Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility.
Ernest BeckerRead
When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that humans must create meaning in their lives, and love plays a crucial role in that process.
Ernest Becker's quote reflects on the unique human condition where unlike any other animal, humans are tasked with creating meaning in an otherwise indifferent nature. Love is portrayed as a foundational aspect of this endeavor, serving not just as an emotional bond but as a vital means through which individuals engage with the world and find their own existence.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a discussion about the nature of human existence in a philosophy class.
Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility.
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.
When 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
All power is in essence power to deny mortality.
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.
Each society is a hero system which promises victory over evil and death.
If we do not believe within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve into something higher.
Public behavior is merely private character writ large.
In our memories, there is a graveyard where we bury our dead. They all lie there together, the loved ones and the ones we hated, friends and foes and kin, with no distinction among them. We have to mourn every one of them, because our memories have made them as much a part of us as our bones or our skin. If we don't, we've no right to remember anything at all.
My heart, to put it more simply, got nostalgic for the present. Always a bad sign.
I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.
Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.