Thought Provoking.

কিন্তু আমি Becker এবং তিনি যাদের উদ্ধৃতি দিয়েছেন প্রায়শই, সেই Yung, Rank, Kierkegaard প্রমুখের অবজার্ভেশনের তারিফ করছি বটে কিন্তু কনক্লুশনগুলো মেনে নিতে পারছি না।

তবে মনে রাখা উচিত, বইটা বেশ পুরনো। এরমধ্যে আমরা নিউরোসায়েন্স, সাইকোলজি, জেনেটিক্সে অনেকটা এগিয়েছি। যে স্টোয়িক ও পজিটিভ নিহিলিস্ট ভাবধারা আজকাল জনপ্রিয় হচ্ছে তা হয়ত তখনও অতটা জনপ্রিয় হয়নি। বাঁচার জন্য, স্যানিটি রক্ষার জন্য জীবনের যে একটা 'অর্থ' থাকতেই হবে এমন একটা ধারণা এই বইটার ভিত্তি। আরেকটা জিনিস অ্যাজিউম করে নিয়েছেন বেকার যে ইভোল্যুশন আমাদের কিছু ক্ষমতা 'দিয়েছে', এমনটা যেন ইভোল্যুশের স্বাধীন ইচ্ছা আছে। ইভোল্যুশন, আমরা যতদূর জানি, অন্ধ।

বেকার সাহেব (এবং অটো র‍্যাঙ্কও) মনে করেন, শেষমেশ একজন ঈশ্বর এবং ধর্ম প্রয়োজন পড়ে মানুষের এক্সিস্টেনশিয়াল ক্রাইসিস থেকে মুক্তি পেতে। মূল যুক্তিটা হচ্ছে কোনো একটি হায়ার অথোরিটির এনডোর্সমেন্ট ছাড়া মানুষ চলতে পারে না। শেষ পয়েন্টটিতে আমি খানিকটা একমত, তবে এরজন্য ধর্ম প্রয়োজন (আমরা সাধারণত ধর্ম বলতে যা বুঝি সেই ধর্মের কথা বলছি না, বরং হারিরি ধর্মের যে সংজ্ঞা দিয়েছেন তার বইতে, অর্থাৎ মোটাদাগে, "যা আমাদের এথিকসকে অথরিটি দেয় তাই ধর্ম")। তা হতে পারে লিবারালিজম, লিবারালিজমের সংকট কী হতে পারে তা এখানে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ না। আমি শুধু বলতে চাচ্ছি ঈশ্বরবিহীন নতুন 'ধর্ম'গুলো সে জায়গায় আসতে পারে, এবং তা হচ্ছেও।

সাইকোঅ্যানালাইসিস আজ অব্দি বোধহয় শুদ্ধ বিজ্ঞান না। এর অনেকটাই মানুষের সাবজেক্টিভ রিয়্যালিটির ওপর নির্ভরশীল এবং সাবজেক্টিভ রিয়্যালিটির এই অংশগুলো যথার্থভাবে ট্রান্সফার বা প্রকাশের বিশেষ সুবিধা মানুষের নেই। কনভার্সেশনই শেষ ভরসা। অনেকটাই অন্ধের হাতি দেখার মত অবস্থা। সেসব মেনে নিলে সাইকোঅ্যালাইসিসের রথী-মহারথীরা যথার্থই জিনিয়াস। কিন্তু শুদ্ধ বিজ্ঞান হতে হয়ত অনেকটা দূর যেতে হবে।

The Denial of Death [1973] – ★★★★

This non-fiction is both: a cry of a soul on the human condition, and a penetrating essay that demystifies the man and his actions.

“It is fateful and ironic how the lie we need in order to live dooms us to a life that is never really ours” [Becker, 1973: 56].

Ernest Becker (1924 – 1974) was a cultural anthropologist whose book The Denial of Death won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize. It deals with the topic that few people want to consider or talk about – their own mortality and death. The paradox is that, although this topic is considered to be a societal taboo, everyone on this earth will have to confront it sooner or later. In fact, Becker argues, everyone is confronting and dealing with it from the moment that they are born – they just do it subconsciously or unconsciously. The Denial of Death delves into the works of Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank and Søren Kierkegaard, as Becker puts his thesis forward that all humans have a natural fear (or terror) of death and their own mortality, and, thus, throughout their lives, employ certain mechanisms (including repression) and create illusions to deal with this fear and live. Though the book relies heavily on works by other authors, it is also a very deep and insightful read.

