Becker's Paradox

[Shogun]

I don't know a ton about this dude or his work. I couldn't find much, which weird in these internet days, but whatever....the point is interesting, I think, and one I haven't really considered before.

The most noble human motive will cause the greatest damage because it would lead men to find their highest use as part of an obedient mass, to give their complete devotion and their lives to their leaders…The paradox is that evil comes from man’s urge to heroic victory over evil….If Freud’s famous “fateful question for the human species” was not exactly the right one, the paradox is no less fateful. It seems that the experiment of man may well prove to be an evolutionary dead end, an impossible animal — one who, individually, needs for healthy action the very conduct that, on a general level, is destructive to him….From this point of view history is the career of a frightened animal who has to deaden himself against life in order to live. And it is this very deadening that takes such a toll of others’ lives….Today (written in 1974) we are living the grotesque spectacle of the poisoning of the earth by the 19th century hero system of unrestrained material production. This is perhaps the greatest and most pervasive evil to have emerged in all of history, and it may even eventually defeat all of mankind.

Since men must now hold for dear life onto the self-transcending meanings of the society in which they live, onto the immortality symbols which guarantee them indefinite duration of some kind, a new kind of instability and anxiety are created. And this anxiety is precisely what spills over into the affairs of men. In seeking to avoid evil, man is responsible for bringing more evil into the world than organisms could ever do merely by exercising their digestive tracts.

Ernest Becker - Wikipedia

The italics are mine. It's an interesting (and probably apt) take on Capitalism, and what it is doing to us.

I guess the real question is: can we move beyond this "hero system of unrestrained material production"? From the opposite perspective, can we move beyond this hero system of unrestrained consumption?

 

[Hood Critic]

I don't know a ton about this dude or his work. I couldn't find much, which weird in these internet days, but whatever....the point is interesting, I think, and one I haven't really considered before.



The italics are mine. It's an interesting (and probably apt) take on Capitalism, and what it is doing to use.

I guess the real question is: can we move beyond this "hero system of unrestrained material production"? From the opposite perspective, can we move beyond this hero system of unrestrained consumption?

There are a lot of points being made in just that single quote that don't appear to be mutually exclusive. In regards to your question on "unrestrained material production", what we know as capitalism, is just symbolic of man's innate flaw to chase the "something" that is missing. For this cycle of man, its material goods, in past cycles it has been dominion and its expansion, then knowledge and information in others. My answer would be no, during this cycle capitalism will destroy man and through future cycles man's measure of wealth and accumulation will do the same.

 

[Shogun]

There are a lot of points being made in just that single quote that don't appear to be mutually exclusive. In regards to your question on "unrestrained material production", what we know as capitalism, is just symbolic of man's innate flaw to chase the "something" that is missing. For this cycle of man, its material goods, in past cycles it has been dominion and its expansion, then knowledge and information in others. My answer would be no, during this cycle capitalism will destroy man and through future cycles man's measure of wealth and accumulation will do the same.

I guess the overly optimistic view would be that eventually this cycle will give way to one wherein people find "heroism" in something that isnt destructive to the planet or other humans.

 

[DEAD7]

It’s all part of the journey to post scarcity

...should be embraced not resisted.

 

[Shogun]

It’s all part of the journey to post scarcity

...should be embraced not resisted.

I'm starting to think scarcity might be more suitable to our mental health.
Pretty much all other animals live in the context of scarcity.
Seems far more natural than abundance.


“I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.” –Wittgenstein