Punching Faith in the Glasses

Here's a couple of quotes from Escape From Freedom, by Erich Fromm. This is the book I'm reading and enjoying currently. I think that these quotes help make clear how we are not as free as we'd like to believe.

..."All this does not mean that advertising and political propaganda overtly stress the individual's insignificance. Quite the contrary; they flatter the individual by making him appear important, and by pretending that they appeal to his critical judgment, to his sense of discrimination. But these pretenses are essentially a method to dull the individuals suspicions and to help him fool himself as to the individual character of his decision."

"With the political victories of the rising middle class, external authority lost prestige and man's own conscience assumed the place which external authority once had held. This change appeared as the victory of freedom. To submit to orders from the outside (at least in spiritual matters) appeared to be unworthy of a free man; but the conquest of his natural inclinations, and the establishment of the domination of one part of the individual, his nature, by another, his reason, will or conscience, seemed to be the very essence of freedom. Analysis shows that conscience rules with a harshness as great as external authorities, and furthermore that frequently the contents of the orders issued by man's conscience are ultimately not governed by demands of the individual self but by social demands which haved assumed the dignity of ethical norms. The rulership of conscience can be even harsher that that of external authorities, since the individual feels its orders to be his own; how can he rebel against himself?" --I'd argue that even our conscience can sometime be thought of as not entirely our own--In order to compensate for this, a wise man distrusts his conscience to a healthy degree and grants his "nature" at least some free reign to influence his actions and thoughts.

Say you are raised by Muslim parents in an Islamic nation. There's a good chance that you will live your life a devout Muslim; perhaps even a fundamentalist Muslim. What would be the state of mind you possess? Taught your entire life that there are certain absolute truths, and that your religion is the sole possessor of those truths, your state of mind may be one of conviction and faith. Relief and pride are the prizes recieved for adopting each and every absolute truth you hold dear. Conscious pride for feeling courageous and convicted. Subconscious relief for not having to seriously consider in depth any other religious/philosophical idea. These are the incentives for embracing faith. You are rewarded with greater pride and greater relief with every incremental increase in your faith. You may become addicted to these positive feelings, and reach a point where you are bound to your beliefs by a mental/emotional bond that cannot be broken. You essentially become a slave, possibly a happy, content slave, but a slave nonetheless. A slave to whom? The direct authority in your life consists of scripture and muslim clerics. You do as they say. The indirect authority which you answer to is your own mind--a stew of swirling thoughts, the words of the clerics, the scriptures, natural emotional impulses/instincts, etc. In this evironment your thoughts constantly butt up against cognitive barriers which consist of the rules, direct commands, and sense of ethical norms put in place throughout your life by your religion and culture. Always a sense of faith and conviction sways your thoughts away from what is considered "dangerous" or "innappropriate". Always you come to an early end to questioning, to consideration, to even listening. Because you are human, you are already a slave to your natural physical and intellectual limits. On top of this, with faith you willingly deny yourself the opportunity to understand your world and yourself to any extent beyond what is allowed, beyond impenetrable walls of your religion/ideology and muddled mind. You stop. You stop living and progressing intellectually and emotionally in this life in large part because you have faith in an afterlife---one that will be infinitely better, if only you have faith and stay in line.
...so i'm rambling. I mean to make more apparent the sort of subtle, invisible evil that faith begets. More later. Goodnight.