Escape from Evil

i've read thousands of books in my life, but "escape from evil" is one of the top 3...maybe at this point in my life, #1...why?...b/c after 6 decades of living this life, pondering many religions, paradigms, ideologies, worldviews - whatever your preference, becker's expose really strikes at the heart of this thing called life...his thesis will be more lucid to one who reads it with a little background in psychoanalysis (read, freud), but not absolutely necessary...plenty of life experiences may carry the day for some without a background in psychology, or maybe just an acute intuitive feel for what he's saying no matter your life experiences, i.e., it will speak to the "collective unconscious" - that repository of archetypes that we've all inherited in our psyche, viz., the "shadow"...bottom line (and this hearkens back to nietzsche): the principle that motivates man is the "will to power", and to tap into that force man creates his immortality projects, i.e., IT'S ALL ABOUT THE QUEST FOR "LIFE, AND LIFE MORE ABUNDANTLY"!...the quest for immortality...even the atheist is motivated by immortality, though it may be unconscious...becker died in his '50s...maybe this was one of his"immortality projects".

I suppose I'm one of those weird people who actually appreciates books of this nature, which attempt to address the deepest dimensions of human existence and pathology, but I really like this book. I particularly like and agree with Becker's conclusions about what drives the dimension of evil in the human condition. I won't tell you what that is, in order that you actually buy the book, but I think it's good and mostly correct.

Continuing with the themes developed in The Denial of Death, which dealt with the individual, Becker argues that human societies (whether hunter-gatherer tribe or modern techno-industrial) are giant immortality projects. They are essentially humans trying to escape from their own creatureliness, their mortality and their littleness. Hence the desperate desire to put together some system or program that people can believe in and dedicate their existence to, whether we call it capitalism, communism, fascism, consumerism, Marxism, theocracy, "progress," etc.As with The Denial of Death, you will begin to recognize the pattern in everyone you know: the identification with nation, political party, religion, sports team, music group, TV show or whatever it is that gives a person the illusion of power and control."As the ancients believed that the kingdom would perish if the king's mana ebbed, so do we feel uncomfortable and anxious if the figure 'at the top' doesn't show real excellence, some kind of 'magic.'""The identification of the mana figure with one's own well-being still influences too the democratic voting process: just as in traditional society, we tend to vote for the person who already represents health, wealth, and success so that some of it may rub off on us.""Each person nourishes his immortality in the ideology of self-perpetuation to which he gives self-allegiance; this gives life the only abiding significance it can have. No wonder men go into a rage over fine points of belief: if your adversary wins the argument about truth, you die. Your immortality system has been shown to be fallible, your life becomes fallible.""All power is in essence power to deny mortality. Either that or it is not real power at all, not ultimate power, not the power that mankind is really obsessed with. Power means power to increase oneself, to change one's natural situation from one of smallness, helplessness, finitude, to one of bigness, control, durability, importance."

First of all, I am not a psychology buff nor did I get a degree in philosophy. I am a dilettante in the truest sense, and, I only read this because I found Denial Of Death so arresting. That having been said, Becker's take on primitive man as subject to the same guilt and fear that modern man suffers from seems a very truthful notion. It's unfortunate that his only "solution" for eradicating the evil of men is to simply live a quiet, modest life and accept that we are all bound up by fear of death and lack of control. He says that it's always the "Great" men that do the most harm to the world. Think about that for awhile.

Most important book you will ever read.

Book in excellent condition and is a great reading!

After reading The Denial of Death, I took up Becker's final work. He had tremendous insights into human cultures that are getting confirmed experimentally today.

Amazing book, highly recommend it

Having read 'The Denial of Death', this was even better. I'm a quick reader usually, but I gave this two weeks to read in sections and think about. Scholarly without being at all heavy, lightning moments every page or so. Draws heavily on Norman O.Brown and Otto Rank. I love this sort of broad-stroke speculative approach grounded in a powerful understanding of 'the human condition'. We are not, as Freud would have it, 'instinctively' aggressive or violent: these are the inevitable evils which follow on our desire to be good, to transcend with culture our animal limitations.

This book is an attempt to argue that history is a series of immortality ideologies. Becker was a good writer, but I don't think that it successfully makes the argument that it wants to. I also think that the 'terror thesis' in his earlier work is - frankly - much, much more interesting than this anthropological/historical framing of his ideas.I came to this book after reading The Denial of Death, which is superb. But this book does not carry through the same personal-level themes, instead of looking at individual motivation, it tries to make 'the denial of death' the basis of world history. And so it really isn't as successful as the earlier work. This is likely in part because it is unfinished work, cut short by Becker's own death.Even though it is readable, I would say that this book is for specialist researchers only. If you want to know a little bit more about Becker for a wider project, it is worth buying.If you want 'more' like the Denial of Death, then this book isn't that. Rather, sections of The Birth and Death of Meaning (written earlier than both Denial of Death and Escape from Evil) are really great and so I would recommend that as your next jumping off point.

I found The Denial of Death brilliant. Escape from Evil was intended as a (relatively short) companion and perfection of it, which I felt it was not.If you have not read The Denial of Death, I suggest you buy that instead. I feel I could barely tell that the first 8 chapters were written by Becker, after being so impressed by The Denial of Death, and I do not think the final two substantially develop any particular aspect of the earlier one.I was disappointed that the text read like a simplified rehash of the earlier book's central idea - which I agree with - rephrased around 300 times. I believe my time would have been better spent starting to re-read The Denial of Death, although I certainly don't regret buying this.

Reading this book after reading Fustel de Coulange's "The Ancient City" had a very powerful effect. The two works rather go together, I think. It's a difficult book to read, but well worth it. I was a little skeptical about the idea that people can so easily be driven by their fear of death, but there is also a documentary about the work of Becker that demonstrates scientifically that this is a testable phenomenon. However, I still think that this isn't the whole banana. Becker mentions people who drive the masses this way and that, evil leaders and shamans and so forth, and we certainly have such in our own day. But he didn't develop this angle as he could have. In all times and places they are the psychopaths among humanity who lack the capacity to fear anything. So reading Andzrej Lobaczewski's "Political Ponerology" adds more pieces to the puzzle. Then, if you factor in cosmic catastrophes as described in the works of Victor Clube and Bill Napier, you have a pretty good picture of the forces that have shaped human culture.

I bought this as a present for my husband and am told it is brilliantly written, so five stars it is!