Becker, Ernest. Escape from Evil. New York: The Free Press, 1972.

And this brings us to the unique paradox of the human condition: that man wants to persevere as does any animal or primitive organism; he is driven by the same craving to consume, to convert energy, and to enjoy continued experience. But man is cursed with a burden no animal has to bear: he is conscious that his own end is inevitable, that his stomach will die. (p. 3)

Wanting nothing less than eternal prosperity, man from the very beginning could not live with the prospect of death. As I argued in The Denial of Death, man erected cultural symbol which do not age or decay to quiet his fear of his ultimate end – and of more immediate concern, to provide the promise of indefinite duration. His culture gives man an alter-organism which is more durable and powerful than the one nature endowed him with. (p. 3)

What I am saying is that man transcends death via culture not only in simple (or simple-minded) visions like gorging himself with lamb in a perfumed heaven full of dancing girls, but in much more complex and symbolic ways. Man transcends death not only by continuing to feed his appetites, but especially by finding a meaning for his life, some kind of larger scheme into which he fits: he may believe he has fulfilled God’s purpose, or done his duty to his ancestors or gamily, or achieved something which has enriched mankind. This is how man assures the expansive meaning of his life in the face of the real limitations of his body; the “immortal self” can take very spiritual forms, and spirituality is not a simple reflex of hunger and fear. It is an expression of the will to live, the burning desire of the creature to count, to make a difference on the planet because he has lived, has emerged on it, and has worked, suffered and died. (p. 3)

This is mankind’s age-old dilemma in the face of death: it is the meaning of the thing that is of paramount importance, what man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance. Man wants to know that his life has somehow counted, if not for himself, then at least in a larger scheme of things, that it has left a trace, a trace that has meaning. And in order for anything once alive to have meaning, its effects must remain alive in eternity in some way. Or, if there is to be a “final” tally of the scurrying of man on earth – a “judgment day” – then this trace of one’s life must enter that tally and put on record who one was and that what one did was significant. (p. 4)

But it is culture itself that embodies the transcendence of death in some form or other, whether it appears purely religious or not. It is very important for students of man to be clear about this: culture itself is sacred, since it is the “religion” that assures in some way the perpetuation of its members. For a long time students of society liked to think in terms of “sacred” versus “profane” aspects of social life. But there has been continued dissatisfaction with this kind of simple dichotomy, and the reason is that there is really no basic distinction between sacred and profane in the symbolic affairs of men. As soon as you have symbols you have artificial self-transcendence via culture. Everything cultural is fabricated and given meaning by the mind, a meaning that was not given by physical nature. Culture is in this sense “supernatural,” and all systematizations of culture have in the end the same goal: to raise men above nature, to assure them that in some ways their lives count in the universe more than merely physical things count. (p. 4)

The fact is that self-transcendence via culture does not give man a simple and straightforward solution to the problem of death; the terror of death still rumbles underneath the cultural repression. What men have done is to shift the fear of death onto the higher level of cultural perpetuity; and this very triumph ushers in an ominous new problem. 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. It is man’s ingenuity, rather than his animal nature, that has given his fellow creatures such a bitter earthly fate. (p. 5)

Many people have scoffed at Goffman’s delineation of the everyday modern rituals of face-work and status forcing; they have argued that these types of petty self-promotion might be true of modern organization men hopelessly set adrift in bureaucratic society but these kinds of shallow one-upmanship behaviors couldn’t possibly be true of man everywhere. Consequently, these critics say, Goffman may be a perceptive observer of the contemporary scene, of the one-dimensionality of mass society, but he is definitely not talking about human nature. I have noted elsewhere that I think these critics of Goffman are very wrong, and I repeat it here because it is more in context with the deeper understanding of primitive society. When you set up society to do creation rituals, then you obviously increase geometrically the magnitude of importance that organisms can impart to one another. It is only in modern society that the mutual imparting of self-importance has trickled down to the simple maneuvering of face-work there is hardly any way to get a sense of value except from the boss, the company dinner, or the random social encounters in the elevator or on the way to the executive toilet. It is pretty demeaning – but that is not Goffman’s fault, it is the playing out of the historical decadence of ritual. (p. 16)

One of the reasons guilt is so difficult to analyze is that it is itself “dumb.” It is a feeling of being blocked, limited, transcended, without knowing why. It is the peculiar experience of an organism which can apprehend a totality of things and not be able to move in relation to it. Man experiences this uniquely as a feeling of the crushing awesomeness of things and his helplessness in the face of his culture; after all, the world of men is even more dazzling and miraculous in its richness than the awesomeness of nature. Also, subordinacy comes naturally from man’s basic experiences of being nourished and cared for; it is a logical response to social altruism. Especially when one is sick or injured, he experiences the healing forces as coming from the superordinate cultural system of tools, medicines, and the hard-won skills of persons. An attitude of humble gratitude is a logical one to assume toward the forces that sustain one’s life; we see this very plainly in the learning and development of children. (p. 33)

