The artist takes in the world, but instead of being oppressed by it, he reworks it in his own personality and recreates it in the work of art.
Ernest BeckerRead
Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Guilt can sometimes feel less heavy than the weight of total freedom and the responsibilities that come with it.
In this quote, Ernest Becker suggests that experiencing guilt is often preferable to the overwhelming nature of absolute freedom and the associated responsibilities. He implies that with freedom comes the necessity of making choices and facing consequences, which can be burdensome; therefore, feelings of guilt may serve as a reminder of oneβs moral compass, which can help navigate the complexities of freedom and responsibility.
Themes
GuiltFreedomResponsibilityBurdenPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the challenges of adult life, this quote can highlight the burden of making important choices.
More from Ernest Becker
All quotes βWhen you confuse personal love and cosmic heroism you are bound to fail in both spheres. The impossibility of the heroism undermines the love, even if it is real. This double failure is what produces the sense of utter despair that we see in modern man... Love, then, is seen a religious problem
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All power is in essence power to deny mortality.
Ernest BeckerRead
If the love object is divine perfection, then one's own self is elevated by joining one's destiny to it... All our guilt, fear, and even our mortality itself can be purged in a perfect consummation with perfection itself.
Ernest BeckerRead
Each society is a hero system which promises victory over evil and death.
Ernest BeckerRead
We might say that psychoanalysis revealed to us the complex penalties of denying the truth of man's condition, what we might call the costs of pretending not to be mad.
Ernest BeckerRead
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