"The fear of death must be present behind all our normal functioning, in order for the organism to be armed toward self-preservation. But the fear of death cannot be present constantly in in one's mental functioning, else the organism could not function." ~Ernest Becker, 1973
"So we can understand what seems like an impossible paradox: the ever-present fear of death in the normal biological functioning of our instinct of self-preservation, as well as our utter obliviousness to this fear in our conscious life." ~Ernest Becker, 1973
"Reality and fear go together naturally... Early men who were most afraid were those who were most realistic about their situation in nature, and they passed on to their offspring a realism that had a high survival value." 1/2
"The result was the emergence of man as we know him: a hyperanxious animal who constantly invents reasons for anxiety even where there are none." 2/2 ~Ernest Becker, 1973
"The essence of man is really his paradoxical nature, the fact that he is half animal and half symbolic... We might call this existential paradox the condition of individuality within finitude. Man has a symbolic nature that brings him sharply out of nature." 1/
"He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet..." 2/
"Yet at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish..." 3/
"His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways--the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two... It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with..." 4/
"It is only if you let the full weight of this paradox sink down on your mind and feelings that you realize what an impossible situation is is for an animal to be in... Everything that man does in his symbolic world is an attempt to deny and overcome his grotesque fate." 5/
"He literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness...disguised & dignified madness, but madness all the same." 6// ~Ernest Becker
I'm revisiting Becker's "The Denial of Death" as I prep for a workshop that'll be informed by his ideas. It's no exaggeration to say that encountering him shifted my life's axis. A red pill/blue pill moment, if you like :-) amazon.com/Denial-Death-E…
And it's worth noting that for all Becker's intensity and his searing focus on mortality, I actually find that exploring his ideas has brought a great deal of lightness and joy to my life by giving me a new perspective on existence. YMMV, of course.
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