Another reason that guilt is so diffuse is that it is many different things: there are many different binds in life. One can be in a bind in relation to one’s own development, can feel that one has not achieved all one should have. One can be in a bind in relation to one’s body, which is the guilt of anality: to feel bound and doomed by one’s physical appendages and orifices. Man also experiences guilt because he takes up space and has unintended effects on others – for example, when we hurt others without intending to, just by being what we are or by following our natural desires and appetites, not to mention when we hurt others physically by accident or thoughtlessness. (p. 33)

Most people would agree that the word “alienation” applies to modern man, that something happened in history which gradually despoiled the average man, transformed him from an active, creative being into the pathetic consumer who smiles proudly from out billboards that his armpits are odor-free around the clock. (p. 61)

The thing that connects money with the domain of the sacred is its power. We have long known that money gives power over men, freedom from family and social obligations, from friends, bosses, and underlings; it abolishes one’s likeness to others; it creates comfortable distance between person, easily satisfies their claims on each other without compromising them in any direct and personal way; on top of this it gives literally limitless ability to satisfy appetites of almost any material kind. (p. 81)

Money is associated with the anal region because it represents par excellence the abstract cultural mode of linking man with transcendent powers…it is the perfect “fetish” for an ape-like animal who bemuses himself with striking icons. Money sums up the causa sui prject all in itself: how man, with the tremendous ingenuity of his mind and the materials of his earth, can contrive the dazzling glitter, the magical ratios, the purchase of other men and their labors, to link his destiny with the stars and live down his animal body. (p. 82)

Money gives power now – and, through accumulated property, land, and interest, power in the future. Man has become dependent on social symbols of prestige that single him out as especially worthy of being remembered in the eyes of the gods and in the minds of men. But for an animal who actually lives on the level of the visible and knows nothing of the invisible, it is easy for the eyes of men to take precedence over the eyes of the gods. The symbols of immortal power that money buys exist on the level of the visible, and so crowd out their invisible competitor. Man succumbs easily to the temrpations of created life, which is to exercise power mainly in the dimension in which he moves and acts as an organism. (pp. 84-85)

If there is one thing that the tragic wards of our time have taught us, it is that the enemy has a ritual role to play, by means of which evil is redeemed….This explains why wee are dedicated to war precisely in its most horrifying aspects: it is a passion of human purgation. (p. 115)

Men try to qualify for eternalization by being clean and by cleansing the world around them of the evil, the dirty; in this way they show that they are on the side of purity, even if they themselves are impure. The striving for perfection reflects man’s effort to get some human grip on his eligibility for immortality. And he can only know if he is good if the authorities tell him so; this is why it is so vital form him emotionally to know whether he is liked or disliked, why he will do anything the group wants in order to meet its standards of “good”: his eternal life depends on it. (p. 115)

In all this we see the continuity of history; each heroic apotheosis is a variation on basic themes because man is still man. Civilization, the rise of the state, kingship, the universal religions – all are fed by the same psychological dynamic: guilt and the need for redemption. If it is no longer the clan that represents the collective immortality pool, then it is the state, the nation, the revolutionary cell, the corporation, the scientific society, one’s own race. (p. 119)

For all organisms, then, opposing and obliterating power is evil – it threatens to stop experience. But men are truly sorry creatures because they have made death conscious. They can see evil in anything that wounds them, causes ill health, or even deprives them of pleasure. Consciousness means too that they have to be preoccupied with evil even in the absence of any immediate danger; their lives become a mediation on evil and a planned venture for controlling it and forestalling it. (p. 148)

But if we add together the logic of the heroic with the necessary fetishization of evil, we get a formula that is no longer pathetic but terrifying. It explains almost all by itself why man, of all animals, has caused the most devastation on earth – the most real evil. He struggles extra hard to be immune to death because he alone is conscious of it; but by being able to identify and isolate evil arbitrarily, he is capable of lashing out in all directions against imagined dangers of this world. This means that in order to live he is capable of bringing a large part of the world down around his shoulders. (p. 150)

History is just such a testimonial to the frightening costs of heroism. The hero is the one who can go out and get added powers by killing an enemy and taking his talismans or his scalp or eating his heart. He becomes a walking repository of accrued powers. Animals can only take in food for power; man can literally take in the trinkets and bodies of his whole world. Furthermore, the hero proves his powers by winning in battle he shows that he is favored by the gods. Also, he can appease the gods by offering to them the sacrifice of the stranger. The hero is, then, the one who accrues power by his acts, and who placates invisible powers by his expiations. He kills those who threaten his group, he incorporates their powers to further protect his group, he sacrifices others to gain immunity for his group. In a word, he becomes a savior through blood. (p. 150)

Men cause evil by wanting heroically to triumph over it, because man is a frightened animal who tries to triumph, an animal who will not admit his own insignificance, that he cannot perpetuate himself and his group forever, that no one is invulnerable no matter how much of the blood of others is supplied to demonstrate it. (p. 151)

Guilt is a reflection of the problem of acting in the universe; only partly is it connected to the accidents of one’s birth and early experience. Guilt, as the existentialists put it, is the guilt of being itself. It reflects the self-conscious animal’s 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. (p. 158)

Neurosis, in other words, reflects the incapacity of the individual to heroically transcend himself; when he tries in one way or another, it is plainly vain. (p. 158)

If men kill out of animal fears, then conceivably fears can always be examined and calmed; but if men kill out of lust, then butchery is a fatality for all time. (p. 169)