorists. Due to various editions in print for this book, it's easiest to locate this information in this manner.
Erich Fromm generalises about this experiment as follows:
"The main result of Milgram's study seems to be one he does not stress: the presence of conscience in most subjects, and their pain when obedience made them act against their conscience. Thus, while the experiment can be interpreted as another proof of the easy dehuminization of man, the subjects' reactions show rather the contrary -- the presence of intense forces within them that find cruel behavior intolerable. This suggests an important approach to the study of cruelty in real life: to consider not only cruel behavior but the -- often unconscious -- guilty conscience of those who obey authority. (The Nazis had to use an elaborate system of camouflage of atrocities in order to cope with the conscience of the average man.) Milgram's experiment and is a good illustration of the difference between conscious and unconscious aspects of behavior, even though no use has been made of it to explore this difference."
In the paragraph preceding the one quoted above Erich Fromm described the importance of pursuing such an investigation:
"I believe that the most important finding of Milgram's study is the strength of reactions against the cruel behavior. To be sure, 65 per cent of the subjects could be "conditioned" to behave cruelly [in the interest of science associated with a great university, etc], but a reaction of indignation or horror against this sadistic behavior was clearly present in most of them. Unfortunately the author does not give accurate data on the number of "subjects" who remained calm throughout the experiment. For the understanding of human behavior, it would be most interesting to know more about them. Apparently they had little or no feeling of opposition to the cruel acts they were performing. The next question is why this was so. One possible answer is that they enjoyed the suffering of others and felt no remorse when their behavior was sanctioned by authority. Another possibility is that they were such highly alienated or narcissistic people that they were insulated against what went on in other people; or they might be "psychopaths," lacking in any kind of moral reaction. [emphasis added] As for those in whom the conflict manifested itself in various symptoms of stress and anxiety, it should be assumed that they are people who do not have a sadistic or destructive character. (If one had undertaken an interview in depth, one would have seen the differences in character and even could have made an educated guess as to how people would behave.)"
The important aspect of all of this is that Lt Harry Bird and BS are here 24/7 and have been for many years. They do so with a great deal of glee, energy and dedicated effort. They fight viciously against cessation or removing them from this activity. Therefore, they fall into this category highlighted in bold in the above paragraph. "He's potty as hell," yelled BS at this point. All they can do is attack me personally with this infantile, toilet oriented nonsense name. They reflect the reality of what is being done with what David Blunkett has called "Prison Without Walls." I believe that this is mainly a Home Office project with participation from several other government departments and/or agencies. Clearly, I believe, the Home Office is responsible for this activity overall.
Since this has been going on for so many years involving the extraordinary abuse of a human being 24/7, there is a fundamental reaction of conscience that is largely unconscious although there are certainly any number of overt reactions against what is being done about which I'm aware. In fact, just last weekend after I published one of these web journal entries which was followed by loud talking and discussion among a group of people nearby, one couple who was leaving made the following comments. The male said "We are associated with that," and the female with him said "But, it's cruel." This was obvious to me that a conflict of conscience was arising among some people about what was happening after I was making public my description and comments about its reality.
I believe that this leads to overall organisational malaise when it is communicated by word-of-mouth throughout organisations. The character of what is actually going on known to many and communicated this way to the multitude creates such conflicts inside people that they are fundamentally distracted and perhaps even depressed by a conflict that arises from the overall impact of their work they are required to do which might be segmented as only a part of the whole. Erich Fromm's comment about the Nazi need to hide what was happening has been echoed recently by a BBC documentary on the Holocaust. The bureaucracy compartmentalised all the jobs connected with the Final Solution so that each person could do his or her job and consider it of no ultimate consequence from rounding up the Jews, transporting them to Poland, etc. Thus, they could live with themselves and their conscience even though they might hear rumours about what was actually being done.
In an open society like this, such information flows freely. The horror and terror from the knowledge of the surveillance technology being used and abused in such a manner as this will have a deleterious impact on everyone, well almost everyone. There are those who embrace it with sadistic glee like Lt Harry Bird, BS and others. When the reality of this surveillance technology which can monitor human senses, read thoughts and induce sound, thoughts and muscle activity as well as surreptitious medication is spread among the general public and those departments of government who are working with this technology, its impact will be negative for the most part on the human beings who know about it even if only unconsciously.
The word-of-mouth gossip about this surveillance technology will have the same impact on the larger number of people. Those people working in the Home Office will then begin to see their work in the context of this larger objective for "Prisons Without Walls" and react by a general failure to function properly with a malaise setting it. This will be unconscious for the most part with people failing to do essential jobs and not consciously realising why such a failure occurred. When complete corruption of false allegations is knowingly added to this surveillance technology so that it is well understood by those using it who gain the truth by its use (that's a real conflict of serious proportions), that failure to function and malaise are magnified because the dishonest, cruel behaviour is multiplied by existing on several levels.
