Both my friend and I have been particularly interested in Becker's ideas about creativity as an honest response to our mortality. But I want to discuss a different though related aspect of Becker's thinking. Let me start with this quote from page 105 of The Denial of Death:
The first thing that seems to emerge clearly about Freud's stance toward reality is that, like many men, he had great trouble yielding. He could submit neither to the world or to other men. He tried to keep a center of gravity within himself...
In a broad sense, this is something true of many people and is particularly true of many men born into male-dominated societies. Again, in the broad sense, we see this among business people, athletes, politicians and more specifically, in an extreme form, among people who are narcissistic or sociopathic. But Becker is talking in a narrower sense about something that is acutely felt by many people in the complex era that has existed since the mid-19th century (acutely or not, though, it's always been somewhat conscious in the minds of thoughtful people whether they are found in the East or West).
In the West, we speak of people being self-reliant, self-made or, more broadly, individualistic (ironically, the character of such types is usually sketched rather easily in pulp fiction and popcorn movies—see the typical Clark Gable movie; obviously people who are largely self-created like Freud are considerably more complex). Such descriptions of self-reliance or individualism are at heart delusional; on the other hand, a belief that one can shape reality has some degree of potency—certainly more so than simply yielding to fate or superstition. Certainly what one can be is competent and imaginative. But, in the service of what? Too often it means being in the service of some idea of the self that once again is somewhat delusional. As Becker explains on page 107, it's a common problem when framed in the particulars that all of us, regardless of our self-image, so frequently share:
...what makes the matter of yielding ... so difficult for Freud? The same reason that makes it so for everyman. To yield is to disperse one's shored-up center, let down one's guard, one's character armor, admit one's lack of self-sufficiency. And this shored-up center, this guard, this armor, this supposed self-sufficency are the very things that the entire project of coming-of-age from childhood to manhood is all about. ...the basic task that the person cuts out for himself is the attempt to father himself... The causa-sui passion is an energetic fantasy that covers over the rumbling of man's fundamental creatureliness, or what we an now more pointedly call his hopeless lack of genuine centering on his own energies to assure the victory of his life. ...man can only attempt to do so in his fantasy. ... One suspects at all times that one is fundamentally helpless and impotent, but one must protest against it. The fathers and mothers always cast their shadow. ... To yield is to admit that support has to come from outside oneself and that justification for one's life has to come totally from some self-transcending web in which one consents to be suspended...
A key word in the above quote is near the end: suspects. We're not entirely helpless, nor entirely impotent. But even the most competent, assuming they are honest with themselves, have to be amazed at how often they fail in ways that are quite real. If one is realistic, one can make a difference, but one cannot create oneself anew, one cannot redefine what we are, let alone what a society is. In fact, we are already in the process of dying before we begin to understand the enormity of a series of problems. We can make dents in those problems, we can create a few new things, we can push against what is toward some new arrangement, but we cannot do much beyond that. Perhaps there are exceptions but often we're talking some group dynamic which is where humans are most effective anyway, even if misguided or collectively for reasons not purely related to public rationales. Under stress, a group of scientists can create an atom bomb. With conviction, several generations of a city can create a magnificient cathedral. As individuals, we are biologically self-contained with a flawed but extraordinary brain but we are still fundamentally dependent on others for who we are despite our strong sense of a self.
From our first moments of reaching out in infancy, we increasingly want to transform ourselves into a complete human being. But our transformation depends on what we see and hear. We imitate the language and music of others. We imitate the facial expressions and movements of others. (We even imitate, quite successfully in fact, the behavior of animals.) What others reach for, we reach for. What others desire, we desire. Beyond what we take in from others, when and where does the unique person we see in ourselves emerge—if ever? Make no mistake, creativity is real, even if it is often nothing more than reinventing—and reinvigorating—what others have said and done. Most human beings, however, are content most of the time to become what others are and have been while feeding the illusion of their unique life construction (we are legally, emotionally and humanistically unique in other ways even if we depend on and are sustained by what others have put into us).
The reality, in its harshest form, is that for most of us beyond two or three generations of our relatives and a few friends, our existence barely has an impact even on the local environs where we live our lives. Time is swift and we are forgotten. This is something important to understand—but it is not entirely correct. First, no person outside of ourselves can ever truly know who we are, even if we have written books and left diaries and letters. The complete package of who we are never travels far. A spouse for a few remaining years becomes the most complete vessel of many of us and yet the contents are always incomplete. But it's the wrong way to look at things. All of us, if we can just forget ourselves for a moment, are very old. I am as old as Heraclitus and Socrates. I utter their words. I feel them. I am not one being but thousands who have poured through me. Parts of me are parts of others. And even if my ripples fade out long before those of Heraclitus or Socrates, there are echos sustained and sometimes amplified along with millions of others.
Becker has some powerful things to say but certain kinds of honesty can partially blind us to the subtleties and complexity that is the real world. Neither the West nor the East totally gets it but both have much to teach. We are each of us unique and each of us the same but not in the ways we were so certain was the case. We are mortal and the universe as we know it will not last forever. But there are compensations and there is time, at least some time, to shape what might come.
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