Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility.
Ernest BeckerRead
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
Interpretation
What this quote means
Confusing personal love with grand heroic ideals can lead to failure in both areas.
Ernest Becker suggests that when individuals mix up the intimate nature of personal love with the lofty expectations of heroism, it ultimately devastates both their romantic relationships and their sense of purpose. The unrealistic pursuit of being a hero can distort genuine love, leading to despair and disillusionment in modern life, where both love and heroism become unattainable ideals.
Themes
LoveHeroismDespairRelationshipsModern Man
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the pressures of modern relationships.
More from Ernest Becker
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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.
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Each society is a hero system which promises victory over evil and death.
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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.
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