A site dedicated to exploring and debating the thoughts of Ernest Becker and Otto Rank and applying them to current and historical events.
email: BeckerRank@shaw.ca
I understand that maybe 'denial of death' or heroism or other terms associated with Ernest Becker's work would attract more attention and hence, more discussion. We'll see how this goes. There's a great deal of material to discuss. One of my favourite aspects of Becker's work is his conclusion that the nature of society is that of a 'hero-system for the denial of death.' One of the more interesting parts of Becker's Escape From Evil is how he traces the creation of 'moities,' a term familiar to anthropologists, in the eventual establishment of our current polarized politics. Moities are the separation of a previously unified group into two so as to provide 'teams' in contests to see who is most worthy in the eyes of the gods or God. Obviously moities have evolved into more complex sets of sometimes interrelated groups, but the need to win contests to qualify for eternal life is still very much a part of our social organization.
By the way, don't be afraid to click on the word 'comments' just under each post if you wish to respond to that post. When you click 'comments' you will be prompted to enter a username and password. Create any username you want or as many usernames as you want for subsequent comments, and create a password which is composed of letters and numbers and is at least 6 characters long.
The distinction is enormous. In our attempts as humans to deny our animality and hence our deaths, we downplay as essential to ourselves all that is bodily, earthly, sexual, etc. We try to convince ourselves that we are essentially 'spirits-with-bodies.' We try to convince ourselves that we are immortal by creating what Rank and Becker call immortality-ideologies or ideologies that encompass our symbolic selves and collectivities, those things that are immune from earthly death. I may die, but my 'soul' won't. My 'soul' is an essential ingredient in a death-denying ideology that is based in a collectively defined set of 'religious' constructs that both deny our animality and glorify our symbolic side. My animal self may die and that's fine, but if my symbolic self dies that means that I die eternally. Problem is, my immortality-ideology isn't the only one around and others, as plausible to its adherents as mine is to me, may have other ideas about how to get to heaven or gain immortality. The fireworks start when my immortality project is actually threatened by others or if I am convinced that it is by people with a particular vested interest. If my immortality project is threatened in any way and in fact is destroyed, then I die forever. No resurection for me. So what am I to do except fight desperately to maintain my symbols of immortality in the face of real or implied threats. Off I march to war and gladly too.
As an addendum to my last posting, I need to add that as Becker notes, all power resides in the group, in the society, the collectivity. We are nothing outside our groups (church, country, school, sports) so we must protect and defend our groups with the utmost vigor or abandon their immortality-ideologies as is the case with religious conversions among many colonized people. No point in hanging on to a defunct god. If our prosperity, our future, our lives and those of our children and their children are compromised by threats to our group, internal or external, we have to deal with them harshly.
A real life example of what I'm talking about here is the real or perceived threat to America by 'terrorists.' In order for Americans to meet this 'threat,' there must be internal solidarity. Americans are urged to not tolerate any internal dissent or the enemy will win. In other words, America must be united to face the enemy or die. Of course, that's true, as long as people have correctly identified the real enemy to America.
Ironically, immortality-ideologies based on the secular principles of capital accumulation and the private expropriation of hugh amounts of public wealth are always lies because no secular authority can promise you immortality. The enemy may not be the one everybody is pointing at; it may be something much more insidious. It would be easy for Americans if the ultimate enemy were really the Taliban, Sadam Hussein or Al-Quaeda. It's hard to resist seing a conspiracy here. Chasing these 'evil' characters around is taking attention away from very important internal threats to American solidarity and isn't that convenient? The fact is that big business* as it becomes more and more 'globalized' is less and less likely to find American collective interests very important. There's no such thing as 'American' business. There's only business that for the moment finds it convenient to be 'American' or 'Canadian' or 'French.' The idea of 'foreign trade' is getting sillier and sillier by the day. Don't be fooled: business is always business first, everything else second.
When America finally implodes, it will be because of its own leadership, both political and economic, abandoning the essential values that have been the basis of American patriotism since 1776 . Business is supposed to serve the American people isn't it? Not the other way around. When the American people realize in sufficient numbers that they've been lied to on a regular basis by their leadership for decades, there won't be much left to do but duck and look for cover. Fixing elections won't help. Nothing will.
Nobody is held with less regard than a king who has lost power and whose people finally see him naked and being sodomized by special (business and other) interests while he pleads tearfully that he has everybody's interests at heart. Watch out George...it ain't gonna be pretty.
* Big business is not monolithical. Business itself isn't evil. However business has it's own survival needs and they aren't fundamentally compatible with national ones.
I am currently interested in comparing and contrasting the cultural diversity of ritualistic behaviour toward the deceased. There is undoubtedly considerable differences in how rituals for the dead are performed, but many techniques (I am coming to understand) are aimed at ensuring the deceased transcends his or her physical death for lasting continuity of their soul, spirit, mind, or so forth. Is this always the case, or are there groups of people, primitive or contemporary, who do not partake in any form of ceremony or memorial whatsoever after someone has died? If there is no acknowledgment of one’s death, was there even a life to begin with?
