Part One.
Option #2: In a 5-page research paper, analyze Frank Meeink's descent into the Skinhead movement in terms of Erich Fromm's "Escape from Freedom." How, in other words, is Meeink's conversion an escape from freedom?
The Authoritarian Character (culled from Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom)
1. Meeink needs his ideology to inflate his self-admiration, but in reality this grandiosity is a feeble mask for his self-loathing. This is the first trait of the authoritarian: He adorns himself with bluster and grandiosity in a failed attempt to hide his self-hatred.
2. Like all humans, the authoritarian faces the unbearable human condition: a sense of isolation and powerlessness. Well-balanced people overcome isolation and powerlessness by finding love and work, but the authoritarian does not. Instead, he relies on mechanisms of escape, mainly becoming dependent on masochistic individuals who submit to his dominant, sadistic behavior.
3. Other mechanisms of escape: MECHANISMS OF ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM
Authoritarianism. Submission or domination. In masochistic form, we allow others to dominate us. In sadistic form, we try to dominate and control the behavior of others. A common feature of authoritarianism is the belief that one's life is determined by forces outside oneself, one's interests, or one's wishes, and the only way to be happy is to submit to those forces. The authoritarian submits to those who are higher up and steps on those who are below.
Destructiveness. "The destruction of the world is the last, almost desperate attempts to save myself from being crushed by it." Destructiveness is often rationalized as love, duty, conscience, or patriotism.
4. Automaton Conformity. People cease to be themselves and adopt the type of personality proffered by their culture.
Part Two. Unable to Overcome Isolation, Like Meeink, You Become Disaffected
1. You lack confidence to engage with others so you withdraw into yourself. Perhaps you were hurt in the past and don’t want to get hurt again, so you avoid people.
2. You get married more for convenience and to shelter you from the world.
3. You become addicted to your routines, which shut out the outside world.
4. You are reflexively hostile to anyone new because they represent a threat to your existence. You hate change.
5. You act like a churlish (grouchy) know-it-all who has all the answers, a person who dismisses everything as a “joke” and “utter nonsense.”
6. You are incapable of listening to others. The only thing you listen to the Cynical Voice constantly grumbling inside your head.
7. You are lethargic in your self-centeredness and numb yourself with various addictions in order to undergo your “slow death.”
8. You teach yourself that there is no hope for change or a better life so you succumb to learned helplessness or you desperately cling to an extreme ideology.
9. Unable to connect, you retreat into the authoritarian world of solipsism: Solipsism, failing to connect with others, is a form of insanity. The telling signs of solipsism are self-pity, resentment, and narcissism (you’re the only one who matters, your suffering is worse than everyone else’s, your grievances are more compelling to everyone else’s). Tell the students about the doctor whose wife left him and the student who never dated after 20 years. These are two examples of people who are withdrawn into themselves and cannot connect with the outside world and as such are insane.
Part Three. Meeink’s Racist Ideology Is a Chimera, a Phantom or Illusion
Chimera’s Definition, Causes and Effects
1. The chimera is a dream, but not all dreams are equal. The chimera is a dream that results in evil and self-destructiveness. A chimera looks like an angel but is really the devil. A chimera looks like it is taking you to heaven, but it is really taking you to hell.
A chimera is a mirage that draws us in slowly, starting with a burp or a trifle, a tease, an iridescent color that flashes before our eyes or it hits us over the head. In either case, it grows into an obsession and consumes all our energies, thoughts, and dreams.
2. The chimera is based on unconscious longings for class ascent, acceptance, love, popularity, wealth, parental unconditional love (Rosebud), the Chanel Number Five Moment, distinction, proving our doubters that they were wrong.
3. We project our fantasy onto a tabula rasa.
4. Often the chimera is a panacea, a cure-all for all our woes.
5. The Absolute Fallacy (success, fitness, perfection, perfect absolute relationship)
6. The Transcendence Fallacy
7. The Bitch Goddess Fallacy, the belief that we will find happiness by doing nothing as we sit in the lap of luxury.
8. The inevitable despair of the chimera. George Bernard Shaw said there are two great tragedies in life: Not getting what we want and getting it.
9. The cycle of ongoing chimeras, people who never learn and who go in circles, jumping from one chimera to the next.
10. The paradox of the chimera: Chimeras destroy us but they also feed our dreams and in some ways give us strength, drive, motivation, and vitality that we otherwise wouldn’t have.
11. The need for the chimera: We must have stars in the horizon for which he can row our oars. But as I've said before, a chimera is often associated with the Devil Trickster who looks delicious but in reality serves up a nasty stew.
Examples of chimera (have students come up with some):
1. The low-carb diet or the South Beach Diet
2. Yoga
3. A Lexus IS350
4. Viagra
5. Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft
6. Dianobol
7. Having a six-pack
8. Cosmetic surgery, botox or nose job or implants.
9. G-Star Jeans (underground store for special jeans, not the ones you can buy at Nordstrom)
10. the cognoscenti.
11. Becoming famous
12. Angelina Jolie; she’s more than a human. She’s become the great bitch goddess, every man’s dream and every woman’s nightmare. The fantasy of the seductress.
13. Jennifer Aniston, the myth of the good girl, the myth of innocence.
14. Celebrity of all kinds, an autograph, a sighting.
15. Las Vegas
16. Palos Verdes (my neighbors in Torrance are bitter that they haven’t moved to PV yet. Peevers.
17. UCLA
18. iPod
19. Anything sold on the QVC network
20. Marriage. Not all marriages but most are built on the Goody Box chimera. When I want a goody I reach into the goody box. But what happens when all the goodies run out.
21. Me-Time. People who have lots of me-time are miserable.
22. A racist ideology that promises a future of “racial purity.”
Part Four. Class Activity
Write down a chimera that you pursued only to find it a cruel illusion worthy of your contempt.
Part Five. Application of Class Activity to Your Essay: Use your chimera story as your one-page introduction, leading to Frank Meeink's chimera, his racist ideology. You would bridge your intro paragraph and your thesis paragraph with "Similarly" or some such transition.
Your thesis might look like this:
Frank Meeink's quest to find the answers to his problems in the skinhead ideology proves to be a chimera evidenced by ____________, _____________, _____________, and _________________.
Or if you are applying Frank Meeink's conversion to the skinhead movement in terms of "escape from freedom," you would write a 1-page introduction by explaining what "escape from freedom" is. Then your thesis paragraph would look something like this:
Frank Meeink's escape from freedom is evidenced by ____________, _____________, ____________, and ________________.
Another Option:
If you're writing about the true believer, you might in one page profile a TB you know or define one based on McMahon's lecture. Then your thesis paragraph would go like this:
FM is a true believer evidenced by __________, ___________, _____________, _____________, and _________________.
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