[Music] we're all familiar with common images of evil serial killers Supernatural monsters acts of Terror but what about the general evil that pervades daily life distant Wars factory farming sweat shops evil is not solely characterized by hideous maliciousness and twisted path ology instead more often than not it appears in the Bal and acceptable cycle of the everyday where does this evil come from the existential Anthropologist Ernest Becker posited that humans experience the unique situation of being finite creatures aware of their own finitude we get up live our lives try our best knowing that this will
all eventually end from this we experience a sort of existential guilt which results from the self conscious bafflement at having emerged from nature at sticking out too much without knowing what for at not being able to securely Place himself in an eternal meaning system to defend against this to deny our deaths we have developed belief structures that will guarantee our symbolic existence long after our biological lives have ended these beliefs act to atone for this guilt within them we have a blueprint to become a hero in some sense to offer something of ourselves from ancient
rituals to industrial society all of human social behavior according to Becker is a hero system that promises victory over death unfortunately these hero systems are frequently challenged anomalies exist to remind us that what we believe in what guarantees our own symbolic immortality is far from guaranteed and if proven wrong we die this video is sponsored by brilliant I'm a huge proponent of lifelong learning whether I was in school or out of it I've always valued learning new topics no matter the field however one area that always scared me was math and science that is until
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person nourishes his immortality in the ideology of self-perpetuation to which he gives his Allegiance this gives his life the only abiding significance it can have no wonder men go into rage over fine points of belief if your adversary wins the argument about truth you die and so most ideologies locate evil in those beliefs that contradict their own identifying the threat of life in some place where it can be plated controlled and destroyed from this Becker views all of human history as a succession of immortality ideologies the Battle of good versus evil in which each side
thinks that the other is a threat to their own self-perpetuation all ideology is about one's qualification for eternity and so all disputes and conflicts are about who is truly dirty the use of the term dirty here is important all that is evil culturally speaking is that which reminds us of our bind to the Earth to our wretched condition as animals destined for worm food across many belief systems the devil represents the body and those gross things that remind us of our Earthly condition similarly the enemy usually functions as the scapegoat the devil or evil incarnated
their existence reminds us of our own potential for Filth as Auto rank notes this leads to an Impulse for Destruction the death fear of the ego is lessened by the killing the sacrifice of the other through the death of the other one buys oneself free from the penalty of dying of being killed War determines fate it tests to see which side the gods are on by who has killed more in the end this is actually a well studied phenomena in social psychology the cycle of dehumanization when one group perceives the other as less than human
as representative of our closeness to death they dehumanize that group the other group when dehumanized in turn dehumanizes the group dehumanizing them this cycle perpetuates and builds and is hypothesized to be the driving force behind everything from racial Prejudice to mass Wars interestingly then Becker does not locate evil in death itself or any threats of life rather he argues that evil Vil is grounded in this scapegoating this use of the other to assert one's heroism evil is wherever we use our fear of death to justify acts of violence and hatred towards others as he notes
evil is caused by man's hunger for perpetuation and this appetite is driven Above All by our vulnerability and guilt we are pathetic and fragile creatures who must appropriate others to perpetuate ourselves evil is born from Fear whether this is in terms of destroying the other to affirm our own self-importance and ideological righteousness or through dehumanizing others and thereby justifying their exploitation to serve our biological and symbolic continuation the latter form of appropriating others out of fear reflects one of the most prevalent forms of death denial capitalism money is an effective immortality symbol according to Norman
Brown this means that economic activity rather than being rational and secular is sacred at heart we create Surplus we make useless Goods we suffer for profit at a point where it is beyond actually meeting our material needs as Becker would argue many of us strive for wealth and generate a surplus in order to offer something to stand out we will become Heroes we will no longer feel the guilt of existing capitalism is yet another immortality ritual evident in the words of Mary Douglas money provides a fixed Eternal recognizable sign for what would be confused contradict
operations ritual makes visible external signs of internal States money is only an extreme and specialized type of ritual at times we may remember that we can't carry the money we made to our graves in the end we only have fleeting moments of felt immortality and the urge to always make more we become alienated something happened in history which gradually spoiled the average man transformed him from an active creative being into the pathetic consumer who Smiles proudly from our Billboards that his armpits are odor-free around the clock this sort of alienation effectively distances Us from Evil
we feel cozy in the system and we are only ever momentarily bothered by the evils that stem from profit environmental destruction private prisons political corruption the industrial War complex where pathological ideologies may clearly Define the lines between good and evil the modern machine of capital has simply standardized appropriation still it comes from the same place an inherent denial of death itself to defeat evil the sort of evil that stems from Fear Becker posits that we must go beyond a historical view of human nature as he argues conservatives and thinkers such as Freud view humans as
inherently selfish and destructive on the other hand certain schools of Marxism and rouso view humans as a blank slate corrupted by evil institutions that if altered will result in the end of evil Becker believes that humans are neither inherently evil nor neutral but instead they are fearful and weak from this sphere we have developed society which is a standardized system of death denial he points at a proclivity for us to naturally establish systems of unfreedom arguing that men fashion Freedom as a bribe for self-perpetuation we do this of course because we need something to guarantee
our importance humbly Becker proposes a world scientific body of diverse expertise that works on an agreed general theory of human unhappiness in it they would see societies as hero systems where people ironically turn the world into an even larger graveyard by trying to bring forth absolute Purity and goodness specifically he argues for a Marxism that emphasizes the psychological and spiritual dimensions of human nature we must view ourselves and everyone first and foremost as terrified and vulnerable billionaires then rather than Saints of progress or malicious Devils become Paragons of humanity at its most terrified to amass
such wealth to appropriate others to such an extent hints at an underlying symptom of horror at the thought of one's death the criminal the murderer they too can be viewed as acting out of weakness and pathetic Humanity warmonger nations are then viewed as societies whose sense of symbolic immortality is threatened above all such an organization will Center on one key idea it is the evil who are most fearful Beyond this Becker does not attempt to paint any sort of visions of Utopia in other work he has hinted at a sort of KAG Guardian leap of
faith as well as creativity through ART as individual solutions to coping with our own mortality and perhaps the problem of evil will always be there in some form however I do think that this shift in perspective is fruitful and should be applied I think this idea of fear being behind evil should only further encourage us to view love as the only true savior no matter how hokey and cliche such an answer sounds to love courageously in spite of the terror in spite of fear and in spite of death to appreciate rather than appropriate to choose
love over fear [Music] here love has never been a popular movement and no one's ever wanted really to be free the world is held together really it is held together by the love and passion of very few people otherwise of course you should in despair walk down the street to any City any afternoon and look around you what you got to remember is what you're looking at is also you everyone you're looking at is also you you could be that person you could be that monster you could be that cop and you to decide in
yourself not to be [Music]
