Escape from Evil by Ernest Becker (PDF)

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From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Denial of Death, a penetrating and insightful perspective on the source of evil in our world.“A profound, nourishing book…absolutely essential to the understanding of our troubled times.” —Anais Nin“An urgent essay that bears all the marks of a final philosophical raging against the dying of the light.” —Newsweek“Brilliant and challenging…adds another bit of reason to balance destruction…It is, in the best sense of the words, both scientific and philosophical…of the highest importance.” —Los Angeles Times

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Ernest Beckner (1924–1974) won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for The Denial of Death. A distinguished social theorist and a popular teacher of anthropology, sociology, and social psychology, he was also the author of Revolution in Psychiatry, Angel in Armor, and The Structure of Evil.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐An intellectual attempt to solve the swirling theopathy.Escape From Evil (1975) by Ernest Becker has a preface dated 1972, but it was not published until after Becker’s death. Becker’s Denial of Death won the Pulitzer Prize for Becker established some significance for Becker’s thought in the social science tradition of Otto Rank, deeply concerned about the nature of social regimentation, drawn in the direction of Marcuse’s “The Ideology of Death.”The circular nature of the reasoning on this problem of the aftermath of heroic efforts to overcome the anxiety produced by mortality are given a religious nature throughout Escape From Evil. A consideration of money as a form of magical designation of value in chapter 6 is followed by:The Basic Dynamic of Human Evil (pp. 91-95).Scapegoating is easily extended from religious ritual to:When all explanations are comparedon the slaughter of the Jews,Gypsies, Poles, and so manyothers by the Nazis, and allthe many reasons are adduced,there is one reason that goesright into the heart and mind ofeach person, and that is the projectionof the shadow. (p. 95).The modern world has avoided blowing itself up since the ways to create chain reactions of neutrons since the discovery of the neutron in 1932 have been thoroughly tested. Praying for peace became such an accepted part of religion when I was a child that it seemed strange for me to cooperate so fully with my draft board in 1968. I was a glutton for punishment in ways that few intellectuals could imagine, and Becker might have been reluctant to advocate any other alternatives by publishing comments like the following:Little does it matterthat modern public relationsand the appearance ofbureaucratic neutralityand efficiency disguisebetter than ever both thesacrifice and the blatantcentral power of the state;the chief of the U.S.”Selective Service”(the public relationseuphemism) may sitaround and logicallyexplain his functionand the “fairness” ofthe selective processto young high school students,but the bare fact is that theyare obliged by the state’s powerto offer their lives for its owndiversionary ceremony, justas were the ancient Egyptianslaves. If there is anything newin this, it is that the young arebeginning to understand what isreally happening. (p. 99).I was 21 in 1968, feeling like I could handle some adult responsibilities after spending most of my years in school, but I should have been worried that some evil magic was about to take over the world’s supply of money. Gold was called an “immortality symbol” (p. 74), where Norman O. Brown is given credit for seeing a city as a monument to a history of requiring children to continue the accumulation of the glory of their fathers. Brown considered money “still sacred” (p. 76), not really a science because:it is still a living myth,a religion. Oscar Wilde observedthat “religions die when one pointsout their truth. Science is thehistory of dead religions.” From thispoint of view, the religion of moneyhas resisted the revelation of its truth;it has not given itself over to sciencebecause it has not wanted to die. (p. 76).The dynamic nature of life is trying to latch on to whatever symbol can provide the greatest cohesiveness for those who can combine power with social control. Chapter 8, The Nature of Social Evil, brings up the ideas of Kenneth Burke, included by Hugh D. Duncan in Communication and Social Order (1962), Symbols in Society (1968), and Symbols and Social Theory (1969). The attempt to produce social science also calls attention to the work of Robert Jay Lifton.Science is likely to lose influence as the power of money to maintain a huge educational establishment disappears like the commercial success of rock and roll. If unfettered peer to peer file sharing determines the nature of thought in the future, rock and roll is probably beyond the reach that any form of science will have in the collapse of ideology and the next generation of young people looking for something to practice.

⭐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.”

⭐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.

⭐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.

⭐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.

⭐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.

⭐Literally a used library book with the card pouch and everything. Plus the resellers went to the trouble of putting really strong tape all over the cover so if you try and peel off the sticker it will totally ruin the already soiled hardcover. Infuriating

⭐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.

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