tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-915268798077492064.post2791878040956235510..comments2023-07-20T04:18:23.162-07:00Comments on Atticus Bloggimus: The Denial of Death by Ernest BeckerAtticushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03208637984617731551noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-915268798077492064.post-35722088497165993072009-01-18T10:29:00.000-08:002009-01-18T10:29:00.000-08:00In response I would offer:The Ernest Becker Founda...In response I would offer:<BR/><BR/>The Ernest Becker Foundation newsletter on Terror Management research in the East. Plus Becker in Denial of Death p. 260<BR/><BR/><BR/>Take Norma Brown’s Life Against Death: rarely does a work of this brilliance appear. Rarely does a book so full of closely reasoned argument, of very threatening argument, achieve such popularity; but like most other foundation-shaking messages, this one is popular for all the wrong reasons. It is prized not for its shattering revelations on death and anality, but for its wholly non-sequitur conclusions: for its plea for the unrepressed life, the resurrection of the body as the seat of primary pleasure, the abolition of shame and guilt. Brown concludes that mankind can only transcend the terrible toll that the fear of death takes if it lives the body fully and does not allow any unlived life to poison existence, to sap pleasure, and to leave a residue of regret. If mankind would do this, says Brown, then the fear of death will no longer drive it to folly, waste, and destruction; men will have their apotheosis in eternity by living fully in the now of experience. The enemy of mankind is basic repression, the denial of throbbing physical life and the spectre of death. The prophetic message is for the wholly unrepressed life, which would bring into birth a new man.<BR/><BR/><BR/>And on p.267<BR/><BR/>Utopian man might live in the same ”eternal now” of the primitives, but undoubtedly too with the same real compulsivity and phobia. Unless one is talking about real immortality one is talking merely about an intensification of the character defenses and superstitions of man.<BR/><BR/>Neil Elgee<BR/>neil@ernestbecker.org<BR/>www.ernestbecker.orgAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com