This is why I believe that the Home Office has become an organisation that is not functioning as it should. People are in an state of unconscious revulsion and revolt against the horror of what is actually being done in reality. When you add to that the Home Office pretending that there is a mental illness on my part in reporting accurately what is being done, there is a further horror by decent people and a reaction against this travesty of decency with its torture and destructiveness. This is why I wrote the following for the BBC's Have Your Say which was posted in its entirety as follows:
Added: Saturday, 27 January, 2007, 24:59 GMT 00:59 UK
The Home Office exists in a state of organisational conflict as a result of a decade of governmental dishonesty and image management.
David Blunkett's "Prison Without Walls" has not been implemented yet. I've been subject to over eight years of 24/7 pilot experimental surveillance for imprisonment and total tracking. It just hasn't been rolled out yet.
This kind of dishonesty results in dysfunctional consequences with personnel frozen in a state of conflicted malaise. Nothing gets done.
Gary D Chance, London
2. Here's yet another example of dysfunctional malaise which emerged about the Home Office today. The question arises about what kind of reform the Home Office is going through? There has been no effort to stop the torture abuse from the surveillance technology being used against me which continues as of this writing. In fact, BS just said a moment ago "It's my job." Does this sound familiar?
BBC News Saturday, 27 January 2007, 11:37 GMT
Drug traffickers passport blunder
 Mr Reid has said he was merely re-stating guidelines |
The Identity and Passport Service has failed to enforce overseas travel bans imposed by the courts on nearly 150 convicted drug traffickers.
The service is still trying to trace 15 of the 147 traffickers who have left jail and may have gone abroad.
The government said there had been "no risk to public protection" and that most of those handed bans were in jail.
The Home Office said as it went through reform, "many historic" problems would come to light and be rectified.
Its statement said: "The Home Office and its agencies are going through a programme of wholesale reform. During this process, problems - many of them historic - will continually come to light and will be rectified.
"As the home secretary said last week: 'As we shake the tree, fruit will fall and not all of it will be good fruit.' But identifying and resolving problems is a necessary part of the reform process. We will face up to them and overcome them."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6304745.stm
3. This government has no compunction against carrying out torture as it has against me for eight years and five months 24/7 with the use of surveillance technology in the hands of scores if not hundreds of people. On 20th January 2007 two terrorist suspects were deported to Algeria. Amnesty International believes that they are now in Algerian army custody and subject to torture. Again, the reality of the Home Office emerges one more time.
BBC News Saturday, 27 January 2007, 03:15 GMT
Safety fears for terror suspects
 The men felt their only option was to return home, lawyers said |
Human rights group Amnesty International says it is deeply concerned for the safety of two terror suspects who were deported from the UK.
The organisation claims the Algerian men - known only as Q and K - were sent back to their homeland "despite the risk that they would be tortured".
The two men were flown from the UK on 20 January, having dropped their appeals against deportation orders.
Amnesty has claimed the men are being held by Algeria's military police.
 |  They were always at risk of torture and should never have been returned to Algeria  Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen |
Q and K were first arrested in Britain under the anti-terrorism act of 2001, but in December 2004 the Law Lords ruled that detention without charge under this act was unlawful and the two men were released.
Amnesty says the case against the men was never disclosed to them.
The organisation believes both were arrested by Algeria's military police, the DRS, on Wednesday and have been in custody every since.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6304677.stm
4. It is beyond comprehension that Tony Blair would make such a statement about the Holocaust as noted below when he allows surveillance technology driven imprisonment, torture and medical experimentation to be carried out in London against me 24/7 for the past eight years and five months after being comprehensively informed by extensive communication to him personally throughout these years starting in September 1999. I have never been charged for any offence and am a nonconsenting human guinea pig for the medical experimentation being carried out against me along with the surveillance technology R&D. This activity against me will inevitably be lethal which is well known. He has never stopped it, yet he has invaded a foreign country on the basis which he eventually settled to remove an abusive tyrant from power who tortured and carried out genocide. His extraordnary hypocrisy is appallingly beyond belief.
What lesson has Tony Blair learned from the Holocaust? What lesson has anyone in my direct experience during these years learned from the Holocaust? My answer is that Tony Blair and those in this government have learned to carry out the same activity only on a much better basis with the ultimate in sophisticated surveillance technology so that they will not get caught. The ultimate goal of population control is at hand.
BBC News Saturday, 27 January 2007, 14:37 GMT
Learn lessons from Holocaust - PM
 Tony Blair says the testimony of those involved must not die |
Tony Blair has said Holocaust Memorial Day is a reminder of the need to tackle racism and intolerance head on.
Events marking the millions of victims of the World War II Nazi concentration camps are taking place across the UK.
The prime minister said the Holocaust was a "uniquely terrible" event and it did not bring to an end intolerance, hatred and genocide.
About 25,000 people are set to attend 600 events, including the main memorial in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on Sunday.