Ernst Becker
Fear of death haunts us. Some early people celebrate it, see as a kind of promotion or achievement.
Military budgets, national effort into war. Very afraid. Writers forced to exaggerate achievement to be seen. Book built on Otto Rank.
Chapter 1
Human nature and the heroic. Heroism important. Life a theater of heroism. Attractive. Narcissist- absorbed with self. Last expendable person. Feel sorry for next to us. We immortal.
We need to feel secure in our self esteem. We live in world of matter but also symbols and dreams. Need for esteem feed endlessly in symbols. Narrissits needing self esteem drive for primary value- to be the one. Must stand out. Be a hero. Big home, large bank account.
Society – symbol action system of hero systems. Out live death and decay. Make humans count more than any other animal.
Becoming conscious of need for heroism, self esteem is main need of therapy.
How true is this hero system? People willing to sacrifice self for others. Work for recognition rather than reward. But have to feel past w of a hero system. Main problems in work. We lost sense i I f cultural hero. Don’t believe we can be hero in our culture. Becoming grasping, self serving. Hero of one for one. Be over you, not special anomng u. Hero lash out, destroying hero.
Religious paths no longer valid for us. Used to provide compact spree for self esteem.
Chapter 2
Heroism reflexive in face of death. Animal courage lifted into a cult. Mystery cults, hero return from death. Have immunity to death. Promise of Christ.
We know we die but don’t think about death. Not happen to us. Repress it. Work electric pole. Ladder. Live wire. Rain. Must learn to deal. Could easily die. Fear clear. Hidden fear always there for us. Do this by feeling ourselves more important. God lives us. Chooses us. Or naturally better personal. Inner sustainment. We accept culture we grew up. Plunge ahead in to hero paths given us.
Anxiety comes from sep of body and world. Aware of it yet know it ends. Try to mesh and stand out.
Chapter 7
One who acts. Priority magic. The one who acts for the group. Relieves guilt for self and others. Even murder forgiven. Participants in a group transform reality like child’s play. A heighten reality. How group carry away with themselves, easily kill others. Follow into hell for the pleasure to kill. Leader followed to fulfill self desires of followers. Leader part of group. Leader also an excuse. Not out acts. Put violence on leader, her act.
We have inner need to be good. Self feeling. No idea what this conscious is. Rules for being good come from society but urge to feel ‘good’ in us, before culture. Need to feel right. Comes from dual need.
Be part of something Bigger. Part of a universal. Merged. Connected. Identified in cosmic process and meaning.
Also need to be special. Individual and alone. Opposed to rest of nature. See our smallness. How to be better. Have value and endure.
Can’t do both. Anxious. Lose isolation and achieve it. Control the contradictions by safe heroism. Transference urge to higher heroism. Include live to value to declare is good. Take out Struve for universal connection and place in self. Awed by own life. Create reality we need to discover our ‘true’ self. Natural self striving for behold that gives self validation.
Chapter 8
Hard to accept sep sphere for material and spiritual needs. Without religion, make partner god or god for partner. Not fulfilling
For long. Both grow resentful. We lose our beauty or strength, or wealth, achievements We get back from human live object less than we need to feel good about ourselves and we attack. Our neurosis subsumed in culture. More effective some times than other. Christianity can provide sealed system. Hero path mapped out by following gods path. Gave life. Shows how to live. Provides immortality
Art: hero who gives a gift to society. Society determines the fight even if gift pushing boundaries. Bed to push past underantendinf, be special. Not just give exactly what get want. Push to far and gift rejected.
Chapter 9.
Neurotics closer to truth of life. Too far in material life ( less symbol) control. OCD , neurotic. Too far in data bay, create our symbols own life (psychotic).
Such a problem today. Few good hero paths. Hospitals empty during French Revolution. Found plenty of ways to solve dualism. Hard to find balance in normal life now. Need upheaved. Overthrow god, left to ourselves. Lovers and kids not paths to transcendence. Psychological man isolate from group. Justify self within herself. Inner life moved from soul to self, understand it. What in brain. Even though we still have no idea what this need to feel good. Consciousness.
Psychological never enough looks for solution in self. Only part of the issue. Need to see world and place self as symbolic animal within the world. Why we are here. Why we have to die. How to make a life a triumph. Need communal ideology of transcendence. Redemption
Not helped by more knowing, only by living and doing.
Chapter 11
Freud not fully analyzed himself. Not give over to Pam. Stay in realm of self. Kirkegaard spoke of Knight of Faith. Believe in transcendence. Not make happen. Grace makes manifest. Give over meaning of life to gods. Acts are duty. Not afield. Not manipulator. The leap not up to man.
Guilt not result of infant or child fantasy but adult reality. Real overwhelmedness. No way to overcome creature anxiety.Child existential issue. What is body. What is it for? Repression allows kids to act.
We don’t transfrom the world. Take more of world into self and develops more courage and fortitude. Whatever we do must be done in lived truth of the terror of creation, of the rumble of panic under everything. Must be aware of the stakes, the loss and the end. We don’t and won’t know the meaning of creation. Driving force behind the mystery sacred. Knowing is not enough. We need to act and believe – oriented beyond the body, beyond the individual.