On Original Thinking

With regard to all basic questions of individual and social life, with regard to psychological, economic, political, and moral problem, a great sector of our culture has just one function - to befog the issues. One kind of smokescreen is the assertion that the problems are too complicated for the average individual to grasp. On the contrary it would seem that many of the basic issues of individual and social life are very simple, so simple, in fact, that everyone should be expected to understand them. To let them appear to be so enormously complicated that only a 'specialist' can understand them, and he only in his own limited field, actually - and often intentionally - tends to discourage people from trusting their own capacity to think about those problems that really matter. The individual feels helplessly caught in a chaotic mass of data and with pathetic patience waits until the specialists have found out what to do and where to go.

The result of this kind of influences is a two-fold one: one is a skepticism and cynicism towards everything which is said or printed, while the other is a childish belief in anything that a person is told with authority. This combination of cynicism and naivete is very typical of the modern individual. Its’ essential result is to discourage him from doing his own thinking and deciding....

excerpt from: Erich Fromm (1941) Escape from Freedom.

pdf: On Original Thinking