The Denial of Death
Ratings10
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings10
Average rating3.5
'It made me rethink the roots of our deepest fears and insecurities, and why we often disappoint ourselves in how we manifest them' Bill Clinton, Guardian Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the 'why' of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie - man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. The book argues that human civilisation is a defence against the knowledge that we are mortal beings. Becker states that humans live in both the physical world and a symbolic world of meaning, which is where our 'immortality project' resides. We create in order to become immortal - to become part of something we believe will last forever. In this way we hope to give our lives meaning. In The Denial of Death, Becker sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates decades after it was written.
Reviews with the most likes.
I really want to come back to this book. I remember reading it when I was 18 just before I came to Cambridge, and it staggered me and blew my mind. It'd be really interesting to come revisit it years later, now that I have (hopefully) become better read, and whether it has the same impact.
If only I could take back the time I spent reading this masturbatory psychobabble and instead used it to re-watch Rick And Morty, I would've learnt a whole lot more than what I got out from reading this pseudo-science.
I first learnt about The Denial of Death when I was watching my first film from Woody Allen - Annie Hall. The witty, self-deprecating humor with subtle hints about problems of humanity was right up my alley, and so naturally the book referenced also caught my attention. The Pulitzer prize was a cherry on top. Recently, it also got heavily referenced in one of videos of the film analysis channel - Like Stories of Old.
And so my curiosity peaked and with a great enthusiasm, I picked up this book.
The central theme of Death and how we shape our lives around it was an intriguing theme and our need for hero-worship was a very interesting idea. However things started to go downhill the moment Freud came into picture. Even though Ernest Becker repeatedly mentioned how Freud got a lot of the things wrong and tried to bring out later thinkers' nuanced theories, it was clear that he worshipped Freud. How else can you explain a whole chapter on root-causing the times when “The Great Freud” fainted and trying to analyze the possible reasons! And then there's one chapter called “Perversions” where he declares homosexuality a “problem” to be solved and analyzes it to say that people engage in this act because they are trying to rebel against carnal reality of their existence being for the sole purpose of procreation. What bullshit!
Maybe this book deserves a place in history as a testament to our mistakes and how we used to treat genuine illnesses not through science but by psychobabble.