In his book, Becker has recourse to psychology, psychiatry, philosophy and anthropology, and begins his book by pointing out that, from birth, we feel the need to be “heroic” and cannot really comprehend our own death – the fact that we will die one day is too terrible a thought to live with and, thus, men [sic] never think about their own deaths seriously. People become attracted to a certain “hero” system in society and are conditioned from birth to admire people who face death courageously. This desire stems from a human being both a mortal and insignificant creature in the grand scheme of things and the universe (a simple body), and, at the same time, a human capable of self-awareness, consciousness, creativity, dreams, aspirations, desires, feelings and high intelligence (soul/self). It is very difficult (in fact, impossible) to reconcile these two elements and come to terms with the fact that this human being who has so much potential and awareness can just “bite the dust” and do so as easily as some insect flying next to him/her.

Relying on the work of Sigmund Freud, Becker speculates on child psychology, and goes to detail many mechanisms that human beings employ to escape the paradox outlined above, the condition of the perpetual fear of death, as well as the fact that life and death are so closely interlinked that one cannot live without “being awakened to life through death” [Becker, 1973: 66]. These mechanisms are the creations of various illusions, such as the “character” defence, as well as such activities as drinking and shopping to forget mortality, and various other activities, from writing books to having babies, to prolong one’s immortality. It is precisely the implicit denial of death and decay by everyone in society that makes sexuality such a taboo topic (because it exposes humans’ propensity to be mere creatures that procreate). Thus, death or bodily functions are best deemed forgotten, and, instead, humans set their minds on cultural things to get closer to the idea of being immortal. Love is explained by Becker as the desire to experience immortality through the lover or the love for another person, and one idolises that person to which one is attached to and, in this, way, seeks immortality (“the love partner becomes the divine idol within which to fulfil one’s life” [1973: 160]).

Becker goes to explain artistic creativity, masochism, group sadism, neuroses and mental illness in general through his idea of the terror of death. According to the author, neurosis is natural since everyone holds back from life at some point and to some extent, and Becker also points out that the happier and more well-adjusted a person appears to be, the more successful he is in creating illusions around him and fooling everyone close to him. In fact, it is neurotic personalities out there, those who are generally fearful and socially-handicapped, who really see the true picture and refuse to believe in the illusionary world created by others. Others are merely indulging in their “hellish” jobs to escape their innate feelings of insignificance and dread – men are protected from reality and truth through jobs and their routine – “the hellish [jobs that men toil at] is a repeated vaccination against the madness of the asylum” [1973: 160].

Becker then turns to Kierkegaard and says that religion previously provided an answer for the man to resolve this paradox of death and life, and it is through religion the man could previously finally accept that he would die. There is an urge in every human being from childhood to attach himself or herself to a high power figure (“expand by merging with the powerful” [1973: 149]), and religion provided the means of attachment to be able to transcend a being while remaining a being. Religion provided a comfortable answer to death, while enabling people to develop and realise themselves. However, now, the modern man cannot have recourse to that religion because it lost its conviction and he [sic] no longer believes in the mysterious. The modern man is stranded and lost, trying to reach his immortality by other means, sometimes through very undesirable means. The solution that Kierkegaard proposes is the “knight of faith”, who accepts everything in life and has faith – “the man must reach out for support to a dream, a metaphysic of hope that sustains him and makes his life worthwhile” [1973: 275].

The downside of Becker’s book is that it relies too heavily on what others have said before Becker, including Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank and Søren Kierkegaard, and there is this feeling that the whole book is merely a summary of other authors’ positions, including those of William James and Alfred Adler. It becomes difficult to distinguish Becker’s views from those he quotes so extensively, praises and criticises. Becker’s account is also very individualistic, with his thesis stemming from the premise that a human being is a very selfish being who primarily desires to make his own voice heard. In that vein, the author pays little attention to more collectivist and altruistic aspects of the human nature, and barely mentions such elements as self-sacrifice, suicide or Buddhism – though they are all very relevant to his topic. This is coupled with the endless repetitions by Becker, as well as his tendency to over-simplify human behaviour, reducing it to just a single driving force.

