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coberst 03-5-2007 03:45 PM

Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it...
 
Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it, or…

Becker compares three great thinkers Otto Rank, Wilhelm Reich, and Carl Jung to conclude that the three provide us nothing with which to connect their conclusions except that they dissented from Freud. However, there is agreement on the answer to the fundamental question, “What causes evil in human affairs?”

This agreement is also the agreement in all of the human sciences; “man wants above all to endure and prosper, to achieve immortality in some way”.

Wo/man wants, above all, to reject the knowledge of mortality; s/he does so by seeking to assure immortality in some way. Mortality is connected to our animal nature and thereby wo/man reaches for some way of being transcendent of that nature. As our mental capacity increased we rejected other animals with a vengeance because these other animals “embodied what man feared most, a nameless and faceless death.

Our fears are buried deeply within our unconsciousness by repression, that great discovery of the science of psychoanalysis. This repression “is achieved by the symbolic engineering of culture, which everywhere serves men as an antidote to terror by giving them a new and durable life beyond that of the body”.

I have just finished reading “The Art of War” an article in the March 12 edition of “Time” by Lev Grossman. The article is about a, largely computer generated, movie regarding a war in ancient Greece. The movie’s title is “The 300 Spartans” and Zack Snyder is the director. The movie is, except for the human actors, a virtual world created by digital movie techniques.

“Snyder is one of a small, hypertechnical fringe of directors who are exploring a new way to make movies by discarding props, sets, extras and real-life locations and replacing them with their computer-generated equivalents.”

“With so much computer-generated make-believe going on, the actor’s physicality is the movie’s only link to the real world…every frame was manipulated and color-shifted to create an intense, thunderstorm palette…The result is a gorgeous, dreamlike movie that’s almost perfect. Every frame is neat and composed, like an oil painting, not a hair or a grain of sand out of place. All noise and dissonance have been digitally eliminated. Maybe that’s the only way to make a war movie right now, or at least, the only way to make a war movie that’s not an antiwar movie…That’s why it’s a piece of mythology. It’s what we would hope for. “300” is a vision of war as ennobling and morally unambiguous and spectacularly good-looking.”

That’s one hell of a special effect. And this movie is, I find, an insight into the meaning of “evil in human affairs”. We are all directors of our individual and our community’s virtual reality.

Quotes from “Escape from Evil”—Ernest Becker

Maid 03-5-2007 04:45 PM

Re: Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it...
 
You need to learn doing an introduction before venturing into the woods. You may understand what you have read in a book and burning with desire to share that excitement or whatever made you post this in the 1st place. But this has no meaning or worth if presented like you just did.

coberst 03-5-2007 05:22 PM

Re: Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it...
 
Maid


Ernest Becker has woven a great tapestry, which represents his answer to the question ‘what are we humans doing, why are we doing it, and how can we do it better?’

Becker has written four books “Beyond Alienation”, “Escape from Evil”, “Denial of Death”, and “The Birth and Death of Meaning”; all of which are essential components of his tapestry. Ernest Becker (1924-1974), a distinguished social theorist, popular teacher of anthropology and sociology psychology, won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for the “Denial of Death”.

Many weeks ago a forum member suggested that I might be interested in the author Ernest Becker and I was given the following web site.
http://faculty.washington.edu/nelgee...lomonsound.htm This is a great one hour audio about Becker’s ideas given by a very good lecturer.

Becker provides the reader with a broad and comprehensible synopsis of the accomplishments of the sciences of anthropology, psychology, sociology, and psychiatry. Knowledge of these accomplishments provides the modern reader with the means for the comprehension of why humans do as they do.

Becker declares that these sciences prove that humans are not genetically driven to be the evil creatures that the reader of history might conclude them to be. We humans are victims of the societies that we create in our effort to flee the anxiety of death. We have created artificial meanings that were designed to hide our anxieties from our self; in this effort we have managed to create an evil far surpassing any that our natural animal nature could cause.

Becker summarizes this synoptic journey of discovery with a suggested solution, which if we were to change the curriculums in our colleges and universities we could develop a citizenry with the necessary understanding to restructure our society in a manner less destructive and more in tune with our human nature.

The only disagreement I have with Becker’s tapestry is in this solution he offers. I am convinced that he has failed to elaborate on an important step that is implied in his work but not given sufficient emphasis. That step is one wherein the general adult population takes up the responsibility that citizens of a democracy must take on; adults must develop a hobby “get a life—get an intellectual life”. In other words, it will be necessary that a significant share of the general population first comprehend these matters sufficiently to recognize the need for the proposed changes to our colleges and universities.


.


http://faculty.washington.edu/nelgee...lomonsound.htm This is a great one hour audio about Becker’s ideas given by a very good lecturer.

Reach 03-5-2007 07:36 PM

Re: Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it...
 
Becker was a genius. Well beyond his times if anything.

XxxBLUNTMANxxX 03-5-2007 09:56 PM

very interesting,
coberst I want u to explain what you think the purpose of life is in ur own words, just curious

wow I just listened to part of that guys speach (Humans As Intelligent, Social Creatures) and I'm amazed by how true this is. Especially the part about being alive. I stop in the most random parts of my days and I realize that I am here and I am alive. I just leave reality for a sec and I get this feeling of a bit of fear with in me but I shouldn't I should look at it from a different perspective and be happy that i realize I'm alive... do u think that it's a good thing to realize ur alive?

coberst 03-6-2007 03:17 AM

Re: Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it...
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by XxxBLUNTMANxxX (Post 1299549)
very interesting,
coberst I want u to explain what you think the purpose of life is in ur own words, just curious

The purpose of of life is what you make of it.

XxxBLUNTMANxxX 03-6-2007 09:14 PM

Re: Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it...
 
have u ever stopped and realized u alive?

RandomPscho 03-6-2007 09:26 PM

Re: Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it...
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by XxxBLUNTMANxxX (Post 1303328)
have u ever stopped and realized u alive?

What?

XxxBLUNTMANxxX 03-7-2007 06:57 PM

Re: Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it...
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by RandomPscho (Post 1303373)
What?

just listen to this guy
http://faculty.washington.edu/nelgee...lomonsound.htm
and go to chapter 4 i think it is

Chocaholic 03-12-2007 07:42 PM

Re: Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it...
 
the devil cant make you do any thing.... its your choice

RandomPscho 03-12-2007 07:52 PM

Re: Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it...
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Chocaholic (Post 1337916)
the devil cant make you do any thing.... its your choice

Please read the entire thread before responding.

Chocaholic 03-12-2007 10:07 PM

Re: Evil in human affairs: the devil made me do it...
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by RandomPscho (Post 1337980)
Please read the entire thread before responding.

ok^^ lol Im sooo sorry! I tend to do that alot^^;


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