Ernest Becker, anti-psychiatry and "science of evil"

Becker came to believe that individuals' characters are essentially formed around the process of denying their own mortality, that this denial is necessary for us to function in the world, and that this character-armor prevents genuine self-knowledge. Much of the evil in the world, he believed, was a consequence of this need to deny death.

 

Becker also wrote The Birth and Death of Meaning, which gets its title from the concept of humankind moving away from the simple-minded ape into a world of symbols and illusions, and then deconstructing those illusions through our own evolving intellect.

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Open parent cardset ("Man for himself - An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (by Erich Fromm)")