⚰️ Though hardly ground-breaking, The Denial of Death is, nevertheless, an essay of great insights which puts other people’s ideas intelligently together to become an almost essential read since the ideas put forward can really open one’s eyes on many things in life, and on how and why the man does what he does in life.

Going to school when I did, it’s hard to conceive of how important the psychoanalytic project was for so much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The influence of Freud and the subsequent schools of psychology developed by his students spread into virtually every discipline, from literary analysis to economics, but by the time I got there it was all pretty much gone. I’m sure that somewhere there’s an Onoda-type holdout department that won’t let the old stuff go, or one or two octogenarian professors whose names are recognizable enough that they haven’t been forced into retirement, but for me psychoanalysis was primarily discussed in the past tense.

This book is from 1973, and clearly had quite an impact on American thought at the time (if Woody Allen movies are any representation, at least), but seems impossibly dated forty years later. In fact, aside from a handful of obscure movie references, I wouldn’t be too terribly surprised to find that this came from the 30’s or 40’s. Becker’s project here, rather than an actual mediation on death, is a reorientation of psychoanalysis, putting death at the top (or bottom?) of the pyramid in place of the sexual impulses that Freud spent so much time thinking about. This new direction for study is a kind of synthesis of Freud, Kierkegaard, and notably Otto Rank, one of Freud’s disciples who Becker believes hasn’t received the credit he is due.

In that way, there’s not a whole lot of original thought in this book, which is probably its most contemporary quality. Rather than present new ideas, he shuffles and reorganizes old ones from disparate sources that, due to various disciplinary and dispositional prejudices, have been kept at arm’s length from one another. It’s really an extended commentary on the work of prior psychoanalysts, and its (syn)thesis was apparently fairly revolutionary at the time (though, again, its late publication date makes me suspicious of that), but today it seems somewhat obvious.

And it all reads like a bunch of garbage. It’s clear that psychoanalytic thinking must have been a great deal of fun, finding all kinds of willy-nilly metaphors for everyday behaviors that can be pulled out of mythology or Shakespeare or one’s ass. When one isn’t beholden to any sort of evidence other than anecdotes from like-minded psychologists, one can say pretty much anything one wants and, if the voice is properly authoritative, say it to a whole lot of people. It’s like philosophy without all that pesky logic and rigorous thinking. It seems unfair to apply 2012 knowledge to a book that didn’t have access to it, but this is from 1973. Were we really still looking for cures-through-metaphor to things like schizophrenia and – appallingly – homosexuality at such a late date? (Psychiatric drugs for schizophrenics were available at least since the 50s, but you’ll have a hard time finding a suggestion of any potential biological/chemical causes to mental diseases here.)

Oh, and if you’re a woman, bad news: there’s either no hope for you, or Becker isn’t interested in looking for it. It’s your genitals, after all, that are causing all the problems in the world.

Even if we chock all this offensive nonsense up to being a sign o’ the times (which I can’t help but reiterate is 1973, much too late to excuse it), the book still buys into the “heroic soul” project that is to this reader extremely annoying. The idea that some people are just too sensitive for this world, and that the beautiful souls of our great men need special care is an adolescent concept that I’m always surprised can be found in so much literature written by people who should have been old enough to know better. “You just don’t get me, man.” Half of this book’s sentiments can be found on t-shirts at your local Hot Topic.

The concept that humanity lives in a state of denial of our own imminent demise is interesting, but doesn’t feel particularly new, considering mortality has been a theme in literature since… literature. That we need to shed our reliance on the common denials – materialism, status, class – and transfer them to the unhappy cure of Becker’s Rank-ian brand of psychoanalysis is not convincing in the least, and so this book feels like yet another (albeit depressive) common denial to add to the list. It may have been a big influence on everyone in the 1970’s, but thankfully we’ve put a lot of this stuff behind us.