Escape from Evil
Ernest BeckerEscape from Evil Sözleri ve Alıntıları
Escape from Evil sözleri ve alıntılarını, Escape from Evil kitap alıntılarını, Escape from Evil en etkileyici cümleleri ve paragragları 1000Kitap'ta bulabilirsiniz.
Hitler’s rise to power was based on his understanding of what people wanted and needed most of all, and so he promised them, above everything else, heroic victory over evil; and he gave them the living possibility of ridding themselves temporarily of their real guilt.
all warfare and revolutionary struggle are simply a development of feuding and vendettas, where the basic thing at stake is a dramatization of the immortality account.
The thing that makes man the most devastating animal that ever stuck his neck up into the sky is that he wants a stature and a destiny that is impossible for an animal; he wants an earth that is not an earth but a heaven, and the price for this kind of fantastic ambition is to make the earth an even more eager graveyard than it naturally is.
In this book I attempt to show that man’s natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil.
For primitive man, who practiced the ritual renewal of nature, each person could be a cosmic hero of a quite definite kind; he could contribute with his powers and observances to the replenishment of cosmic life. Gradually, as societies became more complex and differentiated into classes, cosmic heroism became the property of special classes like divine kings and the military, who were charged with the renewal of nature and the protection of the group by means of their own special powers. And so the situation developed where men could be heroic only by following orders. Men had given the mandate of power and expiation to their leader-heroes, and so salvation had to be mediated to them by these figures. In a primitive hunting band or a tribe the leader cannot compel anyone to go to war; in the kingship and the state the subjects have no choice. They now serve in warfare heroism for the divine king who provides his own power in victory and bathes the survivors in it.
With the rise of money coinage one could be a money hero and privately protect himself and his offspring by the accumulation of visible gold-power.
With Christianity something new came into the world: the heroism of renunciation of this world and the satisfactions of this life, which is why the pagans thought Christianity was crazy. It was a sort of antiheroism by an animal who denied life in order to deny evil. Buddhism did the same thing even more extremely, denying all possible worlds.
In modern times, with the Enlightenment, began again a new paganism of the exploitation and enjoyment of earthly life, partly as a reaction against the Christian renunciation of the world. Now a new type of productive and scientific hero came into prominence, and we are still living this today.
Men put on the chains imposed by the powers of dead ancestors,then shamans, priests, divine kings, heads of state. Today we understand the inner dynamics of this long history of self-abasement: men need transference in order to be able to stand life.