Will you read his "Escape from Evil" next? Here he talks about how death anxiety leads to all sorts of human caused evils. Or you might want to check out Sheldon Solomon's "The Worm at the Core" published in 2015? Sheldon Solomon and his colleagues have done studies showing how death anxiety influences all sorts of behaviors. Fast forward to today, and there thousands of studies across various cultures validating Becker's theory that death anxiety underlies much of human behaviors. And Solomon's book is a much easier read i always, with many examples. For example, the first study they did: they got judges around PHX AZ and asked them to set bail on a case where a lady was jailed for prostitution. Then they reminded one group of judges about their mortality by asking them to write what it would feel like to die. The group that got reminded of their mortality set a bailed 9 times higher than the group of judges that weren't reminded of their death. I know Becker and the psychodynamics stuff sound like quackery, but just read Solomon's book and read up on the thousands of studies. Even the great Jordan Peterson said that the death anxiety phenomenon is one of the best documentated phenomenon in psychology.
I will look those two books up. Yeah, death anxiety probably has an influence but not to the extent Becker argues for. And priming is a thing, yes. There are also studies where we just talk about old people in one group and not mention them in another, and the group that hears about old people will walk slower afterwards. We can prime people in all sorts of ways. And I imagine thoughts about death are no exception. Becker takes the fear of death from "it influences behavior" to "it is the fundamental drive behind all behavior," like when he called all human culture a hero myth that is engaged with for the singular reason that we fear death. That is a wild claim. Completely ignores genetics, for starters, and ignores cultural practices in other animals - who he said were completely governed by instinct and thus cannot reflect on death - and likewise ignores the seemingly non-random elements in culture: like that every culture speaks a language, has a family structure, has hierarchies, develops rules of governance, etc etc. If all our culture was driven by a death instinct, then why do they all our cultures have such similarities? Wouldn't he have to concede that some culture is driven by biology? I mean, he even said schizophrenia is a consequent of being too symbolic, lol. I will check the other books out, as I do agree fear of death, fear of ageing, or fear more generally influences human behavior. But I would probably disagree with anyone who reduces human motivation down to being driven only by a fear of death.
Sounds like a very interesting book, as someone who lived with Mental Health issues for a time and got out of it, I do disagree with a lot of what is said in the book, but either way it's interesting to see another outlook on it.
Very interesting. I'm just bought a biography of a guy called Gabriele D'Annunzio. Completely insane figure. It fits the description of you mentioned as "a genius involved in symbolism creating hero myths". The only problem is that he probably invented fascism XD. I'm almost afraid to read it.
Does he square depression being a fear of death with the fact of suicide? The suicide rate is very high. I'm fond of the idea that masking death is adaptive psychologically(and I don't think "adaptive" means good, it just means good for survival. I think a culture that denies death creates a more psychopathic population, not merely a less neurotic one), but I've not read the book.
I will try to steel man. My guess would be that he thinks suicide is the ultimate denial of creaturely nature, and that by committing suicide the person allows their symbolic self to truly become immortal; since they never chanced it dying due to never trying. So, for instance, the idea that I could be a great painter continues to live on, not because I succeeded, but because I never failed due to never trying. Other than that, suicide is actually a good objection and I am not sure how he would answer it. I am sure he could make something up, that's what any good psychoanalyst would do, lol.