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8 comments:
it will be interesting to see who can find this. I think the name should be more reflective of what you are studying.
I understand that maybe 'denial of death' or heroism or other terms associated with Ernest Becker's work would attract more attention and hence, more discussion. We'll see how this goes. There's a great deal of material to discuss. One of my favourite aspects of Becker's work is his conclusion that the nature of society is that of a 'hero-system for the denial of death.' One of the more interesting parts of Becker's Escape From Evil is how he traces the creation of 'moities,' a term familiar to anthropologists, in the eventual establishment of our current polarized politics. Moities are the separation of a previously unified group into two so as to provide 'teams' in contests to see who is most worthy in the eyes of the gods or God. Obviously moities have evolved into more complex sets of sometimes interrelated groups, but the need to win contests to qualify for eternal life is still very much a part of our social organization.
By the way, don't be afraid to click on the word 'comments' just under each post if you wish to respond to that post. When you click 'comments' you will be prompted to enter a username and password. Create any username you want or as many usernames as you want for subsequent comments, and create a password which is composed of letters and numbers and is at least 6 characters long.
This is a test
The distinction is enormous. In our attempts as humans to deny our animality and hence our deaths, we downplay as essential to ourselves all that is bodily, earthly, sexual, etc. We try to convince ourselves that we are essentially 'spirits-with-bodies.' We try to convince ourselves that we are immortal by creating what Rank and Becker call immortality-ideologies or ideologies that encompass our symbolic selves and collectivities, those things that are immune from earthly death. I may die, but my 'soul' won't. My 'soul' is an essential ingredient in a death-denying ideology that is based in a collectively defined set of 'religious' constructs that both deny our animality and glorify our symbolic side. My animal self may die and that's fine, but if my symbolic self dies that means that I die eternally. Problem is, my immortality-ideology isn't the only one around and others, as plausible to its adherents as mine is to me, may have other ideas about how to get to heaven or gain immortality. The fireworks start when my immortality project is actually threatened by others or if I am convinced that it is by people with a particular vested interest. If my immortality project is threatened in any way and in fact is destroyed, then I die forever. No resurection for me. So what am I to do except fight desperately to maintain my symbols of immortality in the face of real or implied threats. Off I march to war and gladly too.
As an addendum to my last posting, I need to add that as Becker notes, all power resides in the group, in the society, the collectivity. We are nothing outside our groups (church, country, school, sports) so we must protect and defend our groups with the utmost vigor or abandon their immortality-ideologies as is the case with religious conversions among many colonized people. No point in hanging on to a defunct god. If our prosperity, our future, our lives and those of our children and their children are compromised by threats to our group, internal or external, we have to deal with them harshly.
A real life example of what I'm talking about here is the real or perceived threat to America by 'terrorists.' In order for Americans to meet this 'threat,' there must be internal solidarity. Americans are urged to not tolerate any internal dissent or the enemy will win. In other words, America must be united to face the enemy or die. Of course, that's true, as long as people have correctly identified the real enemy to America.
Ironically, immortality-ideologies based on the secular principles of capital accumulation and the private expropriation of hugh amounts of public wealth are always lies because no secular authority can promise you immortality. The enemy may not be the one everybody is pointing at; it may be something much more insidious. It would be easy for Americans if the ultimate enemy were really the Taliban, Sadam Hussein or Al-Quaeda. It's hard to resist seing a conspiracy here. Chasing these 'evil' characters around is taking attention away from very important internal threats to American solidarity and isn't that convenient? The fact is that big business* as it becomes more and more 'globalized' is less and less likely to find American collective interests very important. There's no such thing as 'American' business. There's only business that for the moment finds it convenient to be 'American' or 'Canadian' or 'French.' The idea of 'foreign trade' is getting sillier and sillier by the day. Don't be fooled: business is always business first, everything else second.
When America finally implodes, it will be because of its own leadership, both political and economic, abandoning the essential values that have been the basis of American patriotism since 1776 . Business is supposed to serve the American people isn't it? Not the other way around. When the American people realize in sufficient numbers that they've been lied to on a regular basis by their leadership for decades, there won't be much left to do but duck and look for cover. Fixing elections won't help. Nothing will.
Nobody is held with less regard than a king who has lost power and whose people finally see him naked and being sodomized by special (business and other) interests while he pleads tearfully that he has everybody's interests at heart. Watch out George...it ain't gonna be pretty.
* Big business is not monolithical. Business itself isn't evil. However business has it's own survival needs and they aren't fundamentally compatible with national ones.
I am currently interested in comparing and contrasting the cultural diversity of ritualistic behaviour toward the deceased. There is undoubtedly considerable differences in how rituals for the dead are performed, but many techniques (I am coming to understand) are aimed at ensuring the deceased transcends his or her physical death for lasting continuity of their soul, spirit, mind, or so forth. Is this always the case, or are there groups of people, primitive or contemporary, who do not partake in any form of ceremony or memorial whatsoever after someone has died? If there is no acknowledgment of one’s death, was there even a life to begin with?
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