Berman / Becker
I can't remember if I've written about Morris Berman here before. I think I started a post, but it remained as a draft.
If you have an hour to spare, I recommend listening to his podcast interview here
http://jari.podbean.com/2008/06/17/interview-with-morris-berman/
The interviewer comes across as a bit ditzy, but she lets Berman do a lot of talking. (No Charlie Rose style interruptions, as when he seems to feel a need to prove to everyone that he already knows what his guest is talking about.)
Listening to it was one of the most intellectually stimulating things I've done in the past week or so.
--
I know I've mentioned Colin Wilson's Criminal History of Mankind in here before, but I have to do it again. A few weeks ago I was trying to snap myself out of a moderate depressive state (lasting about a week). Unable to concentrate on new material, I usually turn to old familiars (books, movies, music) where I've already got "grooves" worn down to take them in. So I pulled down the Criminal History and started reading. Generally I skip around in the first 120 pages or so. Those pages could be published as a small book in their own right, and I think it would be one of Wilson's best. At any rate, I had noticed before that he cites Ernest Becker's Denial of Death , but I had never followed up on that, even though the quotes and paraphrases he offers are interesting. The next day I had planned to stop by the PSU library again, and while there I looked up the Becker book. In the first few pages, Becker notes his indebtedness to Otto Rank's work. He mentions that his own copies of Rank's book are filled with marginal checkmarks and exclamation points. That is true of my Rank book as well, so I knew I had found a kindred spirit. I got the book from a public library soon after, and proceeded to read through it in two big sessions over the next couple days. A phenomenal book. I wish I had read it years ago. I sort of knew about it by reputation and mistakenly thought it was some pop psychology fluff from the seventies when Death books were a bit trendy (Kubler-Ross and all that). Far from it. The Denial of Death is a devastating book--a combination of social history and philosophy. It is not easily shaken off, and I suspect people with more optimistic constitutions than myself will feel a need to dismiss it as a gloomy "jeremiad," or perhaps the distorted vision of depressive personality. What I find so impressive about it is that he does not set up a dark vision of things only to offer his own solution or program for improvement, but rather argues that there is no program or solution. People probably suspect that this is the case, and this is why people don't like to dwell on negative visions like Becker's book, or Berman's books either. Berman says in that interview that his early "optimistic" book The Reenchantment of the World was his only (slight) best-seller. As his books became less cheery, the sales dropped. In a way, this is central to Becker's point. We humans live by what he calls a "vital lie" in which mortality is kept out of sight. Works of art or literature which threaten to pull the veil of illusion away are usually ignored in favor of works that give vitality to the Lie.
If you have an hour to spare, I recommend listening to his podcast interview here
http://jari.podbean.com/2008/06/17/interview-with-morris-berman/
The interviewer comes across as a bit ditzy, but she lets Berman do a lot of talking. (No Charlie Rose style interruptions, as when he seems to feel a need to prove to everyone that he already knows what his guest is talking about.)
Listening to it was one of the most intellectually stimulating things I've done in the past week or so.
--
I know I've mentioned Colin Wilson's Criminal History of Mankind in here before, but I have to do it again. A few weeks ago I was trying to snap myself out of a moderate depressive state (lasting about a week). Unable to concentrate on new material, I usually turn to old familiars (books, movies, music) where I've already got "grooves" worn down to take them in. So I pulled down the Criminal History and started reading. Generally I skip around in the first 120 pages or so. Those pages could be published as a small book in their own right, and I think it would be one of Wilson's best. At any rate, I had noticed before that he cites Ernest Becker's Denial of Death , but I had never followed up on that, even though the quotes and paraphrases he offers are interesting. The next day I had planned to stop by the PSU library again, and while there I looked up the Becker book. In the first few pages, Becker notes his indebtedness to Otto Rank's work. He mentions that his own copies of Rank's book are filled with marginal checkmarks and exclamation points. That is true of my Rank book as well, so I knew I had found a kindred spirit. I got the book from a public library soon after, and proceeded to read through it in two big sessions over the next couple days. A phenomenal book. I wish I had read it years ago. I sort of knew about it by reputation and mistakenly thought it was some pop psychology fluff from the seventies when Death books were a bit trendy (Kubler-Ross and all that). Far from it. The Denial of Death is a devastating book--a combination of social history and philosophy. It is not easily shaken off, and I suspect people with more optimistic constitutions than myself will feel a need to dismiss it as a gloomy "jeremiad," or perhaps the distorted vision of depressive personality. What I find so impressive about it is that he does not set up a dark vision of things only to offer his own solution or program for improvement, but rather argues that there is no program or solution. People probably suspect that this is the case, and this is why people don't like to dwell on negative visions like Becker's book, or Berman's books either. Berman says in that interview that his early "optimistic" book The Reenchantment of the World was his only (slight) best-seller. As his books became less cheery, the sales dropped. In a way, this is central to Becker's point. We humans live by what he calls a "vital lie" in which mortality is kept out of sight. Works of art or literature which threaten to pull the veil of illusion away are usually ignored in favor of works that give vitality to the Lie.