Part of the Casswiki article series Books
Escape From Evil is the last book by cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, first published in 1975, which continues with the themes developed in his 1973 book, The Denial of Death, exploring the frightening needs of diverse social groups, looking into the deep inner fears of man.
In his preface, Becker writes:[1]
This book is a companion volume to The Denial of Death. It completes the task begun there, which is to synthesize the scientific and tragic perspectives on man. In The Denial of Death I argued that man’s innate and all-encompassing fear of death drives him to attempt to transcend death through culturally standardized hero systems and symbols. 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. This book also completes my confrontation of the work of Otto Rank and my attempt to transcribe its relevance for a general science of man. Ideally, of course, the two books should be read side by side in order to give the integrated and comprehensive picture that the author himself has (or imagines he has); but each book stands on its own and can be read without the other.
There are a lot of excellent points Becker makes that reflect some of the ideas of Gurdjieff about “man is machine” and the problem of the System 1 versus System 2, with the former generally ruling our lives until we somehow wake up from the control of our physiology and begin to grow and develop true consciousness.
This book and Becker’s 1973 The Denial of Death would ensure the reader to get a much better - and more accurate - idea of what really drives people.
Further information
See also
- Psychology
- Human condition
- System 1 and System 2
- The Denial of Death
- Thinking, Fast and Slow
- The Hero With a Thousand Faces
References
- ↑ Becker, Ernest. Escape from Evil, p. xvii. New York: The Free Press, 1975.